The scholars said that religious groups “have to return to their barracks”!

“It was a vital matter that the Azhar take its representative out of the constitution assembly simply because it is not proper for the stature of the Azhar to participate in a panel marked by domination not partnership and splits instead of accordance,” said Academy member Dr. ‘Abd al-Mu’tī Bayyūmī.

Dr. Ahmad Mahmūd Kurayīmah, a professor of comparative jurisprudence at the Azhar University, said religious groups’ dominance of the panel drafting a constitution is “unprecedented nonsense”.

He denounced the presence of artists, soccer players and illiterate people in the panel while people of knowledge, fiqh and specialists are absent.

“Those religious groups should return to their barracks. After all, they seized parliament by flagrantly-rigged elections in a way even violating the Islamic sharī’ah. Constituencies were widened to fit them and bring down their contenders as if everything was tailor-made for them,” Kurayīmah said. [Ahmad ‘Uways, al-Shurūq al-Jadīd, March 31, p. 5] Read original text in Arabic