Egyptian Activists: Our Religion Is None Of Your Business

Since Egypt’s revolution began, tensions among Egypt’s Muslims and Christians have only increased. Earlier this month, it once again turned deadly. Tit-for-tat killings left three Muslims and at least six Christians dead.

That and other religious violence is prompting a public debate about religious identity in Egypt. One group of young Egyptians wants to remove religious labels from national ID cards.

‘Where The Trouble Starts’

Aalam Wassef, one of those advocates, will gladly tell you he’s a video artist, a musician and a publisher. When it comes to his religion, though, he says it’s none of your business.

That’s the motto of his new campaign, too. Wassef, along with two other Egyptians, is calling on others to cover up their religion on their national ID card and start identifying as human first. They’re spreading the word on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

One of their videos plays images of a particularly bloody day for Christians last year, when the military — in power at the time — drove over Christian protesters, and state television called on “honorable” Muslims to come out and defend the troops from the Christians. Twenty-seven people were dead by the end of that day.

The lyrics sung to these images are just as chilling: “The racist republic of Egypt, the sectarian republic of Egypt. It’s ingrained on your ID, and this is where the trouble starts.”

“Egypt has a long history of sectarian violence and sectarian issues, which have always been covered up with this narrative of national unity,” Wassef says. “And so it’s a big lie, actually, because there’s a lot of embedded discrimination in the society.”

FULL ARTICLE FROM NPR 

Christian faith is source of Catholic priest’s passion for Islam

By James Martone
Catholic News Service

CAIRO (CNS) — On a recent afternoon in Cairo, Comboni Father Giuseppe Scattolin was delving into 13th-century Sufi poems at his desk in the single room he inhabits, on an upper floor of a building that also houses an Arabic language school and its related administrative offices.

The ancient odes he studied were written by Sufi Arab poet Umar Ibn al-Farid, who lived in Egypt eight centuries ago, leaving behind a trove of verse in Cairo when he died there in 1235.

They are little known in the Arab and Muslim world and even less so in the Christian West. Bringing such Muslim texts to a wider audience is not only Father Scattolin’s passion, but his duty as a Christian, he said from behind his open laptop and piles of books in Arabic, French, Italian and English.

“What does it mean to be Christian? To know the other! What is the identity of Christ … to put on those stupid garments of the cardinals? What does St. Paul say of Christ? ‘He emptied himself,’” Father Scattolin told Catholic News Service.

And so “emptying” himself is what the missionary has been doing for almost four decades now, in the form of numerous publications and studies, in multiple languages, on Islam’s different literatures and schools, and through dialogue and other interfaith activities with Muslims, aimed at furthering understanding among Muslim and Christian communities.

FULL ARTICLE FROM CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE 

Five Egyptians killed in clashes between Christians, Muslims

By Ulf Laessing and Omar Fahmy, Reuters

Five Egyptians were killed and eight wounded in clashes between Christians and Muslims in a town near Cairo, security sources said on Saturday, in the latest sectarian violence in the most populous Arab state.

Christian-Muslim confrontations have increased in Muslim-majority Egypt since the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak in 2011 gave freer rein to hardline Islamists repressed under his rule.
Four Christians and one Muslim were killed when members of both communities started shooting at each other in Khusus outside the Egyptian capital, the sources said.

State news agency MENA put the death toll at four.

The violence broke out late on Friday when a group of Christian children were drawing on a wall of a Muslim religious institute, the security sources said. No more details were immediately available.

FULL ARTICLE FROM NBC NEWS

Attack on Christians in Egypt Comes After a Pledge

CAIRO — Police officers firing tear gas joined with a rock-throwing crowd fighting a group of Christian mourners Sunday in a battle that escalated into an attack on Egypt’s main Coptic Christian Cathedral that lasted for hours.

It was the third day of an outburst of sectarian violence that is testing the pledges of Egypt’s Islamist president to protect the country’s Christian minority. By nightfall, at least one person had died from the day’s clashes, bringing the weekend’s death toll to six.

Later Sunday, President Mohamed Morsi called the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, to reassure him. “I consider any aggression against the cathedral an aggression against me personally,” Mr. Morsi said, according to state media.

The president ordered an investigation of the violence and instructed security forces “to protect the citizens inside the Cathedral,” state media reported, and he pledged to protect both Muslims and Christians.

The violence began Friday when a sectarian dispute in the town of Khusus outside Cairo escalated into a gunfight that killed four Christians and a Muslim — the first major episode of deadly sectarian violence since Mr. Morsi’s election last year. Hundreds of Christians and sympathetic Muslims gathered at the cathedral Sunday for the four Christians’ funeral, chanting for the removal from power of Mr. Morsi and his Islamist allies.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES 

In run-up to parliament polls, Egypt’s Christians remain disaffected

Despite president’s decision to bring date for legislative polls forward so as not to conflict with Easter holiday, Egypt’s Coptic Christians still appear to harbour resentment

“We’re told it’s a good thing that they decided to change the date of parliamentary elections to avoid their falling on the Easter holidays,” said Nabil, a Coptic-Christian silversmith in Cairo’s Heliopolis district. “I was really dismayed by the original date, but – let’s face it – these aren’t the easiest times for Christians.”

Speaking shortly after Egypt’s presidency changed the electoral timetable – which had initially failed to take into account Coptic Easter celebrations – Nabil said: “It’s not just the Muslim Brotherhood [the group from which President Mohamed Morsi hails]; the state never really paid much attention to Easter under [ousted president Hosni] Mubarak, too.”

He added: “The Muslims don’t recognise Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and as such Easter never meant much to the state.”

On Sunday evening, the presidency brought the date for parliamentary polls forward – from 27/28 April to 22/23 April – “in compliance with the demands of Coptic members of the Shura Council,” the upper house of Egypt’s parliament, which is currently endowed with legislative powers.

FULL ARTICLE FROM AL AHRAM 

Egypt detains Islamic preacher for insulting Christianity

Egypt’s state prosecutor ordered on Sunday an extremist Islamic preacher detained for questioning on suspicion of insulting religion after a complaint from a Christian activist, a judicial source said.

The preacher Ahmed Abdullah, known as Abu Islam, is already on trial for tearing up a bible during a protest outside the American embassy in Cairo in September over a short film made in the United States that insulted the Prophet Mohammed.

The latest probe came after a complaint filed by Coptic Christian activist Nagib Gibrail who accused Abu Islam of insulting Christians on a television show.

Egyptian law forbids insults against religion, allowing police in the past to arrest Shiite Muslims and Christians for alleged slights against Islam.

A court last month upheld death sentences for seven Egyptian Coptic Christians who live in the United States and were accused of producing “Innocence of Muslims,” a movie that insulted the Prophet Mohammed.

The movie triggered outrage across the Muslim world when it surfaced last September.

FULL ARTICLE FROM THE RAW STORY 

Egypt blocks YouTube over anti-Islam film

A Cairo court has ordered the government to block access to the video-sharing website YouTube for a month for carrying an anti-Islam film that caused deadly riots across the world.

Judge Hassouna Tawfiq ordered on Saturday Youtube’s suspension in the country over the film, which he described as “offensive to Islam and the Prophet (Muhammad)”.

Tawfiq made the ruling in the Egyptian capital where the first protests against the film erupted last September before spreading to more than 20 countries, leading to the deaths of more than 50 people.

YouTube’s parent company, Google, declined requests to remove the video from the website last year, but restricted access to it in certain countries, including Egypt, Libya and Indonesia, because it says the video broke laws in those countries.

At the height of the protests in September, YouTube was ordered blocked in several countries, including Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah issued an order blocking all websites with access to the anti-Islam film in the kingdom.

Egyptian Muslims and Christians Take to the Streets to Protest Sexual Harrassment

15 Years in Jail: Egyptian family charged for attempting to restore Christian names

An Egyptian mother and her seven children have been given lengthy jail sentences for illegally changing their names on official documents. The family wanted to use their Christian names again after a conversion following their Muslim father’s death.

Nadia Ali Mohamed was born Christian but converted to Islam when she married her husband Mustafa Mohamed Abdel-Wahab. When he died in 1991, she wanted to go back to being a Christian, and pushed her seven children to convert.

In 2004, after the family had converted back to Christianity, they replaced their Muslim names on their identity cards with their Christian names. They had also moved to a different city of residence, which was changed on the documents as well.

Two years later, one of Mohamed’s sons was arrested by police at the information Center of Beni Suef, a town about 115 kilometers south of Cairo, where they were living at that time. Officials suspected that the boy’s documents had been forged.

The boy confessed his conversion to Christianity, and said that the subsequent name changes in the documents were at the behest of his mother. When the police passed the case on, judges decided to bring charges against the mother and all of her children, as well as the seven clerks from the registration office who had changed the family’s documents

FULL ARTICLE FROM RT.COM

Egypt’s Top Religious Adviser: ‘Islam Will Have a Place in Egypt’s Democracy’

Egypt’s top religious adviser recently urged the importance of “inter-religious harmony” as the country “continues to pass through a sensitive period of transition,” adding that he believes the Islamic religion does have a place in Egypt’s democracy.

“Muslims and Christians alike are encouraged to transform sentiments of solidarity into true unity for the sake of the welfare of Egypt, and not in the interests of individual advancement or sectarian gain,” Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, senior adviser for Islamic law, wrote in a recent guest column for Reuters.

“This is crucial so that we may leave to future generations a pluralistic, humane culture at the root of which is true faith, a commitment to justice and love between the peoples of this great land,” Gomaa added.

Gomaa went on to address recent statements made by preacher Hisham el-Ashry, who called for the implementation of “anti-vice police,” or police who would patrol the country to ensure no civilian was breaking a law of Islam.

“Egypt’s religious scholars have long guided the people to act in ways that conform to their religious commitments, but have never thought this required any type of invasive policing,” Gomaa stated.

FULL ARTICLE FROM CHRISTIANPOST.COM