Our Response to Al-Qaeda Criminals Inciting their Terrorists to Murder Our Person
Published in January 5, 2010
Translated by: Ahmed Fathy
Firstly:
1- Since we have begun walking through our route of reform when we were an assistant professor at Al-Azhar University in 1977, we have received many death threats (for apostasy and heresy!) that go on coming to us until now.
2- Declaring us in fatwas as an infidel and an apostate who deserves to be put to death began by the Sufi Azharite sheikhs, and then by Wahabi Sunnite Azharite sheikhs and clergy; If Egypt were a formal theocracy, such fatwas might have been executed by anyone who would murder us or sentence us to death by hanging! The accusation would have been the rejection of their Sunnite religion; yet, because formally, Al-Azhar institution is a civil one under the Egyptian State, with its civil law, our Azharite persecutors imposed an inquisition-like interrogation leading to certain penalties on the 5th of May, 1985, as they have accused us of denying facts of Islam, which means disbelief/apostasy, though our writings quote the Quran in almost every single line! In fact, our writings deny, reject, and refute their Sunnite myths and prove how such myths contradict the Quran: real Islam. Their unjust penalties including suspending us from work and confiscating our financial dues. Their decisions violated the Egyptian laws especially Al-Azhar Law. Meanwhile, we've preached as an imam in many mosques delivering Friday sermons, talking about Quranism to spread this call among people. Many extremist Sunnites attempted to silence us many times, until they managed to make the Mubarak regime arrest us, among others of our fellow Quranists, in the first arrest wave of Quranists in Cairo. This arrest was based on fatwas urging to kill us and declaring us as infidels issued by sheikh M. M. Al-Sharaawy in the MB-run governmental weekly journal "Al-Loaa El-Eslami" (i.e., literally, The Islamic Banner), where this sheikh called for putting us to death as per 5:33. Following the footsteps of Al-Sharaawy, the Azharite sheikh Abdel-Mo'ti Bayoumi issued a fatwa urging to put us to death without a trial!
3- After resigning from Al-Azhar University in 1987, and throughout the 1990s, we wrote articles in many newspapers, and fatwas of declaring us as an infidel/apostate increased in number, including the one by sheikh Abdel-Ghaffar Aziz, urging people to kill us and Dr. Farag Fouda because we announced our establishing a new political party named (the Future Party) to call for a civil state based on citizenship rights. Days after this fatwa, Dr. Fouda was assassinated in June 1992. We were never intimidated and never stopped writing articles seeking reform, while allying ourselves to human rights organizations and civil society forces, especially the Ibn Khaldoun Center, where we held the weekly forum, every Tuesday night from 2nd of January 1996 till the second wave of arrest of Quranists in 2000:2001, resulting in the Mubarak regime closing down the Ibn Khaldoun Center and incarcerating its owner Dr. Saad Eddine Ibrahim; we were lucky enough to flee to the USA where we sought political asylum to gain our freedom.
4- The Ibn Khaldoun Center caused a stir in the stagnant waters at the time, not only because of its forums and absolute freedom of speech within discussing taboos and unspoken-of issues, but because of the two main projects adopted in the Center with our participation: 1) reforming education in Egypt to remove all Wahabi influence, and 2) educating Egyptians and raising their awareness of political and electoral rights. We were the main preacher of the second project, roaming Egyptian cities and rural areas and villages to raise people's awareness. As for the first project, we have authored new curricula for Quranist religious education based on democracy, human rights, freedom, justice, and democracy. This project was discussed in the press and in many conferences, but it was opposed by the Mubarak regime: presidency, People's Assembly, Al-Azhar, the Egyptian media, and mosques, even within independent newspapers of some political parties, while declaring us as an infidel and apostate, and a campaign was formed against the Ibn Khaldoun Center and Quranists. In the USA, we have continued our peaceful intellectual jihad within many American centers we have participated in establishing them, and then, we have established our VA-based IQC and our Quranism website; this made fatwas urging our death increase within cyberspace, while Quranists in Egypt suffered arrest waves in 2007. 2008, and 2009.
Secondly:
We have repeated the above facts to assert the following points.
1- We continue authoring and writing unprecedented thought and ideas in each article and book on our website, while our foes have nothing but to issue fatwas urging our killing as an apostate, as they never have the intellectual ability to refute us; they are getting bored of repeating their same silly arguments that are never convincing to anyone.
2- Their fatwas, threats, persecution, incarceration, etc. never stopped and will never stop our Quranist endeavors of seeking reform; on the contrary, their persecuting us increased the number of Quranists and their supporters and shed more light on the lack of intellectual abilities of our foes. Many non-Quranists now attack the inherited false sanctity of the so-called Sunna and hadiths as well as companions and imams, all of which are being put to question now; these notions/myths are no longer taken for granted by the cultural elite. We are forever indebted to our foes in this respect; they are the reason for the increase in the number of Quranists, because instead of trying to refute or discuss our views within the intellectual sphere of the Quran and history, they spread rumors about us and verbally abuse us in media and the cyberspace, as they could not refute our Quran-based thought so as not to appear as haters of the Quran, for this is their reality. Persecuting and incarcerating Quranists increased their number; even when fair readers read about us in articles by our foes who quote our de-contextualized views to attempt refuting them, the readers see that we are in the right and that our foes are in the wrong as their words are illogical. Thus, anyway, all publicity is good publicity for Quranism; the barks of Sunnite dogs provide much needed media attention and free publicity to Quranists. Thus, Quranism spreads the more as Quranists have the intellectual means, while our Sunnite Wahabi foes are being defeated as they have no logical argument despite their controlling all media and their connections with those in power and authority.
3- Our foes and rivals are not confined to tyrannical regimes in Egypt, Sudan, and Arabia, as well as formal Azharite sheikhs and all Wahabi clergy of the KSA, but also all members of extremist Wahabi terrorism; e.g., Al-Qaeda criminals and their defenders, such as the ones who claim being 'moderate' like the terrorist MB in Egypt and elsewhere, and those Salafists who are openly violent and commit murders and terrorist crimes. The KSA, Azharite clergy, the Mubarak regime, and the terrorist MB members claim overtly that they are against Al-Qaeda and extremists Wahabi scholars, and they are struggling among one another, but they all agree on one thing: they are united against Quranists and forget their conflicts so as to defend their Sunnite religion foundations from being smashed by Quranism, as Quranists prove how the Sunnite religion contradict the Quran in everything. All these foes live off the Sunnite myths and use it to deceive the silent majority: millions of Muhammadans. Thus, those rivals for power coordinate their efforts against Quranists: the Mubarak regime arrests them after fatwas are issued to declare them as infidels who deserve to die, to be tortured in prison, and these fatwas are the same one issued by Al-Azhar clergy and head (i.e., Dr. M. Sayed Tantawi) and all Al-Qaeda terrorist sheikhs within cyberspace.
4- This proves that the root of all plight is in tyrannical regimes: there is no difference between Al-Azhar clergy and Al-Qaeda terrorists, nor between Bin laden and the Saudi king, nor between Hosni Mubarak and the MB member; all of them practice terrorism and believe in the Wahabi Sunnite culture of terror. The only difference is that the Al-Qaeda terrorists are true to themselves in applying the Sunnite Wahabi religion, whereas the rest are the worst lot of hypocritical ones who assume they are 'moderate', but they murder victims with cold blood and weep over them in media. All Sunnite Wahabi clergy are without a shred of conscience in their fatwas to urge the murder of the so-called infidels, and when the victims are murdered by terrorists, those clergy wash their hands off the blood and talk about tolerance of 'Islam', or rather their Wahabism!
The latest piece of news:
We talk about this for the sake of fun and laughter; the Al-Qaeda terrorists have written sheets and sheets within the cyberspace urging to murder our person, and their threats are found on this link in Arabic:
http://al-faloja1.com/vb/showthread.php?t=98134
indeed, the passages here describes us as follows: (... the infidel Subhy Mansour who deserved to be put to death immediately ... the criminal and enemy of Allah ... this is the photo of this pig; anyone who finds him must kill him! ... the sinner cursed by Allah ... unless he declares his repentance within all websites that publish his articles ... Al-Azhar has fired him in 1987 ... and many fatwas are issued to declare him as an apostate who forsook Islam ... This death sentence will be executed soon by our group ''Supporters of Muhammad'' peace be upon his soul: signature Abou Zar Al-Maqdishy, media man of Al-Qaeda ... This atheist Mansour has fled and is hidden like a rat in the USA, using all his power to undermine Islam; may God curse him ... he is being funded by Jewish Americans who recruited him after his being expelled from Al-Azhar ... he is sharp-tongued and lacks morals as he verbally abuses Muslims men and clergy of Al-Azhar ... he even quotes song lyrics of famous Egyptian singers in his articles! ...).
The rest of the page contains many articles and fatwas calling for terrorists to assassinate us as soon as possible while leveling false accusations against us accompanied by more verbal abuse. Yet, they know that our murder will never stop Quranism from spreading: the caravan of Quranists will go on with the passage of time, gaining more members, while ignoring infuriated barking dogs of Al-Azhar, Al-Qaeda, and the KSA. All mortals will die eventually; death is inevitable, and all of us will meet before our Dominant Lord God to settle our differences in faith; the unjust ones, Wahabi terrorists, will certainly enter Hell if they never repented before their death.
The last line:
God knows it that we desire very much to be murdered because of our peaceful reform endeavors: this will achieve our greatest victory in this world and the next. We are waiting for Al-Qaeda assassins with their weapons and explosives, and we assure them that we carry in our hands nothing but our copy of the Quran: God's Word.