The current tensions in Egypt between the Muslim Brotherhood-led government and a fragmented populace that includes large segments of people who oppose the Islamization of Egypt—the moderates, secularists, and Christians who recently demonstrated in mass at Tahrir Square and even besieged the presidential palace—is all too familiar.
One need only look to Egypt’s immediate neighbor, Sudan, and its bloody history, to know where the former may be headed.
The civil war in Sudan, which saw the deaths of millions, was fundamentally a byproduct of an Islamist regime trying to push Sharia law on large groups of Sudanese—Muslim, Christian, and polytheist—who refused to be governed by Allah’s law, who refused to be Islamized.
Although paying lip-service to pluralism and equality in the early years, by 1992, the Islamist government of Khartoum declared a formal jihad on the south and the Nuba, citing a fatwa by Sudan’s Muslim authorities which declared that “An insurgent who was previously a Muslim is now an apostate; and a non-Muslim is a non-believer standing as a bulwark against the spread of Islam, and Islam has granted the freedom of killing both of them.”
In other words, Khartoum decreed that:
1) It is simply trying to do Allah’s will by instituting Islamic Sharia law;
2) Any Sudanese who objects—including Muslims—is obviously an infidel;
3) All such infidels must be eliminated.
Accordingly, countless people were butchered, raped, and enslaved—all things legitimate once an Islamic states declares a jihad. While South Sudan recently ceded, the Nuba Mountains in the north is still continuously being bombarded.
Now consider how the above pattern—false promises of religious freedom, followed by a Sharia push and a declaration that anyone opposing it, including Muslims, are infidels and apostates to be killed—is precisely what has been going on directly to the north of Sudan, in Egypt.
First, although Muhammad Morsi repeatedly promised that he would be a president who represents “all Egyptians” during presidential elections, mere months after coming to power, he showed that his true interest—which should have been obvious from the start, considering that he is a Muslim Brotherhood leader—was to Sharia and Islamization.
Even so, Egyptians did not forget that Morsi, during presidential elections, had said the following in a video interview:
The Egyptian people are awake and alert—Muslims and Christians; and they know that, whoever comes [to become Egypt’s president], and does not respect the rule of law and the Constitution, the people will go against him. I want the people immediately to go against me, if I ever do not respect the law and Constitution.
Accordingly, when Morsi aggrandized himself with unprecedented presidential powers, and then used these powers to sidestep the law and push a Sharia-heavy Constitution on Egypt, large segments of the Egyptian people did rise against him; at one point, he even had to flee the presidential palace.
And just as in Sudan, Morsi’s Islamist allies—who, like Morsi, during elections spoke glowingly of Egyptian unity—made it a point to portray all those Egyptians opposing Morsi, the majority of whom were Muslims, of opposing Islam, of being apostates and hypocrites, and thus enemies who should be fought and killed.
Radical online cleric Wagdi Ghoneim, for instance, incited Muslims to wage jihad on and eliminate anyone protesting against Morsi, adding that any Muslim found protesting is, in fact, an apostate hypocrite, who wants to see Islam wiped out of Egypt. He justified the jihad on such Muslims by quoting Quran 66:9: “O Prophet! Strive hard against the infidels and the hypocrites, and be firm against them.” He added that the hypocrites were supported by “Crusader Christians” (a reference to the Copts) and “debauched” liberals and seculars—all of whom must also be fought and even killed.
As for those Muslims who were protesting but were still “true” Muslims, Ghoneim portrayed them as being misguided—asking them, “Why are you siding with crusaders and infidels against Sharia?”—and thus also needing to be fought until they come to their senses.
He correctly pointed out that Islam forbids true Muslims from fighting each other—despite the fact that history (and current events) are replete with Muslims slaughtering each other—and rationalized his call to fight fellow Muslims by quoting Quran 49:9: “If two factions among the believers fight, then make settlement between the two. But if one of them oppresses the other, then fight against the one that oppresses until it returns to the ordinance of Allah.” In this context, the Muslims opposing Sharia are the ones “oppressing the other”—the true Muslims—Morsi and his supporters, who want Sharia, that is, who want to “return to the ordinance of Allah.”
Many more Muslims made the same exact argument, that whoever protests against Morsi, is in fact protesting against Islam itself, since the former is simply enabling the latter; like Ghoneim, they too issued fatwas, or Islamic decrees that all such protesters are to be fought, regardless of whether they are fellow Muslims, leading to the violent attacks and killings during the uprisings against Morsi, including the “Muslim Brotherhood’s Torture Rooms.”
Egypt is still not Sudan, but it is going down the same path and following the same pattern, specifically, an Islamist government trying to Islamize society, and characterizing as infidels and apostates all who resist. Undoubtedly Egypt’s Islamist government will continue to try to Islamize all walks of Egyptian life; undoubtedly there will be those who reject it. The question is, will their resistance ever be staunch enough to prompt the government to act on the aforementioned fatwas, formally declaring all those Egyptians opposing Sharia as infidels and apostates to be hunted down and eradicated with impunity?
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum.