CAIRO - Mazhar Shahin, nicknamed ‘The Preacher of the Revolution', did well on Friday when, after the congregational noon prayers in the Omar Makram Mosque near the iconic Tahrir Square, he led a throng of Muslim worshippers to offer Christmas greetings in a nearby church. “The Muslims and Copts are one hand,” chanted the worshippers as they headed to the Qasr el-Dobara Church, which served as a makeshift field hospital during the police's crackdown on pro-democracy protesters before and after Hosni Mubarak's toppling. Shahin's gesture was apparently in response to a fatwa (religious edict) issued by a Salafist leader, prohibiting Muslims from greeting Coptic Orthodox Christians on their Christmas, annually celebrated on January 6 and 7. Meanwhile, Egypt's Mufti, Ali Gomaa, decreed that offering the season's greetings to Christians is something commendable in Islam. For their part, the Muslim Brotherhood, who have taken the lead in the first two rounds of Egypt's staggered parliamentary polls, have said their members will create ‘human shields' to protect churches across the country at Coptic Christmas. In the past two years, the Copts' Christmas festivities were marred by two deadly attacks outside churches in Luxor in Upper Egypt and the coastal city of Alexandria. The latest gestures are definitely laudable. However, they are unlikely to dispel fears among the country's Christian minority, triggered by the Islamists' dominance of the parliamentary elections and public statements made by the ultra-conservative Salafists in particular. In the months following the popular revolt against the Mubarak regime, the Salafists have made a strong showing after decades of oppression. Their re-emergence is welcome in the new Egypt where equality and pluralism should prevail. However, the unorthodox views dished out by several Islamists, mainly Salafists, cannot be disregarded as personal. It is worrying to hear Yasser Burhami, a senior member of the Salafist Al-Nour Party, the runners-up in the current elections, telling voters not to vote in electoral districts where there isn't an Al-Nour candidate. “You should not vote for candidates who are not in favour of enforcing God's Sharia [Islamic Law],” he was quoted as saying. Burhami had apparently on his mind the third and final round of voting, starting today, as he proclaimed this bizarre fatwa. Al-Nour have secured 25 per cent of parliamentary seats in the first two stages of the polls, while the Muslim Brotherhood are way out in front with 46 per cent. Youssef el-Badrai, another eminent Salafist cleric, told official television the other day that he proposes creating a ministry to be tasked with ‘promoting virtue and prohibiting vice', i.e. religious police, in Egypt. “This ministry could operate by making the Imam of each mosque, backed up by a police officer, responsible for ensuring that the Sharia is applied in the streets,” he explained. Worries felt by Egypt's liberals and Christians about such opinions are understandable. The big problem is that these views are perceived as being made in the name of Islam, thereby compromising the moderate tenets of this faith and undermining efforts to promote religious tolerance in the country. It is not enough for the Islamists to dismiss such views as personal or to accuse the media of deliberately trapping them to portray them as radicals. They have to stop mixing politics with religion and casting themselves as the patronising guardians of Islam. With their dominance of the new Parliament already a foregone conclusion, the Islamists must brace themselves for a crucial socio-economic test. They will need far more than religious slogans to fulfil their voters' wishes for a better life.
