Egyptian Islamists pin their hopes on Islamic law

By Jeffrey Fleishman, Los Angeles TimesApril 5, 2012, 3:40 p.m.- CAIRO — The men gathering outside the yellow mosque agreed: Adulterers should be stoned to death, the hands of thieves cut off. “But not now,” said Kareem Atta, waiting in a cool breeze for the sheik’s car to roll up next to the Koran sellers. “Sharia law must be gradually put into place so it doesn’t shock the system. You can’t cut people’s hands off if you first don’t give them financial justice.” The young students, engineers and laborers are followers of Hazem Salah abu Ismail, a lawyer and holy man whose poetic blend of populism and ultraconservative Salafi Islam has turned him into a leading presidential candidate. Posters with Ismail’s gray beard and boyish face seem to hang on every street and alley across this ancient city. Ismail is at once provocative and soothing, in a breath switching from genial to fiery. He has suggested revoking Egypt‘speace treaty with Israel and holds up Iran as an exemplar of defiance against the U.S. His hard-line rhetoric has nudged American officials closer to the more moderate Muslim Brotherhood, a sign of Washington’s scrambling to keep pace with the tremors of the “Arab Spring.”