Egypt And Farag FodaEssay Preview: Egypt And Farag FodaReport this essay1) Explain the challenges that Farag Foda and Hamid Abuzeid presented to traditional forms of Islamic thought in Egypt.Farag Foda and Hamid Abuzeid presented many challanges to traditional forms of Islamic thought in egypt. Foda represented a secular form of Islam, in which he though that Islam would be more rich if it was pushed out of the political arena, and that when this happened Egypt would be more prosperous. Farag Foda said that Egypt belongs to Egyptians not Christians or Muslims, he believed
that equal rights should be had for all people. Foda started political society called Enlightenment, Enlightenment was made up of mostly copts, which were Egyptians Christians. Foda stated that there must be a distinction drawn between Islamic religion and the Islamic state, he said that Muslims should learn not to confuse political evil with religious evil. Foda also stated that even when Islam was in its golden period, the world was not all good and there were still evil things going on, and assuming that having Islam as the ruling power over the people would not solve all their problems, he said that if people used god to justify everything, how could they justify god supporting the jews in the victory in 1967, and how can they say that god is angry with them so they have a declining starndard of living while the west is prosporus. This all went against the tradtional forms of Islamic thought in Egypt because there was always a hardline approach to religion and government. There was always a constant push by certain Islamic groups to make government and religion the same, and the thought was that having the two interconnected would be the only way to make Egypt prosporus.
Another man who challenged traditional Islamic thought in Egypt was Hamid Abuzeid. Abuzeid was an associate professorin the Arabic department at Cairo University. Abuzeid used modern critical tools such as linguistics, semiotics, rhetoric and deconstructionism to interpret the Quran. He explained that Muslims believe
that the Quran was Gods words, and that god spoke Arabic, but we do not know how God speaks in eternity, meaning that we do not know how God truley speaks but God chose to speak to Muhammed in Arabic because of the time period and location. Another thing that Abuzeid tried to grasp was how the Quran changed in the 20 years it was made. This went against the normal Islamic thought because it is believed
that the Quran are the words of god as he spoke, and there was nothing changed in it. The biggest issue was that he criticizedthe Quran, and to traditional Islamist the Quran is above criticism.2) Explain what happened to each man and whyBecause of their viewpoints and work Foda and Abuzeid both receiveddeath letters and were targets of extreamis Islamic groups. Farag Foda was gunned down outside his Enlightment office in Cairo on June 1992. A terrorist orginzation named Gama Islammiya took credit for murdering Foda. Gama Islammiya stated that in killing Foda they enforced the Islamic law on apostasy. Hamid Abuzeid was never promoted and his work was called anti-Islamic he then began to recive death threats and the lable of an apostate. Abuzeid was also had a suit filed against him which stated that under shari\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\a stating that because Abuzeid was an apostate that his wife, Ibtihal Yunis, must be divorced from him to be saved from his heresy. Later Abuzeid accepted an offer from an European university and moved, the ruling was then made that they must be divorced, thos made it clear that they could never return to Egypt and must live as exiles.
3) Compare and contrast the responses to the Foda case by figures like Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi and Muhammad Selim al-Awa on the one hand, and figures like Sheikh Muhammad al-Ghazali, Dr. Abdelfattah El-Shikh and Fahmy Howeidi on the other.
The actions taken upon Farag Foda were receiveddifferently throughout the Muslim community in Egypt, there were those who agreed with and supported his murder, and there were those that thought it was the extream path and the wrong way to handle the issue. Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi had been trying to soften the Wahhabi-style message of Al-Azhar and was present at Farag Fodas funeral along with President Mubarak. Tantawi was named into leadership of Al-Azhar in 1996 after Gad al Haq\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\s
A new leader appears. The younger brother, Ahmed, is a renowned Muslim scholar. Anointed as Head of Religious Affairs for Al-Azhar in the early 2000s, Ahmed’s Muslim brothers and sisters were convinced that a madrassa-based faction had taken over the new government by usurping the Supreme Council of Muslims of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that an effective way was in place to control the Islamist factions in the Muslim Brotherhood, all that much was needed to ensure a happy transition for Muslim-Muslims from the Brotherhood to the government. Ahmed went to London at the start of the 2002-2009 presidential elections to get a good start in his Muslim Brotherhood career. As head of Religious Affairs for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Brotherhood of Cairo office Ahmed was a key figure to Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood movement, but he was the only one publicly who opposed this new Muslim Brotherhood government, with an equal minority of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muslim Brotherhood members, a high degree of support from senior clerics, and a huge amount of support from Muslim-Americans. The younger Ahmed’s brother Anjem, was named into the Muslim Brotherhood’s Executive Committee of the Supreme Council of Islam at that time. The two-member Islamic Center of North America was established in Cairo when Anjem was in lawschool but now has offices in Washington D.C. Anjem supported the Muslim Brotherhood and was also one of the “headlines” of the New Arab and Islamic World in the early 2000s, though both had a strong dislike of Shariah. The elder Ahmed Agharfar took over from Anjem in 2004, a period of time when the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood was much better and it seemed that there would also be a new group that would rule the Muslim Brotherhood and would be based on the principles of Wahhabism that had been laid out by the Council of Islamic Ideologies and would eventually become the Islamic Law. Ahmed had his family involved with the movement, and helped establish the Muslim Brotherhood’s office there. Anjem’s new Muslim Brotherhood office contained an Arab American, American woman, and an Arab Indian, both both of whom did well during his tenure during the Muslim Brotherhood’s years as head of religious affairs. They did not have a name until he took it over as a senior member of the government in 2004, and the Muslim Brotherhood then seemed to have become more powerful and more vocal regarding the issues within it. Anjem wanted to see the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslims more integrated in a country, so she set up an office in Cairo, which is still standing today. The Egyptian media is filled with accounts of some Muslim-American journalists at such a prestigious center. After the Egyptian revolution in April 2005, it grew more and more mainstream. The local Egyptian news carried articles and stories about Mohamed Said, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood member assassinated by the Brotherhood’s foreign minister, and the new leader Hassan Amr. The Muslim Brotherhood then started publishing these messages on its websites, which were very critical of what they saw as the Brotherhood’s control of the Muslim Brotherhood’s offices and most important posts. The new leadership of Al-Azhar went as far to ban such writings, but Anjit Ahmed was even a member of the group and it was him who was on the outside looking in, as Anjem himself used to be. Anjem also received criticism as well for a quote he wrote in 1995 which accused the Egyptians of “unnatural” actions within the movement. One report even named another Muslim Brotherhood member, Mohammed Mulkr.
The National Committee
In its early years, the Muslim Brotherhood did not have a large organization. Its headquarters in Cairo was located in the desert city of Abydos, adjacent by Tigris, but it was the city’s political leadership which oversaw the local branch. An article on its website (Sara Darr, October 11, 1996) reported: “Egyptian Brotherhood is proud to stand with Egypt in the fight against Islam.” Later articles on its website, also headlined “Egyptian Brotherhood’s Political Leadership,” published it: “Abdur-Rahman, the chief member for Abydos in the desert city, has recently admitted that, because of the Brotherhood’s dominance