By Charles Jacobs
June 29, 2007
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At 2:30 a.m. on May 28th Egyptian police broke into Abdellatif Muhammad Said's Cairo apartment, blindfolded and arrested him, and seized his computer. At the same time, Said's three cousins were arrested in another apartment. No one knows where they are being held.
Arrests like this happen frequently in Egypt, which receives $2 billion yearly in U.S. aid. Why Said? He works with the Quranists, a Muslim reform group, and is the half brother of the movement's leader, Sheikh Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour. (Full disclosure: Mansour is my friend).
Being a progressive Muslim is a dangerous business, whether in Cairo or Tehran. Although he has not been officially charged, Said's "crime" appears to have been the form of Islam he promoted -- reformist, non-violent, and based exclusively on the Koran. The plot thickens: Said's cousin, Amr Tharwat, another Muslim reformer, worked for the Ibn Khaldun Center, headed by Egypt's most prominent democracy advocate, Saad Eddin Ibrahim.
The Quaranist movement was recently denounced as "non-Muslim" by a representative of Al-Azhar University, often referred to as "Islam's Vatican." Sheikh Mansour, once a faculty member at al-Azhar, was forced out because of his beliefs and imprisoned by the regime for the crime of wanting to reform Islam from within. He was eventually given asylum in the U.S., admitted to Harvard's "Scholars at Risk" program, and then sued by the Islamic Society of Boston when he complained about anti-Semitic and anti-Christian hate literature in the ISB's Cambridge mosque.
This week, Human Rights Watch (HRW) fired off a letter to Egyptian authorities protesting the disappearance of the Quranists. A good sign, as the HR establishment has mostly gone PC, and focuses mainly on the behavior of Westerners while it protects the West's enemies: secret CIA prisons get more attention than Saddam's torture chambers ever did. Distracted and obsessed with 40 years of Israeli "occupation," "rights activists" have little or no time to defend women, apostates, atheists or dhimmis under Islamic rule. They abandoned the black Christian slaves of Sudan's jihad.
Both the "left" and "right" chatter about the need for reform to come from within Islam. But Muslim reformers who actually put their lives on the line don't seem to register with anyone.
What can we do? Call Amnesty International. Ask that Said and the Quranists be adopted as "prisoners of conscience." Encourage HRW to keep up the pressure. Call the State Department and ask them to intervene: billions of U.S. aid should count for something. Ask your elected representatives why the U.S. is continuing to support Egypt when it refuses to grant basic political and religious freedoms. Learn about the Quranists from Sheikh Mansour's Web sites. The only hope for peace in the world may rest with Islamic reform movements. Learn about them. Support them.
Abdellatif Muhammad Said and the Quranists are in a dark Egyptian prison. People like them may hold the only hopes for Islam's future and for world peace. Don't be a bystander. Do something.
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