H R C A P

The Human Rights Association for the A assistance of Prisoners (HRAAP) held a symposium for discussing the book issued within the activities of its campaign against torture in Egypt entitled “Type of Punishment for torturing a suspect to confess committing a crime”. It is comparative study in the El-Shariea “Islamic legislation”, by Dr. Abdallah Mabrouk El-Naggar, a professor in the faculty of Shariea “Islamic Legislation” and Law, and a member in the Islamic Research Institute. This symposium included a research about the attitude of the Islamic Legislation towards torturing a suspect to get a confession committing a crime.

In the end, Dr. El-Naggar declared frankly that ‘Islam is innocent of torturing and tortured’. In addition, he said that Islam came to honor man not to humiliate him, assuring the need to a new understanding to the Islamic Law, depending on reading religion deeply to cope with the spirit of the age. In addition, Dr El-Naggar condemned the so-called new preachers and described them as “narrators”, who re-explain Islamic issues in new terms, however they do not present a new ideology.

Some attendants expressed their fear through their interventions that the call for issuing a new Islamic ideology will distort the Islamic religion. He also urged the attendants to interact with the trends that defend the rights of the Arab and Muslims in Europe assuring that isolation from the world will lead to increasing the feelings of hostility of Muslims. In addition, some interferes assured the importance of spreading the idea of condemning torture, especially in the light of spread of the phenomenon of torture in the police stations. Other interferes asked to discuss the phenomenon of torture in accordance to all religions, as both Christians and Muslims live together in Egypt.

Mr. Negad El-Bora’e, a lawyer in the Cassation court, emphasized the importance of interacting with the current events and understanding the Islamic religion in a modern way. He also condemned explaining religion depending on the succession of the narrators of the holy speeches of our prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him) and asserted that the door for inventiveness is open in Islam, and that the ancient good religion are human beings and we are human beings as well. We have to understand Islam in a modern way to cope with the needs of age, not with the needs of the fourth century (A.H).

Ehab Sallam - a lawyer - programs supervisor (HRAAP). He started the symposium with a story about a police officer that tortured a suspect by pouring boiling water over his body to force him to confess committing a crime. When Mr. Sallam discussed the matter with the officer, he replied that he got a legal opinion from a sheikh “an Islamic preacher” that allows him to torture a suspect to extract a confession from him. That incident urged the HRAAP to hold this symposium.

In the end of this debate that lasted for two hours, Mr. Negad Al Bora’e-a cassation lawyer concluded that it is high time to modernize the Islamic legislation that emerges from our desire to have a proper, strong and appropriate religion anytime and everywhere. Modernizing the Islamic legislation does not absolutely mean to manipulate the holy books, but it means re-explaining the holy speech in a new way that benefits Muslims nowadays[1].

[1]To get the book entitled “Type of Punishment for Torture to Extract a Confession” by Dr. Abdallah El-Naggar, a comparative study in the Islamic Legislation “in Arabic language”, or requesting any of the publishments of the association or inquiring about its programs and activities, please call us on

Tel: 7121656.