Egypt puts religious fanatics on trial

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33778, 26 February 1975, Page 19

Egypt puts religious fanatics on trial

(By

IRENE BEESON,

of the Observer Foreign News Service.)

CAIRO, j “There is no God but Allah and Mahomet is the prophet of Allah . . . '' e vow to fight or. until Islamic rule is established . . . Allah is the most great ...” The booming voices of the Hl young men in the dock drowned that of the Judge calling their names and those of the lawyers appointed to defend them before the Supreme State Security Court. The men are charged Wh a ff e . m Pting to change the Egyptian Constitution by force, set up a new Government and establish an Islamic republic. They are dlso accused of attempting to storm the Cairo Military Academy as a first step towards fulfiling the plot. There are 95 accused. Three have been referred to juvenile courts and a fourth was absent on the opening day of the trial because he was taking examinations. They are, for the most part, university students and were arrested on April 18, after an armed attack on the Military Academy in which 11 people were reported killed and 20 wounded.

The chief accused, Salah Ibrahim Abdullah Sareya, is charged with setting up the secret “Islamic Liberation Organisation,” which carried out the operation, and with planning the abortive coup.

Most of the accused wore long white gowns and skull caps, were bearded and longhaired. Several brandished the Koran and repeatedly interrupted the proceedings, shouting religious slogans and quotations from the Moslem holy book. They protested that the court was not fit to try them, warning that the judgment of Allah would be upon their accusers. They refused to have any dealings with the lawyers appointed to defend them and said that they had been beaten and ill-treated in gaol. The chief prosecutor lost his composure. He stormed at the defence lawyers, calling them liars when they complained they had not been allowed to visit the prisoners privately and alleged the accused had been ill-treated. A semblance of order was restored for a while when the Judge ruled that lawyers

must be allowed to see their clients in private and called upon the prosecution to withdraw its insulting remarks. He announced that the trial would be postponed until December 14.

The accused appeared to be totally unconcerned with the proceedings upon which their future and, in some cases, their lives depended. “They are mad,” an Egyptian journalist on my left diagnosed. “They do unquestioningly anything commanded by their leaders —they want to bring chaos to the country, “My son is one of the principal accused,” the man on my right confided with a certain pride. “A bright boy . . . student at the engineering faculty of Alexandria University ... a pity . . . look at him now . . .”

No, this group was not Moslem Brothers, the father explained. They probably belonged to a “parallel organisation.” They were kids, he said, fanatics, unbalanced by religious fervour but good, sincere boys. That there should be, in the twenty-fourth year of Egypt’s socialist revolution, groups of young men fanatically motivated towards violence out of religious fervour is disturbing but understandable. Since the remotest antiquity, Egypt has always been one of the mainsprings of religion. The country is held together to a considerable extent by religious fervour, whipped up at times by the religious and political leaders to the point of fanaticism.

With more than 80 per icent of the population poor ,and illiterate and a total ban 'on political activity outside ■the official Arab Socialist Union, religion is the natural ! outlet. This is both a safeguard and a potential threat to the rulers. Of all the political parties, movements and organisations that sprang up in Egypt in the first half of this century, the Moslem Brotherhood, founded by Hassan el Banna in 1928, spread the most widely and grew the deepest roots. When, in 1954, members of the Brotherhood’s secret armed organisation, attempted to assassinate Gamal AbI del Nasser —who opposed their policy of establishing a Moslem State run by the new generation they are training —about 18,000 members were arrested and detained in concentration camps and prisons.

Yet in 1965, the Moslem Brotherhood was still considered the greatest threat to the regime. In August of that year, 400 Moslem Brothers were arrested for ploting to assassinate Nasser and his Cabinet Ministers. The basic aims of the Moslem Brotherhood —and other Moslem groups, like the Moslem Liberation Organisation—are total reform in the spirit and way of Islam, to follow Islam, its rules, laws [and civilisation, to forsake the ways of the West and oppose communism. There was a strong revivalist movement in 1967, when the Arab leadership blamed the defeat in the June war on the fact that the Arabs had strayed from Islam. “God wanted to give the Jews mastery over us because of our estrangement from our religion,” muftis and imans told their congregations. “The Arabs deserted their faith in God, so God deserted them.” Another religious upsurge was fostered by the Egyptian regime in October 1973. In what Egyptian moderates and Leftists analyse as ■ fear of building up the Soviet image and .of hurting the susceptibilities of Egypt’s main supporter, Islamic Saudi Arabia, the Egyptian leadership attributed the victory of its Armed Forces to Allah’s intervention, not to the quan- ■ tity and quality of Soviet [weapons. This was accom-

panied by an intensive antiSoviet smear campaign. While the part played by Soviet aid and weapons was played down, stories were circulated of the angels of Allah hovering ab.ove the battlefield, protecting the army from the Israeli Phantoms; of the face of the Prophet Mahomet appearing in the sky over Sinai; of [water and food miraculously springing out of the desert sands to feed the trapped Third Army. This created the right atmosphere for ever-watchful politico-religious fanatics to step up their activities, especially among the devout young.

Victory had been within reach but was snatched away by Allah because the regime did not follow the path of Islam. It negotiated and made compromises with the imperialist West. It was making new 7 overtures towards the Godless East. All but a handful of Moslem Brothers have been released from detention since President Sadat came to power. Ten or 20 years behind bars have made zealots of the most moderate among them. Developments in the last two decades have strengthened their conviction that the way of Islam alone is right. Nasserism, reliance on the Soviet Union, on the West, attempts to import foreign ideologies, have all brought disaster to the country, Moslem Brothers explain. The answer, the solution for Egypt’s and the area’s problems, is in the application of Islam. (OFNS COPYRIGHT)