U.S. Copts Association

By Robeir al-Faris

A textbook used by the first-year students at Cairo University’s faculty of arts is the History of the Arab Islamic State , authored by none other than Mohamed Barakat al-Biali who heads the Islamic History Department at the same faculty.
In 308 large-size pages, the book tackles Islamic history from the Mohammedan [prophetic] mission until the fall of the Umayyad State, with the life of the Prophet Mohamed taking up 123 pages. Given that the book is a history textbook taught in a civil-not a religious-university, one would assume it would stick to historical facts. But this is far from the case; the book brims with material that lies strictly within the domain of faith. Christian students must acknowledge in the examinations that the Torah and the Bible currently in use are misquotations of previous versions that included prophesies of the coming of Mohamed and that have consequently been disfigured by ‘Zionists’, and that the only true religion before God is Islam.
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By Nader Shukry

In the wee hours of dawn last Monday, the police knocked on the door of Bahiya Nagy al-Sissy in the small east-Delta town of Mit Ghamr, woke the family up, and arrested her. Bahiya is a 34-year old Coptic peasant woman, and she was caught in order to serve a three year prison sentence she was handed, together with her 36-year-old sister Shadya, in absentia in 2000 by a criminal court. Bahiya’s and Shadya’s crime: forgery, even though there were no forged documents to indict them in the first place. The two sisters were born Christian, had lived and had married as Christians, and had Christian children. The court, however, considered that they should have been Muslim according to their father’s brief conversion to Islam more than thirty years ago. Shadya and Bahiya had then been children and were ignorant of their father’s conversion, especially that he later reverted to his original Christianity. The story was kept secret by the father, but surfaced in 1996 when Ramadan Hassan Hussein, a forger, was arrested and, among his confessions, related how he had helped Sissy acquire Christian identity papers which were practically almost impossible to obtain once he had reverted to Christianity.

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Social networking sites expose Egyptian government’s inability to prevent its citizens from publicly demonstrating their dissatisfaction.
By Andrew Masloski - Washington, DC

Thirty four years ago, Egypt’s most celebrated author, Naguib Mahfouz, published his novella Karnak Café. Set in Egypt during the late 1960s, it tells the story of a group of young, idealistic students who become acutely aware of the gap between the ideals espoused by Nasser’s pan-Arab socialism and the realities of Egyptian daily life. The students are arrested and intimidated for calling attention to this gap, alternately accused of belonging to the Communist party or the Muslim Brotherhood.
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British peace campaigner held hostage in Iraq in late 2005 helps fund bail for Abu Qatada.
LONDON - A radical Muslim cleric seen as a leading figure in Al-Qaeda is to be released on bail in Britain — but with strict curfew conditions as he fights deportation, London’s Home Office said Thursday.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith voiced disappointment at the decision to grant bail to Abu Qatada, and pledged to “take all steps necessary to protect the public” from the preacher, convicted of terror offences in Jordan.
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Egypt opens ration card system to extra 17 million people to contain growing public discontent.
By Cynthia Johnson - CAIRO

Egypt has opened its ration card system to an extra 17 million people and doubled the amount of rice that card holders receive in an effort to counter the effects of rising food prices.

The global prices of staple foods have risen more than 40 percent in the last year causing shortages, hoarding and riots in many developing countries and prompting the United Nations to warn of malnutrition and social unrest.
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The United States military in Iraq says a man detained in the northern city of Mosul is not in fact the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.

An earlier statement from the Iraqi defence ministry said that al-Masri had been captured.
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‘Mubarak increases salaries by 30% and a few days later you find that prices have gone up by 40%.’
CAIRO - Already stunned by skyrocketing prices, Egyptians voiced despair on Tuesday after the government raised duties on fuel and cigarettes in a bid to pay for a promised public sector wage increase.

“Cigarettes don’t matter - you can live without them. But, for the rest, it’s impossible,” shoe polisher Gamal Ahmed, 42, said in central Cairo.
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Rising food cost has plunged government into crisis with far-reaching social consequences.
By Alain Navarro - CAIRO

As popular anger over rising inflation threatens to boil over, the Egyptian government has opted for a solution that could actually add fuel to the fire - raising both salaries and taxes.

On Monday, the government voted to raise the cost of fuel and tobacco by between 30 and 50 percent, in order to finance a May 1 decision by President Hosni Mubarak to raise public workers’ salaries by 30 percent.
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Analysts say social tensions in Egypt may drive ruling elite to look into other scenarios of Mubarak’s succession.
By Alaa Shahine - CAIRO

Social tensions in Egypt over the past year have eroded overwhelming expectations that Gamal Mubarak will succeed his father President Hosni Mubarak at the helm of the most populous Arab country, analysts say.
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Pope Shenuda III has left for US to have medical treatment after reportedly suffering from kidney pain.
CAIRO - The head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenuda III, has left for the United States for medical treatment, the Coptic Orthodox Lay Council which manages the church’s affairs said.

The 84-year-old patriarch left Cairo late on Monday on an unscheduled trip to Cleveland, Ohio, Dr Tharwat Bassily of the council said, on what he said was a “routine check-up”.
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