Martyrs of Atheism.. Why do Arab atheists ask for divine mercy for their dead?

On February 6, 2022, the Egyptian writer Sayed al-Qimni, who had long stirred controversy since the beginning of his writings dating back to the eighties of the last century until his death, passed away, issuing dozens of books with titles that talk about religious topics of particular sensitivity to a wide sector of Muslims such as “Our awakening does not May God bless her” and “Muslims’ relapse into paganism”, and the like.

Immediately after his death, reactions were launched in praise and slander at other times, and people were divided in their position on Qimni into two parts. The first group sees that Qimni is nothing but a renegade from religion, a forger of his doctoral thesis, a weak statement, and the thinker Abdel Wahab Al-Masiri described him one day as idiocy when he interviewed him In a televised interview on the Al Jazeera network.

The other group sees Qimni as a pioneer of enlightenment and bearer of the torch of renewal of religious discourse, a great thinker and reformer who is placed in the ranks of Nietzsche, Ataturk and others, until one of the activists called him "Voltaire of the Arabs."

Al-Qimni was known for his offensive statements against the Islamic religion, and his call to revise the Qur’an itself, and he was a famous atheist who tried to hide his atheism repeatedly but did not succeed, as Qimni declared more than once in private and public meetings that he is an atheist who denies the existence of God and denies the facts of religions, and in 2015 he said in One of his interviews: "With great regret, I personally to this day still say that I am a Muslim because I fear death for my life"[1].

Despite this, calls have been launched calling for divine mercy to the spirit of Qimni, and it is noticeable that what happened with Qimni is almost repeated in every incident in which a famous Arab atheism dies, where the team of sympathizers with the atheists show a paradox that calls for contemplation, as this team rushes to pray for mercy for the souls of Atheism, as happened with Qimni and happened before with others, down to Stephen Hawking and others who died denying the existence of God from the ground up!

So why does the group sympathetic to atheism race to sympathize with the atheism, and even anger from those who atone for them?

And what is the motive behind their insistence on the necessity of asking for supplications for them and the infliction of divine mercy on souls who declared in their lifetime that they do not believe in the spirit or in the Lord?

Is it intrigue and hostility to Islamists?

Or is it ignorance of the law?

Or is it intellectual idiocy similar to Elmessiri's description of their sheikh?

Khaled Montaser's post that Sayed Al-Qimni looks out from the sky 

Divine Mercy Free

At the outset, let us record this shift that affected legitimate discourses during the last decade, specifically towards consolidating the idea of ​​“mercy on non-Muslims” from a humanitarian and national perspective, and this is in contrast to the 1990s and before, when the official Egyptian and Arab religious discourse mostly tended towards extreme conservatism In these issues, and the state at that period was not willing to blatantly interfere in religious spaces, and did not push a particular religious discourse at the expense of the other, while the general mood was understanding the idea of ​​borders between religions, and the lines between believer and non-believer in each religion, not to mention That the voice of atheists was very faint in that era.

This is evident in the language used by the most important pillars of semi-official religious discourse in the eighties and nineties of the last century, which is Sheikh Muhammad Metwally Al-Shaarawi, the owner of the word heard among the intellectuals and the common people alike. Fire, Christians, loyalty, disavowal, and other clear legal terms.

Like him were the scholars of the Shariah Society, and dozens of sheikhs and preachers such as Sheikh Muhammad Al-Ghazali in his famous testimony about the apostasy of Faraj Fouda in the trial, and Sheikh Muhammad Al-Mesir, who was a presenter in press columns in government newspapers and received frequent television interviews on governmental and non-governmental satellite channels. Compassion for the dead non-Muslim, and he declares that it is not permissible[2], which suggests that the Islamic culture prevailing at that time was in line with the traditional legal ruling that it is not permissible to have mercy on non-Muslims.

However, with the transformations after the Arab Spring, the official authoritarian mood shifted from caution and away from adopting a specific religious position to pushing for the adoption of a “religious revolution” against the traditional version of Islam, with the aim of undermining the political rise of Islamic currents in the first place.

This idea was expressed in the media by the term "renewing religious discourse", which the mainstream Muslim sheikhs and scholars looked at with suspicion and fear, fearing that it would erode firm foundations in Islam in its path.

What is remarkable, according to some observers of this matter, is that at a time when fierce battles are being waged over the faith of atheists and non-Muslims, many of the symbols of “religious renewal” themselves have called for the members of Islamic groups to be declared atonement under the pretext of violence, and even anger those who take pity on the leaders of these groups. Those who were not involved in violence, but rather those who had mercy on the late Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi were subjected to an unprecedented media attack, as happened with the football player Mohamed Aboutrika.

The list of symbols for the renewal of religious discourse includes many names, perhaps the most famous of which is the Azhari Sheikh Khaled al-Jundi, who is close to the regime and is an exporter in the official channels of the state. By following up, we will find that he does not show any embarrassment in supporting non-Muslims for mercy, and equates the request for mercy to the living and the dead, the Muslim and the non-Muslim at all. Both, and the Azhari Ramadan Abdel Moez also agreed with him, who declared that this is permissible, and Abdel Moez was so close to the ruling regime that he chose only to represent the religious side in the series “The Choice”[3].

At a time when the former Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, is embarrassed to have mercy on atheists as non-Muslims[4], he finds no objection to mercy on non-Muslims. Then he accused those who refuse to be merciful to non-Muslims of being "fools".

Al-Habib Ali Al-Jafri, who is preferred by the Egyptian regime in addressing the masses of officers and soldiers, nor Osama Al-Azhari, the religious advisor to the president, does not stray far from Ali Gomaa, both of them agree about the permissibility of supplication for non-Muslims, and they say that mercy is permissible if it is based on custom and the words of ordinary people, without regard The legal ruling of the issue [5].

The same is the view of the advisor to the Grand Mufti of the Republic, Magdi Ashour, who refuses to show mercy and says that mercy is possible for anyone, because we do not know what faith contained in his heart when he died, and this is the position of the Egyptian Dar Al Iftaa, which is close to the trends of the official religious mood, The fatwa authorizes the permissibility of mercy on non-Muslims[6].

Over time, these views caused a change in the public mood, which had long been receptive to the idea of ​​borders between religions, and the separation between civil and judicial rights and religious beliefs, so belief in the infidelity of an outspoken atheist or non-Muslim was rejected.

These new views quickly found their way to segments of the Arab youth, especially since we live, according to Asef Bayat, professor of sociology and Middle Eastern studies, in the “post-political Islam” stage, when all Islamic movements were stunted and the rest of them were reduced to narrow spaces that do not affect the public sphere. Islam has been redefined in the public sphere so that it focuses on human rights rather than Islamic duties[7].

The authorities in the Arab region have contributed to supporting those trends that are based on refining Islam and presenting a more tolerant version of it, according to their vision, a vision devoid of militant and dogmatic content, according to its opponents.

Here, let us recall again that we are not interested in discussing these views in terms of legal consideration, as this has its field and specialization, but what concerns us is monitoring the political transformations in which these ideas swim, as well as the authoritarian transformations that led to them.

Beautiful middle atheism!

If the political conditions and the reality of power on the ground have presented a new religious discourse during the past few years, what is really interesting is that those with a negative attitude towards religion, deism and the Last Day, and by them we mean the non-religious groups that were at the forefront of the defenders of this discourse, are in keeping with the logic they reject. They are rushing into a fierce war in defense of a bright afterlife for those who died in their path.

Fatima Naoot's post, have mercy on Qimni

Indeed, Muslim mourning pamphlets and non-religious ceremonies for atheist dead raise many questions about the profound contradictions in Egyptian Enlightenment discourse.

Some go to the interpretation of this that we are in front of a kind of anxious and fragile atheism, atheism whose owners are greatly upset if it is reported that they are out of religion.

It seems that in contrast to the critical boldness that atheistic discourse shows in front of religious facts, it appears fragile and weak in front of major existential realities such as the soul, death and the encounter with God.

In addition to the fragility that inhabits the enlightenment discourse, there is the logic of conflict, where non-religious people sometimes see death as an opportunity to shock the majority in their religious ideas, as well as an ideal space to show their opponents the enemies of the idea of ​​tolerance and acceptance of the other, especially in an atmosphere of dominant polarization, and the forced mixing between the two political spaces And religiously, many Islamic activists deal with the issue of mercy and the eschatological destiny as a counter weapon that they employ for moral assassination and religious and political defamation of their opponents.

Many Islamists, along with some religious masses, consider the death of some non-religious people or critics of religious thought an ideal opportunity for reckoning. The hadith “You are God’s witnesses on earth”, and Islamic mobilization accelerates at the moment of announcing the death of one of their opponents, filling them with hope that their testimony on social media platforms will contribute to establishing a bleak afterlife for their opponents.

The crisis is deepening more and more, then, as a result of the current political conflict between the Islamists and their opponents, especially in light of the alliance of the most extreme secular forces with authoritarian regimes, which made the “determining the eschatological destiny” of the two parties to the conflict an integral part of the political conflict.

In light of the weakness of the ideological content of the Egyptian enlightenment discourse, the political campaign imposes itself in the end.

The Enlightenment wants to prove their entitlement to the Islamists not only in this world, but also in the afterlife, paradoxically, while the Islamists see death at the moment of just reckoning.

As a result, this intense conflict is renewed with the recurrence of the incidents of death, in an absurd scene that repeats itself endlessly.

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