There would be no exaggeration when we say that Egyptians do love religion and consider it part and parcel of their daily lives and they wouldn’t settle for pushing religion to the sideline as they want religion to be upfront and center. This kind of gentle integration of religion in the fabric of the Egyptian society stirred the furry of many secularists and led them to seek answers for the dominion of religion and resort it back sometimes to the authority of the religious clergies and other times to the effect of the religious institutions. But most of the time they would play with the card of theocracy and the establishment of a religious state.
The Egyptian experience which started with Muhammad Ali Pasha did not give the religious institutions any power to meddle or interfere in the political or economic affairs and decisions. At the same time, the state did not totally ignore or banish the role of the religious institutions as this fact is obvious in many countries across the globe. Fore example, the Anglican Church continues to crown the British queen till our present time and the Catholic institution in France still enjoys major popularity among the masses although the French constitution states that France is a secular state.
In the West religion was pushed to the sideline only when the society found that religion was no longer a reason for social security and stability but rather became a reason for futile tensions among different religious cults. The situation in Egypt is very different; a fact which gave room to some ill hearts to incite tensions among different Islamic sects as a justification for driving religion out of the picture and push it to the side, thinking that this will lead the society to new breakthroughs in economy, production and scientific research; a fact which would lead man- in their opinion- to enjoy more free and luxurious life.
The secularists aim at limiting religion to the private life of the individual as it should not play any role in the public life. In other words, they ask people neither to advocate nor to live with religion which is something that is totally rejected by the Egyptian society as it goes against their cultural heritage and religious identity.
For my part I give my heartfelt advice to the personalities who appear on different media outlets not to become a gear in this mechanism which aims at destroying religion and making it fade away in the hearts of Muslims. Their plan is carried out through different techniques such as:
Seeking to point out differences among different legal schools of Jurisprudence in an absurd way and this attempt is not only restricted to stating differences between the Sunni and Shi’tes legal schools or between textual scripture and its interpretation but the differences were extended to include the four Sunni legal schools of jurisprudence and sometimes differences in the single juristic school is absurdly pointed out.
Persistence on taking the opinions of self claimed scholars who are adamant on issuing uneducated fatwas and unsolicited religious opinions.
Moving from the world of thoughts in which everybody is allowed to have his own shares of thoughts which shows the significance of the value of freedom of thought; but moving this right to the world of jurisprudence -which is a realm of science that has its own methodology, maxims and rulings and should only be tackled by specialized scholars- leads to this messy state which we live in today. Mixing between these two worlds leads some people to ban the freedom of thought in an attempt to prevent non specialists from delving into scholarly and juristic issues whereas other people would advocate for freedom of thought in all realms including that of jurisprudence which leads to uneducated opinions and false religious edicts.
Disseminating mythical and legendary mentality which is something that goes against what secularism advocates for but nonetheless it is a temporary means to force people to give up on religion altogether through mixing between the unseen and the metaphysical with its creedal and faith based understanding and between oracles and crystal balls which turns religion to some sort of witch craft.
Things get even more complicated when the mythical mentality finds its way from religion to medicine. The catastrophic effect of this transfer leads to calling people to abandon medicine and be sufficed with reciting Quranic verses and supplications for healing.
The ultimate aim of these deceiving techniques is to push religion to the sideline and force Egyptians to live without it. Those who advocate for such ending forgot that Egyptians enjoy both intelligence and transparency so they would look at these attempts with a smirk as these calls underestimate the deep roots of the Egyptian religious identity which developed since the dawn of history and was an integrated element in the fabric of the Egyptian civilization.
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