Amid fears about the fate of prisoners in the event of an outbreak of the Corona epidemic, Egyptian security forces are holding a member of the Qur'anic minority in Egypt.

Andalus Center for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies calls for the immediate release of Reda Abdel Rahman Ali and the cessation of prosecution of religious minorities in Egypt.

August 26, 2020, Cairo, Egypt— Egyptian security forces arrested Citizen Reda Abdel Rahman Ali at dawn on Saturday, August 22nd, from his home.

Members of the National Security had arrested some relatives of Dr. Ahmed Subhi Mansour, the Islamic thinker and leader of the Qaraniyyin in Egypt, and they were all released except for Reda Abdul Rahman.

Since then, he has been forcibly disappeared, as there is no available information about his whereabouts or the type of charges against him, and he was not allowed to contact his lawyer or his family.

His family sent telegrams to the Attorney General and the Minister of Interior to reveal his fate, to no avail. Andalus Center for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies calls for his immediate release.

This is not the first time that Rida Abdulrahman was arrested, as he was previously arrested on October 27, 2008 and remained in enforced disappearance for more than 25 days, against the background of a post he published discussing Islamic thought from the vision of the Qur’anists.

Amid fears about the fate of prisoners in the event of an outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, and demands for the release of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience, the Egyptian security forces are still targeting religious minorities in Egypt and arresting their members.

The arrest of Reda Abdel Rahman Ali comes on the background of his being a member of the Qur'anic minority in Egypt. It is the minority that appeared in Egypt in the early eighties, based on the writings and reviews of Dr. Ahmed Subhi Mansour, who relied on the Qur’an as a primary source and considered the Prophet’s Sunnah as human dictates subject to political accommodation.

Without delving into the jurisprudential or intellectual principles on which the Qur'anic minority in Egypt depends, it did not violate the law or infringe on the rights of others. It only exercises one of the basic rights which is freedom of thought and belief.

What Rida faces is not only a violation of the freedom of belief, but also a violation of basic human rights related to the right to a fair trial in case of accusation and the right to protection from arbitrary detention and from various types of psychological and moral torture. His enforced disappearance and his prevention of legal defense is a flagrant violation of principles Basic justice.

Andalus Center for Tolerance and Anti-Violence Studies calls on the Egyptian authorities to immediately release Reda Abdel Rahman and to stop violating freedom of thought and belief by pursuing members of various religious minorities,

The Center calls on the Egyptian authorities to respect the articles of the Egyptian constitution regarding rights and freedoms and the articles concerned with the right to a fair trial.

The human rights situation in Egypt has never been worse than that, and there is a complete absence of guarantees of justice, which threatens the stability of the entire nation. There is no good that comes from a lack of confidence in the rule of law and the prevalence of the police and oppressive grip of the state.