Egypt Islamists pass draft Constitution

An Islamist-led Egyptian panel Friday passed a draft Constitution amid a crisis brought on by President Mohamed Morsi declaring his rule was above the law. The draft, which the Constituent Assembly of Egypt approved after dawn, keeps Sharia, or the moral code and religious law of Islam, as the main source of Egypt's legislation. Some critics said certain language could allow conservative Islamists to impose a rigid version of Sharia, the Los Angeles Times reported. Sharia deals with many topics addressed by secular law, including crime, politics and economics. It also addresses personal matters, including diet, prayer and fasting. In its strictest definition it is considered the infallible law of God. The Constitution -- whose more-than-230 articles were approved one by one over more than 16 hours -- was immediately sent to Morsi, who said Thursday he would call a nationwide referendum on the charter "soon." The referendum must be held within 30 days. The assembly approval came without the participation of liberal and Christian assembly members. Dozens of secularists and Coptic Christians boycotted the assembly in recent months, leaving Morsi's Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood's political arm, in control, the Times said. The draft Constitution defines Egypt as a Muslim nation and says, for the first time in the republic's history, Parliament must consult clerics at the revered Sunni al-Azhar Mosque, built in 970 in Islamic Cairo, on legislation "related to Islamic Sharia," the Times said. The Supreme Constitutional Court, Egypt's highest judicial power, was widely expected to rule Sunday on whether to dissolve the assembly amid accusations it was unrepresentative. The court disbanded an earlier version of the assembly in April on similar grounds. The case has become a separation-of-powers test between Morsi and his Islamist supporters and the courts and opposition parties. Morsi issued a decree Nov. 22 elevating his edicts above the reach of any court until a new Constitution is approved. The decree, known as a constitutional declaration, prompted widespread street protests and cries from opponents that Morsi, who already governs without a legislature, was moving toward a new autocracy in Egypt less than two years after the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak. "We are going to get out of this short bottleneck hugging each other," Morsi said in a televised interview Thursday. But Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, a leading reformer and former U.N. diplomat, told private TV channel al-Nahar he doubts the charter will survive. "It will be part of political folklore and will go to the garbage bin of history," he said.