CAIRO: A Bahraini sheikh has denied reports that he called on Egypt President Mohamed Morsi to “destroy the Pyramids” in a tweet on the micro-blogging site Twitter. Abdel Latif al-Mahmoud said the use of his name and making up the statement is part of the “conspiracy” to paint Islam in a poor light. “I did not write this tweet, which has been fabricated by traitors to damage my image,” the Sheikh was reported as saying today by ANSA. The purported tweet was first reported by Egypt's Rose al-Yussif newspaper and taken by ultra-conservative right-wing Frontpage magazine in the United States as “proof” Morsi wanted to destroy un-Islamic relics. The publication, known for its virulent anti-Islamic sentiments and meandering between reality and truth and fiction pertaining to Islam globally and in the United States, argued that the country's Salafist al-Nour party has brought forth plans to demolish the country's iconic monuments to take down “symbols of paganism." The FrontPage Magazine article then details “examples" of contemporary Muslims across several African and Middle Eastern countries who have destroyed historical monuments. “Much of this hate for their own pre-Islamic heritage is tied to the fact that, traditionally, Muslims do not identify with this or that nation, culture, or language, but only with the Islamic nation – the Umma," the article states. “Accordingly, while many Egyptians – Muslims and non-Muslims alike – see themselves first and foremost as Egyptians, Islamists have no national identity, identifying only with Islam's ‘culture,' based on the ‘sunna' of the prophet and Islam's language, Arabic," it claims. The article is yet another example of fearmongering that highlights the growing divide among real scholarship regarding the Muslim Brotherhood, which is not a Salafist organization, and a few outliers who do not speak for the greater Islamic community, in Egypt and elsewhere.
