Cairo Magazine - Traitors, spies and democrats

Members of parliament and preachers in mosques have recently condemned the U.S. move to give $1 million to six Egyptian organizations involved in democracy work.

On 27 March, deputies in parliament expressed anger over the US grant to the six organizations and called for the groups to be dissolved and the money transferred to the attorney general. They also called for a review of their past records and a comprehensive audit of their finances.

In response, the government assured the People's Assembly that it was going to tighten the controls on foreign funding for organizations. To circumvent the tight controls on non-governmental organizations, many groups, such as the Ibn Khaldoun Center, have registered as civil companies, for which the rules are looser. Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Kamal Al Shazli told parliament that the civil companies law would be reformed to block "suspect" foreign funding. Soon, he explained, all foreign funding for companies or NGOs would be subject to government approval.

Several days earlier, on 18 March, preachers in a number of mosques, including the large Al Fatih mosque in Midan Ramsis and Al Nour mosque in Midan Abbasiya, as well as smaller mosques in various other Cairo districts dedicated their Friday sermon to accusing certain civil society organizations of treason and espionage for receiving foreign funds.

According to a communiqué sent by activist Negad Al Borai, head of the United Group and one of the recipients of U.S. funds, some of the sermons targeted him in particular, along with sociology professor Saad Eddin Ibrahim, head of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Developments Studies. The Ibn Khaldoun center is also receiving some U.S. funding as part of the Middle East Peace Initiative (MEPI), a 2003 US presidential plan supporting political, economic and educational reform in the region.

"Mosques are being used for illegitimate purposes," said Al Borai, who believes that the accusations made by the Friday preachers were dictated by the Egyptian government, especially since two of the mosques are among the largest in the city. Al Borai was concerned about his security after such an incident. "This campaign can effectively lead some foolish people to take steps against us," he said alluding to Farag Fouda's assassination. Fouda, an Egyptian liberal academic, was killed by Islamists in 1992 for publishing a number of tracts highly critical of political Islam.

The Ibn Khaldoun center declined to respond to the attacks. "We get insulted all the time, if we pay too much attention, we won’t finish," said Moheb Zaki, senior advisor at the center. "We only respond to official claims." Zaki did not express surprise at the attacks, given that some of the mosques involved, according to him, are known for the extreme tone of their discourse. "Al Fatih mosque is one of the most fundamentalist congregations in town," he said.

The Ministry of Religious Endowments, which manages mosque affairs, said it did not know anything about these sermons. "This is not an official stance. Those are just individual tendencies," said a senior official source of the ministry, who preferred to remain anonymous. "We have to read closely what has been reported by the press and then we will investigate the issue," he added.

The ministry has long attempted to gain control over Friday sermons, which some preachers have used as an avenue for political discourse. The ministry requires mosques to register and also conducts periodic inspections of Friday sermons. While many small mosques (zawyas) remain outside official control, the larger institutions, such as Nour and Fatih, are certainly delivering approved sermons. "The preacher can only sermonize on issues related to religion. But he cannot tackle politics," said the source from the ministry.

Mahmoud Ashour, spokesperson for Al Azhar mosque, one of the highest authorities for Sunni Islam, explained that the preacher should only be tackling day-to-day issues in the course of the Friday prayer. "The religious sermon has nothing to do with politics," he said. "Preachers are usually well trained before they start giving sermons."

Zaki of the Ibn Khaldoun Center points out, however, that mosques are hard to scrutinize closely. "The state is unable to impose laws on mosques. There's a certain immunity that envelops mosques because they are religious spaces," he said.