Egypt's Coptic pope blasts Morsi

From: The Times of Israel

The leader of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church on Tuesday blasted the country’s Islamist president over his handling of the recent deadly sectarian violence, including an attack on the main cathedral in Cairo.

The remarks by Pope Tawadros II underscore rising Muslim-Christian tensions in Egypt. They were his first direct criticism of President Mohammed Morsi since he was enthroned in November as the spiritual leader of Egypt’s Orthodox Christians. They are also likely to fuel the political turmoil roiling the country for the two years since the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.

Egypt is already divided between two camps, with Morsi and Islamist allies in one and moderate Muslims, Christians and liberals in the other. That political schism is essentially over the shape of Egypt’s political future after decades of dictatorship. The divide has been compounded by a worsening economy and tenuous security.

An open conflict between Morsi’s government and the church could add a new and potentially explosive layer, pushing Egypt to the brink of civil strife.

Tawadros also warned that the state of Egypt was “collapsing” and described Sunday’s attack on the St. Mark Cathedral in central Cairo, which serves as the Coptic papal seat, as “breaching all the red lines.”

He said Morsi had promised him in a telephone conversation to do everything to protect the cathedral, “but in reality he did not.”

Asked to explain, Tawadros, who spoke in a telephone interview to a political talk show aired on the private ONTV network, said it “comes under the category of negligence and poor assessment of events.”

On Sunday, an angry mob of Muslims threw firebombs and rocks at the Coptic cathedral in Cairo, leaving two people dead. One of the two was identified as a Christian.

The attack followed a funeral service for four Christians killed in sectarian clashes in a town north of Cairo early the day before. A fifth person, a Muslim, was also killed. It was the deadliest sectarian violence since Morsi came to office nine months ago as the country’s first freely elected president.

“The church has been a national symbol for 2,000 years,” Tawadros said. “It has not been subjected to anything like this even during the darkest ages … There has been no positive and clear action from the state, but there is a God. The church does not ask for anyone’s protection, only from God.”

Tawadros also criticized the president over his decision on Monday to revive a state body mandated to promote equality between Egyptians regardless of their religious and ethnic background. Morsi’s decision was in response to the sectarian violence.

“Enough already of formations, committees and groups and whatever else,” Tawadros said.

“We want action not words and, let me say this, there are many names and committees but there is no action on the ground,” he added.

Morsi has strongly condemned the recent violence and said that he considered any attack on the cathedral to be an attack on him personally. He also ordered an investigation into the violence.

“Should we wait for instructions to start an investigation when something happens?” Tawadros said in response to Morsi’s order. “Egypt’s laws must be adequate to deal with the situation. This is a society that is collapsing. Society is collapsing every day.”

The office of Morsi’s assistant for foreign relations issued a statement on Tuesday shortly after Tawadros comments, saying that the “Egyptian presidency would like to affirm its full rejection of violence in all its forms, and under any pretext, and affirms that all Egyptians are citizens who should enjoy all rights and are equal before the law.”

The statement said the presidency “will not allow any attempts to divide the nation, incite sedition, or drive a wedge among Egyptians under any pretense” and added that it has been “following these unfortunate events with great concern and has instructed all authorities concerned to exert their utmost efforts to contain the situation and protect the lives and property of citizens.”

Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s estimated 90 million people. Copts have complained for decades of discrimination and issues such as the building of houses of worship or inter-religious love stories often ignite Muslim-Christian violence.

But attacks against Christians have increased since Mubarak’s 2011 ouster, including more attacks on churches and at times forced evictions of entire Christian communities from small towns and villages.

With Islamists politically empowered since the overthrow of Mubarak’s regime, Christians have become increasingly worried about their freedom of worship and belief.

During Sunday’s funeral service at the St. Mark Cathedral, mourners chanted against Morsi, calling on him to step down. Witnesses say a street brawl broke out when Coptic activists tried to stop traffic to stage an anti-government march.

A mob, described by witnesses as residents of the area, pelted the Christians with rocks and firebombs and fired birdshot at them, forcing them back into the cathedral complex. The mob outside and the Christians barricaded inside then exchanged rocks and firebombs for hours into the night Sunday.

Many of the Christians denounced what they called a lack of protection for the service. When police did arrive in greater numbers, they fired tear gas and gas canisters landed inside church grounds, causing panic among women and children, while people outside the church cheered.

Some firebombs thrown from near the church landed at a nearby gas station, while witnesses said some in the church lobbed firebombs at the crowd outside.

Police said they have arrested four implicated in the violence, but didn’t provide details. Tawadros was not in the cathedral at the time of the siege.

Morsy implies Jews control the American media

From: The Cable

Last week in Cairo, seven U.S. senators had a highly contentious meeting with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsy during which the Muslim Brotherhood leader implied that he was the victim of an American media run by the Jews.


Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) led a delegation last week to Egypt, Jordan, Israel, and Afghanistan that included Sens. Chris Coons (D-DE), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Kirsten Gilibrand (D-NY). Their stop in Cairo included a 90-minute meeting with Morsy that devolved into an uncomfortable set of exchanges as the senators pressed the Egyptian president to explain his 2010 comments describing Jews as "bloodsuckers who attack Palestinians" as well as "the descendants of apes and pigs."

After the meeting, McCain issued a statement saying that the senators "voiced our strong disapproval of the statement" and that the senators and Morsy "had a constructive discussion on this subject."

Morsy's spokesman issued a statement after the meeting saying that Morsy believed in religious freedom and "the need to distinguish between the Jewish religion, and those who belong to it, and violent actions against defenseless Palestinians."

But inside the meeting, the discussion over Morsy's 2010 remarks was much more heated than either side publicly acknowledged afterwards, according to Coons. Addressing the comments was the first item on the senators' agenda, and the discussion did not go well, he told The Cable in an interview.

"We tried to give President Morsy an opportunity, now that he is the president, to put his comments in a different context because he was claiming that he was taken out of context. On their face they seemed to be very offensive and inappropriate," Coons said. "It was a difficult conversation."

Morsy told the senators that the values of Islam teach respect for Christianity and Judaism, and he asserted repeatedly that he had no negative views about Judaism or the Jewish people, but then followed with a diatribe about Israel and Zionist actions against Palestinians, especially in Gaza.
Then Morsy crossed a line and made a comment that made the senators physically recoil in their chairs in shock, Coons said.

Egyptian Cleric Threatens Egypt's Copts with Genocide

From: Gatestone Institute

"The day Egyptians…feel you are against them, you will be wiped off the face of the Earth." — Dr. Wagdi Goneim

Islamic leaders continue to portray the popular protests against President Morsi and his recently passed Sharia-heavy constitution as products of Egypt's Christians. Recently, Muslim Brotherhood leader Safwat Hegazy said in an open rally, as captured on video:

A message to the church of Egypt, from an Egyptian Muslim: I tell the church — by Allah, and again, by Allah — if you conspire and unite with the remnants [opposition] to bring Morsi down, that will be another matter…. our red line is the legitimacy of Dr. Muhammad Morsi. Whoever splashes water on it, we will splash blood on him."

More recently, Dr. Wagdi Ghoneim — who earlier praised Allah for the death of the late Coptic Pope Shenouda, cursing him to hell and damnation on video — made another video, entitled, "A Notice and Warning to the Crusaders in Egypt," a reference to the nation's Copts, which he began by saying, "You are playing with fire in Egypt, I swear, the first people to be burned by the fire are you [Copts]."

The video was made in the context of the Tahrir protests against Morsi: Islamic leaders, such as Hegazy and Ghoneim, seek to portray the Copts as dominant elements in those protests; according to them, no real Muslim would participate. Ghoneim even went on to say that most of the people at the protests were Copts, "and we know you hid your [wrist] crosses by lowering your sleeves."

Egypt: Sinai's Coptic Christians flee homes, town after militant threats

From: Herald Extra.com

Coptic Christian families have fled their homes in a town in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, fearing for their lives after receiving death threats from suspected Islamic militants, a local priest said Thursday.

Father Youssef Sobhi said that Islamic militants dropped leaflets on the doorsteps of shops owned by Copts in the city of Rafah near the border with Gaza and Israel, ordering them to leave town within 48 hours and making an implicit warning of violence if they failed to do so. Two days later, masked militants on a motorcycle opened fire on one of the shops before speeding off, Sobhi said. No one was hurt in the shooting.

When Christians met Tuesday with the province's top government official, who was recently appointed by Egypt's new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi, the governor promised to facilitate the Copts' move to the nearby city of el-Arish but did not offer to protect the community to ensure that it stayed in Rafah, according to the priest.

"I was shocked at the governor's response," Sobhi said. "This is simply displacement by the government's consent."

An Egyptian intelligence official confirmed that a number of Coptic families had fled Rafah because of a militant threat. Another security official denied the reports and said that no Christians were forced to leave. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to brief the media.

It was not exactly clear how many Christians have left the town, but Sobhi said that the number of Copts in Rafah had dwindled from 14 families to two since the uprising that pushed longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak from power in February 2011.

A first wave left Rafah after the only church in the town, The Holy Family Church, was looted, torched and destroyed in several militant attacks over the past year. The church is built on the site where Christians believe the Holy Family first stopped to rest after crossing into Egypt.

Sobhi was in the first group of Christians to flee, although he returns frequently to Rafah check on his parish.
Mamdouh Nasef, the Coptic shop owner who recently came under attack, said that his Muslim neighbors are urging him to stay and pledging to protect him.

"They can't guard me 24 hours a day, and I fear for my children," Nasef said by telephone. "My children were born here and Muslims here are like my brothers."

Nasef is still in Rafah, but plans to return to his hometown in southern Egypt.

There have been incidents of sectarian violence in Egypt in the past. In July, in the village of Dahshour south of Cairo a Muslim mob torched Christian homes and shops and damaged the local church, forcing many Coptic families to flee the village. The violence was sparked when a personal dispute swelled into violence and a Muslim man died.

In Sinai, the threats against the Christians, who are estimated at around 10 percent of Egypt's population of 85 million, are a symptom of the broader lawlessness that has hit the peninsula since the popular uprising ousted Mubarak. Since then, security has deteriorated across Egypt, particularly in Sinai where heavily armed Islamic groups have exploited the security vacuum to wage attacks on police stations and call for the establishment of an Islamic state.

Militants from Rafah, along with those from the neighboring Gaza Strip who cross into Sinai through an elaborate network of underground tunnels, have also waged cross border attacks into Israel. In one of their most recent strikes, masked militants killed 16 Egyptian soldiers near the border in early August.

Under Mubarak, Christians complained of discrimination from the government, which did little to prevent attacks on the community by hardline Muslims. Many Christians fled to the United States and other Western countries, and tensions have risen since Mubarak's police state has given way to a state of lawlessness.

With the election of the country's first Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, many Christians have grown increasingly concerned about their place in Egypt.

Those worries only deepened after Egyptian Coptic Christians in the United States posted a 14-minute clip entitled "Innocence of Muslims," which denigrates Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, portraying him as a womanizer, a fraud and a child molester. The film has sparked angry protests across the Muslim world as well as attacks on U.S. embassies, including one in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. The wave of protests began in Cairo, where demonstrators breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy.

Also Thursday, an Egyptian court has upheld a six-year jail sentence for a Coptic Christian school teacher convicted of insulting Islam and the country's Islamist president in postings on Facebook.

Egypt's MENA state news agency says a court in the southern province of Sohag agreed with a lower court ruling that found Michelle Bishoy, also known as Bishoy el-Behiri, guilty of blasphemy after posting pictures that were deemed offensive to Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The court also upheld Bishoy's conviction on charges of insulting Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

Thursday's ruling can be appealed.

The case is the second this month in which a Coptic Christian has been detained for posting material considered anti-Islamic on social networking sites.