What is the Secret of Arab Atheists’ New Show Up?

Calling themselves the “non-religious Arabic-speaking people," they called for a global day of demonstrations on February 22, 2022, to inform people of their ideas and activism.

The "non-religious," or Arab atheists, announced that this digital campaign on social media platforms aimed to draw attention to their presence, under the slogan "We are here." They started calling for this World Day through the Clubhouse app on January 18, 2022, and then set it on February 22 of the same year.

The call coincided with the death of the Egyptian atheist, Sayyid al-Qemany, and the defense of secular and foreign media platforms for him.

Simultaneously, activists and researchers exposed his role in attacking the Islamic text, bringing back the debate about Arab atheists, their supporters, and their numbers.

 

Atheistic Activities

It also coincided with the return of the media activity of two of the most prominent attackers of Islamic texts, namely Islam al-Behairy, whom the Saudi MBC channel gave a platform during February 2022 to attack the Sheikh of al-Azhar in Egypt, Ahmed al-Tayeb.

Also, the Egyptian journalist Ibrahim Issa, increased his attack on Islamic symbols and claimed that "religious institutions confine us to a prison they call jurisprudence," through his programs on the American TV Al-Hurra and the Egyptian Cairo and Al-Nas channels.

At the same time, both al-Behairy and Issa adopted the idea of ​​rejecting al-Azhar's reference in civil affairs in Egypt during the first interview with MBC, and the second discussed the matter in his program Hadith Al-Qahera and criticized al-Azhar's opinion.

Al-Estiklal contacted the so-called "22 Feb working group," which manages this digital campaign, to find out their goals and the reasons for the escalation of their activity.

They claimed to be a "disorganized group of individuals" who chose this day in 2022 to call for the electronic demonstration because "this date has a special symbolism as it does not express monotheism (Islamic) nor the doctrine of the (Christian) Trinity."

They indicated that no one is recognizing them and that they are seeking donations through a website they launched to raise $20,000 to be used to launch the digital demonstration website and publicity for their International Day, from which they have collected $5,745.

They hinted that their goal is to count Arab atheists (non-religious) in the Middle East, by knowing the number of those who will participate in the day of the electronic demonstration by entering their site, where they will consider everyone who registers on the site "atheist."

They said they were targeting "Arabic speakers, meaning the people of the Middle East and North Africa, to shed light on our cause."

They chose the timing of "New Zealand" to start their World Atheism Day without clear reasons, stressing: "We do not have any headquarters on the ground."

They pointed out that they communicated with Arab atheists (they call them non-religious influencers who speak Arabic) who announce themselves through communication sites and coordinate with them, "and we asked everyone who wanted to participate to help us."

They denied coordinating with foreign parties, such as the American Al-Hurra channel, which adopts the line of atheists and hosts two programs for Egyptians (Islam El-Behairy and Ibrahim Issa) to challenge Islamic principles.

But they confirmed by saying: "We have received requests for interviews from Al-Hurra and foreign satellite channels, and we are working on them," under the pretext of "communicating our case to the largest possible number of Arab and international stations."

To demonstrate the participation of famous people in their atheism, they published a video message recorded by the secular writer Fatima Naoot directed to their campaign stressing, "I support everyone with different belief system, even those who do not believe in any creed, respect their rights and love them."

They also published other video messages for a group of Arab atheists, including Wafaa Sultan and Ahmed Harqan, some of them wearing masks and devil horns, to say, "We (the atheists are here)."

They raised their slogans in some foreign cities, such as Germany, and carried out real, not digital, street demonstrations, but the irony was that they demonstrated against the Hijab in the streets of Cologne, Germany, not against the "religions" that they disavow.

 

International Day

The slogans they raised at the demonstration were not to request support for their freedom of not believing, but to attack the hijab, and wrote on them: “The hijab equals misogyny and sexism,” as they put it.

Their attack on Hijab and on Islam raised many questions because they define themselves on their site as "a group of non-religious Arabic-speaking, and we dream of a better future for all of the non-religious and religious."

They affirmed that their goal for the "virtual digital campaign" is to "to know the numbers of atheists inside the Arab countries."

The website will count the number of people entering the site during this day, "and thus we will have the first assessment as close to reality as possible about the number of non-religious people inside the Arab countries," according to their claim.

The Syrian Imad, a non-religious person in Germany, spoke about the story of his atheism and abandonment of religion through videos and social media pages, due to his rejection of Islamic teachings, according to Al-Hurra TV, February 13, 2022.

Rania, from Sudan, said that she rejects Islamic rituals such as Hajj, and is not convinced by reading the Qur'an, claiming that there are "many inaccuracies in it," she said.

A young Egyptian man who calls himself "Mr. No One" stated that he hates worship such as prayer and fasting, and he does in Europe what he wants," and that he gets "rid of the idea that there is afterlife or punishment."

The Egyptian journalist and media personality Hafez al-Mirzai had previously confirmed that Al-Hurra had recruited Islam Behairy and Ibrahim Issa with huge sums of money to "criticize the Islamic text."

He revealed in a Facebook post on June 20, 2020, that the American Agency for International Media, which oversees Al-Hurra TV, had contracted with Behairy and Issa to run two programs to attack Islamic texts.

He explained that Alberto Fernandez, the former presidential spokesman and former CEO of the US Agency for International Media, who was impeached by Congress in 2020, was the one who hosted Issa and al-Behairy.

In March 2018, Fernandez met Ibrahim Issa to celebrate the start of his program, which raises controversial issues such as the creation of the Qur’an, the Hijab, and women in Islam and attacked the Companions, Caliphs, Imam Shafi’i, Sheikh Muhammad al-Shaarawy, and al-Azhar.

Fernandez also allowed al-Behairy to launch the "Free Islam" program in November 2018, which was said to "seek to correct misconceptions about Islam" but, in turn, created confusion over many Islamic issues.

Al-Azhar had previously accused al-Behairy of spreading wrong information about Islam and filed a lawsuit to stop his program on the Cairo and Al-Nas channel after he mocked Muslim scholars and violently criticized Imam al-Bukhari and his book Sahih al-Bukhari.

At the end of May 2015, an Egyptian court convicted him of blasphemy and sentenced him to 5 years in prison.

In December of the same year, the court reduced the prison sentence for one year, then the head of the Egyptian regime, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, issued a presidential pardon in November 2016.

 

Atheists and Revolutions

Some atheists sought to link their call for atheism with the rise of the Arab Spring and the Islamic trend.

The activity of Egyptian and Arab atheists revived with the counter-revolutions in 2013, and they launched a television channel that represented them, called "The Free Mind," to spread secular thought, and a YouTube channel led by the atheist Ahmed Harqan, to promote atheism.

Secularists also sought to form the first party known as the "Egyptian Secular Party" in 2013, which does not recognize religion and calls for its separation from politics and the state.

Egyptian media and officials blamed the Islamists and the Arab Spring for the spread of atheism, pretending that it is related with the spread of extremist religious discourse in the Arab world following the Arab revolutions.

The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Shawki Allam, claimed in an interview with the Al-Arabiya channel on October 17, 2017, that an increase in the percentage of atheism was observed in Egypt after the year in which the Muslim Brotherhood took control of the country, due to their use of the slogan "Islam is the solution."

The Mufti repeated the same allegations in an interview with the private newspaper Veto on May 24, 2018, claiming that the percentage of atheism increased after the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood.

On the other hand, Western analysts believe that dictators in Arab regimes consider atheism an existential threat because they aim to strengthen their religious authority and to appear as guardians of the faith, in order to compensate for their lack of democratic legitimacy.

Brian Whitaker wrote in Qantara on September 13, 2017, that most Arab regimes use religion to compensate for their lack of electoral legitimacy, and to do so, build their own version of Islam that suits their political needs.

He added, "The emergence of the 'atheist threat' fits with the government's political narrative, as it was presented as the unfortunate outcome of 12 months of misrule by the Muslim Brotherhood."

The first monitoring of atheism linked to the Arab Spring was conducted by the Burson-Marsteller Foundation in New York, through a survey by the University of Eastern Michigan in the United States, from the January 25, 2011 revolution until the July 3, 2013 coup.

This monitoring stated that the number of atheists in Egypt reached 3 percent of the population, or more than two million atheists, at that time.

However, a report issued by the Observatory for Monitoring Takfiri Fatwas of the Egyptian Dar al-Ifta in December 2014 estimated them to be 866 atheists in Egypt, 325 in Morocco, and 320 in Tunisia.

The report, which was based on the index of the Red Sea Center of the US-based Global Institute, announced that there are 242 atheists in Iraq, 178 in Saudi Arabia, 170 in Jordan, 34 atheists in Libya, 70 in Sudan, 56 in Syria, and 32 in Yemen.

Then an exploratory study prepared by the independent research network Arab Barometer for the British BBC revealed that the number of non-religious or atheist Arabs has increased significantly, and their concentration in Egypt, Libya, and the Maghreb countries.

It clarified on June 23, 2019, that the percentage of Arabs who describe themselves as non-religious or atheist increased from 8 percent in 2013 to 13 percent in 2018 and 2019.

Activists say that "the rooms managed by La Digne on the Clubhouse application currently have an average of 600-800 people per room, and their ages vary, and both genders, but the majority are for young people from 18 to 30 years old."

Al-Sisi acknowledged the presence of Egyptian atheists during the celebration of Laylat al-Qadr in Ramadan 2015 and said, "I am not worried about atheism," and described the "atheist" as "not out of Islam," saying: "There are many young people who are atheists, but it does not meant that they left Islam."