“This compromise would settle the differences between the camp that seeks changing the Egyptian nation’s Islamic identity by just stopping at sheer general principles and the camp that seeks including the rulings of the Sharī’ah into the constitution,” said ‘Isām Dirbālah said in statements.

“The rights of non-Muslims, however, will be preserved by adding the line granting them recourse to their own religious laws,” he said, adding “this way we’re going to block the way of the rebels from the church and secularist movements who wish to change Egypt’s Islamic identity by using the rights of non-Muslims as their pretext”.

On the group’s vision regarding the constitution-drafting panel, Dirbālah replied, “since the court ruling dissolving the constituent assembly was handed down, we’ve always been announcing that we’re highly respecting judicial decisions to select public figures from outside parliament to draw up a constitution”.

“There are some general criteria the Jamā’ah’s Building & Development Party is working on in accordance with certain controls including the notion that all political powers and national institutions be represented on the panel so that we may eventually get a constitution representative of all segments of the society,” he added. [Muhammad Sha’bān, Rose al-Yūsuf, April 17, p. 3] Read original text in Arabic