Last December and before polling started in the 2012 constitutional referendum, an internet campaign named "Take him off the Minbar, Altar," was launched. The campaign aimed to encouraging people to actively stop Imams and preachers from expressing their opinions on the constitutional draft during Friday sermons or in religious classes taking place inside the mosque.

The campaign provoked a response-campaign, called "Tie him up to the column", encouraging worshipers to physically stop anyone who tries to interfere with the Imam's during sermons or class, or anyone who tries to stop Imams and preachers from voicing their opinions and providing guidance and advice to people. The campaign called for tying them up in one of the mosque's columns.

Against the backdrop of a political crisis at its height, marked by heavy polarization between the two poles: "Islamist forces" and "civil forces", the two calls were reflections of a struggle over the right to employ religion in the public sphere. What later unfolded on the ground was almost identical with the two calls of the campaigns: several clashes took place inside and outside mosques. The most prominent of these incidents were the clashes of Al Qaid Ibrahim Mosque in Alexandria.
This type of civilian-on-civilian fighting has not seized to this moment. The struggle over the control or mosques also sometimes assumes an official dimension. An example of this was the attempt by the state-represented in the Ministry of Religious Endowments- lately, to tighten its grip on the discourse of Minbars and mosque activities in general at this particularly critical moment in the crisis.

This struggle has unleashed many questions about the notion of "public religion" an "official religion", and the extent to which are the physical spaces designated to religion considered "public sphere", as well as who has the right to use it and regulate it. This also presents an entry point to understanding the struggle over religion itself, the power it welds and the authority it commands in the wider public sphere; between state control or regulation, society's unwritten rules concerning religion, and finally--the effect of the crowds in the squares.

The discussion will be moderated by Amr Ezzat, a researcher in freedom of religion and belief at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR)

The seminar is a part of a series called "Public Space Revolutionized" organized by the Right to the City and Public Space group and hosted by the EIPR (Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights).

EIPR address: 6 Dar El-Shifaa st, Garden City
27960197 / 27960158 (202)+