Egypt and Farag Foda

1) Explain the challenges that Farag Foda and Hamid Abuzeid presented to traditional forms of Islamic thought in Egypt.

Farag Foda and Hamid Abuzeid presented many challanges to traditional forms of Islamic thought in egypt. Foda represented a secular form of Islam, in which he though that Islam would be more rich if it was pushed out of the political arena, and that when this happened Egypt would be more prosperous. Farag Foda said that Egypt belongs to Egyptians not Christians or Muslims, he believed

that equal rights should be had for all people. Foda started political society called Enlightenment, Enlightenment was made up of mostly copts, which were Egyptians Christians. Foda stated that there must be a distinction drawn between Islamic religion and the Islamic state, he said that Muslims should learn not to confuse political evil with religious evil. Foda also stated that even when Islam was in its golden period, the world was not all good and there were still evil things going on, and assuming that having Islam as the ruling power over the people would not solve all their problems, he said that if people used god to justify everything, how could they justify god supporting the jews in the victory in 1967, and how can they say that god is angry with them so they have a declining starndard of living while the west is prosporus. This all went against the tradtional forms of Islamic thought in Egypt because there was always a hardline approach to religion and government. There was always a constant push by certain Islamic groups to make government and religion the same, and the thought was that having the two interconnected would be the only way to make Egypt prosporus.

Another man who challenged traditional Islamic thought in Egypt was Hamid Abuzeid. Abuzeid was an associate professor

in the Arabic department at Cairo University. Abuzeid used modern critical tools such as linguistics, semiotics, rhetoric and deconstructionism to interpret the Quran. He explained that Muslims believe

that the Quran was Gods words, and that god spoke Arabic, but we do not know how God speaks in eternity, meaning that we do not know how God truley speaks but God chose to speak to Muhammed in Arabic because of the time period and location. Another thing that Abuzeid tried to grasp was how the Quran changed in the 20 years it was made. This went against the normal Islamic thought because it is believed

that the Quran are the words of god as he spoke, and there was nothing changed in it. The biggest issue was that he criticized

the Quran, and to traditional Islamist the Quran is above criticism.

2) Explain what happened to each man and why

Because of their viewpoints and work Foda and Abuzeid both received

death letters and were targets of extreamis Islamic groups. Farag Foda was gunned down outside his Enlightment office in Cairo on June 1992. A terrorist orginzation named Gama Islammiya took credit for murdering Foda. Gama Islammiya stated that in killing Foda they enforced the Islamic law on apostasy. Hamid Abuzeid was never promoted and his work was called anti-Islamic he then began to recive death threats and the lable of an apostate. Abuzeid was also had a suit filed against him which stated