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Shia Islam in Egypt is composed of the highly persecuted low profile Shia Muslim community of Egypt. [1]
| Part of a series on Shia Islam |
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| Shia Islamportal |
Shia Islam in Egypt is composed of the highly persecuted low profile Shia Muslim community of Egypt. [1]
Shia Islam has a long pedigree in Egypt. The Shia Fatimids came to power in 969 AD in Egypt; they established a new capital called Cairo as the seat of the Fatimid dynasty. Fatimids ruled Egypt for 200 years (969 -1171) and shaped its identity. They also established the famous al-Azhar University in 970 AD in Cairo as a university, founded in order to spread knowledge throughout the world; the university exists to this day and is one of the oldest universities in the world. Al-Azhar was originally a Shia university. [2] [3] However, it is generally accepted that before, during and after the Fatimid rule in Egypt, the people of Egypt were and continued to remain predominantly Sunni, [4] [5] with Ismailism being followed by the ruling classes, rather than the general populace. [6]
Even today, Egypt remains a country with strong Shia ties. Egyptian Sunnis especially followers of Sufi denominations visit revered Shia shrines and mosques dedicated to Hussein, Hasan, Zainab, Ali, and other Shia Imams, and unwittingly incorporate Shia practices into their traditions and funerary rites. The number of Shia in Egypt is growing, and there have been several cases of Sunnis converting to Shiism. [7]
Following are few Egyptian Shia organizations:
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While Shia activists claim the number exceeds one million, the Salafists say there are only a few thousand. [2] According to The Economist , estimates range from 50,000 to one million. [9] Minority Rights Group International estimates Egyptian Shia population to range from 800,000 to two million out of Egypt’s total population of about 90 million. [10]
According to Brian Whitaker, in Egypt, the small Shia population is harassed by the authorities and treated with suspicion, being arrested - ostensibly for security reasons - but then being subjected to torrents of abuse by state security officers for their religious beliefs. [11] For decades, international organisations – including the UN, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International – have documented instances in which Egyptian Shias have been targeted for their religious beliefs. A December 2012 report by UN refugee agency UNHCR highlighted the fact that Shias still cannot openly practice their religious rituals in Egypt. Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui told the UNHCR that many groups were being prosecuted for alleged 'blasphemy.' US Commission on International Religious Freedom continues to label Egypt as a "country of particular concern" in terms of systematic violations of religious freedom. [2] In December 2011, Egyptian security forces prevented hundreds of Shias from observing Ashura religious celebrations in Cairo's El-Hussein Mosque, a Shia holy site. Police forcibly removed the Shia worshippers from the mosque after Salafi groups accused them of performing barbaric rituals. [12]
In May 2012, Al-Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed El-Tayeb chaired a meeting with Islamist forces – including scholars, Muslim Brotherhood members and Salafists – at which they declared their total rejection of "attempts to spread Shiism in Egypt." [2]
On 23 June 2013, after months of Salafi propaganda in the area, several hundred Sunni Muslims surrounded the house of Shia cleric Hasan Shahhata (an ex-Sunni) in the village of Abu Mussalam in Giza Province. The mob killed the cleric along with three of his followers, then dragged their bodies in the streets. The police did nothing to stop the attack. [13] [14] Amnesty's Deputy Director of Middle East Programs Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said on 25 June 2013, "The Egyptian authorities must immediately order an independent and impartial investigation into the killing of the four men, and send a clear message that carrying out attacks and inciting violence against Shiite Muslims will not be tolerated." [15]
As of 2017, the NGOs still report that violence and propaganda against the Shia minority continues. Shia Muslims are frequently denied services in addition to being called derogatory names. Anti-Shia sentiment is spread through education at all levels. Clerics educated at Al-Azhar University publicly promote sectarian beliefs by calling Shia Muslims infidels and encourage isolation and marginalization of Shia Muslims in Egypt. [16]
The Fatimid Caliphate was a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD under the rule of the Fatimids, an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty. Spanning a large area of North Africa and West Asia, it ranged from the western Mediterranean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids trace their ancestry to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, the first Shi‘a imam. The Fatimids were acknowledged as the rightful imams by different Isma‘ili communities as well as by denominations in many other Muslim lands and adjacent regions. Originating during the Abbasid Caliphate, the Fatimids conquered Ifriqiya and established the city of al-Mahdiyya. The Fatimid dynasty ruled territories across the Mediterranean coast and ultimately made Egypt the center of the caliphate. At its height, the caliphate included—in addition to Egypt—varying areas of the Maghreb, Sicily, the Levant, and the Hejaz.
The Al-Azhar University is a public university in Cairo, Egypt. Associated with Al-Azhar Al-Sharif in Islamic Cairo, it is Egypt's oldest degree-granting university and is known as one of the most prestigious universities for Islamic learning. In addition to higher education, Al-Azhar oversees a national network of schools with approximately two million students. As of 1996, over 4,000 teaching institutes in Egypt were affiliated with the university.
Islam is the dominant religion in Egypt, with approximately 89% of Egyptians identifying as Muslims. The majority of Egyptian Muslims are adherents of Sunni Islam, while a small minority adhere to Shia Islam. Since 1980, Islam has served as Egypt's state religion. Due to the lack of a religious census, owing to the alleged undercounting of non-Muslim minorities in Egyptian censuses, the actual percentage of Muslims is unknown; the percentage of Egyptian Christians, who are the second-largest religious group in the country, is estimated to be between 6% and 11% of the population.
Takfiri is an Arabic and Islamic term denoting a Muslim who excommunicates one of his/her coreligionists, i.e. who accuses another Muslim of being an apostate.
Islamic Cairo, or Medieval Cairo, officially Historic Cairo, refers mostly to the areas of Cairo, Egypt, that were built from the Muslim conquest in 641 CE until the city's modern expansion in the 19th century during Khedive Ismail's rule, namely: the central parts within the old walled city, the historic cemeteries, the area around the Citadel of Cairo, parts of Bulaq, and Old Cairo which dates back to Roman times and includes major Coptic Christian monuments.
Islamic schools and branches have different understandings of Islam. There are many different sects or denominations, schools of Islamic jurisprudence, and schools of Islamic theology, or ʿaqīdah (creed). Within Islamic groups themselves there may be differences, such as different orders (tariqa) within Sufism, and within Sunnī Islam different schools of theology and jurisprudence. Groups in Islam may be numerous, or relatively small in size. Differences between the groups may not be well known to Muslims outside of scholarly circles or may have induced enough passion to have resulted in political and religious violence. There are informal movements driven by ideas as well as organized groups with a governing body. Some of the Islamic sects and groups regard certain others as deviant or accuse them of not being truly Muslim. Some Islamic sects and groups date back to the early history of Islam between the 7th and 9th centuries CE, whereas others have arisen much more recently or even in the 20th century. Still others were influential in their time but are no longer in existence. Muslims who do not belong to, do not self-identify with, or cannot be readily classified under one of the identifiable Islamic schools and branches are known as non-denominational Muslims.
Religion in Egypt controls many aspects of social life and is endorsed by law. The state religion of Egypt is Islam, although estimates vary greatly in the absence of official statistics. Since the 2006 census religion has been excluded, and thus available statistics are estimates made by religious and non-governmental agencies. The country is majority Sunni Muslim, with the next largest religious group being Coptic Orthodox Christians. The exact numbers are subject to controversy, with Christians alleging that they have been systemically under-counted in existing censuses.
Islam is historically divided into two major sects, Sunni and Shia Islam, each with its own sub-sects. Large numbers of Shia Arab Muslims live in some Arab countries including Lebanon, Yemen, Bahrain, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, the UAE, and Qatar.
After the death of Muhammad in 632, a group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Sunnis, believed that Muhammad's successor as caliph of the Islamic community should be Abu Bakr, whereas a second group of Muslims, who would come to be known as the Shias, believed that his successor should have been Ali ibn Abi Talib. This dispute spread across various parts of the Muslim world, which eventually led to the Battle of Jamal and Battle of Siffin. Sectarianism based on this historic dispute intensified greatly after the Battle of Karbala, in which Husayn ibn Ali and some of his close partisans, including members and children of the household of prophet, were killed by the ruling Umayyad Caliph Yazid I, and the outcry for revenge divided the early Islamic community, albeit disproportionately, into two groups, the Sunni and the Shia. This is known today as the Islamic schism.
Although the majority of the Nigerian Muslim population is Sunni, there is a small Shia minority, particularly in the northern states of Kano and Sokoto. However, there are no actual statistics that reflect a Shia population in Nigeria, and a figure of even 5% of the total Nigerian Muslim population is thought to be too high “because of the routine conflation of Shi’a with Sunnis who express solidarity with the Iranian revolutionary program, such as those of Zakzaky’s Ikhwani.”
The population of Shias in Africa is composed of several communities:
Muhibb ud-Din al-Khateeb (1886–1969) was a Syrian Salafi writer. He was the maternal uncle of Ali al-Tantawi and was the author of the "hate filled" anti-Shia pamphlet entitled al-Khutoot al-‘Areedah. He has been described as "one of the most influential anti-Shiite polemicists of the twentieth century."
Al-Azhar Mosque, known in Egypt simply as al-Azhar, is a mosque in Cairo, Egypt in the historic Islamic core of the city. Commissioned as the new capital of the Fatimid Caliphate in 970, it was the first mosque established in a city that eventually earned the nickname "the City of a Thousand Minarets". Its name is usually thought to derive from az-Zahrāʾ, a title given to Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad.
Ahmed Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb is an Egyptian Islamic scholar and the current Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Al-Azhar Al Sharif and former president of al-Azhar University. He was appointed by the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, following the death of Mohamed Sayed Tantawy in 2010. He is from Kurna, Luxor Governorate in Upper Egypt, and he belongs to a Sunni Muslim family.
Mohamed Yousif Rashid Albuflasa is a Bahraini poet, writer, former independent candidate for the Bahraini Parliament in the 2010 Parliamentary elections and a member of the Bahraini youth parliament. He belongs to the Albuflasa Bedouin clan. Formerly a Bahrain Defence Force officer, he is now employed at the court of Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
Anti-Shi'ism is hatred of, prejudice against, discrimination against, persecution of, and violence against Shia Muslims because of their religious beliefs, traditions, and cultural heritage. The term was first used by Shia Rights Watch in 2011, but it has been used in informal research and written in scholarly articles for decades.
El-Nas is an Egyptian television station founded in January 2006 and broadcast from Cairo until the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état.
Since the classical era, two major scholarly movements have been influential within Islamic societies: Sufi-Ash'arism represented by Ghazzali (1058-1111) and Salafism represented by Ibn Taymiyya (1263-1328). The dispute between these two schools of thought dominated the Sunni world, splitting their influence across religious communities and cultures, with each school competing for scholarly authority via official and unofficial religious institutions. The relationship between Salafism and Sufism – two movements of Islam with different interpretations of Islam – is historically diverse and reflects some of the changes and conflicts in the Muslim world today.
Hassan Bin Muhamad Bin Shehata Bin Mousa al-Anani, known as Sheikh Hassan Shehata was ascholar who was killed in the small village of Zawyat Abu Musalam in Giza
Mohamed Ibrahim Moustafa, often referred to simply as Mohamed Ibrahim was the Minister of Interior of Egypt, from January 2013 until March 2015.
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