The Muslim Brotherhood is struggling with more dissent in its ranks after a group of young members broke away from the Islamist organization's political party to form a secular party that is more inclusive of other cultures and religions.

The new party, known as the Egyptian Current, is a direct challenge to the Brotherhood and follows the expulsion this week of Dr. Abdul Monem aboul Fotouh, a prominent member who defied the organization by running for president.  Fatouh has the support of thousands of young members, many of whom reportedly have had their memberships in the organization frozen. 

“We are convinced that Egypt is currently in need of political parties that rise beyond specific ideologies. The Egyptian mainstream political current should have a real voice in the country’s politics,” Mohammed Abbas told the Los Angeles Times. Abbas said he suspects he and others will also be expelled from the Brotherhood.  

Abbas said the Egyptian Current will be a secular party with Islamic and Arabic roots but will represent Egyptians belonging to different cultural and religious backgrounds: “We need a party which will look after the interests of all Egyptians," he said. Founding members announced that the party will take the slogan of “freedom, building and pioneering.”

Young Brotherhood members have often voiced their dismay at the policies of the Brotherhood's senior members, most notably after leaders of the organization's Justice and Freedom political party were appointed by the group’s politburo rather than being elected by a committee of party members.

Abbas, who represented the Brotherhood at the Jan. 25 Youth Coalition during the revolution that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak, was also angered by the group's decision to ban its members from taking part in “the second revolution” protests in Tahrir Square in May.

The announcement of the Egyptian Current comes days after the Brotherhood officially axed Fotouh. The group announced that Fotouh violated its regulations by launching a presidential bid despite the Brotherhood’s decision not to field a candidate. The dissension comes as the Brotherhood -- free from the persecution of Mubarak's police state -- has emerged as the country's top political player. It is poised to win as many as 25% of the seats in Parliament in September elections.

But it is increasingly unable to mend the differences between the aspirations of its youth and its conservative Islamic tenets. While members of the Egyptian Current expressed willingness to remain in the Brotherhood, many officials in the organization's guidance bureau demanded their dismissal from the group Wednesday. No decisions were made but Abbas believes that they are likely to be expelled.

-- Amro Hassan in Cairo

Photo: Brotherhood leaders during the establishing conference of the Justice and Freedom party on April 30. Credit: Reuters

Babylon & Beyond today is switching to a new commenting system.

The system requires commenters to sign in through their Facebook accounts. People without Facebook accounts will not be able to leave comments.

Readers will have the option of posting their Babylon & Beyond comments on their Facebook walls, but that's not required. Readers are welcome to express their opinions about the news -- and about how the new Facebook comments system is working.

Jimmy Orr, the Los Angeles Times managing editor in charge of latimes.com, discussed our online comments and the Facebook system in a March entry to the Readers' Representative Journal.

We hope to see your comments on Facebook.

-- The Foreign Staff of the Los Angeles Times

Although new laws regulating the construction of houses of worship have been sought by politicians and human rights advocates long before the Jan. 25 revolution, there has been little progress toward passing such regulations.

A draft law proposes that building permit applications for houses of worship should go through the public engineering office in the governorate where the church or mosque would be built. It sets a maximum period of two months for approval or rejection of an application, and stipulates that no house of worship can built closer than a kilometer to another church or mosque.

A spokesman for the Egyptian Evangelical Church, Akram Lamei, said he believes that the draft law has a number of flaws, including the "strange" condition of setting two or more houses of worship apart by at least a kilometer.

A day after Syrian President Bashar Assad promised reforms, gunfire continued to sound in several of the country's cities as pro-and anti-regime forces took to the streets in demonstrations, sometimes clashing.

Meanwhile, international relief organizations on a government-organized trip through northwest Syria found entire cities and towns emptied by the regime's crackdown on the rebellious area around the town of Jisr Shughur, according to a briefing by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees [PDF]. 

Thousands of Syrians, many of them government employees, joined pro-Assad demonstrations in the capital, Damascus, and other cities, vowing that the leader Assad would remain in power forever. Many said that their blood was cheap if shed as a sacrifice for their president.

The demonstrations came in the wake of Assad's speech promising reforms, dismissed as inadequate by protesters partaking in the three-month-old uprising challenging the Assad family's four-decade rule. 

In one piece of amateur video from the third-largest city of Homs, (above) men, women and children protesting against the regime come under gunfire. They first hide behind buildings but reemerge. Three people were killed in the clashes, Reuters reported, citing statements by residents. 

In the city of Hama, pro-regime crowds were gathered by security forces to attack protesters, said pro-democracy activists. 

It didn't take long after Syrian President Bashar Assad's speech on Monday before protesters took to the streets of Homs, Hama, Lattakia, Damascus and Idleb, again demanding an end to his regime. 

The video above is said to show residents of Homs holding banners and shouting "Bashar go away, the Syrian people want freedom."

One banner reads, "Homs pharmaceutical company presents, the best vomit-inducing medication: listening to Bashar's speech," in reference to Assad's frequent use of medical analogies during his speech.

At one point, he compared the anti-regime protesters to germs. 

Assad last addressed the nation more than two months ago. His reemergence in a more than hourlong speech on Monday left many in the pro-democracy opposition dissatisfied. For some, nothing less the president's resignation would have placated them.

 Toppled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has cancer, according to his lawyer, who disclosed the news less than two months before Mubarak is to stand trial, accused of financial corruption and allowing security forces to kill hundreds of protesters who rallied against his regime in February. 

Mubarak, who has been hospitalized since suffering a heart attack in April, has been in ill health for years. Reports that he may have cancer surfaced in 2010, when the 83-year-old former leader had a growth removed from his intestine during gallbladder surgery.

Mubarak’s lawyer, Farid Deeb, told Reuters of the former president condition on Monday, referring to a medical report filed with the court. Deeb was quoted as telling Agence France-Presse that Mubarak has "stomach cancer and the tumors are growing."

The announcement contradicts comments last week by an Egyptian medical official, who denied that the former leader had a serious illness. “Whatever has recently been said about the deterioration of Mubarak’s health is rumors,” Dr. Adel Adawi, an assistant to the minister of health, told the Arab media.

Activists and opposition leaders have been suspicious of reports on Mubarak’s health, fearing that his condition is being made to look more dire than it is in an effort by his supporters to keep him from trial. Mubarak and his sons, Alaa and Gamal, are expected to be tried in early August for allegedly defrauding the country and allowing government forces to kill more than 840 Egyptians during 18 days of demonstrations.

“Mubarak and his sons are the symbol of all the corruption carried out under his rule,” said Ismael Zakareya, a teacher. “The importance of his trial is not just to punish him, but it will be to set a great example to any ruler or official who will come to power after him. This revolution will lose a large part of its essence if he and his sons are not sentenced.”

Gamal Mubarak, once expected to be his father's successor, and Alaa are in Tora Prison on the outskirts of Cairo. The former president is in custody in a hospital in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El Sheikh. His wife, Suzanne, was released from detention after agreeing to turn over about $4 million in assets. She remains under investigation.

RELATED:

Egyptian revolution's unsung heroes languish in hospitals

TV 25 chronicles post-revolution in Egypt, bucks censorship, strives for balance

Political tensions grow in Egypt as former ambassador to U.S. is appointed foreign minister

-- Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

 Photo: Hosni Mubarak. Credit: Reuters

Two American hikers taken into custody in 2009 on charges of espionage for crossing into Iran from Iraqi Kurdistan are to stand trial July 31, the second anniversary of their arrest, their lawyer said Monday. 

"I've just received an official notification that says the next trial will be on July 31 in the morning, which is exactly the anniversary of their arrest in the Iran-Iraq border two years ago," Masoud Shafii, the lawyer, told Babylon & Beyond.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah movement was quick Sunday to ease fears regarding a decision to postpone a meeting between Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal that had been planned for Tuesday in Cairo.

Fatah officials said the decision had to do with Abbas’ busy schedule and did not necessarily mean the reconciliation process between the two rival factions is faltering.

Fatah and Hamas signed a reconciliation agreement early in May after four years of bitter and sometimes violent rivalry. The agreement called for establishing a unity government with the goal of holding general elections within a year and to rebuild the Gaza Strip, devastated after five years of the Israeli blockade and military assaults.

Forming the unity government has become a stumbling block in the reconciliation effort. Fatah wants current Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to run the new government because it believes the Western-backed Fayyad will be able to prevent an international blockade against the new government because of Hamas involvement. Hamas, however, does not trust Fayyad. 

When the two sides failed to agree on a prime minister during their meeting last week, they called on Abbas and Meshaal to sit together to resolve the issue.

Azzam Ahmad, who heads Fatah's delegation to the reconciliation talks and who announced the postponement after meeting Abbas in Ramallah, insisted that it was Abbas’ busy schedule that had led to the delay.

Abbas is going to be in Turkey on Wednesday and then in Strasbourg, France, on Thursday to address the European Parliament. Ahmad said it was better to give the two leaders time to discuss the complex issue without any interruptions. For this reason, it was believed better to postpone the meeting rather than risk having to end it before an agreement is reached.

Hamas did not seem too thrilled with the postponement. Hamas' leader in Gaza, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said Sunday that "we were ready for this meeting and we wanted it to tackle all issues in order to have a government of conciliation."

Damascus-based Hamas official, Izzat Rishk, a hard-liner, said Fatah postponed the meeting because it could not get Hamas to agree to Fayyad as prime minister.

Abbas has a lot to risk if the new government is run by a prime minister who is not acceptable to the United States and Europe. Israel is already threatening to again stop transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinian Authority. It collects over $100 million in customs duties and taxes on Palestinian-imported goods coming through it ports. These funds account for two-thirds of the monthly salaries of Palestinian public employees, and 150,000 employees will go unpaid if Israel halts remittance.

In a news conference Sunday with the president of the Dominican Republic in Ramallah, Abbas reiterated that the new government would follow his policies, which is based on reaching a solution to the Middle East conflict based on peaceful negotiations with Israel and that will continue the policies of Fayyad’s West Bank-based government.

Hamas does not seem to object, but it does not want Fayyad to be the key person in the new government.

— Maher Abukhater in Ramallah, West Bank

"Joon" is unhappily in love and needs advice.

"For the past few years I have been in love with a straight girl, my best friend," she writes.

"Apart from her being straight, I suspect she is homophobic, because bringing up this subject in any form disgusts her. What happens when we fall in love with a straight person, or worse, a homophobe?"

A person writing under the profile "Reem" responds:

"I can relate to this, as it happens to pretty much every lesbian. In my situation I realized that I simply needed to get over her. Maybe you can come out to her at some point, if she is really your best friend then her homophobia should not interfere in how much she cares for you."

The thread above was published on Ahwaa.org, a new user-generated online community and forum run by a group of volunteers where members of the LGBT community in the Arabian Peninsula and beyond can vent their feelings and discuss and debate just about any issue on their minds in what administrators say is a safe and secure environment.

Egyptian Prime Minister Essam Sharaf has appointed former Ambassador Mohamed El-Orabi as the country’s new foreign minister, state news agency MENA announced Sunday.

El-Orabi, who has previously served as Egypt’s ambassador to the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Kuwait, will replace Nabil Elaraby, who will move to become the Arab League’s secretary general.  Elaraby’s nomination to head the league was opposed by Egypt’s political elite and activists, who believed he articulated a bolder foreign policy less dependent on Washington and the West.   

Prior to Shara's appointing El-Orabi, a number of activist groups, including the April 6th Youth Movement, called on the prime minister to put the matter up for national debate. It is unclear whether El-Orabi will prove a popular choice among the majority if Egyptians.

Press freedom groups are calling attention to a raid on the office of the Agence France-Presse news agency in the Jordanian capital earlier this week after it reported that the motorcade of Jordanian King Abdullah II was pelted with bottles and stones during a tour in a southern city. 

Paris-based Reporters Without Borders "strongly condemned" the attack in a statement on Saturday.

On Wednesday, AFP's Amman bureau became a scene of chaos and violence when a group of club-wielding men descended on the office, storming the facility and smashing furniture and office phones, according to Reporters Without Borders. 

AFP's Amman bureau chief Randa Habib told the group that she had received threats since the bureau reported the alleged stone attack on the king's motorcade.

Egypt is seeing a post-revolution media renaissance, including in print and on television stations. The growth of coverage has posed a challenge to the transitional military government, which activists and some media have accused of slipping back into the censorship of the previous regime.

Among the upstarts is TV 25, a 24-hour satellite news channel with more than a dozen original programs. The channel is staffed by about 42 newly-trained journalists charged with covering the aftermath of the Jan. 25 revolution from the perspective of the people, not the oft-quoted experts seen on mainstream television.

The station has a Facebook following, broadcasts and streams live video online from the sleek offices of Video Cairo, a 40-year-old satellite broadcast network overlooking the Nile. One day last week, the TV 25 news broadcast—  delivered by a young presenter in short sleeves and jeans — included reports about the latest sectarian tensions between Muslims and Coptic Christians attempting to build churches, a strike by electrical workers and spending limits for the presidential election next fall.

"Our main rule is to be a reflection of the street," one young anchor said. "We are fed up with experts who didn’t expect the revolution."

Another host, Miral Brinjy, 26, is a blogger who now has her own social media show, "Hashtag." She has reported about recent government censorship, including the arrest and sentencing of an Egyptian blogger to three years in prison after a military trial.