Zionist puppet Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush speaks during a joint press conference with her Kuwaiti counterpart in Kuwait City on Oct. 3, 2021. (YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES)
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 2023, pp. 46-47
Special Report
By Mustafa Fetouri
AS A PREDOMINANTLY Sunni Muslim country, Libya has long been known for its moderate practice of Islam based on tolerance and acceptance of others. Christians in the country, nearly all of whom are foreigners including Egyptian Copts, are welcomed by the people and have their own places of worship. They seldom face any prejudice based on their religion.
Last May, Libya’s General Authority for Awqaf and Islamic Affairs (GAAIA), a public organization, announced the creation of what it called the “Guardians of Virtue.” A body that would guard Islamic and traditional social values in the country was needed, it claimed, because many young Libyans were “deviating” from the correct Islamic path and are even being converted to Christianity through foreign and local nongovernmental organizations operating in the country.
Proselytizing Christianity in Libya is not only illegal but socially condemned. Anyone accused of that (and their families) are shunned by society and treated with contempt, even if their innocence is proved later in a court of law.
Late last year Libya’s Internal Security Agency detained half a dozen young Libyans and accused them of converting to Christianity. The agency later published a couple of video clips purporting to show at least two of the detainees confessing to becoming Christians with the help of foreigners including Jeff Wilson, who is described as an American citizen teaching English in a private school in Tripoli. The U.S. State Department acknowledged that an American citizen was detained but did not mention Wilson by name; he is described online as a businessman helping American companies work in Libya.
Regardless of how true the allegations are, the fact that a few Libyans are accused of converting to Christianity is unprecedented in Libya. At least one such individual has already received the death sentence; a court in Misrata, east of the capital Tripoli, condemned Diaa al-Din Balao to death for apostasy.
Libyans have always been proud of their open interpretation of Islamic teachings. They believe that their country has one of the highest rates of mosques per capita in the Muslim world. The country is nicknamed “the country of a million memorizers of the Qur’an,” a huge number in a nation of only seven million people. In international Qur’an recitation competitions Libyan competitors tend to win the top places. Most of the infrastructure of Islamic education, including the curriculum, were founded and developed under Muammar Qaddafi to propagate mainstream Islamic teachings.
But Libya is changing and the country is being dragged into a more extreme version of Islam that is completely alien to Libya. Since the civil strife that began in 2011 and ended with the NATO military intervention that killed Qaddafi, ended his government and plunged Libya into chaos, a major casualty appears to be Libya’s moderate Muslim way of life.
For example, women today are expected to dress in ways that have no basis in traditional local customs. It is now common to see even working women wearing burqas, which is very unusual in Libya where women used to enjoy a wide range of freedoms protected by laws, including equal pay with men. Under Qaddafi hundreds of women worked as lawyers, judges, airplane pilots, military and police officers and civil servants, including ministers. Now they are discouraged from working in such professions.
Rights and civil society groups, both foreign and local, have noted the recent crackdown on young people because of their alleged anti-Muslim behaviors, which are perceived as a threat to Libya’s Islamic traditions and way of life. Last March, Amnesty International accused the security agency of persecuting “young Libyans” under the guise of protecting “Libyan and Islamic values.”
Many observers believe what is happening is a war between different Islamic ideologies aiming for influence in politics and a place in society, said Hassan, a law professor in Benghazi who does not want his family name published. Referring to women’s current dress code, he observed that “the way many women dress is not even Libyan” but rather a foreign “Taliban-style attire.” Twelve years ago it was rare to see head-to-toe veiled young women. Today, it is rare to see women, even ministers and other civil servants, dressed in suits or Western-style clothes. The country’s foreign minister, U.S. educated Najla al-Mangoush, is constantly ridiculed and bullied on social media for wearing Western-styled attire and not wearing a headscarf.
Another new trend is occurring in which female and male pupils, some as young as six, are taught in separate classrooms. They are taught an Islamic-focused curriculum and are required to wear an outfit similar to those found in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
ISLAMIC IDEOLOGY USED FOR POLITICAL GAIN
Beneath the surface, a battle is raging, mainly between Fatwa House (Dar il-Aftaa), led by Sheikh Sadiq al-Ghariani, and GAAIA, headed by Mohamed al-Abani. Both are considered extremists in their own ways. The fight made history last April when both unelected men disagreed about the date of Eid al-Fitr, dividing the country for the first time in its history. The outcome: the holiday was not celebrated by Libyans on the same day even within the same city.
Both Al-Ghariani and Al-Abani are accused of wasting millions of dollars in public funds. The country’s Public Audit Bureau implicitly accused them of corruption while the country’s Central Bank says the Fatwa House, for example, has spent over five million Libyan dinars (approximately $1.1 million) from January to June this year—a huge amount for this institution. The Audit Bureau said both institutions spent large sums on clothes and unwarranted celebrations. Legally, Sheikh al-Ghariani is no longer even the mufti since he was fired by the parliament seven years ago and the institution itself was abolished. Yet he is still spending millions on his own TV channel broadcasting out of Istanbul, Türkiye, where the sheikh spends most of his time while preaching to Libyans back home about their religion. Al-Ghariani issued a fatwa in 2012 banning women from traveling abroad without a chaperone. This year law enforcement tried to implement the fatwa but abandoned the idea in the face of public outrage.
Politically and because of his religious status, Al-Ghariani is seen as a divisive figure, constantly meddling in politics. The man has been known, on many occasions, to encourage internal divisions, fights and “jihads.” Loyal to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the sheikh is considered to be one of the top unofficial leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in Libya, a group designated as a terrorist organization by Libya’s parliament back in 2019.
Many Libya watchers think what is going on is an attempt to create a Taliban-style Islamic emirate on the southern banks of the Mediterranean, a horrific scenario for Libya and the region including Europe, which helped create this mess. On at least two previous occasions extremists tried to establish an Islamic emirate in the far eastern city of Derna; the first time, in 2011, led by mostly foreign elements, and the second, in 2014, led by the local Ansar al-Sharia, a group implicated in the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens.
One of the less apparent outcomes of the 2011 civil war and the subsequent foreign meddling in the country’s affairs is the way Libyans understand and practice Islam, a religion based on tolerance. The West’s military intervention in Libya helped create a dangerous land instead of the free and democratic nation the Libyans were promised.
Tolerant Islam faces a serious existential challenge in Libya, as political divisions grow and the battle for the minds of Libyans intensifies. Aided by publicly funded institutions like GAAIA and Fatwa House, Libya’s educational system and media are changing, and extremists are slowly gaining the upper hand. The long-term future is not promising for Libya, the region and maybe the world.
Mustafa Fetouri is a Libyan academic and freelance journalist. He received the EU’s Freedom of the Press prize. He has written extensively for various media outlets on Libyan and MENA issues. He has published three books in Arabic. His email is mustafafetouri@hotmail.com and Twitter: @MFetouri.
