Statement of the International Quranic Center (IQC) Denouncing the Death Sentence against Those who Insulted Prophet Muhammad, as It Is a Court Sentence Contradicting the Islamic Sharia

Firstly:

1- The Cairo Criminal Court, in Egypt, has sentenced to death, in absentia, on 28^th of Nov., 2012, seven Egyptian Christians along with an American pastor, Terry Jones, for their production of a movie which is defaming Islam and insulting to Prophet Muhammad. The movie is titled ''Innocence of Muslims'', uploaded in YouTube but removed later on within some countries. This court sentence was reached unanimously by all high-rank judges, headed by the head-judge Seif-Al-Nasr Suleiman, who ordered the papers of the defendants in this case to be referred to the Grand Mufti of Egypt to endorse the death sentence in the court session to be held on 29^th of Jan., 2013, against the following defendants: Morris Sadek, Morcos Aziz Khalil, Esmat Zaqalama, Nabeel Adeeb Bisada Moussa, Elia Basseley, and Nader Fareed Fawzy Nicola, who are Egyptian Coptic Christians who live in the USA, and Nahed Mahmoud Metwalli, an ex-Muslim who converted to Christianity and lives in Australia, and finally, the American anti-Islam pastor Terry Jones. Moreover, the Egyptian citizenship of Morris Sadek had been revoked by the Egyptian authorities.

2- The International Quranic Center (IQC) denounces such terrible court sentence that contradicts human rights as well as Islamic sharia in the Quran; this court sentence defames both the Egyptian State and the Egyptian judicial system; hence the IQC demands firing those judges, who issued this infamous court sentence, from their posts and accusing them formally of intentionally tarnishing the image of both the Egyptian State and the Egyptian judicial system. This court sentence flagrantly contradicts the real Islamic sharia found exclusively in the Quran; hence, the IQC demands that the Grand Mufti of Egypt, Dr. Ali Gomaa, would not endorse such court sentence so as not to be an enemy of God and of Muhammad His messenger.   

Secondly:

1- This infamous court sentence asserts what we, Dr. A. S. Mansour, have repeated for decades until now; namely, the veritable arch-enemies of Islam are not confined to the terrorist Salafists and the terrorist MB group members, as both are merely two hands within the many hands of the real arch-enemy: the Sunnite Ibn Hanbal doctrine-based Wahabi religion that has spread among Egyptians and infiltrated Egyptian life for the last four decades within mosques, education, and media. This Wahabism has poisoned most Egyptians, including those judges who issued this infamous court sentence, despite their being no members of the terrorist Salafist groups or the terrorist MB group. Accordingly, it is no longer enough to politically neutralize the terrorist Salafists and the terrorist MB group members; rather, the Sunnite Ibn Hanbal doctrine-based Wahabism must be intellectually faced, debunked, and refuted from within Islam (i.e., the Quran alone) so as to rid Egypt of its evil and its devilish influence. This urgently needed good riddance of Wahabi ideology, posing falsely as Islam, will allow Egypt to achieve progress and retrieve its pioneer status to lead the Arabs and Muslims all over the globe. This refutation and intellectual confrontation is done so far exclusively by Quranists for more than 30 years.    

2- Let us be reminded of the following historical facts: religious innovative thinking (a.k.a. ijtihad in Arabic Sunnite theological terms) always comes from Egypt, from the past centuries until the present era. Even Sunnite imams of the Middle Ages were influenced by the Egyptian culture and moderation. For instance, the Sunnite imam/scholar Al-Leith Ibn Saad was a very moderate, lenient imam in his era as he lived most of his life in Egypt. The Sunnite imam/scholar Al-Shafei had to review and mitigate his radical, extremist views concocted during his stay in Iraq when he moved to Egypt to live in it. On the Contrary, the Sunnite scholar/imam Ibn Hanbal became an extremist thinker and theologian with radical views once he came to dwell in Iraq. It is his Ibn Hanbal extremist doctrine that spread in the Levant during its Mameluke era. After centuries of obscurity and being overlooked, this Ibn Hanbal doctrine was revived by M. Ibn Abdul-Wahab, the founder of Wahabism, during the rise of the very first Saudi kingdom (1745-1818), crushed and destroyed by the Ottoman-appointed Egyptian governor at the time, who became Egypt's king later on, Muhammad Ali Pacha. When the well-known scholar Ibn Khaldoun, the Arab father of sociology, came to live in Egypt after living in other countries in North Africa, with his mentality of theologian extremism and fanaticism, he was surprised to find the Egyptian atmosphere of religious tolerance during the Mameluke era. He noticed that even bigots of the Ibn Hanbal doctrine were more tolerant and lenient in Egyptian soil, in comparison to their peers elsewhere, and that was why the Egyptians at the time were united against extremist views of Ibn Taymiyya, an extremist fanatical scholar/imam of the Ibn Hanbal doctrine, who lived in Egypt and was rejected, imprisoned, and persecuted by the Mameluke sultans in Egypt and the Levant.         

3- Influenced by the liberal era that dawned in Egypt before any other Middle-Eastern country, religious ijtihad or innovative trends of thought was revived and led by the Egyptian imam/scholar  Muhammad Abdou (1849-1905) head of Al-Azhar institution, but his Syrian disciple, Rasheed Reda, who came from Aleppo, had betrayed his teacher/imam/sheikh when he allied himself to Abdul-Aziz Al-Saud, founder of the third current KSA, to spread Wahabism throughout Egypt in the name of ''Sunnite Salafism'', and of course, Rasheed Reda was paid handsomely by Al-Saud family for his endeavors. This Syrian sheikh who lived in Egypt, Rasheed Reda, was the one to establish the terrorist MB organization in Egypt and to choose the ambitious youth at the time, Hassan Al-Banna, to head it in 1928. Various political circumstances helped the terrorist MB organization to spread all over Egyptian soil, with headquarters or premises erected in all major Egyptian cities, with the intention to make Wahabism pose as 'Islam' and to control cultural, educational, and religious lives of Egyptians for decades within the infamous of Salafism/Wahabism ideology, until the terrorist MB organization reached power and presidency of Egypt in 2012, within the questionable presidential elections. We have written in detail about the danger posed by the terrorist MB and Salafist/Wahabi trend in Egypt, the Arab world, and the West countries in our previous books and articles published on our website in Arabic and in English.

4- As a reaction against the Wahabi/Salafist MB trend in Egypt, the Quranism reformist trend emerged since 1977 initiated by us, Dr. A. S. Mansour, which is building on the intellectual legacy and writings of the late imam M. Abdou, who died in 1905. This Quranist trend, along with its members worldwide, is facing Wahabism from within real Islam, the Quran alone, and is intellectually refuting the Wahabi spectra that include Salafist and MB overt and covert groups, sub-groups, bodies, agents, and organizations.   

5- Sadly, the earthly, man-made, fabricated religion of Wahabism is poisoning the mentalities of Egyptian Muhammadans today; this 2012 court sentence that we refute here in this book is deeply influenced by the Wahabi ideology, with its bigotry, fanaticism, and extremism as well as its contradiction with real Islam (i.e., Quranism) and its Quranic sharia of tolerance and justice, which is based on absolute religious freedom. We fear that as the terrorist MB organization reached power in Egypt, it may start violence and bloodshed all over the Egyptian cities and such heinous acts might metamorphose into full-fledged destructive civil strife in Egypt, God forbid.  

6- Sadly, Quranists are the only ones with their intellectual endeavors, modest means, and impecuniousness that struggle intellectually against Wahabism and all sorts of tyranny, especially religious tyranny of the Wahabi terrorist MB organization and Salafists. Sadly, victims of Wahabism inside and outside Egypt never care to support and help Quranists, let alone caring to aid in spreading their reformist message. Until when will this disgrace continue?! Would this deafening silence and never shedding light on Quranists' reformist endeavors continue until civil strife would break out in Egypt as the case in Syria?! What a shame! 

7- We assert here, as in many previous writings of ours, that politically defeating Wahabi MB and Salafists in Egypt, which will soon occur as we presume, does NOT mean that their veritable danger will be over. In fact, their influence on Egyptian mentality will go on as long as no one in Egypt would dare to discuss, criticize, debunk, and refute Wahabism and to show how it contradicts Islam, as thinkers fear being imprisoned in accordance with the law of the so-called ''contempt of religion'' among other laws that restrict freedom of speech and expression. The Wahabi danger will continue in Egypt as long as Wahabism (posing as 'Islam') is still infiltrating minds of millions of Egyptians without intellectual confrontation from within Islam by Quranists who adhere to real Islam, Quranism, that proves the discrepancy between Wahabism and the Quran. Unlike many Egyptians, we do believe that some of the terrorist MB members had infiltrated the Egyptian military in the 1940s, and those members helped in the 1952 coup that turned Egypt from a monarchy to a republic. When the terrorist MB members tried to control the Egyptian president Gamal Abdel-Nasser, he managed to achieve politically victory over them, and he imprisoned many of them, whilst others fled Egypt to some other countries, mainly their spiritual homeland the KSA; yet, Nasser could not face them intellectually, and this led to the fact that the Wahabi ideology spread in Egypt secretly, slowly but steadily, during the era of Nasser in the 1950s and 1960s. when Sadat took over as president, he allied himself to the KSA and the Saudi king made him spread Wahabism in an accelerated pace in Egypt and allow the terrorist MB members to infiltrate into Egyptian ministries, institutions, governmental bodies, syndicates, Al-Azhar institution, etc. to control the Egyptian mentality for decades until Egypt fell into the hands of the terrorist MB members in 2012. If Nasser had employed reformist thinkers to intellectually refute Wahabism, he would have saved Egypt forever from the veritable danger caused by the trap into which it had fallen in the questionable 2012 presidential elections, whose votes are assumed by many to be rigged. All Egyptians must learn this valuable lesson: intellectual confrontation that refutes the Sunnite Wahabism must spread all over Egypt by supporting the Quranists, or else, massive destruction would occur even if the terrorist MB members and Salafists would be politically removed from rule.                       

Lastly: the next series of articles that comprises this book will definitely show how such an insulting court sentence contradicts God's Quranic sharia.