Middle East Focus: Mickey and Minnie vs. the Fundamentalists: Just How Freer are Egyptians Now? Beast of Cairo………

Arabia Deserta

Mickey and Minnie vs. the Fundamentalists: Just How Freer are Egyptians Now? Beast of Cairo………

Rattlesnake Ridge

BFF

“Christian billionaire Naguib Sawiris is scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 14 after he was charged Monday with "blasphemy and insulting Islam" by Cairo prosecutors, state newspaper Al Ahram quoted judiciary sources as saying on its website. The telecommunications mogul, who also heads the secular Free Egyptians political party, is charged with posting a photograph on his Twitter account last June that depicted a bearded Mickey Mouse and a veiled Minnie Mouse. A group of Islamist lawyers, including ultraconservative Mamdouh Ismail, filed a lawsuit immediately after the cartoon was circulated. Despite his formal apology, Sawiris' stunt was seen as mockery of Islam by this overwhelmingly Muslim country. Various religious groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafis, led a nationwide campaign to boycott products and services offered by Sawiris' companies. Sawiris has had an increasingly tense relationship with Islamists……..”

These frivolous lawsuits by ‘Islamists’ started and spread under the Mubarak regime that was supposedly ‘secular’. The lawsuits were used as a weapon to stifle the limited freedom of expression. They were mainly brought on by Islamist lawyers, but there were also others. There were cases of marriages being forcibly annulled by Egyptian courts on the pretext that one of the spouses had committed blasphemy. All that against the wishes of the two spouses. One famous judgment was against Hamid Nasr Abuzaid, an Islamic academic, who had to escape into European exile to keep his marriage and family intact.
It looks like these Egyptian lawyers have picked up where they left during the uprising last year. They are back, and they will have a more sympathetic Muslim Brother-Salafi-Military regime now.
(There was a notorious Egyptian lawyer with the last name el-Wahsh, means Monster in Arabic, who specialized in bringing these lawsuits. I wonder what happened to that trou du cul).
Cheers
mhg

m.h.ghuloum@gmail.com