Islamic Fascism by Hamed Abdel-Samad

Author:Hamed Abdel-Samad
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9781633881259
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2016-01-05T00:00:00+00:00

In countries like Egypt, Iran, Morocco, and Tunisia, the Arab Spring unleashed an internal clash of civilizations, with secular and religious forces locking horns ever since over how much influence religion should wield over public life and the law.

More and more Arab atheists are joining this debate and making their voices heard. I met and spoke with five of them, each a young person risking his or her own life to speak above the parapet—a choice I understand better than most.

THRASHING BELIEVERS ON THEIR OWN TURF

Momen's name means “faithful” in Arabic, but he became an atheist five years ago, finding a different calling altogether. At age twenty-one, he studies engineering at Cairo's deeply religious al-Azhar University, the hub of Sunnite Islam. For two years, he kept his loss of faith to himself, finding the courage to tell family and friends he no longer believed only once Mubarak had been deposed. Many of those closest to him were shocked, but Momen also found out he was far from alone. Numerous friends shared similar views yet were too afraid to out themselves.

Together with a couple of these friends, Momen started a Facebook page, its Arabic name meaning “Egyptian Atheists United.” Over the next few months, the page attracted thousands of members, most displaying photographs of themselves and using their real names—which is still a novelty in the Arab world. “Egyptians aren't as religious by nature as Islamists want us to believe,” Momen tells me.1 “My guess is every Egyptian family contains an atheist, or at least someone who takes a critical view of Islam. They're just too scared to say anything to anybody.”

One key experience for Momen came in mid-February 2013, during an encounter with Islamists in Old Cairo. A scholar from the Muslim Brotherhood was set to deliver a lecture titled “How Does an Atheist Think?”—and Momen and three of his friends went along, taking their seats in the packed mosque.

For eighty minutes, he tells me, the sheikh preached nonstop nonsense about atheists and the theory of evolution. Once the floor was opened up near the end, Momen discovered that most of those present were fellow atheists who decided to come when they learned of the event on social media. Most were well-educated ex-Muslims, even headscarf-clad women shamelessly declaring themselves atheists and taking the lecture's falsehoods unflinchingly to task. “We thrashed believers on their own turf,” Momen tells me proudly.

The evening's events emboldened him to start a large-scale movement to reach Egyptians in greater numbers. The “Seculars,” as they call themselves, remain active today in Cairo, Alexandria, and three other Egyptian prefectures, holding educational events about secularist ideas. For many of the country's Muslims, the concept of secularism still leaves almost as sour a taste as does atheism.

Momen never planned to politicize his unbelief, he says, “but when people's faith is political, my lack of it is just as political by definition. As long as unbelievers face persecution, as long as religion encroaches on the private sphere, I can't reject it purely as a private matter.

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