Journalist Haider Qandil, of Al-Dostor, was forcibly disappeared on Monday evening, members of his family and Journalists Syndicate council member Eman Ouf told Mada Masr. His family believes the arrest is part of a security campaign that has included the arrest over recent days of a number of people who adhere to the Shia faith. Shia are a minority in Egypt at less than one percent of the population. They have faced discrimination and security restrictions previously, particularly in the years following the 2011 revolution. The news of a new anti-Shia crackdown comes despite a positive shift in the narrative of official Islamic authorities in Egypt toward the sect in recent years. Qandil, a journalist and photographer, went missing on Monday evening after leaving his workplace at the Al-Dostor office in Dokki, Giza, his wife Asmaa al-Nashar told Mada Masr. She last contacted her husband at 6 pm on Monday, when he was still inside the office. She described the call as normal, but said his phone was switched off immediately afterward. The family then began to search for him but were unable to make contact. Nashar said that Qandil’s sister then went to his residence in Cairo, where the doorperson informed her that he had not returned home. Her husband’s colleague, journalist Iman Adel, was meanwhile contacting his colleagues at the office, who said that Qandil left around 6 pm intending to return shortly afterward but never did. Following Qandil’s disappearance, Nashar said that a group of security personnel raided the home of her sister-in-law, arresting her husband, Mustafa al-Mubarak, a citizen of New Zealand, and taking him to an undisclosed location. She described the two arrests as part of a campaign targeting a number of Egyptian Shias ahead of the commemoration of the Ashura, a significant holiday in the Shia faith. Qandil’s brother, Youssef, also said that six others were arrested on Monday, adding that “the process of documenting the detainees and the disappeared is still ongoing.” Ouf told Mada Masr that the Journalists Syndicate’s chair, Khalid al-Balshy, is currently in contact with security agencies to determine Qandil’s location and resolve the situation. Qandil was previously detained at the end of 2020 in a case that included charges of “contempt of religion” and “forming an illegal group.” He was held for eight months at the time. Recent years have witnessed a noticeable decline in the arrest of Egyptian Shias, according to Ishaq Ibrahim, an officer for the Freedom of Religion and Belief Program at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). “The last few years have been relatively calm regarding Shia; the state wasn’t arresting them. The last arrest was that of Haider Qandil himself in 2020,” Ibrahim told Mada Masr. Ibrahim noted that he had been informed by Qandil of a number of arrests targeting Shias in recent days, but that EIPR was unable to begin documenting these cases before Qandil’s arrest. Ten years ago, EIPR documented dozens of incidents of violations against Egyptian Shias between 2011 and 2016. These included detention, prosecution, discrimination, violence and restrictions on religious freedom. EIPR called at the time for a review of the legal texts used to prosecute those with different religious beliefs and practices, particularly the article on “contempt of religion,” which was used to sentence a nursery director in Sharqia Governorate to two years in prison in 2016 on the grounds that he was spreading the Shia doctrine. Al-Azhar issued an official warning in the same year about what it described as attempts by the Shias to spread their beliefs in Egypt, as part of a larger scheme to expand the sect in Sunni areas. But despite continued security targeting, the official discourse on Shia Muslims has shifted in recent years, with the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed al-Tayeb affirming in January that they are “brothers in faith” and “an integral part of the Islamic nation,” and emphasizing that the difference between Sunnis and Shias is “a difference of thought and opinion, not a sectarian one.” Tayeb said that Al-Azhar is working to promote dialogue and rapprochement between Islamic schools of thought in the coming period.The post Journalist forcibly disappeared amid reports of security crackdown on Shia minority first appeared on Mada Masr.
