Ahmed Subhy Mansour

He and his sons operate the Quranic Center in Northern Virginia, which includes an Internet site in Arabic and English. On its website at www.ahl-alquran.com, the organization is republishing dozens of Mansour's books and hundreds of articles he has written over the years.

Since arriving in the United States in 2002, Mansour has held a number of academic posts.[5] In 2002, he was a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, where he wrote on the roots of democracy in Islam.[1]

The next year, he received a visiting fellowship at Harvard Law School's Human Rights Program.[1]

In October 2004, he said that the leaders of the Muslim organization behind a new $22 million mosque in Roxbury tolerated "hateful views", and harbored extremists.[14] In 2004 Daniel Pipes lauded him for speaking out against Islamists.[15][16]

In 2007, The Washington Times reported that his teachings have earned him dozens of death "fatwās" from fellow Muslim clerics,[17] the punishment of Apostasy in sunni sectarian Islam.

In 2008, he said of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), "The culture of CAIR is the same as Usama bin Laden, but they have two faces. Who are the moderates? You probably never heard of them, and that, they say, is part of the problem. The message of peace does not make the news."[18]

International Quranic Center

Mansour founded and is a board member of the International Quranic Center (IQC) to further his vision of moderate Islam. His interpretation of the letter and spirit of the Quran focuses on the values of democracy and religious tolerance. The IQC sponsors research, convenes conferences, and disseminates the ideas of Mansour and like-minded advocates in the U.S. and abroad through scholarly and educational publications, Arabic and English-language websites, movies, and TV productions. Its board of directors includes Muslims, Christians, and Jews.[1]

They do not identify themselves as Sunnis' or Shiites' sects but simply call themselves Muslims because they believe that the Qu'ran represents the single authentic scripture of Islam. The basic differences with the rest of the Orthodox Muslims is that they reject the Hadith and Sunna, purported sayings and traditions of the prophet Muhammad. Mansour claims about 10,000 followers in Egypt.[19]

Americans for Peace and Tolerance

He is a co-founder and board member of Americans for Peace and Tolerance, along with political activist Charles Jacobs and Boston College political science professor Dennis Hale (an Episcopal layman).[20] It states its purpose to "promote peaceful coexistence in an ethnically diverse America by educating the American public about the need for a moderate political leadership that supports tolerance and core American values in communities across the nation."[21] The group is a primary critic of the $15.6 million mosque in Roxbury Crossings, which the group asserts is led by extremist leaders and contributors.[22][23] Mansour said: "I visited this mosque one time with my wife. I found their Arabic materials full of hatred against America. I recognized they were Wahhabis."[24][25] The Islamic Society of Boston sued him over his attacks on anti-American and anti-Semitic statements he said he read and heard inside the society's mosque.[26] He is also a founder and board member (since October 2004) of Citizens for Peace and Tolerance.[1]

Free Muslims Coalition

Mansour is also a board member (since September 2004) of the Free Muslims Coalition, a nonprofit organization of American Muslims and Arabs who feel that religious violence and terrorism have not been fully rejected by the Muslim community. The Coalition seeks to eliminate broad base support for Islamic extremism and terrorism, to strengthen secular democratic institutions in the Muslim world by supporting Islamic reformation efforts, and to promote a modern secular interpretation of Islam which is peace-loving, democracy-loving, and compatible with other faiths and beliefs.[5]

Center for Islamic Pluralism

Mansour is the founder and the interim president of Center for Islamic Pluralism.[1]

In May and June 2007, Egyptian authorities arrested five leaders of the movement, including Mansour's brother, on charges of "insulting Islam", and began investigations of 15 others.[27] Following the arrests, Mansour's homes in Cairo and Sharqia were searched by the State Security.[28][29]

Paul Marshall analyzed the arrests in the Weekly Standard as follows:

These arrests are part of the Egyptian government's double game in which it imprisons members of the Muslim Brotherhood when the latter appear to become too powerful, while simultaneously trying to appear Islamic itself and blunt the Brotherhood's appeal by cracking down on religious reformers, who are very often also democracy activists."[30]

Mansour lamented:

Killing people just because they are not Muslims, they have a Hadith for this. To kill a Muslim like me after accusing him to be an 'apostate," they have a Hadith for this. To persecute the Jews, they have a Hadith for this. All this is garbage. It has nothing to do with Islam. It contradicts more than one-fourth of the Koranic verses. We find Islam has the same values as the West: freedom, unlimited freedom of speech, justice, equality, loving, humanity, tolerance, mercy, everything. This is our version of Islam, and we argue that this is the core of Islam according to the Koran.

He added:

Few Americans understand that the battle against terrorism is a war of ideas. It is a war that is very different from the military in its tactics, its strategy and its weapons.

Books in Arabic

1. Al Sayed Al Badway: Fact versus Superstition. Cairo, 1982.
2. Using Religious Texts to Inform Muslim History. Cairo, 1984.
3. The Personality of Egypt after the Muslim Invasion. Cairo, 1984.
4. The History of the Historic Sources of Arabic and Muslim Fields. Cairo, 1984.
5. The Fundamental Rules of Historical Research. Cairo, 1984.
6. The Invasions of the Moguls and the Crusaders in Muslim History. Cairo, 1985.
7. A History of the Cultural Development of Muslims. Cairo, 1985.
8. The Muslim World between the Early Stage and the Abbasy Caliphate. Cairo, 1985.
9. The Prophets in the Holy Quran. Cairo, 1985.
10. The Sinner Muslim: Common Mythology Regarding the Sinner Muslim. Cairo, 1987.
11. Egypt in the Holy Quran. Al Akhbar newspaper, Cairo, 1990.
12. The Quran: the Only Source of Islam and Islamic Jurisprudence (published under the title The Quran: Why? using the pseudonym Abdullah Al Khalifah) Cairo, 1990.
13. Death in the Quran. Dar Al Shark Al Awsat, Cairo, 1990.
14. The Penalty of Apostasy. Tiba Publishing, Cairo, 1992; Al Mahrousah, 1994; Al Mothakkafoun Al Arab (The Arab Intellectuals Publishing Company), 2000; English translation, The International Publishing and Distributing Company, Toronto, Canada, 1998.
15. Freedom of Speech: Islam and Muslims. The Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, Cairo, 1994.
16. The Al Hisbah between the Quran and Muslims. Al Mahrousah, Cairo, 1995; Al Kahera magazine, Cairo, 1996.
17. The Torture of the Grave. Tibia, Cairo, 1996; Al Mothakkafoun Al Arab, Cairo, 2000.
18. Naskh in the Quran Means Writing Not Abrogating. Al Tanweer magazine, Cairo?? 1997; Al Mahrousah, Cairo, 1998; Al Mothakkafoun Al Arab, Cairo, 2000.
19. The Introduction (mokademat) of Ibn Khaldoun: A Fundamental Historical and Analytical Study. The Ibn Khaldoun Center, Cairo, 1999.
20. Suggestions to Revise Muslim Religion Courses in Egyptian Education to Make Egyptians More Tolerant. Ibn Khaldoun Center, Cairo, 1999.
21. Religious Thought in Egypt in the Mamluke Era: Islam versus Muslim Sufism. Ministry of Culture, Cairo, 2000.[5]
22. Al-Aqaid Al-Diniyah Fi Misr Al-Mamlukiyah Bayna Al-Islam Wa-Al-Tasawwuf, by Ahmad Subhi Mansur, ISBN 977-01-6991-9, al-Hayah al-Misriyah al-Ammah lil-Kitab
23. Al-Tasawwuf Wa-Al-hayah Al-Diniyah Fi Misr Al-Mamlukiyah, by Ahmad Subhi Mansur, ISBN 977-313-057-6, Markaz al-Mahrusah lil-Buhuth wa-al-Tadrib wa-Nashr
24. Misr Fi Al-Quran Al-Karim, by Ahmad Subhi Mansur, ISBN 977-12-4355-1, Muassasat Akhbar al-Yawm

• "Mediaeval theocracies in a modern age", by Ahmed Sobhi Mansour, Al-Ahram, October 15–21, 1998
• "The Roots of Democracy in Islam", National Endowment for Democracy, December 16, 2002
• "The False Alarm of Evangelism", April 28, 2005
• "The Suicide Bomber", FrontPage Magazine, August 3, 2—5
• "They ask you about the veil", November 21, 2006
• "A Shackled Reformation; Egypt persecutes Muslim moderates", The New York Times, February 3, 2009

• Testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Washington, D.C., October 25, 2005