Arab Journalism and Egypt’s Claimed Control over UK’s Mosques

Anyone who reads the alarming title quoting the President of Al-Azhar University saying ‘We have put an end to the practices of some preachers in the Islamic centres of Britain’, published by Asharq Alawsat newspaper, Tuesday 21 Sept 2010 would think that UK is one of Egypt’s provinces.

I was intrigued to find out how Egypt or its AlAzhar University officials have been able to fix something inside UK and in what capacity.

The first question that comes to mind is has UK and its politicians became bankrupt of ideas that they resorted to the expertise of the Middle Eastern officials to solve their alleged internal problems? Does Egypt really have a say when it comes to local policies in UK? And why would UK officials take advice from a source that proved not to be able to handle its own internal affairs? And most of all, was what Asharq alAwsat newspaper reported accurate? If UK needs advice or help from a Muslim source, why has it resorted to Egypt? Why not request the advice from Indonesia for example since Indonesia is the largest Muslim country by population, and home for 15.6% of the world's Muslims, or why not ask the advice of any other Asian country since around 62% of the world's Muslims live in Asia.

The second line of the title for the same article came with smaller font and humbler calmer rhetoric: ‘Dr. Abdullah Al-Husseini told "Asharq Alawsat": Al-Azhar University is to open dialogue with the West’.

We are left confused by the two different tones of the headlines, and which one of them to consider. We wonder, whether the Asharq Alawsat newspaper is adopting sensationalism, or there has been really a formal request by UK seeking an Egyptian rescue mission on this matter.

Reading down the article, the content says: during the interview with the President of Al-Azhar University, Dr. Abdallah Al-Husseini said that "his University has ‘put an end’ to the ‘wrong behaviour’ of some preachers in Islamic centres and some of the mosques in Britain".

Wow, ‘put an end’?...This seems strong, I was eager to know how a Middle Eastern University has helped UK to ‘put an end’ to what seems to be a huge problem. The report claims that Dr. Husseini said that the Sheikh of Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb, headed a delegation to visit the mosques in London, and the outcome was that Al-Azhar university has implemented a ‘rehabilitation’ course for ‘those Imams’ to correct their methods of preaching Islam. The butter of the long article can be simply be squeezed into a line of information that says 20 imams from UK, mostly Afghan, attended a course supervised by Al-Azhar University. That’s all.

One wonders, why amongst the millions of courses implemented in different fields and organized annually in UK between mutually interested parties none of them use such rhetoric to insinuate control or an upper hand but this one.

For those who are not familiar with the Arab Press, and who might not understand this example of language masculinity that insinuates being in charge, one should bear in mind that, everyone in the Arab world wants to be in charge or be the leader, no one wants to be led. Arabs like to be in the position of telling others what to do, being in charge and leading others make them somehow feel good about themselves for playing the role of the shepherd and not one of the sheep. This attitude can be noticed through Arab journalism practices.

Asharaq AlAwsat is a Saudi newspaper, and Saudi media has always done its best to reflect Saudi Arabia as the leader and the guardian of Arabs especially when it comes to subjects related to Islam. It is a well known fact that both Egypt and Saudi Arabia stroke each others’ ego, since Egypt as well considers itself the leader of the Arab world politically, and has a record of media stunts to prove that. Such as its latest manipulation of the photo of the world leaders’ summit held in USA which was published by the leading national Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, that doctored the photoshopped front page picture, to bring the Egyptian President Hosni Mubark from the back in the original photo, positioning him right at the front. This manipulation of facts contradicts the ethics of journalism and basic common sense, since the host usually leads the way ahead of his guests in his own home not the other way round. Besides, Mubarak, at the age of 82 is the eldest of all the leaders present at that summit and it is natural that his steps might be slower than Obama's and could not race him to the front position.

Having to shift Obama’s figure, the host, and all the other leaders, and placing them all behind Mubarak, who was the last in the original photo, became a source of media ridiculing carnival around media circles in a way that might have even embarrassed President Mubarak himself.

The Editor-in-chief of the Al-Ahram newspaper, Osama Saraya, has not apologised for his professional failure, nor did he have the gut to resign from his post and take responsibility for embarrassing all Egyptian journalists. His action was even more shocking when he resorted to the attack policy as a defence mechanism, saying in his official response: ‘The picture has been published in that manner to express and portray the exact important political position of President Mubarak and his unique and leading role regarding the Palestinian issue’.

Surely this reply reflects professional immaturity by insinuating that all the other leaders present at the event including the American host himself do not match Mubark’s importance. Saraya’s naïve reply reflects as well an ethical gap between the media in Egypt and any other progressive free transparent media in the world.

It seems that those who are in charge of Arabic press have the illusion that they are addressing an ignorant oppressed herd and that no one from outside their borders has access to their fabricated stories. They presume that there are no monitoring bodies over their amusing news, and the bloggers are as frightened as the journalists employed and paid by their governments.

Some Arab editors-in-Chief think that they can treat the readers around the world with the same contempt they treat their own readers at home by forcing them to swallow their fabricated news and their manipulated content. For those ‘churnalists’ I would say, wake up. You are living in the globalisation era, where a reader in a remote area of India can read the same news article at the same time a reader at the outskirts of the Arabian Desert when they both strike their computer keyboards, besides, the Western world does not suffer a shortage of translators, nor your fellow citizens are as naive or ignorant as you might hope they will be.

Iqbal Tamimi is Director for Arab Women Media Watch Centre in the UK.

Saudi Arabia’s flogging punishments: 100 lashes for a man in his 90s

By Iqbal Tamimi

The picture attached has been circulated anonymously on Saudi forums of the sentence of flogging a female Saudi teacher in public for throwing a shoe at one of her students.

The maximum number of lashes mentioned in Islamic texts is 100. It is a punishment for what is considered the major crime of adultery. But the latest of shocking news of abusing the punishment system in Saudi Arabia has been reported 31st August 2010 by a number of local Saudi websites including (hrofy.com), claims a Saudi judge at a court of the city of Taef, has sentenced an elderly man in his 90s to 100 lashes. This old man did not commit adultery. He was sentenced to 100 lashes for breaking the windscreen of a car that belongs to the judge of Alqureea Bani Malik’s court during Friday prayers. The old man said he broke the windscreen of the judge's car to take revenge over a previous verdict against him.

In October 2008 a Saudi court in the city of Jeddah, sentenced the Egyptian doctor Raoof Ameen AlArabi who was working in Saudi Arabia to 1500 lashes and 7 years imprisonment. He was accused of prescribing a drug to a female patient that resulted in her becoming addicted to the prescription. Alriyadh Saudi national newspaper warned on 5th April 2009 that flogging punishments has reached an astronomical record in Saudi Arabia; one of such sentences was 40.000 lashes. Another punishment was 4.000 lashes for stealing two lambs.

These punishments raised controversial issues, since such numbers of lashes has never been reported or recorded in Islamic punishments’ system before. The punishment by flogging in Islam has been recorded in three cases and allowed only under tight regulations and conditions. Making the flogging punishment an almost impossible task, such as in the case of adultery, where four witnesses are required to come forward to testify accusing the person of adultery, and they should swear that they have seen personally, without a shadow of doubt the intercourse act was happening in front of all four of them at the same time and that the genitals of both adulterers were fitting like a hand in a glove. Hugging in bed, kissing or seeming like making love does not count in such testimony, making accusing a person of adultery almost an impossible task.

The small number of flogging incidents reported along history took place after the persons who committed adultery came forward themselves and confessed willingly, to take the punishment in an act of repentance.

The cases where Islam punishes by flogging are mentioned in Islamic texts in three cases. The first is 100 lashes for committing adultery if the adulterer was a virgin. This punishment has been mentioned in Quran, Surah An-Nur, 2. “The woman and the man guilty of illegal sexual intercourse, flog each of them with a hundred stripes. Let not pity withhold you in their case, in a punishment prescribed by Allah, if you believe in Allah and the Last Day. And let a party of the believers witness their punishment”. (This punishment is for those who were never married and found guilty but if they were married the punishment is to stone them).

The second punishment of 80 lashes is a punishment for defamation, when accusing a person of adultery without being able to produce 4 witnesses; as mentioned in Quran, Surah An-Nur, 4. “And those who accuse chaste women, and produce not four witnesses, flog them with eighty stripes, and reject their testimony forever, they indeed are the Fasiqun” (liars, rebellious, disobedient to Allah).

The third case is a punishment of 40 or 80 lashes for drinking alcohol.

The maximum punishment by flogging mentioned in Islamic texts is 100, and the justification for punishment by lashes has been mentioned in the Quran. The over-application of the flogging punishments and increasing the number of lashes in Saudi Arabia raised many questions about the legitimacy of such punishments, and upon what foundations the Saudi judges estimate the number of lashes when they make their verdicts especially that these verdicts vary from one judge to another and the matter is left to their own personal judgements.

People wonder, since 100 lashes is the maximum punishment for committing adultery, which is considered a major crime in Islam, how come some Saudi judges issue verdicts of thousands of lashes for misdemeanours cases or minor violations, such as sentencing two teenagers to two thousand lashes and a jail sentence of three years each, for stealing a sheep.

The Legal Counsellor for the National Assembly for Human Rights, Khalid bin Abd al-Rahman al-Fakhiri warned that this ciaos of flogging punishments will turn the Saudi judicial system from achieving justice to an oppressive tyranny tool. Others favoured the over-flogging punishment and welcomed it, such as the lawyer Sultan AlZahem, the Chairman of the Lawyers Committee in Madinah who told Alriyadh Newspaper in a report published 5th April 2009: “Increasing the number of lashes to a thousand or more, is a good thing, because it might deter the offenders by setting an example to others who are tempted to commit such crimes, considering the harm they cause the victims. The over-flogging will serve as a deterrent that maintains the security and stability in the country”.

A proportional punishment for a particular offense must be considered to protect the rights and dignity of human beings. Lashing a doctor for claimed wrong prescription that has led to addiction, or lashing a female teacher 100 times in public and in the presence of all her students and some parents for throwing a shoe at a student, does not do the society any good or deter anybody from making a mistake. Contrary to that, it will frighten people from working in Saudi Arabia where such system of punishments discourage much needed skilled people to work in its segregated society, especially where skilled and educated expatriate women are desperately needed to work in the medicinal and educational fields to serve Saudi females, besides many other sectors. People will be hesitant to accept employment offers in a country where there is a possibility of miscarriage of justice should one get entangled in any mishap.