When Tunisia's prominent opposition leader Chokri Belaid was gunned down last week, the news touched a raw nerve and set the alarm bells ringing in Egypt. Egyptians have been looking to Tunisia over the past two years for clues about the road ahead. Tunisia was the first Arab country to rise in a popular uprising in late 2010 against its longstanding autocrat, Zine al-Abdin Ben Ali. Less than two weeks after Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia, Egyptians poured into the streets, initiating their revolt against the regime of Hosni Mubarak, who was forced to step down after 18 days of mass protests across the country. Since then, virtually every step in Tunisia has been closely watched in Egypt, as both countries move along a rocky road towards democracy. The uprisings have propelled Islamists to power in Egypt and Tunisia where a bold, secular-leaning opposition has recently stepped up criticism of the new rulers' policies. Belaid's slaying could not have come at a worse time for Egypt. The leading leftist was shot dead after hardline Islamists had lashed out against him and even called for his death in video footage that went viral on the Internet. Similarly, Mahmoud Shaaban, an Egyptian Muslim cleric, raised the hackles among Egyptians when he called for killing opposition leaders. Shaaban appeared on the ultra-conservative religious Al-Hafez TV channel, accusing the National Salvation Front, the main opposition alliance, of inciting unrest in the country and seeking to depose Mohammed Morsi, Egypt's first elected Islamist President. “In God's Sharia law, they deserve to be killed," Shaaban said, singling out Mohammed ElBaradei and Hamdeen Sabahi, two outspoken critics of Morsi, as a target for his contentious opinion. Shaaban was shown in a widely watched video backing up his fatwa or religious edict with a hadith (saying), attributed to the Prophet Mohammed. Apparently stunned by the massive condemnations of his fatwa, Shaaban, a theology professor, later said his talk had been taken out of context and blamed the “biased" media for playing it up. The Egyptian police have done well by providing protection for opposition leaders, a step made more necessary by the widening gap between the opposition and Morsi's Government. However, the measure is inadequate to allay fears that Egypt's turmoil could be further fuelled by acts of politically motivated assassination. The real problem lies in the prevalent intolerance in a country where the opposition is accused of a kind of heresy, if not infidelity, which must be punished by death. President Morsi and his Islamist-backed Government hurried to decry Shaaban's fatwa in the strongest possible terms. Their Islamist allies followed suit. But, with intolerance and bigotry gaining ground in Egypt, who can guarantee that a fanatic might not act on such a fatwa to end the life of anyone portrayed by militants as an enemy of God? In 1994, a brainwashed Islamist radical attempted to kill Egypt 's Nobel Laureate Naguib Mahfouz, on the basis of a similar fatwa.
