'Book burning' in Cairo?

CAIRO, Egypt -- One of Islam's most-prominent religious institutions is seizing extremist books and pamphlets sold on Cairo streets and has been granted the authority to confiscate materials deemed un-Islamic.

Egyptian rights activists worry authorities are creating a religious police force akin to Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Protection of Virtue and Prohibition of Vice that roams streets looking for violators of strict Islamic social norms.

Unlike the Saudi religious police, the roaming clerics in Cairo have a narrow mandate and do not have the power to make arrests, though they can report suspicious activity to police for further investigation.

A cleric with al-Azhar, the foremost theological institute in the mainstream Sunni sect of Islam, said Saturday that "secularists have nothing to fear from this decision."

"I believe that this decision leans more toward targeting the fundamentalist religious movement," Abd el-Azim al-Mataani, a member of al-Azhar University's faculty, told The Associated Press. He said the aim appeared to curb extremist literature that leads to "so- called terrorism."

The Muslim world has been under pressure since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States to rein in extremist rhetoric that could incite terrorist acts.

Rights groups fear having al-Azhar take on a policing role could infringe on freedom of expression.

Justice Minister Farouk Seif el-Nasr's decision last month to empower al-Azhar with search-and-seizure powers -- something normally reserved for law enforcement -- came in response to al-Azhar's long- standing desire for more authority to confront and confiscate material that violates Islam as well as extremist writings readily available on the streets but printed without official permission.

The independent daily newspaper Nahdet Masr reported Saturday that the first search conducted by clerics of al-Azhar's Islamic Research Academy was Thursday and involved searches of bookstores and publishing houses for religious material that had been circulated without permission.

Nahdet Masr said the clerics had confiscated a couple hundred illegitimate copies of the Quran and several Islamic tapes that had been released without al-Azhar's consent, as required by law in Egypt.

Police officials confirmed the search and confiscation but gave no further details. There was no answer Saturday at the academy.

Al-Azhar's influence among Sunni Muslims is considerable. Its decisions and religious edicts have far-reaching influence in the Muslim world and its clerics, called Azharis, are widely respected.

During the 1980s and 1990s, President Hosni Mubarak's government cracked down heavily on Egyptian militant groups, jailing thousands. A wave of fundamentalism in Egyptian society has led many to believe that al-Azhar, fearing marginalization by more radical interpretations of Islam, is seeking to appease extremists by cracking down on publications and behavior that is deemed un- Islamic.

"A disaster" is how Hisham Kassem, head of the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, described the decision. "We were shocked by this."

"We condemn this," Kassem said. "The lines are not clear. ... We are fully against widening the search and seizure powers of al- Azhar."

Powers of search and seizure normally have been restricted to police and other branches of Egypt's security apparatus. Crackdowns regularly target items deemed sexually explicit or religiously unacceptable.

Aides to several Justice Ministry officials said nobody was available to comment on the issue.

Controversy over books or other publications is not unusual in Egypt, where the secular government, in a precarious balancing act, tries to satisfy a traditional, religiously conservative majority by portraying itself as no less Islamic than its critics.

Bloody confrontations erupted three years ago between protesting students and police when the government published a novel by a Syrian writer that was deemed blasphemous.

In 2001, three state-published novels were banned after coming under fire from Islamists in parliament for alleged indecency, and last month al-Azhar urged the Egyptian government to ban a novel by an outspoken feminist writer, saying it violates Islam.

"This is the beginnings of a religious police in Egypt," prominent journalist and writer Adel Hammouda told the AP.

"This is very, very dangerous," he warned. "It is a subjective power that gives the religious establishment an executive authority when it should only be consultative."

Even having a permit to publish material will not be enough now, Hammouda said, adding that "they can now be judge, jury and executioner."

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