In 1994, the Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz survived an attempt on his life as he was walking near his home close to the Nile in Cairo. When asked if he'd read any of Mahfouz's writings, the assailant, a young militant, said he hadn't. However, the would-be assassin admitted to having sought to kill Mahfouz, who was then 83, in compliance with a fatwa (religious edict), issued by his mentor, who had ruled that the leading novelist was an apostate who deserved to die! "The emir [the leader of a radical Muslim group] told me that killing Naguib Mahfouz would be in the interests of society," the attacker was quoted at the time as saying while being probed. And herein lies the rub. Glamourising evil deeds and intolerance in the name of religion is an increasing risk in Egypt. There has been a worrying rise in the number of lawsuits filed over alleged defamation of religion in recent months. The trend is unlikely to recede anytime soon. A newly approved constitution, drafted by Islamists, is set to embolden hardliners to take the law into their own hands and punish those perceived as violators of public morals. Specifically, Article 10 of the charter, which was adopted by a slim margin in last month's public vote, stipulates that the state and society shall "safeguard the characteristic nature of the Egyptian family, its cohesion and stability, as well as deepen and protect its moral values". Critics are understandably apprehensive that this stipulation may be manipulated by militants to force their unorthodox view of Islam on the people – Muslims or otherwise – on the pretext of promoting society's interests and values. These worries were last week fuelled by reports in the local media about people planning to set up morality police to ensure that public morals comply with the Islamic code. In doing so, the latter-day street vigilantes are obviously making use of the aforementioned article in the new Constitution and the prevalent atmosphere in Egypt, where liberalism and secularism are equated with heresy and even apostasy. Such misconceptions threaten to further erode the state authorities, which have felt the pinch of a wave of labour strikes and violence that has gripped post-revolution Egypt. Freedom is ominously at stake too. In a space of a single week, at least four lawsuits were brought against opponents, including the popular TV satirist Bassem Yousef, for purportedly insulting the Islamist head of state. Strangely enough, the complaints were lodged by Islamist lawyers, not the President's office. These cases conjure up in one's mind similar lawsuits filed against opponents and journalists in the Mubarak era. What is worse now is that religious sentiment is glaringly manipulated to antagonise the public against opponents and lend an aura of holiness and infallibility to the rulers. For example, some ultra-conservative clerics claim that rebelling or even criticising a ‘pious' ruler is haram or religiously impermissible. They are apparently referring to President Mohammed Morsi, Egypt 's first ruler to sport a beard and publicly frequent mosques to perform prayers. At this point, it should be mentioned that Egyptians, Muslims and Christians, deposed Mubarak not because he was not a religious leader, but because he was authoritarian. The revolutionaries succinctly summed up the objectives of their uprising in the inspiring slogan: Bread (a decent standard of living), freedom and social justice. Basically, Egypt does not have a problem with religion, but with the manipulation of religion for political and worldly gains.
