“Five members of our group had visited the so called the atheists’ street in downtown Cairo, I think it should be named the street of astray,” said Salafist leader Yasser Borhami Saturday.
“Nowadays there are cafes for atheist, streets for atheists, political parties for atheists, TV channels for atheist… That’s strange,” Borhami said in a recorded statement uploaded on “Me the Salafi” webpage.
In December, a café in Cairo’s district of Abdeen was destroyed after locals noticed a group of people visiting the café on regular bases for allegedly spreading “wrong thoughts regarding religions.”
In December, Egypt’s Dar al-Ifta stated that Egypt has the “highest rate of atheism” in the Middle East.
Egyptians, who are open about their atheist ideas, come from both Muslim and Christian backgrounds, but a few of them have been jailed for declaring their beliefs.
In March, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told the Holy Quran radio station he was not worried about a “trend” of atheism in Egypt, adding that “the shock was too much; our shock to see people who say there is not God but Allah and Mohamed is His Messenger, or who claims they raise this slogan, and [at the same time] doing this; killing, destroying and sabotaging.”
Sisi emphasized that intellectuals should talk about the mercy, generosity and the core of Islam because “some youth have been confused” after wide-spread violence in the name of Islam.
He also condemned that Muslims did not counter offenses to religion and “took sides without impartiality to misperceptions and distorted ideas” although they are “detrimental to our religion and prophet and have made youth to think there is no God”.
