Salafi representative says protest on table to defend Sharia

The Nour Party's representative in the body drafting Egypt’s new constitution said that the party was keeping all options open to defend articles related to Egypt's identity, including calling for the draft's popular rejection.

If the Nour Party went into the streets it would be a major change for the organization’s recent tactics in advancing Islamic Sharia as a basis for the Egyptian legal system. The Nour Party has tended to take a behind the scenes role, mediating between parties and modifying other proposals rather than using its strong base to push for radical change.

Salah Abdel Maaboud told Aswat Masriya that the party would continue is to be present in the committee of 50.

“The idea of cancelling articles on identity is completely rejected,” Abdel Maaboud said. He said provisions in the last constitution, including Articles 2, 3, 4, 9, and 81 were already agreed upon. Article 219 is especially important to the Nour Party, and was its most prominent influence on the last constitution.

Its previous representative, Bassam al-Zarqa, complained of exclusion from the committee and resigned from the council for “health reasons.” He was previously an adviser to former President Mohamed Morsi.

Another prominent member of Morsi's administration, Khaled Alam Eddin, had frozen his membership in the Nour Party when the party was deciding if it was going to participate in writing the constitution.

Both Alam Eddin and Zarqa publically resigned from Morsi’s administration.

Two Islamist representatives, Maaboud and Kamal al-Helbawy, a former Muslim Brotherhood member, are in the committee of 50, despite garnering some 70% of the vote in Egypt's last parliamentary elections. The Nour Party won just over 20% in the last elections.

The committee that wrote the 2012 Constitution was overwhelmingly Islamist after massive withdrawals by non-Islamist and secular figures.