Entangled in that grass-roots pursuit of justice is a rising religiosity that has taken Egypt by storm since Mubarak’s fall. Islamists dominate the assembly tasked with drafting Egypt’s new constitution.
But it is outside the halls of government — in the streets, mosques, schools and courts — where Egypt’s Islamist revival is redefining the rights and responsibilities of ordinary citizens…
Egypt’s penal code is vague on the issue of blasphemy, criminalizing only the use of extreme religious ideas “to incite strife.” But court cases that invoke the law increasingly derive less from obvious breaches than from popular “encouragement” by neighbors, relatives and crowds who feel emboldened by Egypt’s Islamic revival and the people power of revolution, Gharbeia said.
“We have also seen large groups of people gathering outside courthouses exerting huge pressure on the lawyers, defendants, and even on the judges themselves,” he said. In one instance, his organization’s lawyers were chased from a trial because the local community already had its own verdict in mind.
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