Egyptian secular thinker Sayyed Al-Qimni has for long been labeled a sworn opponent of Islam but a recent state prize awarded to him unleashed a furor from Islamists who have threatened him with death.
What annoys them is that someone was able to say publicly I am secular , Qimni told AFP in an interview.
The outspoken 62-year-old has been housebound after the campaign against him mushroomed since June when the culture ministry granted him the prestigious State Award of Merit in Social Sciences.
For many in Egypt, where Islam is the state religion, secularism is synonymous with atheism, heresy or loose morals.
The government has been criticized for supporting Qimni but the prize provoked the wrath of conservative Muslims, re-igniting the anger surrounding his writings in which he studies, among other things, the advent of Islam from a sociological point of view.
The award was a big setback for the (Islamist) trend, said Qimni, who says thousands of imams have declared him an apostate.
But it was not a response from the state to the fundamentalist trend. The fact that I received the award was a surprise, it showed that there is a strong secular current, even within the culture ministry, he said.
Qimni believes nothing in the Quran forces a woman to don the hijab. He calls for the abolition of article two of Egypt s constitution which takes sharia (Islamic law) as the main source of legislation.
I lifted the veil on the sham of the hijab. The hijab has no link to Islam, it is to control the street, Qimni said, condemning the manipulation of public opinion by sheikhs.
A strong advocate of the separation of religion and state, he is also fighting for religion to be removed from citizens mandatory identity cards.
Yusuf Al-Badri, an Egyptian sheikh well known for chasing liberal intellectuals through the courts, has made it a mission to have Qimni s award retracted.
Badri also joined 20 lawyers in accusing Qimni of having forged his doctoral diploma.
The LE 200,000 (around $36,000) in prize money that came with the award further fuelled the anger of Qimni s critics.
When the state takes money from my pocket and gives it to Sayyed al-Qimni, I have the right to ask why have you given him this money? , asks Gamal Sultan of the online daily Al-Masriyun.
Qimni says he receives regular death threats in his inbox and lives in fear of attacks even by ordinary citizens.
To the dog Sayyed Al-Qimni. I swear to God that if I were to cross you in the street, I will slit your throat, read an email signed by a Mohammed Abdel Fattah.
He believes he is a target because he has brought the secular point of view to the average citizen.
Why Sayyed? Because Sayyed speaks to the people. Sayyed has transported the debate from the elite to the street, said Qimni from his home, where two life-sized busts of him decorate the living room and the study.
Outside his house, police stand guard. He rarely steps out, leaving mainly to appear in the odd television show, but only under police protection.
But he refuses to bow to pressure and hand back the award.
I will not renounce my prize. If I give it back, I would be betraying the new (secular) movement and it would lose credit, he said.
Nor does he plan to leave the country… yet.
I have no intention of leaving this country. But if our house were to burn down and no one were to protect us, all embassies should open their doors to me. But that is the last resort, he said.
He would like to believe there is a resurgence of the secular movement saying: I am not alone. There is now an army of secular people in Egypt.
We all got together to confront the electronic jihad that Dr Qimni has been subjected to, said one of his supporters who asked to remain anonymous.
You would think that today in Egypt, we are living in the Middle Ages of European history when men of religion controlled the people, she said.
Several human rights organizations have called on the government to protect (Qimni) from the extremists in order to avoid a fate like that of Farag Foda, an Egyptian intellectual and critic of fundamentalist Islam who was assassinated in 1992 after a similar campaign.
Qimni s daughter Isis, an active supporter, is scared for her father.
I really fear for his life, said Isis, who is harassed at the hospital where she works, her colleagues branding her father an infidel.
What happened to Farag Foda … can happen again.
