Not that anyone is surprised to hear that from the Salafists. But everyone is surprised at their showing in the election. They were widely described as a marginal Tiny Minority of Extremists. With the Muslim Brotherhood’s Kiss Freedom and Justice Goodbye Party, the Salafists’ al-Nour party will be writing the next constitution. A democracy is only as good as the values that inform its participants.
What they like in the current constitution, they will keep, and uphold as a precedent for more Islamic governance, particularly in the case of the current Article 2, which proclaims that Islam is the religion of state, Arabic its official language, and Sharia the basis for legislation.
“Egypt’s al-Nour Salafists say no to Coptic president,” by Manar Ammar for Bikya Masr, January 3:
CAIRO: Egypt’s al-Nour ultra-conservative political party announced that a Coptic Christian cannot become president of Egypt and that Egyptian society “will not accept a Christian president.”
Al-Nour means “the light.” So many Lucifer jokes, so little time.
The puritan party”s spokesman wrote a statement published on the party”s website aiming to clear the controversy after Egypt’s al-Akhbar state-run newspaper published an interview with spokesman Mohamed Nour on December 31 in which he said that “the Egyptian society is not fit to accept a Coptic president.”
In that translation, you could take that more than one way. It almost sounds like a compliment to the Copts.
The spokesman said that after going back to the leaders in the party it was agreed on that Egypt “will not accept a Christian president.”
The Islamic political party was founded after the Egyptian uprising of January 2011 and has come in second place in the country”s first parliamentary elections following the revolution.
“We see that the interpretation of the second band [Article 2] in the Egyptian Constitution which states Islam as the “˜official religion” of the country, which automatically states that the president be a Muslim,” read the statement….