From a mosque in 7th century Arabia, Prophet Mohammed began spreading the faith of Islam. Today, Egypt's government is fighting to keep Muslim extremists from spreading revolution from the mosque.
In Cairo's sprawling Imbaba district, once a militant stronghold, authorities have closed at least a dozen makeshift prayer centers crammed into hallways and alleys that were run by the radical al-Gamaa al-Islamiya.Throughout the country, the Ministry of Religious Endowments plans to take over more than 7,000 mosques that were controlled by extremist groups, many of whose members have fled or been jailed.
In essence, it's a battle for the soul of Egypt. Islam pervades Egyptian life. In Cairo, the call to Friday noon prayers sounds from loudspeakers in every direction, drowning even the ubiquitous horn-honking. Prayer mats are spread across busy downtown streets to accommodate the faithful. More than 90 percent of Egypt's 58 million people are Muslim.
In downtrodden areas like Imbaba, the fundamentalists seized on the people's traditional faith to implant a more adamant Islam. For the past two years, militants have waged a violent campaign to supplant the secular government with Islamic rule. More than 240 people have been killed in radical attacks or clashes with police.
But Abdel Ghaffar Mohammed, a resident of Imbaba for 10 years, said he believes the government is loosening the radicals' grip.
"The fall of the Islamic Republic of Imbaba started the day the government took over the Gamaa's mosques," he said.
Mohammed Abdel-Monem Saeed, a political analyst at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, said the government's approach was astute but faced a major barrier.
"The government is . . . controlling the message it conveys to the people," he said. "But the problem is that there will always be more mosques than the Ministry of Endowments can control."
In fact, no one knows how many mosques there are in Egypt.
Cairo is known as the city of 1,000 minarets, but there are thousands of small, private mosques in addition to historic and official ones.
Saeed said that since the rise of the Islamic movement in the 1970s, militants gathered recruits and made plans in mosques, and the Interior Ministry accuses "terrorists" of storing weapons there.