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Members Of Heretical Muslim Sect Appear In Egyptian Court
CAIRO (AFP)-Sixteen members of a Muslim sect led by a woman claiming powers as a medium appeared before Cairo's state security court Monday accused of heresy, said the court's chief prosecutor Hisham Saraya.
Their leader, Manal Wahid Mane'a, a 41-year-old political science graduate from Cairo University, claimed to be in spiritual contact with the dead leader of a Sufi brotherhood, Omar Hassanein Bayumi, Saraya told reporters.
She attributed divine powers to Bayumi, passing on messages from the guru to her 15 disciples at weekly meetings in her Cairo apartment. The meetings had been going on for the past five years, said Saraya.
Mane'a's disciples included two businessmen, two engineers, four young women and a lawyer. Claiming to be following the dead guru's instructions, she allegedly exempted some of her followers from daily prayers, one of the five religious duties of Muslims.
She said Bayumi was "the creator of human beings and it was he who would decide if they were to go to heaven or to hell," said Saraya. The members of the sect, arrested last October, face sentences of up to three years' hard labor.
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