Brotherhood leader who had attributed the 1988 Armenian earthquake to God's punishment of the 'atheist' Soviet Union, but offered no explanation for the equally deadly 1990 earthquake in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Though accused of apostasy, Foda argued he was defending Islam against its distortion by Islamists, stating "Islam is a religion and Muslims are human beings; religion is blameless, while humans make mistakes". After an Islamist periodical condemned as immoral the broadcast of the ballet Swan Lake on television, he argued that the problem lays within "the onlooker or viewer (mushahid) rather than the looked upon view or what is viewed (mushahad)" and quoted passages from a 1979 book, The Jurisprudence of Looking in Islam, which directs men to avoid looking at both women and males and, "in particular, smooth-faced boys". In a column in October magazine shortly before his death, he lamented that "the world around us is busy with the conquest of space, genetic engineering and the wonders of the computer," while Muslim scholars concern themselves with sex in paradise. Assassination On 8 June 1992, Foda, after leaving his office, was shot dead by two assassins. His son and other bystanders were seriously wounded in the attack. The two gunmen had reportedly been "monitoring Farag Foda’s movements and watching his house in al-Nuzha area in Heliopolis for several weeks". The jihadist group Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya announced responsibility. Before his death, Farag Foda had been accused of blasphemy by Al-Azhar. The Al-Azhar ulama had thereby adopted a previous fatwā by Sheikh al-Azhar, Jadd al-Haqq, accusing Foda and other secularist writers of being "enemies of Islam". In a statement claimed responsibility for the killing, Al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya accused Foda of being an apostate from Islam, advocating the separation of religion from the state, and favouring the existing legal system in Egypt rather than the application of Shari’a. The group explicitly referred to a religious fatwa of Al-Azhar when announcing responsibility. Eight of the thirteen Islamists brought to trial for the murder were subsequently acquitted. One of those involved in Foda's murder, Abu El'Ela Abdrabu (Abu Al-'Ela Abd Rabbo), was released from prison in 2012 having served his sentence. In an interview which aired on Al-Arabiya TV on June 14, 2013 (as translated by MEMRI), Abdrabu defended Foda's murder, stating that "The punishment for an apostate is death, even if he repents" and that "...[if] the ruler does not implement the