Translated by Amin Refaat

B3: The battle extends beyond Al-Azhar – The book “Al-Azhar: Islam’s Greatest Enemy.”

Introduction

1
In the early 1980s, while working at Al-Azhar University, I was also volunteering with the “Islamic Call to Truth” group. I became their first preacher after its founder travelled on secondment to Saudi Arabia. In every weekly sermon, I was keen to discuss a new Quranic topic. I began preaching in their mosques in 1982.

Then I fell into a dispute with them that coincided with my dispute with Al-Azhar in 1985, and my relationship with them ended that same year. After that I moved around, giving Friday sermons in different mosques, and I was careful to write a brief summary of each sermon so that it could serve as the nucleus for a research article to be published later.

A few months before our arrest in the first week of November 1987, I had accumulated a large number of those summaries. My Quranist brothers asked me to publish them in small booklets under the title “Quranic Studies.” The only book that actually appeared in this series was “The Disobedient Muslim: Does He Leave Hell to Enter Paradise?”

2
This topic also has its own particular story. Before I left them, I used to give the first Friday sermon of each month at the mosque of the Islamic Call to Truth group in Tanta. At that time, a heated discussion had broken out among them about:

“The disobedient Muslim: does he leave Hell and enter Paradise as Al-Bukhari says in his hadiths, or not?”

They were waiting to know my view on the issue when I came to them. I told them that whoever enters Hell will not come out of it, and I cited the Quranic verses. They asked me to give a sermon on that topic – so I made it the subject of the khutbah. I recorded a summary of the sermon on a sheet of paper, as usual.

The topic caused a huge reaction among moderate Sunnis, some supporting and others opposing it.

Therefore, when I parted ways with them and began thinking about launching a Quranic Studies series, the subject of the disobedient Muslim was the starting point for the proposed series. Our hope was to publish a small book from the series every two months, and to place an announcement in each book drawing attention to the next one.

Indeed, on the last page of The Disobedient Muslim I wrote an announcement for the following book, which was to be:

“Abrogation in the Noble Quran Means Writing and Affirmation, Not Deletion and Cancellation.”

With generous help from some Quranist brothers, I printed 15,000 copies of The Disobedient Muslim at Al-Ahram Press on the Nile Corniche, which belongs to the Al-Ahram institution. It was distributed through the News Distribution Company, and everything outwardly was going smoothly. We did not know they were planning to arrest us.

Indeed, we were arrested, and the unsold remainder of the book’s copies was confiscated and used as evidence against me at the Supreme State Security Prosecution.

I remember that on the night of our arrest, they confiscated every copy of the book they found in my house. When they asked me at State Security, “Are there any more copies?” I said yes. So they sent me back again in the same Central Security vehicle – shackled in chains – so that I could help them gather the remaining copies from the corners of the house.

While I was in prison, and after my release, articles came out criticizing the book and attacking its author – articles whose size exceeded that of the book itself. Among those who criticized the book and attacked me were the journalist Ahmed Zain and the columnist Fahmi Huwaidi. I sent each of them a reply, but they did not publish it.

This attack – as usual – led to the book becoming famous and many people trying to obtain it. Some copies were photocopied and circulated, and Sheikh Abdul-Mu‘ti Bayoumi wrote describing this as the circulation of “pamphlets,” in order to incite the security services against us.

3
The question here is: what is so dangerous about this very small book for Al-Azhar’s religion and for Egyptian society?

It is a call for reform through the Noble Quran, in a society controlled by “the great criminals” – the tyrant and his henchmen – who breathe corruption, because their Azhar-made religion guarantees them Paradise no matter how much they oppress. Even if they enter Hell, they will only stay there for “a day or part of a day.”

The book exposes them and places them in open conflict with the Noble Quran. And because they cannot confront this tiny book, they have nothing left but to take revenge on the author.

Fahmi Huwaidi continued to attack me personally while I was in America. Let us now look at Mr. Fahmi Huwaidi, his attacks on me, and my response to him:

First article: Dismantling Fahmi Huwaidi

In response to his article “Dismantling Islam” published in Al-Ahram and elsewhere on the last Tuesday of March 2005.

This is not the first time that Fahmi Huwaidi has attacked me, and it will not be the last.

He accuses me of working with others to dismantle Islam, even though the Islam I believe in is not subject to dismantling, because it is the Noble Quran alone, preserved by God Almighty and protected from distortion and human tampering.

It might be said that he is confusing Islam with Muslims, and accusing me of working to dismantle the Muslims. But the disintegration of Muslims into sects began in the time of the Companions and the Great Civil Strife (the first fitnah), then developed and branched out.

For the last ten centuries up to today, Muslims have been fragmented into three major groups: Sunnis, Shi‘ites, and Sufis. Each group has itself fragmented into various schools and sects. The Sunni group split into four madhhabs in the third Hijri century, the most rigid of them being the Hanbali school. The Hanbalis themselves then fragmented into several hard-line currents, the most extreme of which was Ibn Taymiyyah in the eighth century AH. From the Taymiyyan current there later arose an even more violent and extreme current in modern times: Wahhabism, which further fragmented the Sunnis.

Fahmi Huwaidi belongs to Wahhabism, and considers it alone to be “Islam,” excluding all other Muslims and accusing anyone who criticizes Wahhabism of hostility to Islam or of dismantling Islam, inciting against them.

The terrorists regard his incitement as a fatwa for killing, and thus a thinker or intellectual may lose his life in public – as happened to Dr. Farag Foda – or disappear without a trace, as happened to the journalist Reda Helal; or be forced into exile as happened to me and to Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd; or cry out in terror at the fate awaiting him, as happened to Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim and others.

The victims of Fahmi Huwaidi are many: among them are those who have met their end and those who are still waiting!

Let us read together his article “Dismantling Islam”, so that we may get to know this condition called “Fahmi Huwaidi.”

Huwaidi speaks of:

“Efforts being exerted by the extremist American writer Daniel Pipes to establish a progressive Islamic institute that would represent the voices of liberal Muslims in the United States.”

He says:

“Pipes’s project resulted in the creation of a progressive center called the Center for Islamic Pluralism, which announced that its goal is to promote moderate Islam in the United States and the world, combat the influence of militant Islam, and thwart the efforts of organizations with an extremist Wahhabi orientation, through the media and in cooperation with American government organizations.”

He adds:

“In a subsequent article published by the agency for the same writer on 24/2/2005, there was other important information about those running the center and its sources of funding. Its director is an American Muslim named Stephen Schwartz … and his assistant is an Egyptian who was dismissed from Al-Azhar in the 1980s because he denied the Prophetic Sunnah, then travelled to the United States for some time, then returned to Egypt to become one of the pillars of the Ibn Khaldun Center (!). After the legal problems the center and its director faced in the year 2000, he disappeared from Egypt and reappeared in the United States to become one of the preachers of ‘moderate American Islam.’ Daniel Pipes listed his name, among others, in an article titled ‘Introducing Moderate Muslims,’ which was published in The New York Sun on 24/11/2004.”

And he says:

“Pipes’s article in The New York Sun is of special importance because it reveals the mobilization efforts being exerted to promote ‘American Islam’ through dismantling Islam and excluding it. He regarded that mobilization as good news, bringing the readers the tidings that some Muslims had joined the campaign against the activities of Islamists (meaning extremists and radicals). He mentioned in this regard the names of seven people, among them Dr. Subhi Mansour, dismissed from Al-Azhar University, and Dr. Bassem Tibi, one of the staunch secularists from Syria.”

Then Huwaidi says:

“I would not be mistaken if I took those efforts out of the realm of innocence – at least with respect to their means and aims. A person has the right to be suspicious when he finds that those who support Islamic moderation and renewal are a group of hardened enemies of Islam and Muslims, allied with Israel. He also has the right to raise many question marks about the relationship between those activities and the ‘war of ideas’ declared by the American administration in the wake of 11 September, which sought to reshape the Islamic mind in parallel with redrawing the map of the region within the framework of the ‘Greater Middle East’ project. He likewise has the right to raise more question marks about the relationship between those activities and the proposals contained in the report of the American research institute RAND, regarding the dismantling of Islam and reconstructing it under the title ‘Civil Democratic Islam.’ Some of those proposals have found translation and embodiment in the activities we have witnessed, whether in their secular premises, or in the creation of new façades and leaders as alternatives to those that exist, or in the attack on conservative, traditional Islam, or in the encouragement of the Sufi current. One also has the right to ask about the echoes of those activities as they have lately appeared in the Arab world, represented by some secular centers and organizations that have taken on Islamic affairs, wading into the question of changing religious discourse, modifying curricula, and attempting to fabricate Islamic intellectual leaders who are committed to the secular agenda.”

We reply to him briefly:

First:All this information that Huwaidi cites is published and openly available in American society, which is an open society that enforces freedom of information and prohibits its suppression. The prior public announcement of all these activities itself indicates that there is no secret conspiracy.

Second:The Salafi orientation to which Fahmi Huwaidi belongs is based on dividing the world into two camps:

1. The Abode of Islam (Dār al-Islām)– in which the Sunni madhhab monopolizes Islam for itself, accusing Shi‘ite and Sufi Muslims of disbelief and polytheism, and persecuting them through its political domination, just as it persecutes “People of the Book,” the original inhabitants of the lands who remained on the religion of their forefathers; and
2. The Abode of War (Dār al-Harb)– which is the West, whose people must be fought in order to spread Islam and force them to embrace it, whose culture is considered an “intellectual invasion,” and whose misfortunes we interpret as the result of that West’s conspiracy against us.

This is the background from which Fahmi Huwaidi’s articles and those of his ilk arise. His article “Dismantling Islam” is a case in point. Its title alone signals his belief in monopolizing Islam, such that no other Muslim is allowed to think or exercise ijtihad outside the framework that Huwaidi recognizes; otherwise, he becomes a “dismantler” of Islam.

Americans who embrace Islam by a path other than the Sunni madhhab have no right, in his view, to choose a way of worship different from that of the Salaf and what the Salafis found their forefathers upon; otherwise they become dismantlers of Islam.

As usual, Huwaidi does not trouble himself to engage the views of his opponents, because he is not a specialist in Islam or its sciences, and his Islamic knowledge does not exceed my own knowledge of the island of Cuba. Therefore he hastens to accuse us of conspiring against Islam.

Third:Since 1977 I have carried on my shoulders a thought project for peacefully reforming Muslims through the Quran. I was subjected to persecution inside Al-Azhar and outside it – from dismissal from Al-Azhar University, to imprisonment, to security harassment, to exile twice.

The first time I fled to America – in 1988, after my release from prison – the reason was Fahmi Huwaidi. He did not want to attack me while I was in prison, unable to defend myself, receiving attacks from dozens of pens accusing me of denying the Sunnah. He waited until after I left prison, terrified, then hurled a massive attack at me under the title “The Sunnah Between Slander and Daring”, filling it with an assault on my person by name and description, affirming my takfīr with every fatwa he could muster.

The next day, by chance, I met some old comrades belonging to the Islamist groups. I saw terror in their faces, and – owing to our old acquaintance – they advised me to go into hiding, because Fahmi Huwaidi’s article had put my life in the danger zone. Other warning signals came from honorable Azharis and Salafis.

I had sent Huwaidi a reply defending myself, and I sent a copy to Al-Ahram as well, but my reply was not published. I was forced to flee for my life to America, where I stayed for ten months until the effect of Huwaidi’s article faded, then I returned.

My thought project affirms, through the Quran, that Islam is the religion of justice, democracy, tolerance, peace, freedom of belief, and human rights; that God Almighty sent Muhammad as a mercy to all worlds, not to fight people and coerce them in religion or divide the world into two camps; that He created us as brothers from one father and one mother, and made us into peoples and tribes so that we might come to know one another, not to fight one another; and that the most honorable among us with God is the most pious – something that will be determined on the Day of Resurrection, not now, so that some of us do not feign piety in order to ride on our backs in the name of religion. He made for us and for the People of the Book different laws so that we may compete in doing good, not in bigotry and sin.

On the basis of this intellectual approach, after my return to Egypt I worked with Farag Foda until he was killed by the fatwas of Fahmi Huwaidi; then I worked with human-rights organizations; then I joined the Ibn Khaldun Center in its enlightenment struggle and reform projects, including the project to reform Egyptian education and others. Throughout this struggle, Huwaidi’s articles pursued us, inciting the security forces and terrorists, until Egyptian dictatorship closed the Ibn Khaldun Center, imprisoned Dr. Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and arrested some of my Quranist companions. I was forced to flee a second time to America in October 2001, amid the sharpening wave of hostility to Islam after the events of 11 September.

My intellectual project spoke in English in America, defending Islam and explaining the contrast between it and the extremist thought that produced Bin Laden. I constantly sent my research and life story to be published online and sent them to American intellectuals. This led to the decline of the wave of hostility to Islam and the focusing of the accusation on Bin Laden’s terrorist madhhab alone; they came to recognize what they began calling “moderate Islam.”

My research attracted the attention of Dr. Daniel Pipes, who is accused of hostility to Islam and Muslims. Although he writes today in a way that shows respect for Islam and its civilization, he, like me, opposes armed extremism. Indeed, he now debates those who still accuse Islam as a religion and do not distinguish between it and the terrorists. Thanks to his intellectual influence and constant activity, many people have reconsidered their stances.

But of course this will not cause the Salafi-Wahhabi organizations to be pleased with him, unless he follows their sect – which, by God’s help, will never happen. It was necessary that we cooperate in confronting extremism and its terrorist culture: they want to defend their country, and I want to defend my religion.

Fourth:America follows the Quranic principle “There is no compulsion in religion”. According to Huwaidi’s own admission, there are 1,586 religious groups there, including 700 non-traditional groups. That means every person in America is free in what he believes or does not believe.

The extremists who follow “Bin Laden” are the ones who have exploited this American religious freedom the most. They expanded in establishing new mosques, seizing control of existing ones, and buying churches and converting them into mosques. They control about 80% of the roughly 1,200 mosques on American soil. In those mosques they curse America day and night in the name of Islam in their sermons, prayers, and pamphlets, exploiting American tolerance and American donations to houses of worship.

There are dozens of organizations that sponsor this activity, defend it, and blackmail American politics to the point of declaring themselves the sole representatives of Islam and Muslims in America, entering the White House on that basis. It is known that no so-called “Muslim” country grants its citizens, or its religious minorities, such a level of freedom.

Yet this freedom enjoyed by his extremist brothers in their war on America on its own soil is not enough for Huwaidi, because he cannot tolerate the presence in America of Shi‘ite and Sufi Muslims who have not yet joined Wahhabism.

Fifth:America is in a declared war after the 11 September attacks, which reveal who the plotting party really is – the one sending preachers and fighters into the “Abode of War,” exploiting American freedom and openness.

After the events of September, America discovered that extremism had taken control of the majority of mosques and “Islamic” schools, and of the American Muslim community. Thus it is fighting not only Osama bin Laden but also his followers inside America and the ideology that belongs to him and dominates the minds of millions of American Muslims.

If America had used the methods of Arab rulers, it would have closed those mosques, executed their leaders, arrested their congregants, banned their ideas, and confiscated their publications. It would not have needed an emergency law, because it is in a state of war against an invisible enemy who uses a war of ideas and turns an ordinary religious young man into a walking bomb that destroys himself and others. On American soil there are millions of potential suicide-bomb candidates if the Wahhabi incitement in mosques and schools continues to wash the minds of Muslim youth in the name of Islam.

If America were fanatically anti-Islam, it would have chosen this solution and shut down all mosques, accusing Islam of being a religion of terrorism, citing the Wahhabis’ own claim that they monopolize Islam and speak in its name. But American civility chose the harder path: President Bush affirmed the fact that Islam is a religion of peace, and invited the heads of the “Islamic,” Wahhabi organizations to the White House to win them over to the path of what is right.

Instead of waging war on Islam itself, and instead of resorting to violence, the solution was peaceful: reforming Muslims – inside America and in the Arab world – through what they call ‘moderate Islam,’ or what I call the true Islam.

Huwaidi resents America’s religious freedom and its right to defend itself peacefully on its own soil, and sees this as dismantling Islam and a conspiracy that deserves punishment. He incites against us at the end of his article, saying:

“In this scene, Islam and Muslims appear as if they have become an open field for anyone and everyone – an openness without limits, with no deterrent to those who dare encroach upon it, with no value and no dignity for its people. This compels us to add another question to those already raised: who deserves blame in this matter – those who have encroached and dared, or those who stayed silent, submitted, and lay prostrate?”

And so… I fled with my life out of fear of Fahmi Huwaidi’s incitement, and I still see him pursuing me, inciting against my life even while I am in America. Where can I flee from him after America?

I no longer have any way to protect my life except to resort to the United Nations.

I present this article as a public complaint to the United Nations against the Egyptian journalist Fahmi Huwaidi, writer for Al-Ahram newspaper, and against everyone who publishes his writings and thereby shares with him in the crime of inciting against my life and the lives of reform preachers.

Second article: Empowering Fahmi Huwaidi

In response to his article “The Jurisprudence of American Empowerment” published in Al-Ahram on the first Tuesday of April 2005.

1
In his previous article, “Dismantling Islam,” Fahmi Huwaidi spoke of an American conspiracy aimed at dismantling Islam, accusing me of working in this scheme. I replied with an article titled “Dismantling Fahmi Huwaidi.”

Now he continues his campaign with an article called “The Jurisprudence of American Empowerment,” and I continue my response.

2
Huwaidi began his article by saying:

“Dismantling the nation precedes dismantling the religion. Those who are now striving to fashion for us an ‘American Islam’ could never have dared to do so or even to think of it had they not first succeeded in making the region obedient to American policies. All of that is one of the manifestations of the flourishing of the jurisprudence of empowerment in the United States, which does not want the region to have any horizon outside the circle of submission and compliance.”

Here he links the previous article to the new one, considering America responsible for dismantling the nation and the religion. Yet Muslims have been fragmented since the Great Civil Strife, and their fragmentation continued long before America existed and still continues today. The recent Iraqi scene writes this fragmentation in blood, as Sunni terrorists kill Shi‘a during their religious celebrations. But Huwaidi sees America as responsible for dismantling the nation and the Islamic religion, regarding that as an American requirement for U.S. empowerment.

3
He then cites America’s kidnapping of some people connected with Al-Qaeda and interrogating them about information on the organization, taking this as a pretext to accuse America of violating human rights. He quotes this information from an American organization that defends the rights of those detainees, yet he forgets that America is in a new, declared type of war, in which terrorists use religious ideology to turn innocent youth into moving bombs that can explode at any time and any place.

Confronted with this unknown, invisible danger, America is obliged to defend its internal security, especially as extremists control more than a thousand mosques on American soil where they brainwash Muslim youth and turn them into “martyrdom-seekers.”

Those who object to America are Americans themselves, even though what America is doing is legitimate in time of war. What is not legitimate is what Arab despotism and the extremist current do: persecution, killing, and enforced disappearance of peaceful thinkers who call for reform. Fahmi Huwaidi uses his pen against those reformers and prepares the way with his pen by inciting against peaceful thinkers who possess neither power nor strength.

4
He then speaks about what he calls American “self-empowerment” that seeks to dominate the world. But it is not a fault for any state to seek strength and empowerment; the fault is for a state to be in a condition of our miserable weakness!

America today is the greatest power in the world, and it is not shameful for it to preserve its position. Before it, other empires held the position of greatest world power: the Pharaohs, the Persians, the Romans, the Arabs, the British. No one said that this quest for power was shameful in itself. We still boast of Arab power in the Umayyad, Abbasid, and Ottoman eras.

The fault only appears when power is used to enslave others, as all previous empires before America did – including the Muslim Arabs.

After America became the world’s greatest power, it did not replicate the same pattern of occupation and enslavement. Earlier it had lived in isolation under the Monroe doctrine, away from Europe’s battles over colonies, then it entered the two World Wars to defend democracy, then the Cold War with the Soviet Union also to defend democracy and freedom. The Soviet Union collapsed, and the Salafi current appeared as an enemy of freedom, inventing a new kind of destructive ideological warfare, beginning with attacking America in its own home, forcing it into a war against an invisible, mobile, shifting enemy that is hard to identify or contain.

In defending democracy, America supported peoples living under Nazi tyranny (in Europe), Japanese tyranny (in the Philippines), and Soviet communist tyranny (Eastern Europe, South Korea, South Vietnam, and Afghanistan). It liberated Kuwait from Saddam’s occupation, then went on to liberate the Iraqi people from him as well. Today it is calling on Arab despots to undertake political reform and democratic transition peacefully in order to avoid civil wars and foreign intervention, and it officially declares that it will not impose democracy on the Arabs from outside. Nevertheless, Arab despotism refuses peaceful internal reform. And yet we find Fahmi Huwaidi resenting this American reformist involvement, considering it an aspect of empowerment.

5
It is natural that violations occur in America’s “liberation wars.” War is the worst option, even when it is waged for the sake of liberation from colonialism and dictatorship. But the democracies that were brought to France and Europe, to the Philippines, South Korea, Afghanistan – and, by God’s leave, to Iraq – with American blood, make up for what violations occurred.

Moreover, American liberalism itself stands guard against any violations committed by Americans in war. This same liberalism implanted the Vietnam Syndrome in the American conscience. Because of that syndrome, America had to withdraw from the region, leaving the field to the communist Khmer Rouge who killed millions in a genocide unmatched in the 20th century.

6
American society does not need a preacher of the likes of Fahmi Huwaidi or anyone else. Among the highest American values is the virtue of acknowledging mistakes, apologizing publicly for them, and teaching them in school curricula so that students may learn from their ancestors’ errors.

Thus the American child grows up with a sense of guilt toward Black Americans and Native Americans, while we are still forbidden to discuss the Great Civil Strife so that the Companions remain above the level of ordinary humans and above error. For this reason, Americans learn from their mistakes, while we still wander in the darkness of the Great Civil Strife to this day.

7
Fahmi Huwaidi relays what some American specialists write as plans to rebuild the Middle East on a democratic basis, counting this as part of a conspiracy, even though these plans are published and available to everyone. America openly seeks to convince the Arabs of this peaceful democratic transformation. Arab despots evade the application of democracy while continually striving to appease America by every possible means so that it will close its eyes to the democratic option.

8
It is strange that Huwaidi considers the American effort to establish democracy in the Middle East to be among the foundations of American empowerment. It is well known that America can easily control the individual despot – which is exactly what happens today through its control over the handful of two dozen men who rule the Arab world. But it would be impossible for it to control a democratic state whose people govern it through genuine democracy.

So how could America dominate all Arab countries if they were democratic states?

America has chosen democracy as the solution to the problem of terrorism that threatens it on its own soil. Despotism is coupled with corruption, and together they produce a resentful generation that is unable to fight tyranny in its own country, where police repression is at its peak. So they resort to emigrating to the free world to vent their anger in the “infidel West.”

Thus, the Arabs must be reformed so that the West can live in peace. But our brother Huwaidi, who has dedicated his pen to defending dictatorship and extremism, resents America’s pursuit of democratic reform and considers it empowerment for America in the world.

9
In reality, it is Huwaidi who has achieved “empowerment” for himself over thirty years, writing weekly in service of extremism and despotism, and some even call him an “Islamic thinker,” though he has produced no new ideas to contribute to Islamic or political thought. Over the past three decades, Arabs and Muslims have sunk – thanks to him and to despotism, corruption, and extremism – to the bottom.

Huwaidi has dedicated his pen to attacking America and the West, defending extremism and terrorism, remaining silent about despotism, corruption, torture, and injustice, and about inheritance and extension of rule and the plundering and theft (of wealth). He ignores the demonstrations sweeping the streets demanding reform. He forgets all of that and directs his arrows instead at America and its efforts for democratic reform.

This is the reason for “empowering” Fahmi Huwaidi in Al-Ahram for more than thirty years. To preserve this empowerment, Huwaidi is not troubled by the screams of torture victims in the hell of Egyptian prisons – among those victims are thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members, his “Muslim brothers”!