By : Youssef Emil Hanna


Throughout my random online browsing and readings of different eras in human history, one of the best times I guess when it comes to Islamic history would be during the Abbasid era. During this time when Europe was still indulged in the dark ages and free thinkers were beheaded whenever any forms of ideas were expressed outside the sphere of the church’s own teachings of Christianity, we saw a lot of advancements in the Abbasid Caliphate in all fields like astronomy, philosophy, alchemy, mathematics, medicine, optics and so on. It is believed by a number of historians that The Abbassids were influenced by the Quranic injunctions and hadith such as "the ink of a scholar is more holy than the blood of a martyr", stressing the value of knowledge. And so with the help of ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese pre-Islamic thinkers and mathematicians that were completely disregarded by the Christian West at that time; we had people from the Abbasid Caliphate like Al Kindi who introduced the Indian numerical system into the Islamic and Christian world or someone like the Andalusian Ibn Rushd who introduced us with his school of philosophy that is known as Averroism with the help of Aristotle’s work and is also regarded by some as the person responsible for introducing secularism as an ideology into Europe and the list goes on and on.

One interesting person that I happen to stumble upon during the Abbasids era was Abu al-Hasan Ahmad ibn Yahya ibn Ishaq al Rawandi. Al Rawandi who was born from a Jewish father and then adhered to the Shi’ite sect of Islam but later on joined the Mutazilite group in Baghdad and then after having a lot of arguments with them he turned towards atheism where he became a strong follower of the so called heretic Mohammed Ibn Warraq. He faced a lot of criticism during his lifetime for his writings that refutes any forms of scriptural or revealed religion but still he was given the freedom to express himself. It is quite interesting to see the liberal life that was witnessed in the Abbasid Caliphate where even atheists were allowed to express themselves openly.

Let us pick up the pace to some issue that is currently happening in Egypt. The famous Coptic Christian Egyptian businessman and founder of the newly formed Hezb Al Masreyeen Al-Ahraar (The Free Egyptians) secular party Naguib Sawrius had faced a lot of criticism lately from a number of moderate to ultra conservative Muslims after he posted a picture of a bearded Mickey Mouse mullah and a Minnie Mouse dressed in a burkah. He eventually removed the picture from his account and he made an online apology. But still a lot of those people didn’t accept it and so they decided to start their own campaign of boycotting Mobinil (his mobile phone operator company which was the first of its kind in Egypt, founded in 1998) and some of them even went as far as bashing Christianity as a religion online (as a form of revenge since Sawirus the infidel “made fun” of Muslim icons like the beard and the burkah). So currently, from having pro and anti-Sawirus online fights, we’re back to the same old sectarian bullshit crap between Christian and Muslim with their topics being “my God has a bigger penis than your God” and vice versa.

When I look at both these events, I’m quite startled by the major changes that occurred in Middle Eastern societies. From the liberal Abbasid Caliphate society were people like Ibn Al-Rawandi expressed their atheism openly to the backward corrupt clergymen infested society we currently live in where sedated people are making a big fuss over someone famous that posted a picture that apparently offended their religious beliefs.  

I’m actually not a big fan of Sawirus because just as much as I don’t agree with the fact that a clergymen should have any political power, the same should be applied towards a wealthy business man and like the famous French philosopher Honoré de Balzac once said “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime”. But at the same time, he has a lot of stances that I agree and respect him for.

Regarding his picture, as to my knowledge the same exact one was circulated online and also posted by a number of Muslims as a display picture on their twitter and facebook accounts as a form of discontent towards the growing political power of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists in post revolution Egypt. Are those Muslims lesser Muslims than everyone else?

At the same time, I don’t think that Mickey and Minnie mouse are characters that are mentioned in the Quran. Neither is the beard or the burkah a symbol of Islam as it is not mandatory for a Muslim.

And besides, a lot of cartoonists in a number of Egyptian newspapers have been drawing and publishing a lot of charectures that depicts bearded men and women in burkah in sarcastic manner. So how come Sawirus is the only person that is facing a lot of unnecessary scrutiny?

Unfortunately, we have a tendency of humiliating and disrespecting anyone that thinks or acts outside the box and has been a trend going on for the past two to three decades. Here is a list of some people that are have been mocked, attacked and even got assassinated for more serious issues than Sawirus' picture.

• Our first Egyptian/Arab Nobel Laureate and writer, Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed in the neck because of his book Awlad Haretna (Children of Gibalawi) and because he supported the right of the Indian-British apostate writer “Salman Rushdie” to express his views openly without having any death threats sent to him.  Mahfouz believed in freedom of expression and although he did not personally agree with Rushdie's work, he did not believe that there should be a fatwa condemning him to death for it.
• The Egyptian Secular thinker Farag Fouda was assassinated in 1992 for his writings and opinions. During the trial of his killer, the judge asked him, “Why did you kill Farag Fouda?”. The killer then replied “Because he writes a lot of blasphemy that is insulting towards our Islamic faith”. The judge then asked again “Did you read any of his writings to make such a judgment?”. And ironically the killer replied with “No, I’m illiterate.”
• Then you have Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, an Egyptian Quranic thinker and one of the leading liberal theologians in Islam. He is famous for his project of a humanistic Quranic hermeneutics. He suffered major religious persecution for his views on the Quran. In 1995, he was promoted to the rank of full professor, but Islamic controversies about his academic work led to a court decision of apostasy and the denial of the appointment. In a hisbah trial started against him by Muslim scholars, he was declared an apostate by an Egyptian court, and consequently was declared to be divorced from his wife, Cairo University French Literature professor Dr. Ibtihal Younis. The basis of the divorce decree under Sharia law was that since it is not permissible for a Muslim woman to be married to a non-Muslim man, and since Zayd was an apostate, he therefore could not remain married to his wife. This decision, in effect, forced him out of his homeland.

During these hard times that Egypt is going through we should learn to respect other different opinions instead of putting an “infidel” label onto those that you don’t agree with. At least let us learn to hear each other out and to respect an individual’s right to express his or herself freely.

And for those reading my note that still think that the burkah and the beard are symbols of Islam that have been desecrated by Sawirus’ picture, then I will conclude my note with one of George Carlin’s quotes where he said “and I leave symbols to the simple-minded”.