In Egypt, Islamists Reach Out to Wary Secularists

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CAIRO — Egypt, a fecund breeding ground for Arab and Islamic ideologies, is witnessing the birth of yet another: Islamic liberalism.

Nageh Ibrahim, the ideologue of the Islamic Group, an umbrella organization for Egyptian militant student groups that in the 1980s and 1990s took up arms against President Hosni Mubarak, was one of the first to use the term, in an apparent bid to woo secularists into a rapprochement.

“Liberalism has so many good sides that do not run afoul of the universal principles of the Islamic Shariah,” he told an audience drawn from the Wafd Party in July. “We have to search for a form of Islamic liberalism compatible with the norms of Egyptian society while not alienating other forces.”

Mr. Ibrahim, whose books advocated violence as a means for changing the Mubarak regime, now argues that Islamists and secularists have more common ground than differences

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/world/middleeast/in-egypt-islamists-reach-out-to-wary-secularists.html?_r=1