CAIRO – The desire of the ruling Military Council to specify the principles governing Egypt's next Constitution is proving to be a contentious issue, a few days after a member of the Council made an announcement about this. The earliest objections to the principles are coming from the nation's Islamists. They have been holding meetings and consulting with each other, and are planning to pressurise the Council by expressing their opposition to what they call ‘limits' on the next Constitution. "It is illogical to tie the hands of the next, elected Parliament, which will write the Constitution according to principles drawn up by a group of unelected people," Safwat Abdel-Ghani, a senior member of the Jamaa Islamia organisation, an Islamist group that champions the opposition to the constitutional principles, told The Gazette. "Parliament must not be fettered in any manner when writing the Constitution, because it represents the whole people of Egypt." In an address to the nation last week, the Military Council said it would assign some experts to specify general guidelines for the next Constitution, apparently in a bid to allay fears that, if the Islamists win a majority of seats in the next Parliament, the Constitution will reflect their point of view alone. The next Parliament should form an assembly of tens of experts to write the Constitution, which will then be voted on in a national referendum. The nation's Islamists have organised themselves into parties that have managed to carve an important niche for themselves on the political stage here. This is a cause of concern for a considerable number of Egyptians who are afraid that these Islamists will draw up a constitution that will suffocate freedom of faith and thought, if they win a parliamentary majority. This view has been overly expressed by nationally minded intellectuals, some of whom have even accused the Military Council of taking sides with the Islamists in agreeing to hold the next parliamentary elections even before a new constitution has been drawn up. "What is the Military Council if it is not taking sides with the Islamists in allowing the parliamentary elections to be held before the Constitution has been written?" Abdel-Haleem Qandeel, a political activist, asked a member of the Military Council on Dream, a private satellite channel, on Saturday. Deep down, behind the fears of the liberalists and the secularists and the reservations of the Islamists, there is a kind of political rivalry that may polarise Egypt in the days to come. This rivalry manifested itself very clearly last March, when millions of Egyptians headed to the nation's polling stations to vote on a package of constitutional amendments, the first since a revolution which put paid to Hosni Mubarak's career. As voters arrived at the polling stations, they found bearded Islamists telling them that a no-vote on the amendments would mean an end to the supremacy of Islam in Egypt. A few days ago, Islamists started an all-out smear campaign against one of the symbols of liberal thinking, a communications tycoon, who jokingly, but mistakenly, put a bearded Mickey Mouse photo on his website. The Islamists say they will organise a one-million man demonstration in Al Tahrir Square next Friday to put pressure on the Military Council to forget about the constitutional principles and call for applying the Sharia (Islamic Law) in Egypt. Some people have termed the conflict between the Islamists and the nation's liberals a ‘War of Fear'. The liberals are afraid that an Islamist Egypt would open the way for their victimisation, putting an end to religious diversity and intellectual creativity. The Islamists, for their part, say that, having suffered for years under Mubarak, they are afraid that an anti-Islamic state will victimise them yet again. "This is the real fear," said Abdel-Ghani, the Jamaa Islamia senior member. "A liberal regime in this country might victimise the Islamists yet again." Abdel-Ghani spent years in jail under Mubarak for crimes, he says, he never committed.
