An Egyptian jurist sent me this: "Here's more from Egyptian presidential candidate Hazem AbuIsmail opining on
nutmeg in his days as a televangelist. It is a very weird phenomenon that the
Salafi luminaries (if one can combine these two oxymoronic terms) in Egypt's
political scene are all televangelists. AbuIsmail for example has no formal
Azhari or Islamist training, though he claims to be widely read in the Islamic
sources, and it is even hard to pin him down as a member of a political
organization. His 2005 parliamentary run in my district was an Ikhwan-managed
and backed campaign (he ran formally as an independent like all MB candidates at
that time), yet he denies today that he was a member of the Ikhwan. Today, he
is not formally part of any of the Salafi parties. Of course, his masterpiece remains spreading the "hypothesis" that PEPSI =
"pay every penny to save israel," claiming that the company's founder was a
freemason, and that its founding was somehow possibly related to the Basel
Zionist congress. I really don't know what his beef with the company is. By the way, I think this guy has a strong chance to make it to the second
round of Egypt's presidential race, as things stand now. The elections will be
conducted in two stages with the second stage being a run-off between the two
highest-scoring candidates in the first round. As usual, appreciate anonymity if you find any of this interesting."