* Ghaffour says UN should consider religious hatred
resolution
* Salafi Nour Party second-biggest in Egypt parliament
* Says “interest groups” sowing discord by defaming Islam
By Marwa Awad
CAIRO, Sept 22 (Reuters) – Egypt’s president and other
Muslim leaders should demand the U.N. criminalise contempt of
religion after the release of an anti-Islamic film and cartoons
which demonstrate growing racism, said the leader of the biggest
ultra-orthodox Islamist party.
Despite doctrinal and political differences with President
Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, the Salafist Nour Party
played a key role in supporting it during presidential elections
in June.
Led by Emad Abdel Ghaffour, it now ranks as the
second-largest party in parliament and plays a formidable force
in Egypt’s new politics.
“We call for legislation or a resolution to criminalise
contempt of Islam as a religion and its Prophet,” said Ghaffour,
one of four permanent assistants to the president, on Saturday.
“The voice of reason in the West will prevail if there is
mutual respect, dialogue and efficient lobbying for this
critical resolution,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Leaders and their entourages from the 193-nation United
Nations General Assembly descend on U.N. headquarters in New
York for the world body’s annual “general debate” from Sept.
25-Oct. 1.
Mursi will make his Assembly debut along with the new
leaders of Libya, Yemen and Tunisia, countries where Islamist
parties have moved to the heart of government.
The recent violent unrest in some Muslim countries caused by
anger at the anti-Islam film made in California and the French
cartoons published by satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo is expected
to be a closely watched theme.
A few dozen Egyptians protested near the French embassy in
Cairo on Friday, but were kept away from the premises by police.
The Nour Party and other mainstream Islamic leaders expressed
outrage, but have urged a peaceful response.
Muslim protests in Pakistan turned violent with at least 15
people killed on Friday, after demonstrations in several Muslim
countries a week earlier, including attacks on U.S. and other
Western embassies and the killing of the U.S. envoy to Libya.
“A proposal to look into the root causes of the obvious
racism against Muslims and Arabs as the recent fierce campaign
against their Islamic beliefs shows is much needed,” said
Ghaffour.
DISCORD
Ghaffour blamed interest groups for trying to sow discord
between Western countries and newly-elected Islamist governments
in the Middle East by defaming Islam.
“A new reality in the Middle East has emerged after the
toppling of autocratic regime of Hosni Mubarak and others
through democratic elections that brought newly-elected Islamist
governments,” said Ghaffour.
“There are interest groups who seek to escalate hatred to
show newly-elected governments and their Muslim electorate as
undemocratic.”
His Nour Party plans to produce a documentary film on the
life of the Prophet for global release in an effort to counter
the California-made film.
Salafis follow a puritanical school of Islam that was
revived in Egypt in the 1970s by university students inspired by
the 19th century Wahhabi teaching in Saudi Arabia.
Repressed under the rule of Mubarak, the Nour Party emerged
from Daawa al-Salafiya (Salafi Call), a movement that has
previously only backed preaching, not politics, to spread its
purist interpretation of Islam.
Analysts believe Egypt’s Salafi movement, whose followers
typically wear long beards, has a devoted following of 3 million
people and may control 4,000 mosques nationwide. Egypt has
around 108,000 mosques and smaller places of worship.
Last week, Ghaffour told U.S. President Barack Obama’s
Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonough in a telephone
call that while almost all Egyptians denounced the U.S.-made
anti-Islam film, most of the country’s leaders and population
shunned the violent reactions seen in other countries.
Early in September, the Obama administration planned to go
to Congress with a $1 billion debt relief plan to help Egypt
stabilize its economy and grow its private sector.
(Writing by Marwa Awad; Editing by Sophie Hares)
