When protesters successfully called for the
overthrow of Mohamed Morsi last year,
part of their rhetoric played on fears that Egypt's first democratically
elected president and his Muslim Brotherhood were seeking to turn the country
into a theocracy.
Yet 14 months on, religion and politics are as
interwoven as ever – and Morsi's successors in government are leading the way.
The work of Neamat Saty, a civil servant at Egypt's
youth ministry, shows how. She is setting up a taskforce to combat atheism
among the young. Under her plans, hundreds of lecturers, religious leaders and
psychologists will go to the 27 provinces next year to discourage the young
from turning to what she says are the two faces of extremism: jihadism and
atheism.
"Atheists say there is no resurrection, no
heaven or hell – so they think they're free to do whatever they want,"
said Saty. "If you don't believe in life after death, you won't have
limits in your life – and that causes problems in society."
Saty's views are not unusual. Though Egypt's
post-Morsi constitution outlaws faith-based parties, and a Morsi-era clause
about religious legislation was cut, religion has otherwise been a frequent
touchstone for the various wings of President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi's
administration.
Weeks before Saty's scheme was announced, the police
chief in Egypt's second city, Alexandria, promised to arrest a group of
atheists who had publicised their beliefs on social media.
In the past month,
Dar el-Ifta, the wing of the justice ministry that issues religious edicts, may
havecondemned the extremism of Isis – but it has also condemned both belly-dancing and online communication between
men and women.
More widely, religion is being used to promote
subordination to the state.Preachers have been dispatched to justify the government's actions,
and thousands of others – deemed by the government to be too supportive of the
Brotherhood or other Islamist groups – have been barred from work in state mosques.
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