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State-Sponsored Islam

The Egyptian government actively sponsors the promotion of Islam in Egypt and abroad, spending vast sums of money in pursuit of this objective. Government sponsorship of Islam is subsidized through endowments, including income from land endowed for Christian purposes that had been expropriated by the state, and general taxation. Christian citizens do not have the right to withhold or redirect the percentage of their taxes that is earmarked for the support of Islamic institutions.

The Ministry of Islamic Foundations (Waqfs) is the principle state organ responsible for the supervision and financial support of Islamic institutions. Approximately 7,000 of the country's 60,000 mosques are government mosques and as such are financed and administered directly by the Ministry of Islamic Foundations. Since 1985 all 53,000 private mosques, many of which are closely linked to fundamentalist groups and underground militant organizations, have been placed under the supervision of the Ministry. The Ministry has the right to bar politically unreliable preachers from private mosques. In reality, however, the Ministry lacks the resources to control fully their activities.

Within the Ministry of Islamic Foundations two agencies exist - the Directorate for the Propagation of Islam and the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs. Both agencies are charged with the following tasks:

1) "the diffusion of Islamic culture and the arousal of religious consciousness in the whole Arab nation in order to make Islam known among all peoples of the world."
2) "the preservation of the Qur'an by its publication, and the execution of its printing and distribution."
3) "supervision of the affairs of mosques so that they may properly fulfill their mission in the spreading of Islam." (Berger, p. 47-8)

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The Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs is authorized to validate the legality of Islamic associations and is responsible for incorporating the principles of Islamic law into draft legislation for the consideration of the National Assembly.

The propagation of Islam outside the mosque is heavily subsidized by the Ministry of Islamic Foundations and other government agencies. In this way they support Qur'an memorization programmes, the publication of Islamic apologetical and devotional works, public lectures, daily readings of the Qur'an and religious talks on radio and television. Christians in Egypt are particularly disturbed by the state sponsorship of the prominent television preacher Sheik Al-Sharawi whose broadcasts often include provocative attacks against the Christian faith.

Since 1961 The Ministry of Islamic Foundations has supervised the Al-Azhar University of Cairo, whose head is appointed by the state President. This ancient Islamic institution is the preeminent center of Islamic learning throughout the Sunni Muslim world. Today it is the intellectual hub of the movement to fully Islamize Egyptian life according to the principles of Shariah law. The "Islamic Draft Constitution" produced by Al-Azhar in the late 1970's provides a legal code based on an orthodox understanding of Shariah law. The draft constitution, for example, legitimizes private vengeance based on the talion (kisas) and the negotiation of a blood money settlement. It prescribes the death sentence for apostasy from Islam, stoning for adultery, cutting off of the hand for theft, and flogging for the consumption of alcohol, fornication and casting aspersions on a woman's honour.

The Chief Judge of Egypt's Supreme Security Court, Said Al-Ashmawy, recently expressed concern about the powerful Al-Azhar establishment's wish to see Islamic law take precedence over basic human rights. The Sadat and Mubarak regimes have used this fundamentalist, but government financed university as an instrument for co-opting Muslim militants into the established political order. However, it is far from clear whether the government will ultimately dominate Al-Azhar or be dominated by it. Law 102 of 1985 confirms upon the University's Islamic Research Foundation the quasi-judicial right to recommend the banning or censoring of books, plays, and films which it regards as objectionable to Islam. The government normally accepts the censorship recommendations of Al-Azhar. The Al-Azhar establishment has succeeded in having 155 books banned since 1952. Al-Azhar's censorship is a grave infringement of the intellectual freedoms of the country's Christians whose access to works deemed anti-Islamic by the state's clerics is severely restricted.

The state education system - as opposed to the state-funded Al-Azhar Islamic school system - is one of the main means by which the state propagates Islam. Christians and Muslims each have their own required religious instruction classes in the state schools. But Christian students are inculcated with Islam in Arabic classes, where the Qur'an is the principle required text for memorization, and in History classes, where Islam is extolled at the expense of other faiths. Text books that defame Christianity - contrary to the Penal Code's prohibition on casting aspersions on a "heavenly religion" - are required reading in some state educational institutions. For example, third year students at the College of Education at Sohag are examined on the text book Lectures and Research on the Fundamentals of Education published by the Ministry of Education, which claims that the Christian concept of the cross is based largely on Hindu and ancient Greek religious traditions; that St. Paul assumed the guise of a Christian so that he could undermine the Christian faith from the inside; and that the Judeo-Christian tradition regards sexual activity as evil.

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