The Unity of Rituals and the Unity of the Ummah

With the breezes of the Hajj rituals, which are one of the greatest seasons of obedience, a pillar of religion, and a cornerstone of Islam, these are rituals and feelings that a Muslim must live and experience; to take from them the lesson and the moral, and to derive from them the behavior and application, it is the greatest unity the world has ever known. Imam Al-Banna says in the Hajj season of 1934: “On the day of Arafah, the pilgrims gather at the same time, in the same place, in the same attire, and their voices rise in a single supplication with one heart, one man, what a marvelous position, and what a noble meaning Islam intended as it is the religion of monotheism, and how generous is the reward of Allah and His mercy and His great bounty and satisfaction that covers His noble servants; they return from their position purer, more virtuous, more pious, more pure, like the day their mothers gave birth to them.”

And these rituals remind us of Lady Hagar and her stance with our master Ibrahim, peace be upon him, when he left her and her infant son, she asked him: “Did Allah command you to do this?” He said: “Yes”, she said: “Then He will not let us be lost.” What a trust as solid as mountains, which led Ismail’s mother to surrender to the great and exalted command of Allah… The perfect trust in Allah, which manifested in complete submission and obedience with all limbs to Allah Almighty. And in this position, the necessity of accompanying hope and consolidating trust in the promise of Allah is embodied. The trust in Allah Almighty is a hope that drives action. Professor Jum’a Amin, may Allah have mercy on him, says: “Every person who walks on the path to Allah is full of trust in Allah’s victory for him, and the ray of hope illuminates his path and facilitates the difficulties for him… So trust in all its forms is the basis for the stability of faith, and trust in the approach is a driver for the correctness of the journey.”

The Martyred President Is a Nation’s Project

In the shadows of the blessed Hajj days that manifest the unity of the Ummah, we are reminded of the anniversary of the martyrdom of the heroic martyred president, Dr. Mohamed Morsi, that man whose hearts of millions of sons of the Arab and Islamic Ummah have clung to, realizing that he is a symbol of a project that did not end with his martyrdom, but will remain an aspiration carried by sincere hearts, and souls striding to defend it at all costs.

The martyred president declared the features of the project for which he sacrificed his life, represented in the independence of this Ummah, its unity, and its cohesion in the face of what is plotted against it, he emphasized the necessity that we possess our weapon, our food, and our medicine, he outlined the path and left behind men who carry the torch of truth and walk in his path, they do not accept oppression nor do they agree with the corrupt opinion. The Ummah’s association with the personality of the martyred president and its love for him clearly indicates the goodness of this Ummah, its association with its Islamic civilizational project, and its desire to enforce and strive to achieve it.

This also indicates the integrity of the path that the martyred President took, and he became a symbol for the peoples of our Islamic nation, and even a symbol for all the free people of the world.

June 30 .. Harvest of the Chaff

Close to the anniversary of the assassination of President Mohammed Morsi comes the anniversary of the coup’s foundation against the democratic path on June 30, which pushed Egypt towards a dead end. The economic conditions worsened, the political life became stagnant, Egypt’s regional and international status receded, and the judicial system collapsed, amid intensive efforts to completely politicize it.

On the economic level, the domestic debt reached 5.7 trillion pounds and the foreign debt, according to the Central Bank statistics, rose to 162.9 billion dollars at the end of last June. The trade deficit in the balance of payments reached 43.3 billion dollars due to the rise in the import bill compared to the decline in the export rate. The foreign reserve decreased during the last six months of the past year from 41 billion dollars to 33 billion dollars. The total interest on due debts in the last budget, which ends on the first of July, reached 690 billion pounds, an increase of 19.1% over the previous year. Shares of 32 companies were offered over a full year starting from the first quarter of 2023 until the first quarter of 2024.

On the human rights level, the number of forcibly disappeared people over the past nine years has risen to 16,955 individuals, including 3,155 people in 2022 alone. Sixty-two extrajudicial killings have been documented, and the number of political prisoners has reached 60,000, 865 of whom have died in coup prisons as a result of deliberate medical neglect. In addition to this, the general public continues to face violations of their rights in the media, police departments, and governmental services, and they continue to endure daily instances of insult, oppression, and humiliation.

The latest of these violations was the issuance of a decision to refer the case of the events at Al-Mansura to the Mufti in preparation for a death sentence, on Monday, May 22, 2023. The case was reserved for judgment until September 20. There are eight referred to this case, six of whom are under arrest or imprisoned, and two in absentia. Three of the six are already sentenced to death in the case of the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in.

In the Al-Mansura events case, the police used excessive force, killing 100 peaceful protesters and injuring 5,000. The individuals targeted for execution are Dr. Mohammed Badie, Dr. Mahmoud Ezzat, Dr. Mohammed El-Beltagy, Dr. Osama Yassin, Dr. Safwat Hegazy, and Engineer Amr Zaki.

All this occurs in the context of a strange paradox, where a death sentence is being prepared for a man who had raised the banner of peaceful protest and made it a clearly declared motto, thus affirming the path which…

(Note: the sentence was cut off, so the full meaning may not be accurately represented.)

This comes amidst an astonishing paradox, where preparations are being made for a death sentence against a man who has raised the banner of peace and made it a public and clearly announced motto, affirming the path chosen by the Muslim Brotherhood that they will not deviate from, along with the vast crowds of revolutionaries. At the same time, there is preparation for the death sentence against Dr. Mahmoud Ezzat, who was instrumental in protecting Egypt and preserving it from falling into the clutches of violence. During his leadership of the group, he stood firmly against any deviation from the peaceful path or a descent into a spiral of violence, which Egypt as a whole would fail if it entered.

On the political track, political life has witnessed an unprecedented decline and obstruction and a ban on any form of party competition. As for foreign policy, the Egyptian role has retreated regarding the most important issues related to Egypt’s national security, the latest of which was the inability of the coup authority to deal with events occurring on the southern borders in Sudan and the western borders in Libya, where Egyptians are being expelled from eastern Libya in a humiliating manner, amidst an escalating crisis of the Renaissance Dam where Ethiopia imposes the policy of fait accompli against complete silence from the Egyptian side.

Instead of the coup’s media machine retreating in shame from the miserable state that Egypt has reached in all fields under this coup and remaining silent, we find a well-organized and orderly media campaign that produces large numbers of statements, discussions, and articles every morning, distributed evenly across all media institutions to launch unanimously under the names of writers, journalists, and politicians participating in what is called the national dialogue. This is an attempt to revive June 30th and stimulate a victory without water, with a continuous effort to shift hostility from the eastern borders, where the real enemy of the nation resides, and transfer it inside the borders, where national forces have declared their rejection of this coup. This is in addition to a flood of lies accusing the Brotherhood baselessly and also trying to tarnish the image of the late President Mohammed Morsi.

Elections without guarantees

At a time when the coup’s media machine is being used to market imaginary talk about the achievements of June 30th, there is also marketing of the coup authority’s preparedness to hold what are called presidential elections ahead of their scheduled time in 2024, to be held at the end of this year 2023, without any real guarantees. It is striking that this talk comes not far from the announcement of the Turkish election results, which witnessed heated party competition and everyone, including the President of the Republic who entered the runoff elections with his competitor, anxiously awaited the announcement of the results without either of the candidates knowing who would prevail and win.

Perhaps this synchrony sends a clear message understood by the people that Egypt is no less than the countries where real elections are held, especially after the unique experience presented by the Egyptian people after the January revolution by electing the late President Dr. Mohammed Morsi as the first civilian president in competitive elections, where everyone was in suspense before the result was announced without anyone knowing who the winner was.

At a time when Egypt is supposed to forget this pioneering experience in the Arab region, the coup continues to hold elections without guarantees from state institutions, under full control of all levers of legislative, executive, and judicial authorities, in addition to full control of the media. Is it expected that such a system will conduct legitimate and fair elections? Not far from us is what recently happened in the Engineers’ Syndicate, which many considered a rehearsal (or practice) for what the system calls presidential elections.

Group news:

The administrative authority has launched the “Rooted” project, which a team of specialists from the group’s cadres is working on. The project aims to preserve the constants, origins, and pillars of the group from all forms of changing its identity or attempts to divert its course, and to ensure its firmness in the group’s institutions and members, and to close the gaps generated by the current crisis and the circumstances that the group has gone through since 2011. It also aims to consolidate the system (the foundations, constants, pillars, and institutionality) within the group’s institutions, leadership, icons, and rank. This project will diagnose threatening changes to the group within the system, suggest suitable solutions (prevention and treatment), and also enhance the system and maintain it among the group’s institutions, individuals, and leadership (monitoring-following up-evaluating). It is expected that work will continue on this project for two years.

Allah is the greatest and all praise is due to Him.

Prof. Dr. Mahmoud Hussein

Acting on behalf of the Honorable General Guide

Saturday, 28th of Dhu al-Qi’dah 1444 Hijri, corresponding to 17th June 2023.