What a Muslim Brotherhood State Looks Like

by Joseph S. Spoerl (June 2013)

Historical Background

Treatment of Non-Muslim Minorities: Coptic Christians

Coptic Christians are the largest religious minority in Egypt, comprising 10-15% of the population. Both Marshall and Shea7 and the U.S. State Department document persistent discrimination against, and frequent persecution of, Coptic Christians in Egypt. In the Executive Summary of its 2011 report on religious freedom in Egypt, which covers the period July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, before the Muslim Brotherhood took control of the government, the State Department said the following:

Regarding the treatment of Christians, the State Department also notes the following:

  • The Egyptian state subsidizes Islamic mosques and schools, but not Christian churches. The government pays the salaries of mosque imams, and Al-Azhar University, with 500,000 students, is financed by the government yet admits no non-Muslim students.
  • The government discriminates against Christians in government hiring.
  • The government discriminates against Christians in granting permits for building or renovating churches.
  • The government prohibits proselytizing by non-Muslims, but permits proselytizing by Muslims.
  • The government allows non-Muslims to convert to Islam, but does not allow Muslims to leave Islam.
  • The government allows Muslim men to marry Christian women, but does not allow Christian men to marry Muslim women.
  • The government bars non-Muslims from employment in public university training programs for Arabic language teachers because the curriculum involves study of the Koran.

All of this discrimination against Christians and favoring of Muslims can be traced in one way or another to provisions of classical sharia.9 All of it dates to the Mubarak era or earlier.

Persecution of Muslim Converts to Christianity

Treatment of Other Non-Muslim Minorities

Finally, consider the case of Ahmed Subhy Mansour, founder of the Quranist movement.34 Virtually every State Department report since 2001 documents ongoing persecution of the Quranists, who deviate from every school of classical sharia by arguing that the Islamic religion should be based on the Koran alone, not also on the example and teachings of Muhammad (second only to the Koran as the basis of sharia). Ahmed Mansour was a friend of Farag Foda and, like Foda, was committed to secular democratic government with equal rights for non-Muslims. He was convinced that the more illiberal and intolerant aspects of Islamic law stemmed not from the Koran but from the alleged sayings of Muhammad, which he (together with many Western historians) regards as historically unreliable. For these unorthodox opinions, he was fired from his position on the faculty at Al-Azhar University and, in November 1987, he and twenty-four fellow Quranists were imprisoned and accused by the government of inducing Muslims to commit apostasy. In 2001, he and his wife fled Egypt and applied for asylum in the U.S. Mansour now lives in Virginia.35

Conclusion

http://www.memri.org/report/en/print6846.htm

[2] Paul Marshall and Nina Shea, Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 62.

[3] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 62.

[4] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 67.

http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/

[6] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 62.

[7] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, pp. 65-66.

[8] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?dlid=192881

[10] Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, The Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law, translated and annotated by Nuh Ha Mim Keller, revised edition (Beltsville, MD: Amana Publications, 1994), f1.3 (p. 109), o8.1 (p. 595).

[11] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?dlid=192881

[12] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2010, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010/148817.htm

[13] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 69.

[14] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 69.

[15] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2010, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/2010/148817.htm

[16] Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, o11.2 (p. 607).

http://azure.org.il/article.php?id=581

[18] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?dlid=192881

[19] Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, pp. xx-xxi. Moreover, the Reliance of the Traveller is in the Shafi school of Sunni Islamic law, which has for centuries been the dominant school in Egypt. It is thus an especially useful tool for understanding what sharia means in the Egyptian context. It also enjoys the endorsement of the International Institute of Islamic Thought (pp. xviii-xix), a major Muslim Brotherhood organization based in Herndon, Virginia. It is thus an excellent index of the world view of Hasan al-Banna and the Muslim Brotherhood generally.

[20] Al-Misri, The Reliance of the Traveller, f1.3 (p. 109).

[21] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 74.

[22] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 74.

[23] In his classic study of the Muslim Brotherhood, Richard P. Mitchell repeatedly cites Mohamed El Ghazali (or al-Ghazali) as a typical, mainstream Muslim Brotherhood thinker: Richard P. Mitchell, The Society of the Muslim Brothers (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 61, 90-1, 124, 188, 213, 220, 239-40, 254, 273, 323, 326.

http://meria.idc.ac.il/journal/2007/issue2/jv11no2a3.html and Alison Pargeter, The Muslim Brotherhood: The Burden of Tradition (London: SAQI, 2010), p. 207, and Barry Rubin ed., The Muslim Brotherhood: The Organization and Policies of a Global Islamist Movement (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 12.

http://azure.org.il/article.php?id=587

[29] Al-Misri, The Reliance of the Traveller, 08.7(7) (p. 597).

[30] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, pp. 76-78.

[31] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 62.

[32] Al-Misri, Reliance of the Traveller, q1.0 (pp. 714-725).

[34] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, pp. 78-80. See also the Wikipedia article on Mansour: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmed_Subhy_Mansour

http://www.jeffjacoby.com/205/questions-the-islamic-society-should-answer</a>; Eli Lake, “In 2002, Kerry Welcomed Boston Mosque Now Suspected of Ties to Wahhabism,” The New York Sun, October 22, 2004, http://www.nysun.com/national/in-2002-kerry-welcomed-boston-mosque-now/3627/</a>; Oren Dorell, “Mosque that Boston suspects attended has radical ties,” USA Today, April 25, 2013, http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/23/boston-mosque-radicals/2101411/

[36] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 77.

[37] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 79.

[38] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?dlid=192881

[39] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 72.

[40] Marshall and Shea, Silenced, p. 71.

[42] U.S. State Department, International Religious Freedom Report for 2011, Egypt, http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/irf/religiousfreedom/index.htm?dlid=192881

[43] http://www.oic-oci.org/english/article/human.htm

http://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm/frm/128355/sec_id/128355

http://www.jsantisemitism.org/</a>; Jeffrey Herf, “Scapegoat,” The New Republic, May 12, 2011, http://www.newrepublic.com/article/world/88104/muslim-brotherhood-anti-semitism-israel-egypt#</a>; Anti-Defamation League, “Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi: Theologian of Terror,” http://www.adl.org/anti-semitism/muslim-arab-world/c/sheik-yusf-al-qaradawi.html</a>; Meir Litvak, “The Anti-Semitism of Hamas,” The Palestine-Israel Journal of Politics, Economics and Culture, Vol. 12, Nos. 2&3 (2005), http://www.pij.org/details.php?id=345

http://journals.hil.unb.ca/index.php/JCS/article/view/2166

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/20/world/egyptian-group-patiently-pursues-dream-of-islamic-state.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/world/middleeast/05iht-letter05.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 and “International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) Attacks UN For Promoting Resolutions Banning Polygamy, Underage Marriage, Marital Rape, Promotion of Gender Equality,” Middle East Media Research Institute, Special Dispatch No. 5227, March 8, 2013, http://www.memri.org/report/en/print7063.htm

[49] See Lorenzo Vidino, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010), and Ian Johnson, A Mosque in Munich (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).

Joseph S. Spoerl is professor of philosophy at Saint Anselm College.

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