By Dr. Ashraf Ramelah
While Islamic terror no longer dominates the nightly news around the world as it had a decade ago, Egyptian authorities continue to rely on Egypt’s Second Amendment to terrorize its citizens. According to the constitution, Islamic Sharia Law is the final word. Their target is everyone who expresses antithetical doctrine to Islam, not just Christians. Muslims who are outspoken and waver from orthodoxy in any way pay the price of personal freedom. It is commonplace for authorities to surveil and arrest nonconformists, especially those who profess atheism. Atheism is forbidden by the state and condemned as “deviant.” The Egyptian system is well documented for crushing free expression and penalizing religious freedom.
In 2023, Sherif Gaber, a thirty-one-year-old influencer on social media, a political activist and creator of religiously irreverent YouTube videos, went a step farther. He referred to academic and scientific evidence to defend homosexuality to his university psychology professor who considered the lifestyle a pathological condition. As a result of Gaber’s fierce defense of that lifestyle, some students and professors signed a petition addressed to the university dean accusing Gaber of atheism.
This petition included posts and videos Gaber published on social media. Gaber became known among his colleagues as a spreader of atheistic ideas. In fact, he began a Facebook page called Atheists and denied the existence of heaven and hell. Gaber openly expressed his beliefs, and in the eyes of the state he became a provocateur, and a complaint was filed against him at the university this same year.
it all began 10 years earlier for Gaber
This was nothing new for Gaber. His controversial videos contradicting Islam and encouraging atheism on social media as far back as 2013 brought him his first arrest and prison sentence of three years issued by the Ismailia Misdemeanor Court. Immediately after serving his sentence, he was again arrested in 2015 and sentenced to one year in prison which was reduced to a fine after his appeal. In May 2018, he was arrested for a third time on charges of mocking Allah and the Islamic religion, however, he was pardoned and released.
After his release in 2019, Gaber appealed to the public, “Help me escape from Egypt.” Through his YouTube channel he requested donations to enable him to leave Egypt and request another citizenship. He announced that he was in hiding for fear of retaliation from religious fanatics -- a familiar reality for Egyptian Christians who are pursued by Islamic revenge seekers.
In 2021, the State of Commissioners Authority of the Supreme Council for Media Regulation, a government body overseeing non-state social media and non-government news media, issued a report stating that the government filed a lawsuit against Gaber, demanding the deletion of his YouTube channel and all his electronic links. Unlike YouTube’s censorship in the United States where free speech is shut down on the whim of YouTube’s obscure policies and channels expunged in the blink of an eye, YouTube of Egypt took no such initiative, allowing Gaber to transmit his illegal atheist and pro-homosexuality content in the progressive style of the West.
This meant that the omniscient Egyptian state either turned a blind eye toward YouTube permitting Gaber’s channel or was complicit with YouTube by design so that Gaber and his unholy ideas would be exposed and publicly censured. The State of Commissioners Authority mandates in its bylaws that all media is “to strike with an iron fist anyone who dared to disdain a heavenly religion [although, in all practicality the mandate never applies to Christianity and Judaism], insult one of the messengers or prophets, or attack the divine essence with any kind of expression that carries sarcasm, mockery, or belittlement.”
In addition, the report stated:
“There is no doubt that the deviant atheist ideas broadcast by the so-called person [Gaber] would undermine the noble objectives of Islamic law that protects Egyptian society from temptations and unrest and protects its religious beliefs and principles. This is something that takes precedence over any other material consideration. If the state violates this obligation, it will have violated its most important duties towards its people, and deciding to block Gaber must be the first step to stop him, deter him, and prevent him from spreading his deviant ideas among our sons and daughters.”
Gaber is currently serving a five-year prison sentence issued in 2023
Although Gaber had had the 2021 lawsuit pending, an Egyptian Attorney, Al-Haytham Saad, independently filed a lawsuit against Gaber in September of 2023 accusing him of insulting Allah and mocking the Islamic religion. Saad exploited Gaber’s battle for rights to gain publicity for himself as is often the case in Egypt and Islam where anyone can come to the defense of Allah and the Prophet. His filing led to Gaber’s arrest, who was found guilty by the Egyptian court and sentenced to prison for five years.
Although undermining Christianity is freely permitted in Egypt, it is forbidden to criticize Islam. The state religion is protected by law, which even includes preventing public confrontations and debates by clerics attempting to prove the correctness of the Islamic books. Any inquisitiveness lands an average citizen in jail. Gaber is just that. However, his courage, endurance and resilience in challenging the state’s limitations of speech and expression as no other individual has done in Egypt makes him special and places him among the most heroic of names in the list of human rights warriors.
At this point, President Al-Sisi alone has the power to overrule Gaber’s sentence and show mercy, moreover, show that he is as he stated himself to be upon his election, “the protector of free speech and democracy.” However, at this time, Gaber would be set free only to be silent. Naturally in doing so, Al Sisi would be defying the Sharia and the powerful thought police of Al-Ahzar Institute, the pre-eminent keeper and interpreter of Islamic law for the whole of the Arab-Muslim world.
Consequently, Al-Sisi would surely be denounced publicly by the Al-Ahzar clerics and scholars for his disobedience to Koranic teachings. Subsequently, the Muslim Brotherhood, that already opposes him, would eagerly join in to accuse him and instigate naïve Muslim-Egyptians to rise and protest the president in the streets. When Al-Sisi does not speak up in favor of Gaber on behalf of free expression in Egypt, Gaber becomes an example by the state of what happens when an Egyptian becomes an “infidel” for western values.
Egypt’s government control and archaic practices have not gone unnoticed by the rest of the world. For example, the ranking system of NomadCapitalist.com has calculated Egypt’s Perception score to be 20 out of 50, meaning that “Egypt citizens experience intermediate hostility.” Nomad rates “government surveillance, press freedom and other factors to determine the personal freedom of citizens…with scores from 10 being the least free to 50 being the freest.” Nomad assigned Egypt a Freedom score of 20, meaning that “Egypt citizens have low freedom.” Nomad’s client base is forewarned about what to expect from Egypt when planning foreign investments, second homes and passports.
