‘The message is that we will not stop until the State is based on the principles set down by God and Prophet Mohamed.”
“Egypt: Friday protest for ‘Islamic identity and sharia,'” ANSA, November 27, 2014 (thanks to Insubria):
(ANSAmed) – CAIRO – Egypt is bracing for another Friday of tension as Islamists and a pro-Morsi coalition prepare to take to the streets, calling for the nation’s ”Islamic identity and sharia” to be restored. Quran in hand, they will be protesting against President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi’s government.
Tight security has been deployed on the eve and the interior minister has warned that there will be ”no tolerance for those who endanger state institutions. Every attempt at violence will be met with live bullets”. Egyptian media quote secret services as saying that protestors ”will raise the flags of the Islamic State” and that protestors will be armed with ”pistols, grenades and Molotov cocktails to attack the police” in seeking to reach and occupy the symbolic Tahrir and Rabaa squares, where in the summer of 2013 gatherings of the supporters of ousted Muslim Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi were violently dispersed.
The jihadist group Ajnad Misr, which has claimed responsibility for recent attacks against security forces at the University of Cairo, has threatened in a video that it will attack police ”with explosives”. ”The message is that we will not stop until the State is based on the principles set down by God and Prophet Mohamed,” states a text accompanying the video. It is not yet clear who will be taking part in the protest, which was called by the Salafist Front and then backed by the Muslim Brotherhood, which since December 2013 has officially been an outlawed organization in the country.
The coalition supporting ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, the National Alliance to Support Legitimacy (NASL), has said that Friday will only be the first day of a week of protests and has called on Egyptians to ”dance and sing” in the streets, saying that ”the people’s rage” will have to be dealt with if former president Hosni Mubarak is acquitted on Saturday on charges of killing protestors in the ‘Egyptian Spring’ in 2011. The Al-Nour Salafist party has instead said that it will not take part in the protest, though ”Islamic youths” may decide to act on their own initiative. (ANSAmed).