CAIRO: The administrative court has postponed till July 31the appeal hearing of detained members of the Quranist movement. Adel Ramadan, the lawyer representing the detainees in the case, told The Daily Star Egypt that on May 29, national security forces had broken into the homes of four members of the Quranist movement at about 2 am and detained them without clear charges. Two days later, another member was arrested. According to Ramadan, the Quranists are a group of Muslims who believe that the Quran should be the only frame of reference in Islam, dismissing large parts of the sunnah (actions and sayings) of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). They do not believe in what is called 'sunna motwaheda' which refers to the sayings of the Prophet that have been transmitted through only one source, as opposed to a whole circle of sources. They believe such hadiths [sayings] lack credibility and are full of mistakes, said Ramadan. He continued that they believe in only in hadiths which have been confirmed by many sources. But their belief that the Quran is a holy book protected by God, as opposed to the sunna which might have been wrongly narrated is the most controversial of their claims, Ramadan said. The Quranists are charged with contempt for religion, according to Article 98 of the penal code, which warrants a five-year prison sentence. He said there have been many legal procedures taken in the issue. The minister of interior decided on their political arrest, while the national security prosecution decided on their temporary detainment. There is a double legal situation. We requested an appeal on the decision taken by the national security prosecution, but their lawyer rejected our appeal, but this is an illegal procedure, according to the latest amendments to the constitution that allows any detained person to appeal his case, said Ramadan. The Quranists spread their ideas through a website called Ahl El Quran . Ahmed Mansour, a former professor at Al-Azhar University who is currently a refugee in the United States, was the first to adopt the ideas of the movement in the 1980s, but no legal procedure was taken against him. But when Mansour's brother Abdel Latif, began republishing his work, he was detained and accused of spreading false ideas about Islam. Mahmoud Dahmash, the brother of 30-year-old Ahmed Dahmash, one of the other detainees in the case, said they should not have been detained for a crime that the court had not yet ruled one. If the police is suspicious of something, why should they arrest people in the middle of the night before investigating? Mahmoud Dahmash told The Daily Star Egypt. He insisted that his brother did not belong to any religious groups or work on spreading any false ideas, but that he only happens to be a friend of Abdel Latif Mohamed Mansour, the main detainee in the case. The lawyer told us that Ahmed is accused of contempt for religion, but I think they arrested him because of his friend. When they arrested him in the middle of the night, they confiscated most of his books and personal documents, said Dahmash. Relatives of other members refused to comment on the case, while Abdel Latif s wife was unavailable at time of press.
