CAIRO - A few months ago, some extremist Islamists announced the formation of a Saudi-like police force of the ‘Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice Authority', to assume responsibility for supervising the enforcement of Islamic Shari'a (religious law) and punish those violating it. At the time, An-Nur Salafi Party denied their relation to the group, to whose warning to enforce Islamic rules on society no one gave much attention. However, the terrible crime some members of this group committed in Suez governorate a few days ago, causing the murder of a 20-years old university student should no pass unpunished. It is unacceptable to be satisfied by the Salafists' denial of their part of the crime or of having any connections to its perpetrators, especially given that the Salafists are continuing to push for changing the second article of the constitution. This article considers the principles of Islamic Shari'a as the main source of legislation, which they wish to amend to ‘Rules of the Islamic Shari'a' so as to find the excuse to strictly force the Islamic penalties on the citizens. They even threatened to withdraw from the Constituent Assembly if their demands were not met if the draft constitution includes an article about the civic nature of the state! The Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate reaching rule should not give a green light to those extremists to acquire illegal authority over citizens' life style nor to punish them for any act. President Mohammed Morsi has made it clear that he would be a president for all and that he will strengthen the rule of law and protect the civil democratic state of Egypt. This means that the state and not any other party would continue to assume the responsibility of enforcing the law in society via the ministry of the interior and the court system. However, letting this crime pass without clear condemnation from the President as well as the Muslim Brotherhood could mean other incidents occurring that could touch on the credibility of the president and scare the public about the country's future. President Morsi's moderate character should be stressed not only to the liberal parties, the ordinary citizens but also to the extremist Islamists that wish to use his rule for enforcing their agenda on Egyptian society. Murderers of the Suez youth Ahmed Hussein Eid should be punished by death sentence not only for charges of premeditative murder but also for terrorising society. Otherwise, Eid will not be the last victim and those extremists will continue intimidating citizens that would find no one else to blame but the Islamists' president.
