{"id":20884,"date":"2012-07-10T10:53:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T06:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=20884"},"modified":"2012-07-10T10:53:24","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T06:53:24","slug":"the-salacious-salafi-was-it-just-a-clerical-error","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/middle-east-society\/the-salacious-salafi-was-it-just-a-clerical-error\/","title":{"rendered":"The Salacious Salafi: Was It Just A ‘Clerical Error?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Al-Ahram<\/em><\/a> has published an account of a salacious encounter of an Egyptian Salafi who is a former MP.<\/p>\n

“Egyptian authorities have decided to put on trial a Salafist ex-MP who was caught allegedly performing an \u201cindecent\u201d sexual act with a woman in public, a judicial source said on Thursday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ali Wanis\u2019s trial is set for Sunday and will take place on time although he has gone missing since police found him last month engaged in a sexual act with a 22-year-old woman in a car parked on a highway.<\/em><\/p>\n

The woman, a university student, is behind bars and the public prosecutor\u2019s office has ordered the arrest of Wanis, a cleric and former MP for the ultra-conservative Al-Nour party.<\/em><\/p>\n

After the incident in early June, Wanis denied any wrongdoing and said in a video posted on his website that he had parked along the side of the road because his passenger \u201cbecame sick.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

But the pair have been accused of performing an \u201cindecent\u201d sexual act in public.<\/em><\/p>\n

Al-Nour party, won the second largest number of seats in parliamentary elections last winter after the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

It was hit with a scandal in March when another lawmaker was forced to resign from parliament and from his party after claiming he was injured in a carjacking \u2014 to explain bandages on his face \u2014 when in fact he had had a nose job.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Wow \u2014 a blow job and a nose job and the appeal of Salafism takes a nose dive. Sheikh Wanis was a prominent member of the ultra-conservative Al-Nour party, which advocates returning to the values at the time of the Prophet. I suppose the fact that there were no automobiles around in the Prophet\u2019s time suggests that the sheikh did not violate any specific hadith condemning sex in a car with a 22-year old, although the many traditions and Quranic injunction against adultery would seem rather out of place, even in 21st century Egypt.<\/p>\n

Such hypocrisy is not confined to conservative Muslims, of course, as anyone who remembers Jim Bakker (whose glitzy websit<\/a>e ignores the fact he once seduced a Long Island girl), Jimmy Swaggert (whose official online biography<\/a> does not mention his encounter with a prostitute), and Ted Haggard (whose website<\/a> says he had a \u201cpersonal moral failing\u201d). So there is hope for Ali Wanis, if these Christian precedents are an indication of the gullibility of people to fall for religious rhetoric.<\/p>\n

He may even survive his shame as an adulterer to launch his own television show or even a virtual megamosque. As of today I have not seen any indication that the Al-Nour party<\/a> is calling for the medieval punishment of stoning. So perhaps Sheikh Wanis can breathe a sigh of relief that this outmoded form of punishment is no longer practiced in Egypt. After all, it was just a clerical error.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

DANIEL M. VARISCO: Ali Wanis needn’t worry. If the example of U.S. Christian fundamentalists were to be replicated he may have a big career ahead. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":20885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124,56,235,482,73,5],"tags":[2693,18300,91,6225,389,13435,10408,1364],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20884"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}