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Defending freedom of thought and creation: Al Azhar judicial seizure deals a hammer blow to freedom of thought
24/10/2004
The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights' (EOHR) new 35-page report Defending freedom of thought and creation: Al Azhar judicial seizure deals a hammer blow to freedom of thought examines the role of the Al Azhar Islamic Research Council (IRC) in the censorship of literary and artistic works. It considers:
- Whether the IRC's role is restricted to the seizure of copies of the Qu'ran and the Hadith or whether its mandate extends to other works, in particular literature.
- If granting the power of judicial seizure to Al Azhar inspectors represents a retrograde step back to the ages of inspection courts which is at odds with the values of a secular state, or whether it is simply an attempt to protect Islam and Islamic culture.
- The legislation regulating Al Azhar's role with regard to freedom of thought.
- Whether it is acceptable that religious institution such as Al Azhar have the power to censor literary and artistic work.
- Whether clerics should act as the guardians of freedoms of thought and creation, and whether and why writers and artists should be concerned about the role played by Al Azhar.
- The Egyptian authorities' resistance of the information and communication revolution expressed through its censoring ideas and books.
- Means of realising a balance between the freedom of thought and expression and the protection of values and culture.
Chapter one: Freedom of thought and creativity and the origins of judicial seizure
This chapter documents, in detail, books, novels and poetry confiscated between 1920 and 1990. Examples include Islam and Ruling by sheikh Ali Abdel Razek seized in 1926 and In Pre-Islamic Poetry by Taha Hussein seized the following year. Ibn Rushd and his Philosophy by Farah Antoine was viciously attacked on the charge that the ideas of this Islamic philosopher could form a basis for secularism. The attack led to the closure of the magazine Al Gamaa, produced by Antoine. In 1978 members of the People's Assembly called for the burning of two books; A Thousand and One Nights, and The Mecca Triumphs by the renowned Sufi thinker Mohyeddin Bin Arabi.
In the 1990s the rise of extremist Islamist currents coincided with an expansion of the censorship role of Al Azhar institutions, leading to thought campaigns against journalists, writers and thinkers. This took the form of increased acts of violence against them which begun with the murder of Farag Foda in June 1990. An attempt on the life of writer Naguib Mahfouz failed in 1994, while recently writer Osama Anwar Okasha has been charged with infidelity, aspersions cast as to his faith and legal attempts made to force a divorce between him and his wife merely because his opinion about Amru Bin Alass is at odds with those individuals who have designated themselves the guardians of Islam and Muslims.
An IRC committee physically seized copies of eight books during the 24th Cairo International Book Fair last year, a violation of freedom of thought, expression, opinion and literary and artistic creation and a breach of the Egyptian constitution and legislation, including that relating to Al Azhar. Law 103 [1963] gives the IRC a purely advisory right to recommend banning of copies of the Qur'an and books on the Sunna, but does not allow it to undertake any seizure itself.
Security forces have seized a large number of books and creative in recent years. These seizures have been made either because works are judged as injurious to the ruling regime - criticism of which the authorities fearfully guard against - or in order to appease and gain legitimacy with fanatical Islamist currents. Examples of these works include The Armed Prophet and Al Islambouly and a New Vision of the Jihad Movement by Rifaat Sayyed Ahmed, Why We'll Say No to Mubarak in the Next Presidential Referendum by Hilmy Mourad and Adel Hussein, Amr Abdel Rahman al Zelzal who Shook the World by Essam Kamel Ahmed, Muntaser al Zayat's Who Killed al Mahgoub? and EOHR's 1993 annual report.
This section of the report also comprises a list of the 81 books seized between 1990 and 2004.
Chapter two: Al Azhar and the increase of restrictions on freedom of thought
Chapter two examines legislation and fatwas (which are issued by the General Assembly of the Council of State's Fatwa and Legislation divisions on the basis of recommendations sent by Al Azhar Sheikh Mohamed Sayyed al Tantawy to the Assembly) governing the jurisdiction of Al Azhar and the Ministry of Culture in the censorship of audio and audio-visual copies of the Qu'ran and artistic works which deal with Islamic issues or conflict with Islam and banning of printing, recording, publication and distribution in application of powers afforded to these two bodies by laws and regulations.
It also compares Al Azhar interference in censorship and the freedom of thought and creativity during the tenures of Al Azhar Sheikh Gad al Haq Ali Gad al Haq and his successor Sheikh al Tantawy, and describes the restrictions placed by the IRC on the freedom of creativity during the latter's tenure at Al Azhar. A large number of books and publications have been seized in application of these restrictions, including Abortion is a National Necessity and Belief a Scientific Necessity by Mohamed Abdel Moaty, This is my Qu'ran by Mohamed Abdel Razeq Afify and Marriage of Permissible Pleasure: Between Religion, Development and the Law by Ahmed Salem.
Chapter three: Protecting religion and freedom of thought…The difficulty of finding a solution
Chapter three elucidates opinions of Justice Minister Farouq Seif al Nasr's decree passed on the 2nd August 2003 (whose implementation began in May 2004) which granted a group of Al Azhar clerics the power to monitor copies of the Qu'ran available in shops which have not previously received the agreement or permission of Al Azhar and instigate criminal legal action against their distributors. It also gives them the right to take action against the publishers of books on the Hadith if the IRC considers that the publication "offends Islam and contravenes the provisions of Law 102 [1985]."
Opinion on this decree is divided. Clerics, Al Azhar sheikhs and members of the IRC do not believe that granting Al Azhar the power of judicial seizure signals a return to inspection courts or the censorship of creativity. They defend it as an attempt to protect Islamic culture and Islam and rid it of mistakes, inconsistency and misrepresentations, particularly after the market has been flooded with cassettes and books containing serious flaws and copies of the Qu'ran with mistakes in their chapters and verses. In contrast intellectuals, writers and human rights activists unreservedly oppose the decree as constituting an additional chain on freedom of thought and creativity and a rejection of the philosophy of the secular state. They allege that despite the Justice Minister's decree limiting its task to regulation of the printing of the Qu'ran and the Hadith, it will give Al Azhar a wider role than that conferred on it by the law (which restricts its role to research on the Qu'ran, Sunna and Sharia and associated issues) because there is no guarantee that the decree will not be used as a means of violating the freedom of opinion, expression, thought and belief.
There can be objection to the IRC's censorship role if it is restricted to the seizure and protection of copies of the Qu'ran and the Hadith. Recent years have shown however that tens of reports have been published by IRC members condemning novels, collections of poetry, scientific research and works on religious thought, revival of the religious message and ijtihad. In doing so, they take the IRC completely outside the limits of its mandate and transform it into an inspection court which restricts freedom of thought and creativity. There is plentiful evidence of this; immediately after the implementation of the decree the IRC in June recommended the seizure of five books; Fall of the Imam by Nawal al Saadawi, Freemasonism: Religion or Heresy by Iskander Shaheen, Call to the Conscience by Ali Youssef Ali, City of Ma'agez: The Twelve Imams and Signs of Hag Ali Bashar by Sayyed Hesham al Bahrany and The Mahdy Imam and the Promised Day by Sheikh Khalil Rizq. Last August Gamal al Banna's Responsibility for the Failure of the Islamic State in the Modern Age was seized.
Chapter four: Case studies: Nawal al Saadawi and Gamal al Banna
Both al Saadawi and al Banna were victims of Al Azhar's use of its power of judicial seizure. The IRC arbitrarily imposed a ban on al Saadawi's Fall of the Imam despite the fact that it was published twenty years ago by Dar al Mustaqbal without receiving any objection by Al Azhar or any other bodies. It has been translated into fourteen languages including English, German, French, Swedish and Indonesian, and has been republished several times in Arabic.
Last August a member of the IRC recommended that al Banna's book Responsibility for the Failure of the Modern Islamic State in the Modern Age be seized. Its publication and distribution was banned - despite the fact that this book has been in publication for ten years.
Chapter five: Recommendations
1. A campaign should be launched for the defence of freedom of opinion, expression, thought and creativity which should not be subject to any form of censorship by religious institutions. The law makes the Ministry of Culture responsible for the censorship of visual and audio copies of the Qu'ran, and civil society institutions participate in this. The campaign must issue a series of books and publications bearing the name "defending freedom" with the aim of deepening the meaning of freedom and allowing it to take root in civil society. Seminars and meetings centred on the freedom of thought must be organised throughout Egypt and a network organised with the aim of defending the concept of a secular state, disseminating it among the Egyptian population and clearing up the confusion between it and atheism. A monthly magazine entitled "The Secular State Observatory" should form part of this campaign.
2. The Justice Minister's decree - which is administrative rather than legal - must be annulled as it is in violation of Al Azhar legislation and regulations according to which the IRC has purely advisory powers. Issues related to freedoms of thought, literature, and creation should be left to specialists rather than allowing religious figures to act in a domain completely unrelated to their duties because to do so violates constitutional provisions and international standards.
3. The Egyptian government must respect constitutional provisions on freedom of opinion, expression, thought and belief. Article 49 of the Constitution provides:
The state shall guarantee the freedom of scientific research and literary, artistic and cultural invention and provide the necessary means for its realisation.
Legislation must be amended to rid it of provisions which violate the right to opinion, thought and belief, and the government must abide by international standards on freedom of thought, expression and creativity as embodied in article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights amongst others.
4. Religious guardianship of thought, literature and art in Egypt must be put to an end within the context of the recommendations made above. EOHR has repeatedly demanded the lifting of restrictions on freedom of opinion and an end to all forms of censorship on journalism, publication and distribution of publications and creative and artistic works.
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