CAIRO: Egypt’s second biggest Islamist party, Nour, yesterday rejected proposed changes to the constitution that would outlaw parties founded on religious grounds, and called the move a “sword drawn” against Islamists.
The proposal, made during meetings of the constitutional committee this week but not yet formally approved, came days after a Cairo court separately banned the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s dominant Islamist force.
“It’s wrong to blame the whole Islamist current for the mistakes of the Muslim Brotherhood,” said Nour Party head Younes Makhyoun.
“We reject this article completely because it is discriminatory and exclusionary. By what right does this article aim a drawn sword at some parties? Are we going to put an article in the constitution that bans founding parties on liberal, secular, socialist or Nasserist grounds?”
Islamist political parties formed after the downfall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011 dominated elections, and the Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi became Egypt’s first freely elected president.
But after a year in power, huge demonstrations against his rule prompted the army to oust him. Security forces have launched a crackdown on the Brotherhood in which hundreds of Islamists were shot dead on the streets of Cairo and thousands more, including Mursi, arrested.
Any move to ban religious parties would redraw Egypt’s political map and turn the clock back to the days under Mubarak when Islamists were not allowed to form political parties.
Nour, founded shortly after the popular uprising against Mubarak, backed Mursi’s overthrow in July by signing up to a road map for Egypt’s political transition that included amending the constitution and setting a time frame for new elections.
Reuters
