A total of 160 books authored by “extremist writers” who belong to the Muslim Brotherhood have been confiscated from mosques in Damietta, Youm7 reported Thursday.
The authors included iconic Brotherhood intellectuals Sayed Qutb and Yusuf al-Qaradawi, undersecretary of the Endowment Ministry Bakr Abdel Hady told Youm7.
“All libraries of the mosques in the governorate are now devoid of any books or publications of a takfiri nature,” Abdel Hady said, referring to the takfiri ideology of labeling other Muslims as apostates.
Seven imams of mosques have been referred to investigations for violating the regulations of the ministry, as they tackled topics during Friday sermons that were not instructed by the department.
In June, Minister Endowment Mokhtar Gomaa ordered the removal of any material, books, cassettes or C.D.s, that incite violence or bear radical thoughts from mosques.
Mokhtar called on mosques’ administrators to provide the ministry with a list of the books they have in their libraries to get inspected and approved.
In a similar development, the Ministry of Endowment instructed mosques to remove books authored by Hassan el-Banna, 19th-century founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, and other “radical books.”
In December, an imam of a mosque in Dakahlia was suspended after he delivered a sermon with a topic different from that assigned by the Endowment Ministry; he said in the sermon that “songs are a form of prostitution.
