The image of a smiling man with a gray beard hangs on every street corner. He could be mistaken for a member of a folk music group. But the man on the posters is actually Hazem Abu Ismail, and his message is plain: "Al-Islam huwa al-Hall" -- Islam is the solution.
Until recently Abu Ismail, a television imam, was the ultra-conservative Salafists' candidate for one of the most powerful offices in the Arab world, the Egyptian presidency.
But now his candidacy is finished. Even if Islam has an answer to many things, one question remains unanswered: How on earth could the mother of the deeply religious Abu Ismail, now long dead, have applied for a green card, or permission to live and work in the United States? And why did she even obtain US citizenship afterwards, a circumstance that now excludes her son from running in the presidential election at the end of May?
Under the country's election law, both parents of a candidate must be Egyptian. And although the Salafists respect God's law above all and have had little use for earthly elections until now, Abu Ismail's supporters took to the streets and raged against foreign "falsifications" and "conspiracies." Abu Ismail himself even threatened to trigger an "Islamic revolution."
But despite the fact that tens of thousands demonstrated on Tahrir Square for the first time in months on Friday, this revolution hasn't materialized yet. In fact, many Egyptians seem relieved that a politician is out of the running who believes that girls in puberty are old enough for marriage, that a woman should not come into physical contact with a man at work, and that Sharia law should completely replace current civil law.
Some who voted for the Islamists in the parliamentary elections during the winter and helped them achieve victory are secretly breathing a sigh of relief. "Stoning for adultery? That isn't consistent with Egypt at all," says Egypt's best-known playwright, Lenin al-Ramli. "I believe that the Islamists have already passed the height of their popularity." Of course, writers are allowed to exaggerate.
Egypt's Supreme Presidential Election Commission disqualified 10 of the 23 candidates, including three of the most promising ones. They include, in addition to Abu Ismail, the millionaire and leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood Khairat el-Shater, as well as Omar Suleiman, Hosni Mubarak's former intelligence chief who was also vice president for a short time.
El-Shater's downfall was that he had a previous criminal conviction. Under Mubarak, he was imprisoned as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and, most recently, had been sentenced to seven years in prison for alleged money laundering. The election commission decided that this still disqualifies him today. El-Shater's attempt to contest the decision failed.
In Suleiman's case, the problem was that he lacked just 31 notarized statements of endorsements from a single province, from a total of 30,000 endorsements required to enter the race. He had become ensnared in an election law noose that the former regime had once constructed itself. It's no wonder that conspiracy theories are blossoming in Cairo. "Suleiman's candidacy was probably a tactical move by the military from the start," says Ahmed Osama, a well-connected liberal and human rights activist. "They wanted to make people at home and abroad believe that the Egyptians needed a strong man."
At any rate, the Egyptian presidential elections have declined in entertainment value since last week. With the forced exit of the strongest and most polarizing figures, the contest has turned into an ordinary drama.
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