Egypt Unnerved by Rising Religious Fervor
“Egypt’s recent election of an Islamist president has rekindled a long-suppressed display of public piousness that has aroused both ‘moral vigilantism’ and personal acts of faith,” writes Jeffrey Fleishman for The Los Angeles Times. Recently, fundamentalist groups have harassed women for not wearing veils. One young Egyptian man was killed for walking with his fiancee “by men reportedly linked to a group called the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.” Yet Fleishman also notes that there has been a growing demand to allow police officers and other government employees to wear beards, which were banned under Mubarak’s secular regime because they were seen as a sign of religious fanaticism.