Abdul Rahman al-Barr; the Hadith Scholar Who Rejected Sisi's Coup and Was 'Punished' with Death Penalty

In a steady stance, Dr. Abdel Rahman al-Bar, among a number of Leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood, received the ruling of the Court of Cassation (Egypt's highest appeals judicial authority) to uphold their execution in the so-called "Break-up of the Rabaa al-Adawiya Sit-in" in 2013.

The disengaging committed by the Egyptian army and police forces, against supporters of legitimacy and the rule of the late President Mohamed Morsi.

Dr. Al-Bar is considered one of al-Azhar's leading scholars, the largest religious authority, as well as having a long history of call to Islam that has spanned years, surpassing Egypt to various Arab and Muslim countries.

Courageous Scholar

Al-Azhari's scholar was characterized by centrist fatwas, and his categorical refusal to carry arms and bloodshed, as he announced more than once.

But at the same time, he enjoyed a courage to speak of truth, against successive authoritarian regimes in Egypt, from the regime of Hosni Mubarak, to the era of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. 

Abdel Rahman Abdel Hamid Ahmed al-Bar was born on June 14, 1963 in the Daqahliya governorate (one of the governorates of the Egyptian Delta).

Since his childhood, he has joined the Al-Azhar Religious Institute in his home town and was enrolled in his school years until he joined the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religion and Advocacy in Mansoura, where he received a bachelor's degree with excellent honors, ranking first in his graduating class in May 1984. 

The excellence shown by al-Bar in the Islamic sciences pushed him to complete the march and achieve the highest degrees, in 1989 he received a Master's degree in modernity and sciences, with an "excellent" rating from the Faculty of Fundamentals of Religious Origins in Cairo. He also received his Doctorate in Hadith in 1993 from the same college in Cairo.

Al-Bar began his career in 1985, when he was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Hadith and Science at the Faculty of Religious Origins and Advocacy in Mansoura, and then reached the degree of assistant teacher in the same department and college in 1989.

In 1998 he became an assistant professor at the same college, during which time he was seconded to work in Saudi Arabia, as a professor at the Faculty of Sharia and Religious Origins in Abha, at Imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic University.

Scientific and Advocacy Activity 

Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Bar wrote dozens of scientific and advocacy works, which benefited students of science, particularly the sons of Al-Azhar.

In addition, he has produced hundreds of clips and numerous television programmes, which have transmitted his scientific lessons and lectures, through religious channels, written numerous articles, and has fatwas published in various magazines and websites.

As a university professor, he also supervised a number of master's and doctoral letters and discussed many of them at imam Mohammed bin Saud Islamic Universities in Saudi Arabia and Al-Azhar in Egypt.

His advocacy movement was not limited to Egypt, delivering lectures, speeches and scientific courses at Islamic centers in New York, Washington, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in the United States, and in Milan and Brescia, Italy. 

From his beginnings, al-Bar became a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and reached the level of a member of the group's guidance office, which he paid a great deal of cost, as he was arrested several times during the reign of former President Hosni Mubarak. 

Al-Bar said about these arrests that both times, when the release date came, he prayed before them at night in Surah Yusuf, and he said, "I was saying to myself that God might release us as Joseph was released after being imprisoned unjustly and in a state of infatuated."

 

Rebellious Scholar 

With the outbreak of the January 25, 2011 revolution, Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Bar was at the forefront of al-Azhar scholars who supported and defended the revolution, and he had a famous fatwa at the time, in the Egyptian event program on Saudi Arabia.

"The nation did not go out with arms in the January 25, 2011 revolution, which is totally unacceptable, but criticizing the ruler by the opposition is not a departure from the ruler," he said. 

He became one of the leading political and religious figures who contributed to Egyptian public life after the revolution and was a member of the Constituent Assembly to draft the Egyptian constitution, to shape the transition and shape the country's future, and the democratic aspirations of the people.

With the military coup against the elected regime of the late President Mohamed Morsi, Dr. Al-bar was among the front lines of anti-coup protests, clearly declaring his rejection of military rule, and the mandate of then army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. 

After the horrific massacres on August 14, 2013, by security services against civilians and protesters in Rabaa al-Adawiya and Nahda fields, the authority began to search for opposition leaders and Muslim Brotherhood figures, including Abdul Rahman al-Bar. 

Al-Bar was pursued, dismissed from his academic career as dean of the Faculty of Religious Origins and Advocacy in Mansoura, and in June 2015, he was arrested and forcibly concealed for several days before appearing at the prosecutor's office.

On May 31, 2016, Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Bar spoke in court in a video interview, which was widely reported in the media and social media, telling the court that "the national security officer told me: We have sentenced you to death."

Al-Bar addressed the facts of the torture to which he had been subjected to, and reportedly, following his arrest, had been subjected to forced lying on the ground for more than 500 hours. "The defendants are subjected to very severe torture, and they are under the slow death of Aqrab prison."

Indeed, what the national security officer promised to "execute" occurred on June 14, 2021, when the Supreme Court of Cassation upheld his sentence and muslim brotherhood figures, confronting the Azhari world with death by hanging in Sisi's prisons.

Follies and Messages

On June 17, 2021, 31 Islamic organizations and associations described the death sentences against the mainland and opponents in Egypt as a "bad omen." 

The organizations, led by the World Federation of Muslim Scholars and the Association of Sunni Scholars, said in the statement that they had received "with great anger and denial the politicized sentences handed down by the Egyptian judiciary, the execution of 12 scholars and leaders of Islamic action, and the life sentence of dozens of others."

It considered these provisions to be a "bad omen", and that their implementation "would be the great folly and the great crime that will open the doors wide for the untold," it said.

Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Bar was able to pass a written letter from inside the detention centre, circulated on January 17, 2021, published by the Muslim Brotherhood's official website, and reported on news sites, as well as social media pages, entitled "Ego leads to failure." 

"Some people are tempted by the bloody coup d'état that makes themselves a prelude and enable the leaders of blood and destruction on the body of the nation and the remains of its righteous martyrs, not considering the verses that God sends to them, and are indifferent to the clear messages of popular rejection that are not mistaken by the eye of the visionary, and are not denied by those who had a heart or heard while he was a martyr," al-Bar said.

He said that they were "seduced by the tools of power on their hands, which the people trusted them to protect, betrayed the secretariat and sought to use it for their own interests and to realize their own dreams and ambitions in agreement with the enemies of their nation".

He added: "They imagine that they are thus able to impose whatever they want on a free nation that has woken up from its slumber, and promised its Lord to live in dignity and die in pride, and the Sunnah of God required that God not let her down in her quest to extract the truth from the hands of all traitors."