By Marwa Al-A’asar
CAIRO: Deputy head of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) Rashad Bayoumy denied Sunday press reports about the group conducting an investigation into recent controversial statements made by senior member Sobhi Saleh.
“The group never questioned Saleh over his statements,” Bayoumy told Daily News Egypt.
Saleh, a lawyer and former Member of Parliament, said at a conference in Cairo that MB members should only marry women from within the group.
He said Brotherhood members should not settle for “less,” when they can have the “best,” referring to the group’s female members. Saleh cited a verse from the holy Quran out of context to support his views.
He explained that when a couple raised within the group get married, their children would adopt the group’s ideology by “inheritance,” which would fortify the Brotherhood and their message in society.
“These are [the kinds of] mistakes that will delay victory [for the Brotherhood],” Saleh said, referring to the marriage of group members to people who do not belong to the MB.
Both Bayoumy and the MB’s official spokesman Essam El-Erian told DNE that Saleh’s statements reflected his personal opinion, not that of the group.
“I personally have one son and his wife does not belong to the Muslim Brotherhood,” Bayoumy argued, adding that in the past MB members preferred to marry group members because they were acquainted with the difficulties they were likely to suffer under the former tyrannical regimes.
“I’m married to a group member who could understand and tolerate my imprisonment for about 17 years … because her brother was jailed too,” Bayoumy said.
During the videotaped conference, Saleh also said the next government that will include members of the MB will be an Islamic one that implements Islamic law. He also criticized Egyptians who adopt liberal and secular ideologies which call for separating politics from religion.
Such statements triggered angry reactions from other Egyptian intellectuals who argued with Saleh on several TV shows in which he defended himself by claiming that his statements were taken out of context and that he was misquoted by the media.
He also attempted to clarify his stance in a video recording widely circulated on Facebook.
“All this fuss and criticism started only after Saleh became a member of the constitutional amendment committee,” Bayoumy said, referring to the committee that was charged with amending several articles in the now defunct 1971 constitution last February, days after a popular revolt ousted ex-president Hosni Mubarak.
On Thursday lawyers Maha Abu Bakr and Samira Hagras filed a complaint before the Prosecutor General against Saleh, saying that he distorted the image of Islam, which allows Muslim men to marry Christian and Jewish women.
The two female lawyers also accused Saleh of defaming women, inciting political racism and threatening public order.
Saleh denied these accusations one day later in a telephone interview with DNE, arguing that they were “illegal.”
“We unofficially recommended that Saleh not give any media statements since his recent appearance [on TV] was not successful,” El-Erian said. – Additional reporting by Heba Fahmy.
