Muslim Husbands Must Hate Non-Muslim Wives, Says Egyptian Salafi Cleric

Egyptian Salafist and founder of the Al Nour Party Yassir al-Burhami talks about the importance of Muslim men hating their non-Muslim infidel wives, although it's perfectly okay to love their looks, money etc.

Marrying women of the book (i.e. Jews or Christians) is discouraged, but if a Muslim man is compelled to marry one, he must "make her hate her religion while continuing marriage/sexual relations with her." And he must show her he hates her because of her religion. Then he justifies having a loveless marriage by comparing it to how a rapist views his victim- no love, just using her body.

Islamists Caught With Their Pants Down

For all their so-called piousness conservative Islamist politicians are just as likely to stray from the moral path as say their conservative Christian counterparts. We've had our share of Christian political conservatives who have been caught with their pants down, so to speak, but so have Muslims.

There's the Egyptian cleric and MP for the uber conservative Salafi Al Nour Party, Ali Wanis, who was caught with his 19-year old girlfriend in a car "engaged in an indecent act." Now that might seem harmless to a Westerner, but in Islam it's forbidden to have sexual relations prior to marriage. And from the same political party, there's Anwar al-Balkimi (or Balkimy) aka the "nose job MP" who lied about getting a nose job because it's not allowed in Islam. He also apparently secretly married a famous belly dancer, Sama al-Masri, while still married to another woman. Again, polygamy is allowed in Islam, the problem is he didn't tell Sama, and no-one knew they were married, probably because she's definitely not conservative. When Sama discovered the truth about al-Balkimi she filed for divorce, which was how the rest of Egypt found out.

Now the latest Islamist scandal comes out of Tunisia.

Tunisia’s Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem, from the ruling Islamist Ennahda party, has found himself at the center of an embarrassing scandal following accusations of public money embezzlement and involvement in an extramarital affair.

According to documents published by Tunisian journalist and blogger, Olfa Riahi, the Islamist minister spent several nights at the Sheraton hotel in Tunis with a woman and paid for his stay from the government’s coffers.

Riahi she obtained the receipt and the billing information bearing names of the minister and his alleged mistress. In an interview with alchourouk.com, Riahi said it took her two and half months to verify the authenticity of the documents and trace the bill payments.

“I have the bank account of the foreign ministry and I am certain the documents are authentic,” calling on the authorities to open a probe into the “scandal.”

The minister appeared in the state television dismissing the allegations as part of a plot against his Islamist government. He said he expects similar accusations to be leveled against other ministers.

But he admitted staying at the Sheraton hotel “because he does not own a house in the capital and because the hotel was near his office.” He also admitted that the woman mentioned in Riahi’s documents was true, but said she was a “relative” who came to see him at the hotel.

Naturally they've all denied any wrongdoing, blaming the accusations on plots to bring down the Islamists. Wanis claimed he was just wiping his sick girlfriend's face, and al-Balkimi claimed he didn't even know Sama.

If you are going to claim moral superiority, make sure you live up to it, otherwise you're just a hypocrite, like these men.

Egyptian Islamist MP Caught In "Indecent Act" In Car With Girlfriend

Ali Wanis- 2nd from left with his Salafi buddies

It looks like those wacky Salafi Islamists who preach piety and modesty aren't above getting a little nookie on the side. Not something they should be doing if they're not married. Boys will be boys, Islamist or not.

Egyptian Ali Wanis, a cleric and MP for the uber conservative Salafi Al Nour Party, was allegedly found in a compromising situation in a car with his 19-year-old college girlfriend "Nesrine" on a Cairo-Alexandria highway. Apparently they were “engaged in an indecent act,” which means they were probably going at it in the back seat of his car. Naturally, he has denied it. Not that she was with him (since both were arrested), but that nothing untoward happened.  He claims she was just sick, and he was wiping her face, and that the police have it in for him after a recent run-in with a police officer. According to Wanis, it's also part of a scheme to discredit him and the Islamist political movement. Right. Sounds a little like the "nose job MP" Anwar al-Balkimi who lied about having plastic surgery, and blamed it on a liberal plot to smear Salafis.

Prosecutors would like to bring him in for questioning, but MPs have some sort of immunity. A source told Egyptian paper al-Youm al-Sabea:

“The normal legal procedure in this case is to send the prosecutor’s order to the People’s Assembly [Egypt’s lower house of parliament] on Saturday, so as to lift up the parliamentary immunity from the MP. Immunity must be lifted first and the parliament should give the permission for questioning the MP.”

The story goes:

According to the police officer, who was patrolling the highway on Thursday night, the MP’s car was parked in a no-parking area on the highway near the Egyptian city of Toukh. On approaching the car, the police officer found Wanis and Nesrine so both were arrested and taken to the police station, where a police report was filed.

And, of course, there have been the anti-police, pro-Wanis demonstrations of support.

Such hypocrisy.

The Islamist Salafi Egyptian "Nose Job MP" Swears He Was Never Married To Belly Dancer

Egyptian Islamist politician Anwar al-Balkimi (or Balkimy) aka the "nose job MP", is finding himself in deep doo-doo these days. First of all, the Islamist Salafist al-Nour MP was fired for getting a nose job, which is haram (forbidden) in Islam. He also happened to lie about the cosmetic procedure claiming he had actually been beaten after 5 masked men stopped him while traveling the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway and ran off with 100,000 Egyptian pounds of his.

The latest scandal has to do with Sama al-Masri a beautiful Egyptian actress/belly dancer who filed for divorce from the married father of young children after discovering he had another wife. Of course, having multiple wives in Islam is acceptable, but Sama had no clue, or so she says. Apparently, Sama and Anwar were secretly wed- obviously something he wanted kept hidden since he's an uber-conservative Muslim and Sama is an unveiled belly dancer, of all things.

She also claims that she has received threats, and believes Balkimi is the instigator. 

Regarding the threats, Masri said that she did not want to accuse anyone in the beginning but later discovered that it was her husband who hired people to threaten her with death and with throwing acid on her face.

Although all she wants is the divorce and the pre-nup agreed upon amount of 250,000 Egyptian pounds (approximately £27,000), it wasn't always bad. After all,

Masri admitted [snip] that Balkimi has given her a lot of support since they got married. In the lawsuit, she said that he bought her a car and opened several businesses for her that eventually enabled her of producing her first movie, in which she is also the lead actress.

But this is where it gets even more interesting: al-Balkimi swears he has no clue who Masri is, and that it's a liberal plot to bring him (and Islamists) down. (They have conspiracy theories there too.)

“This is dangerous as they are aiming to tarnish the reputation of the Islamists in the country."

“I never heard of this lady except on Thursday when I was having breakfast with my wife and children and one of my friends surprised me with a phone call telling of what the belly dancer is saying against me,” Balkimi told Al Arabiya.net.

“I have never ever known her before, I swear.”

Right. Just like his nose job wasn't a nose job. But the whole story is laughably bizarre.

I can't begin to imagine what his appeal was, other than the gifts she received from him.  And whether she was married or his mistress, he's just a big 'ol hypocrite, as most of the Islamists are.

Egypt's New Political Parties Refuse To Protect Women's Rights

The Egyptians (mostly youth) who fought long and hard to oust dictator Hosni Mubarak after decades of totalitarian rule only garnered a small percentage of votes in the latest democratic elections. A whopping majority of the parliamentary seats went to Islamists: 47 percent to the so-called 'moderate' Muslim Brotherhood, and 25 percent to the ultra-conservative Salafis. With the final tally in, it seems that the Egyptians squandered away the tremendous gains they made with Mubarak's ouster. Not that it was terribly surprising to me when the Islamists effectively 'bought' the Egyptian people's vote.

Although the Islamists have been trying to assuage the fears of the West and secular Egyptians with promises of 'moderation', they're proving it's nothing but lip service, at least when it comes to their female population.  The Salafis are already trying to force their conservative will on the people, though the women are fighting back. But according to Amnesty International,

“Most of the biggest Egyptian political parties have committed to delivering ambitious human rights reform in the country’s transition, but have either given mixed signals or flatly refused to sign up to ending discrimination, protecting women’s rights and to abolishing the death penalty,” Amnesty said.

The London-based rights watchdog had contacted 54 parties running in Egypt’s first post-revolution parliamentary elections to sign a “human rights manifesto” containing 10 key pledges.

“It is disturbing that a number of parties refused to commit to equal rights for women,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s interim director for the Middle East and North Africa.

“With a handful of women taking up seats in the new parliament, there remain huge obstacles to women playing a full role in Egyptian political life,” said Luther.

Apparently, the Muslim Brotherhood did not respond to Amnesty, and the Salafi Al-Nour party

“agreed orally to all pledges with the exception of the abolition of the death penalty and protection of women’s rights.”

Equally troubling is the fact that it wasn't just the Islamists who either didn't respond or refused to commit to women's rights.  The Free Egyptians party didn't respond either, and ten other parties also refused to commit to women's rights and discrimination.  Out of all the many parties that make up the new Egyptian government, only the Popular Socialist Alliance Party and the Egyptian Social Democratic Part agreed to all ten pledges,

 which also include ending the state of emergency, combating torture, ensuring fair trials and upholding freedom of association and expression.

Of course, pledging and actually acting upon those pledges are two separate things. It's easy to say one thing and do another. Only time will tell if they actually do implement change, but the fact that the majority (including non-Islamists) refuse to view women as equals does not bode well.

Egyptian Women Beat Up Salafi Morality Police

"Give them a finger, and they'll take the whole hand" is an apt cliché for the ultra-conservative Islamists in Egypt.  For decades they were banned from forming a political party under the mostly secular Hosni Mubarak's regime.  But now that they've won a majority, with the Salafists garnering about 30% of the vote in recent elections, they're like caged animals who have suddenly been set free.  The Salafists (the most fundamentalist of them all) want to impose their skewed religious ideology on the rest of the Egyptian population, whether they want it or not.

Of course, those who will suffer the most under an Islamist majority government would be the women of Egypt.  But after decades of secular living and actively participating in the Arab Spring movement, I'm not sure they won't go down without a fight. At least the more secular ones won't. And they proved that in Benha, a town in north-eastern Egypt.

A group of ultra-conservative Salafis got more than they bargained for after bursting into a beauty salon in the Egyptian town of Benha in an attempt to enforce “God’s law” on the women inside reported the online newspaper, Bikya Masr.

The women were told to stop what they were doing or face physical punishment from the group.

But instead of complying out of fear, or calling for help, the women took matters into their own hands by striking back.

They beat and whipped the vigilante gang “with their own canes before kicking them out to the street in front of an astonished crowd of onlookers,” Egyptian online newspaper, Bikya Masr, reported

It looks like the Salafists are already trying to flex their religious muscles, and if Egyptian women don't nip it in the bud before it's too late, they're going to find themselves dressed in niqabs like their Saudi sisters.

Apparently the beauty salon incident wasn't the first of its kind. Salafis (like their Saudi brothers) have recently been conducting surprise inspection raids on other shops to make sure everyone (owner and customers alike) are in compliance with "God's Law". That means no more clean-shaven faces, and 'indecent' clothing is a no-no. And we all know that in Islam anything other than a niqab and abaya is considered indecent. And it's not just Muslim businesses they're targeting, they've also allegedly destroyed any Christmas decorations in area shops and malls because Christmas is for infidels and therefore forbidden.

Granted, this particular group of zealots was just created, fashioning itself after the similar Saudi 'Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice' (CPVPV), and even going so far as using the same name. But no-one wants to claim ownership of that group including Al-Azhar (Egypt's main mosque in Cairo) and the Salafi al-Nour Party, which denies any connection whatsoever to that group in spite of the CPVPV claiming they are.  In fact, in response to Al-Azhar's rejection they posted a statement to their Facebook page:

“The Committee, which millions of Egyptians have agreed to, and expressed their desire to see its members diligently apply God’s law, draws the attention of our brothers in Al-Azhar to what happened in the last elections when millions of citizens voted for Salafi parties.”

Trouble is brewing in Egypt, if even the Islamists can't control their ultra-conservatives. But hopefully the women will save the day. You go girls!

Clueless Egyptian Actors Don't Fear The Islamists' Rise To Power

Egyptian actors and on-camera talent (particularly women) should definitely be concerned about the huge victory for the Islamists in their country, considering ultra religious Muslims don't want to see female flesh on their television screens. One can expect the demand for female modesty from somewhere like Afghanistan, but in 2010, five female news anchors walked off the Qatar-based al-Jazeera as a result of harassment from  the deputy editor-in-chief Ayman Jaballah who complained about their clothes, makeup and unveiled hair. But the Egyptians don't seem to be too overly upset about the rise of the Islamists. According to al Arabiya, some well known Egyptian actors and entertainers who were interviewed on nuqudy.com claimed they would defend their freedom, at all costs, if threatened, but Ola Ghanim doesn't seem to think it will be much of a problem,

The seductress Egyptian actress, Ola Ghanim, who once said she would leave to the United States should the Islamists come to power, now says she will stay on in the country, the Egypt-based website, Nukudy.com, reported. Ghanim who posed in a bikini in one her movies, said she is not concerned about the Islamists gaining power and will continue with her acting career like she always has. She hoped that the Islamists would stay away from the movie making business and issues related to actors’ performances.

She hopes? Good luck with that.

Several others in the al Arabiya article show an equally naive reaction, then again, when it comes to politics or world events actors tend to be a pretty clueless bunch, at least in the U.S. Perhaps that's a result of the fact that while working on a project they stick to the scripted page, rarely researching beyond their particular role, if they do that at all. Unlike directors who are able to see the bigger picture, actors are woefully inept at it. I have always been a researcher, delving into every aspect of a play I'm working on, and I've carried that into other aspects of my life, hence my ability to see beyond the obvious. Actors also tend to defer to the director's vision, right or wrong, and rarely if ever challenge them. This could also be the reason why, as mostly liberals, they toe the Democratic party line without question. And why most of them are still enamored of Barack Obama. 

As for the Egyptian actors, it would be nice to think the Islamists would leave the "movie making business and issues related to actors' performances" alone,  but I sincerely doubt they will.  When you have a majority of the seats in parliament going to Islamists, and 25% of that going to the ultra-religious Salafi al-Nour party, it seems highly unlikely.  They should be very concerned, at least the women should be.

Salafi Leader Bassem al-Zarqa Wants The Word "Civil" Clarified, Says All Egyptians Salafis

Salafis, those uber-conservative, ultra religious Saudi Arabian brand of Muslims that are poised to take control of the Egyptian government alongside their Muslim Brotherhood brothers refuse to get down with the word "civil", at least until they fully understand what it means.  So what exactly is their problem?  What I gather is that in post-revolution, post-Mubarak Egypt the liberals are battling the soon-to-be majority Islamists over a secular "civil" state versus a religious Sharia dominant Egypt. 

The Egyptian Salafi al-Nour Party, via  Bassem al-Zarqa (one of its members), recently told Al Arabiya News, that

“Salafis reject the use of the word ‘civil’ in a way that does not clarify what it entails and they are now trying to reach an understanding on its meaning with other political powers in Egypt."

“Salafism means following the teachings of the Prophet and his companions. It is based on those teachings that both religion and state were founded, so we can say that all Egyptians are Salafis.”

Wrong. Not all Egyptians are Salafis- there are a heck of a lot of Coptic Christians and secular-minded Muslims living in Egypt who would beg to differ, including Hani Nessira, an Egyptian writer. Nessira explains why Salafis have such a major problem with words like "civil" and "democracy":

“From the Salafi point of view, democracy and civil state mean giving people power over God’s laws and this for them is unacceptable. The creation of a civil state is part of Egypt’s history and it can be traced back to even before the 19th century.”

So, of course they would reject those words, because there is no room for democracy in an Islamist,  Shariah compliant country.  Unfortunately,  a non democratic, non "civil" Egypt would be most detrimental to the Copts who even under a predominately secular, civil state have been terribly persecuted over the decades.  Emad Gad, a Copt and member of  one of the more liberal political parties believes that the Salafis' have a problem with the word "civil"  because of their attitude towards non-Muslims living in Egypt.

“Salafis do not recognize the presence of Egyptian Christians and consider a Pakistani Muslim closer to them than an Egyptian Christian. Therefore, they undermine the principle of citizenship,” he said.

Well, if they believe that all Egyptians are Salafis (as al-Zarqa cleary stated), that doesn't leave room for
anyone else, does it.

According to Gad,  there have been

.... several fatwas issued by Salafi clerics and which label Christians apostates and prohibit dealing with them.


“The Salafi discourse is confused and has very dangerous implications which become clear in their statements about democracy as a form of apostasy.”

Gad wants the Salafis to be more upfront about their position on things like, free speech, freedom of religion, rotation of power- you know, all those democratic principles that the liberal activists fought so hard to achieve during their revolution in Tahrir Square.

“They also need to state whether they are willing to accept whatever the majority of Egyptian political powers agrees on or not,” he concluded.

I think it's a little too late, since the Islamists have pretty much won a majority in the elections there. And, somehow, I don't think the Salafis are ever going to come to terms with the word "civil".