U.S. Copts Association

by U.S. Department of State

Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

The National Democratic Party (NDP) has governed the Arab Republic of Egypt, which has a population of approximately 83 million, since the party’s establishment in 1978. The NDP continued to dominate national politics by maintaining an overriding majority in the popularly elected People’s Assembly and the partially elected Shura (Consultative) Council.

 The government derives its governing authority from the 1971 constitution and subsequent amendments. Executive authority resides with the president and the cabinet. In 2005 President Hosni Mubarak won a fifth consecutive six-year term with 88 percent of the vote in the country’s first presidential election, which was marred by low voter turnout, charges of fraud, and government efforts to prevent opposition candidates from participating effectively. The civilian authorities did not always maintain effective control of security forces, which committed numerous serious abuses of human rights.
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by Inspire Magazine   

Muslims in Egypt who change their faith face persecution by the state and rejection from their families, an investigation by Christian organisation Release International has shown.
 A Muslim woman who became a Christian told Release how she was kidnapped by her relatives, who pulled out her fingernails to try to make her renounce her new faith.Mary, not her real name, works secretly to help women like herself -those from a Muslim background, who have chosen to change their religion. She described how some relatives tortured her to try to get her to return to Islam.
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World Vision worker says militants dragged his colleagues into room and executed them.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, March 10 (CDN) - Suspected Islamic militants armed with guns and grenades stormed the offices of a Christian relief and development organization in northwest Pakistan today, killing six aid workers and wounding seven others.
¼br> The gunmen besieged the offices of international humanitarian organization World Vision near Oghi, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) north of Islamabad in Mansehra district of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). Police and World Vision’s regional spokesman said the Pakistani staff members, including two women, were killed after up to 15 gunmen arrived in pick-up trucks and began firing.
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American Muslims are banned from helping U.S. soldiers deployed in Afghanistan, Iraq and other “Muslim lands,” according to a shocking fatwa, or religious decree, recently issued by American-based Islamic jurists.

One of the most respected Islamic law authorities in America has decreed it is “not permissible” for even Muslims who are citizens of America to send food or other aid to American troops serving in those Muslim countries.

The Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America, or AMJA, ruled it is a “sin” to help the U.S. military in its multi-front war on terror. AMJA delivered the ruling through its online “fatwa bank”:

“Q: Is it permissible to participate in taking food to the American and foreign soldiers working in Muslim lands?”

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A human rights organisation in Egypt has accused the interior ministry of manipulating the legal system to target a blogger who exposed police brutality.

The Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said Wael Abbas had been jailed for six months in a case that had already been closed.

A Cairo appeals court cleared him last month of damaging an internet cable.
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The Supreme Council for Culture’s law committee organized a seminar two days ago under the title “The Constitution and the Political Future of Egypt,” held at Cairo University’s law faculty. A considerable number of legal experts and political scientists from various schools of thought participated.

The discussions revealed that the participants agreed more than they disagreed. Despite the different political affiliations, the participants saw how much common ground they shared.

There seemed to be some sort of consensus particularly on the following two points:
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AFP

Washington–US authorities charged an American woman known as “JihadJane” with recruiting jihadist fighters via the Internet and conspiring to kill an unnamed individual in Sweden.

The Justice Department unsealed the indictment Tuesday against Colleen LaRose, who was arrested in October 2009, hours after Irish police arrested seven people accused of plotting to kill a Swedish cartoonist.

LaRose faces charges of “conspiracy to provide material support to terrorists, conspiracy to kill in a foreign country, making false statements to a government official and attempted identity theft,” the indictment said.
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Written by Cairo institute for human rights studies, CIHRS   

(8 March, 2010 - Geneva)   Egypt’s use of the Emergency Law to justify arbitrary detention and the use of exceptional  courts  was examined before the UN Human Rights Council today in a ground-breaking report presented by Martin Scheinin, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism. 

The report is the first issued by the main human rights body of the United Nations that deals exclusively with the human rights situation in Egypt.
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Egypt’s Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi to be buried in Saudi’s Al-Baqie cemetery.
CAIRO - Sunni Islam’s top cleric Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi died on Wednesday in Saudi Arabia of a heart attack suffered while boarding a plane, state media said.

Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar — Sunni Islam’s highest seat of learning — was in Riyadh to attend the King Faisal awards ceremony, the official MENA news agency said.

Tantawi, 81, was boarding a plane early Wednesday morning when he suffered severe pain and fell on the stairs, Egyptian television said.
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Far-right Dutch MP Geert Wilders provoked angry scenes outside Parliament yesterday after claiming that Islamism and democracy are ‘incompatible’.Mr Wilders was visiting London to show his anti-Islamic film Fitna at the House of Lords.

About 200 members of the English Defence League marching in support had to be kept apart from anti-fascist demonstrators chanting ‘Nazi scum, off our streets’ by lines of police.

EDL members, some of them carrying English flags, chanted back: ‘No surrender to the Taliban.’About 50 arrests were made, mostly those taking part in the protest organised by Unite Against Fascism, a police spokesman said.
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by Joseph Mayton   

CAIRO: The Egyptian government has denied all observations made by the United Nations Human Rights Council report, local NGOs have reported. The report by Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism Martin Scheinin says that Egypt’s use of the Emergency Law to justify arbitrary detention and the use of exceptional courts was examined today.

The report is the first of its kind on Egypt that looks specifically into the human rights situation in the country.
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Christian volunteers and foster parents at a Moroccan orphanage were forced to abandon dozens of children on Monday after they were accused of proselytizing.

Moroccan authorities raided Village of Hope and said they were expelling the 20 workers and parents. The 33 children who were being cared for cried out “hysterically” for their foster parents as they were left behind.

“Watching the children be told by their parents that they had to leave, that they would maybe never see them again, is the most painful thing I have ever witnessed,” said Chris Broadbent of VoH.
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(AINA) — Fear has gripped the inhabitants of the upper Egyptian village of Sheikh Telada in Samalout, 250 kilometers south of Cairo, as they anticipate collective punishment against them by the village Muslims, in the wake of two sectarian incidents which took place in the village during February. They fear their fate would be similar to that of Farshout, Nag Hamadi and Bahgoura, where Muslims destroyed, burnt and looted Coptic homes and properties prompted by incidents provoked by Muslims against only one Copt.State security forces have forced the Coptic villagers to remain indoors, and place a news blackout on the village. The presence of state security in the area is viewed with suspicion. Activist Mariam Ragy of the advocacy group Katibatibia sees in their presence “a way to keep Copts prisoners in their own homes and not for their own protection.” Rafaat Samir of the Egyptian Union Human Rights Organization sees in it a slow death for the Coptic villagers. “Is the state security incapable of protecting the Copts so as to force them to remain indoors and abandon their work and schools?” asks Coptic activist Wagih Yacoub. “Is security so powerless every time the Copts are placed under siege by a mob imposing collective punishment on all village Copts?”
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Before the rise of Islam, the Middle East had a wide range of religions and cultures. So much so that it is difficult to imagine the world today without the ideas and beliefs that emerged from there. Today however the Middle East has one dominant religion and one nationality. While there may be numerous countries, they all compromise an Arab Muslim Empire that extends from North Africa to the Gulf. An Empire that with the exception of Israel and Iran consists of one race and one religion, with all others either exterminated or subjugated as second class citizens.

IslamNoDiversity1That Empire was built through the ideology of Islam, that provided a manifest destiny to the quarreling Arab tribes who had already begun to overrun the region. Islam began by giving Mohammed and his followers the right to loot and enslave anyone who did not obey them, and ended by turning his cult into a fanatical worldwide movement bent on doing what they had done to theMiddle East… to the entire world.
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Beirut (AsiaNews) — On February 20 last, the University of Italian Switzerland, located in Lugano, organized an international meeting on the situation of Muslim women. They had invited a certain Dr Huda Himmat as chair of the debate, who developed the following title: “Submissive … to whom?! Muslim women speak for themselves”.

Who is Huda Himmat? She is a freelance entrepreneur, has a Masters in International Law from the University of London, and until recently was the vice-president of FEMYSO (Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organizations) whose headquarters is in Brussels. She is the daughter of Ali Ghaleb Himmat, who was born in Damascus in 1938, a naturalized Italian since 1990 and resident in Campione d’Italia. He is co-director of Taqwa Bank, the Bank of the Muslim Brotherhood and head of Islamic Gesellschaft in Deutschland, founded by Sa’id Ramadan, the father of Tareq and Hani Ramadan. Huda Himmat grew up in Campione d’Italia, and for some months, is a spokesman of the “Islamic Community of Ticino”.
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