U.S. Copts Association

Statement by the President on the Celebration of Christmas

admin2 — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 02:18:19 +0000

Michelle and I wish Coptic Orthodox Christians in the United States and around the world a blessed and joyous Christmas. On this special day, we give thanks for the extraordinary contributions that Coptic Christians have made to the United States. I want to reaffirm the commitment of the United States to work for the protection of Christian and other religious minorities around the world. As events in Egypt and elsewhere have illustrated, and as history repeatedly reminds us, freedom of religion, the protection of people of all faiths, and the ability to worship as you choose are critical to a peaceful, inclusive and thriving society. In this Christmas season, we join our Coptic brothers and sisters around the globe in prayers for peace.

Stealth Jihad Makes Inroads in Australia

admin2 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:16:14 +0000

Everywhere all over the Western world it’s the same story: Muslim groups are growing ever more aggressive in demanding concessions to Islamic law and practice, and Western authorities are responding with eager submission, even when such concessions involve restrictions on long-cherished freedoms. And in every instance, the mainstream media focuses public attention upon those who are determined to resist the advance of Islamic law, as if those standing up for freedom were the problem, not those trying to destroy it.

I’ve just completed a two-week speaking tour of Australia, hosted by the Q Society, an Australian human rights group. While there, I heard the Q Society’s Vickie Jansen report on the situation on the ground in Australia: “La Trobe University has its Muslim-only toilets and prayer rooms. The group Aussie Muslims is campaigning for exclusively Muslim prayer rooms in a western Australia hospital on the basis that they need to avoid the idolatry that may occur if they share. Our public schools are adapting to a Muslim Perspectives curriculum project in which, among many other things, not just female-only swimming is recommended for our Muslim students, but exclusively Muslim-only swimming (these are all sounding much like apartheid practices). Some public schools are catering to diversity by ensuring truckshops [cafeterias] are exclusively halal.”

This coincides with similar initiatives in the U.S., where (until public attention compelled them to take it down) the Muslim Brotherhood group known as the Muslim Students Association’s website featured a “Muslim Accommodations Task Force” page. It included PDFs of pamphlets titled “How to Achieve Islamic Holidays on Campus,” “How to Establish a Prayer Room on Campus” and “How to Achieve Halal Food on Campus.”

The demands of Muslim groups all over the Western world for separate facilities are in the service of a supremacist ideology that emanates from the Koranic assertions that Muslims are the “best of people” (3:110), while unbelievers are the “vilest of created beings” (98:6). Unbelievers are unclean (9:28)–which leads to the conclusion that Muslims should avoid contact with them. Every capitulation made to demands for Muslim accommodation only feeds these supremacist notions, working directly against the principles of equal justice and equal rights for all.

Nevertheless, Left-leaning Western politicians are eager to accommodate these demands. While I was in Australia, the Deputy Premier of Queensland, Andrew Fraser, denounced the Q Society for fliers protesting against the sale of halal meat that was not labeled as such, and the introduction of misleading and whitewashed material about Islam into Australian schools. “Modern Australia has a proud multicultural heritage,” thundered Fraser. “This kind of prejudicial rubbish has no place anywhere, let alone here in Queensland.”

So in Fraser’s view, to advance an apartheid-like system that institutionalizes the oppression of women and non-Muslims serves Australia’s “proud multicultural heritage,” but to resist that system in the name of freedom and equality of rights for all is “prejudicial rubbish.”

That is precisely the position that Islamic supremacist groups take in the U.S. and Australia–and Fraser, like so many opportunist politicians stateside, eagerly parrots their line. Officials in Australia’s Victoria state on Sunday urged Muslims to be more energetic in reporting alleged “anti-Muslim” hate crimes–for such crimes, even the spurious ones that Islamic supremacist groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have not infrequently advanced, are the engine powering the entire Islamic grievance industry. They provide the justification for the energetic accommodation of Islamic customs and practices even when they contradict the law of the land. These accommodations are based on the contention, which all available evidence contradicts, that hate crimes against Muslims are common and growing, and therefore Muslims require special consideration and protection.

In reality, such demands are part of the stealth jihad that endeavors to advance Islamic law in Western countries through nonviolent means–and what better way to accomplish this than by playing on the West’s fears of racism and bigotry to win concessions as a victimized group? The irony here is that the Australian and American politicians who allow themselves to be used in this way are abetting the advance of a system that is far more repressive and ridden with inequalities than anything in any modern Western country. But they will probably only realize this when they themselves fall victim to that system, as–if it continues to advance–they certainly will.

By Robert Spencer
Human Events

Egypt’s Sham Election

admin2 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:14:00 +0000

According to Egypt’s elections committee, the Muslim Brotherhood won 37 percent of the vote of the first round of voting in Egypt, and the Salafis, who promote a yet more extreme Islamist program, won 24 percent, giving them together a jaw-dropping 61 percent of the vote.

This stunning result prompts two questions: Is this a legitimate or rigged outcome? Are Islamists about to dominate Egypt?

Legitimate or rigged? No one took seriously Soviet elections with their inevitable 99 percent returns for the Communists, and, while the process and outcome of the Egyptian elections are less blatant, they deserve similar skepticism. The game is more subtle, but it’s still a game, and here is how it’s played:

The Muslim Brotherhood (founded in 1928) and the military dictatorship (ruling Egypt since 1952) have a parallel ideology and a long history that makes them simultaneously rivals and allies. Over the decades, they off-and-on cooperated in an autocratic system bound by Islamic law (Sharia) and in oppressing liberal, secular elements.

In this spirit, Anwar El-Sadat, Hosni Mubarak, and now Mohamed Tantawi tactically empowered Islamists as a foil to gain Western support, arms, and money. For example, when George W. Bush pressured Mubarak to permit more political participation, the latter responded by having 88 Muslim Brotherhood members elected to parliament, thereby warning Washington that democracy means an Islamist takeover. The apparent weakness of non-Islamists scared the West from further insisting on a transition to political participation. But a close look at the 2005 elections finds that the regime helped the Islamists gain its 20 percent of the seats.

Today, Tantawi and his Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) still play this tired old game. Note the various methods:

- Reports of electoral fraud have emerged, for example in Helwan.

- SCAF has, according to the prominent Islamist Safwat Hijazi, offered a “deal” to the Islamists that it would share power with them on condition that they turn a blind eye to its corruption.

- The military has subsidized both the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafi political parties during the recent parliamentary elections. Marc Ginsburg reports on a SCAF slush fund totaling millions of dollars in “the form of ‘walk around’ money, clothing and food giveaways” that enabled hundreds of local chapters of Islamist political organizations to buy votes. Ginsburg tells of a SCAF emissary who “met secretly with representatives of the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist oriented political movements last April to establish local political ‘action committee’ bank accounts to funnel an underground supply chain of financial and commodity support.”

Other Middle Eastern dictators, such as the Yemeni president and Palestinian Authority chairman, also play this double game, pretending to be anti-Islamist moderates and Western allies while, in fact, being toughs who cooperate with Islamists and repress true moderates. Even anti-Western tyrants like Assad of Syria and Qaddafi of Libya have played the same opportunistic game in times of need, portraying massive uprisings against them as Islamist movements. (Recall how Qaddafi blamed the Libyan insurrection on al-Qaeda’s lacing teenagers’ coffee with hallucinatory pills.)

If the military colludes with Islamists to remain in power, obviously it, not the Islamist faction, retains ultimate control. This is the key point that conventional analysts miss: The recent election results allow the military to keep power. As aspiring Egyptian politician Mohamed ElBaradei correctly notes, “It is all in the hands of SCAF right now.”

True, if Islamists control the parliament (not a sure thing; the military could yet decide to reduce their percentage in future rounds of an unusually complex voting procedure open to abuse), they acquire certain privileges and move the country further toward sharia law — as far, anyway, as SCAF permits. This maintains the long-term trend of Islamization underway since the military seized power in 1952.

What about Western policy? First, press SCAF to build the civil society that must precede real democracy, so that the modern and moderate civilians in Egypt have a chance to express themselves.

Second, instantly cease all economic aid to Cairo. It is unacceptable that Western taxpayers fund, even indirectly, Egypt’s Islamization. Resume funding only when the government allows secular Muslims, liberals, and Copts, among others, freely to express and organize themselves.

Third, oppose both the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis. Less extreme or more, Islamists of every description are our worst enemies.

By Daniel Pipes & Cynthia Farahat
National Review Online

Assyrian Group Condemns Attacks on Assyrians By Kurdish Muslims

admin2 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:12:32 +0000

In a direct attempt to uproot the Assyrian people from their ancestral lands, incited mobs targeted their businesses, following directives delivered by religious leaders during Friday prayer gatherings. Millions of dollars were looted, damaged and displaced from Assyrian businesses in Zakho, Simele, and Nohadra (Dohuk).

The Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) strongly condemns these barbarous acts against the indigenous Assyrians of Iraq and demands that the government of Iraq and the KRG authorities hold responsible and bring to swift and public justice those who instigated these hate crimes and their delivering thugs. We demand that Iraq’s federal and local authorities show their disdain for these acts by quickly compensating the business owners and the Assyrian communities. Moreover, we expect that Iraq’s federal government establish fundamental measures to ensure that these types of heinous crimes are not committed against any ethnic or religious group anywhere in Iraq.

The Assyrian Universal Alliance urges the government of Iraq to facilitate the establishment of the Nineveh Plains Province as a self-governed and protected “Safe Haven” for our people with the opportunity for other Iraqi ethnic and religious minorities to live there freely. We appeal to the regional and progressive governments worldwide and the United Nations to support this request.

Assyrian Universal Alliance

Egypt’s Descent

admin2 — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:10:42 +0000

I’ve been alarmed by the latest polls. No, not from Iowa and New Hampshire, although they’re unnerving enough. It’s the polls from Egypt. Foreign policy has not played a part in the U.S. presidential campaign, mainly because we’re so broke that the electorate seems minded to take the view that if government is going to throw trillions of dollars down the toilet they’d rather it was an Al Gore–compliant Kohler model in Des Moines or Poughkeepsie than an outhouse in Waziristan. Alas, reality does not arrange its affairs quite so neatly, and the world that is arising in the second decade of the 21st century is increasingly inimical to American interests, and likely to prove even more expensive to boot.

In that sense, Egypt is instructive. Even in the giddy live–from–Tahrir Square heyday of the “Arab Spring” and “Facebook Revolution,” I was something of a skeptic. Back in February, I chanced to be on Fox News with Megyn Kelly within an hour or so of Mubarak’s resignation. Over on CNN, Anderson Cooper was interviewing telegenic youthful idealists cooing about the flowering of a new democratic Egypt. Back on Fox, sourpuss Steyn was telling Megyn that this was “the unraveling of the American Middle East” and the emergence of a post-Western order in the region. In those days, I was so much of a pessimist I thought that in any election the Muslim Brotherhood would get a third of the votes and be the largest party in parliament. By the time the actual first results came through last week, the Brothers had racked up 40 percent of the vote — in Cairo and Alexandria, the big cities wherein, insofar as they exist, the secular Facebooking Anderson Cooper types reside. In second place were their principal rivals, the Nour party, with up to 15 percent of the ballots. “Nour” translates into English as “the Even More Muslim Brotherhood.” As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, if that’s how the urban sophisticates vote, wait till you see the upcountry results. By the time the rural vote emerges from the Nile Delta and Sinai early next month, the hard-core Islamists will be sitting pretty. In the so-called Facebook Revolution, two-thirds of the Arab world’s largest nation is voting for the hard, cruel, bigoted, misogynistic song of sharia.

The short 90-year history of independent Egypt is that it got worse. Mubarak’s Egypt was worse than King Farouk’s Egypt, and what follows from last week’s vote will be worse still. If you’re a Westernized urban woman, a Coptic Christian, or an Israeli diplomat with the goons pounding the doors of your embassy, you already know that. The Kingdom of Egypt in the three decades before the 1952 coup was flawed and ramshackle and corrupt, but it was closer to a free-ish pluralist society than anything in the years since. In 1923, its finance minister was a man called Joseph Cattaui, a member of parliament, and a Jew. Couldn’t happen today. Mr. Cattaui’s grandson wrote to me recently from France, where the family now lives. In the unlikely event the forthcoming Muslim Brotherhood government wish to appoint a Jew as finance minister, there are very few left available. Indeed, Jews are so thin on the ground that those youthful idealists in Tahrir Square looking for Jews to club to a pulp have been forced to make do with sexually assaulting hapless gentiles like the CBS News reporter Lara Logan. It doesn’t fit the narrative, so even Miss Logan’s network colleagues preferred to look away. We have got used to the fact that Egypt is now a land without Jews. Soon it will be a land without Copts. We’ll get used to that, too.

Since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact two decades ago we have lived in a supposedly “unipolar” world. Yet somehow it doesn’t seem like that, does it? The term “Facebook Revolution” presumes that technology marches in the cause of modernity. But in Khartoum a few years ago a citywide panic that shaking hands with infidels caused your penis to vanish was spread by text messaging. In London, young Muslim men used their cellphones to share Islamist snuff videos of Westerners being beheaded in Iraq. In les banlieues of France, satellite TV and the Internet enable third-generation Muslims to lead ever more disassimilated, segregated lives, immersed in an electronic pan-Islamic culture, to a degree that would have been impossible for their grandparents. To assume that Western technology in and of itself advances the cause of Western views on liberty or women’s rights or gay rights is delusional.

Consider, for example, the “good” news from Afghanistan. A 19-year-old woman sentenced to twelve years in jail for the heinous crime of being brutally raped by a cousin was graciously released by President Karzai on condition that she marry her rapist. A few weeks ago, you may recall, I mentioned that the last Christian church in the nation had been razed to the ground last year, as the State Department noted in its report on “international” religious freedom. But Afghanistan is not “international” at all. It is an American client state whose repugnant leader is kept alive only by the protection of Western arms. Say what you like about Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood but at least their barbarous theocratic tyranny doesn’t require vast numbers of NATO troops to build it.

I am not a Ron Paul isolationist. The U.S. has two reasonably benign neighbors, and the result is that 50 percent of Mexico’s population has moved north of the border and 100 percent of every bad Canadian idea from multiculturalism to government health care has moved south of the border. So much for Fortress America. The idea of a 19th-century isolationist republic holding the entire planet at bay is absurd. Indeed, even in the real 19th century, it was only possible because global order was maintained by the Royal Navy and Pax Britannica. If Ron Paul gets his way, who’s going to pick up the slack for global order this time?

Nevertheless, my friends on the right currently fretting about potentially drastic cuts at the Pentagon need to look at that poor 19-year-old woman’s wedding to her cousin rapist and ponder what it represents: In Afghanistan, the problem is not that we have spent insufficient money but that so much of it has been entirely wasted. History will be devastating in its indictment of us for our squandering of the “unipolar” moment. During those two decades, a China flush with American dollars has gobbled up global resources, a reassertive Islam has used American military protection to advance its theocratic ambitions, the mullahs in Tehran are going nuclear knowing we lack the will to stop them, and even Russia is back in the game of geopolitical mischief-making. We are responsible for 43 percent of the planet’s military spending. But if you spend on that scale without any strategic clarity or hardheaded calculation of your national interest it is ultimately as decadent and useless as throwing money at Solyndra or Obamacare or any of the other domestic follies. A post-prosperity America will mean perforce a shrunken presence on the global stage. And we will not like the world we leave behind.

By Mark Steyn
National Review Online

Islamists Fare Well in First Round of Egypt’s Elections

admin2 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:17:55 +0000

Cairo (CNN) — Islamist parties made dramatic advances in Egypt’s parliamentary elections during the first round of voting for lawmakers this week, a result reflecting a growing embrace of religious-oriented sentiment across turbulent North Africa.

“We accept the results of the elections in any case because it’s the will of the people, and our rivals should embrace it too because this is the true democracy we fought for and we wish our liberal brothers better results in the next two rounds,” Mahmoud Ghozlan, spokesman of the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood, whose Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) won 40% of the vote.

Al Noor Salafi Movement, a hard-line Muslim group, had the second-highest total, 20%, in the first round of voting for the lower house of parliament, according to Yousri Abdel Kareem, head of the executive office of the Higher Judicial Election Council.

In the first election after the toppling of President Hosni Mubarak, the tallies reflected similar results in Morocco and Tunisia. Moderate Islamists in those North African nations prevailed in recent elections amid the wave of political discontent across the Arabic-speaking world this year.

Secularists weren’t surprised at the result but they were stunned that some longtime secular groups performed poorly.

“The strong showing of the Islamists should serve to mobilize more support for secular candidate,” said Mohamed Ghoneim, speaking for the liberal Egyptian Bloc that garnered 15% of the vote. “We need to build on that and we are going for it.”

Ghoneim said voters were turned off by some secular candidates because they come from Mubarak’s old National Democratic Party.

The Muslim Brotherhood is entrenched in mainstream Egyptian politics. Most are highly educated — doctors, lawyers, engineers, professors and businessmen — and come from solidly middle-class backgrounds.

Al Noor Salafi is the first Salafist group to register as a political party in Egypt. Salafis are conservative, religious purists and have been accused of stoking sectarian strife against Egypt’s Christian minority and of plotting to undermine the country’s fledgling democracy.

This week’s voting in Egypt marked the initial part of a complex, multi-step process that will first pick members of the lower house of parliament.

Voters had to cast three votes, two for independent candidates and one for a party or coalition. Four independent candidates won but runoff elections for those who didn’t win clear majorities will be held Monday and Tuesday. One of the four is Amr Hamzawy, once a research director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a spokesman of the “Board of Wise Men,” which worked to foster negotiations between the government and protesters.

Presidential elections will be held by June, according to the military, which has rulied the country since Mubarak’s fall.

“The success of Islamist parties will make it much more difficult, if not impossible, for the Egyptian military to prolong its political control and to recreate a political system along the lines of Hosni Mubarak, as it appeared intent on doing.” Marina Ottaway, a senior associate of Carnegie’s Middle East program, said in an analysis on Friday.

Voter turnout was initially reported by the country’s election board at 62%, but the board said it would recalculate the figure after reporters raised questions about the number of registered voters used in the calculation, suggesting the true figure was lower.

Abdel Moez Ibrahim, head of the judicial election committee said problems arose during the polling that will be addressed in the next round of voting. They include campaigning on the days of the elections, long lines and the late arrival of a limited number of ballots. Ibrahim said sending vehicles to pick up judges and handing out paper ballots the night before elections are among solutions to problems.

Ibrahim said the process has been triumphant for Egyptian democracy.

“The winner of these elections is the Egyptian people,” he said.

As for the future, the Carnegie analysis says “the response of the military and secular parties, and the political acumen of the FJP” will determine whether the future government will be “dominated by Islamists, including hard-line Salafis, or a less threatening alliance of the FJP and secular parties,” Ottaway said.

By Mohamed Fahmy Fadel

CNN’s Joe Sterling contributed to this report.

Egypt’s Christians Worried By Islamist Surge

admin2 — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:16:18 +0000

CAIRO (AFP) — Egyptian Copts, the Middle East’s biggest Christian community, headed to mass on Sunday fearful of what an Islamist landslide in the country’s election will mean for their community.

In churches across the capital, the community gathered for its first Sunday service since the opening stage of the country’s premier parliamentary elections since the toppling of autocrat Hosni Mubarak in February.

Results on Sunday showed that 65 percent of voters chose Islamist parties, with one in four opting for hardline Salafist candidates whose strict interpretation of Islam is dominant in Saudi Arabia.

At the St Peter’s church in the shadow of the city’s main cathedral in the Abbassiya district of Cairo, the congregation filed out after a two-hour service past posters for Salafi candidates pasted on nearby lampposts.

“All Coptics are very worried. We didn’t expect this,” said Girgi Szaki, a 42-year-old engineer with two children. “We wanted some liberals to be elected. In the other stages, maybe there’ll be a change.”

The results are for only the first of three phases of voting for a new lower house of parliament, with the rest of the country set to head to the ballot box later this month and in January.

Other Copts expressed similar hopes for the coming stages, while many said the results were fixed — a legacy of cynicism perhaps from the era of Mubarak whose abuses during elections sustained his 30-year regime.

Mubarak banned Islamist parties and targeted fundamentalist groups, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood which emerged as the leading power in the results.

“A lot of Christians are now saying that the Mubarak era was better than now, but I don’t agree,” Eman Seif, a 53-year-old doctor, told AFP as she left.

“We were surprised but we are still optimistic. This is democracy now and this is the real opinion of Egyptians. The secular section is still fighting.”

She expressed dismay, however, that relations between Christians and Muslims were tense, which she blamed on the increasing import of the ultra-conservative Salafi strain of Islam from the Gulf.

A pharmacist in her 40s, who asked not to be named because it was “dangerous” to speak on the subject, repeated the widely expressed fear that the Islamists wanted to turn Egypt into Afghanistan.

“All women will be veiled. They will wreck our tourism industry,” she said.

George Wiza, a 44-year-old electrical engineer, called it a “black day.”

Few made a distinction between the Salafi party al-Nur, which won 24.36 percent of the votes cast, and the more moderate Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) of the Muslim Brotherhood which emerged with 36.62 percent.

The FJP has been at pains throughout campaigning to stress it is a moderate, centrist form of political Islam, committed to multi-party democracy, religious freedom and the application of sharia law in a consensual manner.

The movement appointed a Christian intellectual as vice president of its party in May, and said it had almost 100 Coptic Christians among its founding members.

“Some people are scared,” admitted a priest, dressed in black with a heavy cross around his neck. “They (the Brotherhood) have promised they are our brothers and we are one community. We are waiting to see.”

Copts, estimated to number eight million or one in ten of all Egyptians, already complain of systematic discrimination.

They have also been the target of deadly sectarian attacks, most recently in May in Cairo which led the interim military leaders in charge since Mubarak’s fall to warn that they would deal with religious strife with an “iron hand.”

In October, at least 25 people were killed in the capital when security forces opened fire on a demonstration by Copts who were denouncing an attack on a southern church.

Most Copts adhere to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, headed by Pope Shenuda III, while the others are divided between the Coptic Catholic and various Coptic Protestant churches.

The Copts go back to the dawn of Christianity, at a time when Egypt was integrated into the Roman empire.

Their decline started with the Arab invasions of the seventh century and the progressive Islamisation of the country, which today is largely Sunni Muslim.

By Adam Plowright

Egypt’s Islamist Tsunami

admin2 — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:19:47 +0000

It turns out my colleague Sam Tadros was right on the mark in his prognostication of the first phase of the Egyptian parliamentary elections. On Tuesday, he predicted:

The question is not whether the Islamists will win, but what the size of their victory is going to be. Contrary to the earlier narrative propagated by the Western media, the Islamist victory will not be in the 30–40 percent range. It is quite apparent to anyone that has been paying attention that their victory will be nothing short of a tsunami.

As the New York Times is reporting this morning, in an article headlined, “Islamists Claim Mandate in Early Voting,” preliminary calculations of the results from the first of three phases of voting for the parliament indicate that assorted Islamists have won a whopping 65 percent of the seats that were voted on this week. The Muslim Brotherhood, which the Times labels the “mainstream” Islamist group, appears to have garnered 40 percent, while the “ultraconservative,” Taliban-like Salafis captured 15 percent.

This is only a preliminary analysis of the first round of voting (Sam will have more to say on this once the votes are officially counted and public), and the final results will not be known until January. However, subsequent voting is expected to show even more dire results for non-Islamists. As Sam has already explained, the non-Islamists will perform better in the first stage than they will in the overall results because this phase includes the big cities of Cairo and Alexandria, which include non-traditional populations that are not representative of more rural areas.

Remember the Gallup poll last June finding that “only 15 percent of Egyptians said that they support the Muslim Brotherhood, while more than 60 percent showed no political preference”? Then, the AP opined: “The results appeared to counter a widely held view that the Muslim Brotherhood will be the main winner in [Egypt's] parliamentary elections.”

Well, last summer’s polling was wrong, later Western media predictions doubling the Brotherhood support were also wrong, and now, barring a military crackdown, Egypt is on the trajectory for an Isalmist constitution and Islamist rule.

#more#

What does this mean for individual rights and freedoms? The New York Times’s David D. Kirkpatrick reports:

The Brotherhood has pledged to respect basic individual freedoms while using the influence of the state to nudge the culture in a more traditional direction. But the Salafis often talk openly of laws mandating a shift to Islamic banking, restricting the sale of alcohol, providing special curriculums for boys and girls in public schools, and censoring the content of the arts and entertainment.

Like the pre-vote predictions of the Western media, it too misses the point.

Egypt’s Islamist landslide is likely to result in the attempt to coerce — through lawful and/or extra-judicial punishments — apostasy and blasphemy codes, which protect from criticism anything and anyone claiming to be Islamic, including quite likely criticism of the Islamist parliamentarians and governmental leaders themselves. The late Indonesian president and renowned Islamic scholar Abdurrahman Wahid strenuously opposed such punishments because they “narrow the bounds of acceptable discourse . . . not only about religion, but about vast spheres of life, literature, science and culture in general.” As noted by the 2003 UN Arab Human Development Report, commenting on the fact that more foreign books had been translated by Spain in one recent year than by the entire Arabic-speaking world in the last thousand: “In Arab countries where the political exploitation of religion has intensified, tough punishment for original thinking, especially when it opposes the prevailing powers, intimdates and crushes scholars.” It might have also added journalists, teachers, human-rights activists, and many others.

For example, in an Islamist-controlled Egypt, punishments could be meted out to those who dissent from proposals or de facto efforts to revoke women’s rights or equal citizenship rights for Coptic Christians, the establishment of religious police, the enforcement of sharia, or the screening of political candidates for religious correctness — all real examples from other countries. Based on the survey of contemporary Islamic speech codes I recently completed with Paul Marshall, this list could be virtually endless. Muslim Brotherhood campaign promises aside, the real test of freedom will hinge on the resolve of Egypt’s newly elected leaders to resist attempts from at least some among them to instate a legally based blasphemy regime, in whole or in part, and to curb efforts to impose one outside the law by Islamists willing to use violence. The trend in the Muslim world, based on the fatwas and action steps of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, an international group of 56 member states that claims to speak for Islam, is to push for such codes, not resist them.

The implications of an Islamist mandate is a great deal more far-reaching than would be suggested by today Times article (however drastic the impact of alcohol and entertainment bans would be for the Times’s foreign correspondents). Fundamental individual freedoms of religion and speech and democracy itself are all at risk.

By Nina Shea
National Review Online

Muslim Brotherhood Rising

admin2 — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:21:40 +0000

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party appeared to be a big winner in the first round of parliamentary elections held in Egypt on Monday and Tuesday. Early returns suggest the FJP captured as much as 40% of the vote with a surprisingly strong showingfrom the Salifist al-Nour party. The two Islamist parties together could very well make an absolute majority of 65% of the parliament, which means if voting continues along these lines during the rest of the complex process, it is likely that the first freely elected parliament in Egypt’s history will be run by radical Muslims.

The military congratulated itself on how smoothly the vote went despite apparent blatant electioneering at most polling sites by the Muslim Brotherhood and other parties, which is against the law. It hardly mattered since it was clear that the FJP was going to get a large plurality of the vote simply because it was the only party with any name recognition. As soon as it became apparent that the FJP was going to surpass pre-election expectations, the Muslim Brotherhood turned on its erstwhile allies on the military council, calling for an early transfer of power to civilian authorities.

Also accepting the results, albeit with fear and trepidation, were Egypt’s Coptic Christians who fear that an Islamist government will be even harsher than the current military regime has been.

As for the protestors in Tahrir Square, their credibility suffered a blow as the elections appeared to be conducted in a mostly fair and free manner. The National Democratic Institute, which oversaw the foreign observers who monitored the election, issued a statement praising the vote but suggesting that the blatant violations of election laws regarding campaigning at polling spots be better enforced. And while the young activists who brought down the Mubarak regime earlier in the year urged a boycott of the elections, authorities estimated that up to 70% of eligible voters in the 9 provinces that voted this week turned out to cast ballots. Two more rounds of elections in the other 18 provinces — 9 at a time – will be held in the coming weeks with runoff elections for candidates not receiving 50% of the vote held one week after the initial voting.

The complexity of the voting process played right into the hands of the FJP. Voters had to choose two individual candidates and one party list or their ballot would be invalidated. Because of its many decades of charity work with the Egyptian poor, the Brotherhood had a ready-made base of support which it capitalized on by setting up “information” booths right next to polling stations to help voters — many of whom were illiterate — in choosing who to cast their ballots for. The Associated Press described one such “information” center:

Outside polling stations around the country, Brotherhood activists were set up with laptop computers in booths, helping voters find their district and voter numbers — which they wrote on cards advertising the party’s candidates. Elsewhere, they posted activists outside to wave banners, pass out flyers or simply chat up voters waiting in line.

For the illiterate, there were symbols next to which they could mark their ballot. And the FJP made sure that the voters knew which symbols stood for the Brotherhood candidates.

The confusion over who was running and what the parties stood for didn’t help the largest secular mix of parties, the Egyptian Bloc, which is composed of neo-liberal Free Egyptians; the socialist Gathering party; and the Egyptian Socialist Democrats. The better known but even smaller Wafd party, a Mubarak-era organization of liberals and academics, apparently didn’t have much of a showing either. Dr. Barry Rubin points out that the secularists wasted their energy in protesting military rule rather than organizing, uniting, and getting out the vote. Given the several decade head start in organizing that the Brotherhood enjoyed, they may not have won, but they certainly would have had a better showing and a chance for larger representation at the table when negotiations over forming the new government begin.

Besides patting themselves on the back for conducting the elections on time, the generals were expressing their pleasure at the size of the turnout. Major Gen. Mukhtar al-Mulla, a member of the ruling council, said the vote “responds to all those who were skeptical that elections will take place on time.” He added that the turnout was “unprecedented in the history of the Arab world’s parliamentary life.”

Perhaps the size of the turnout had something to do with the fine of 500 Egyptian pounds — around $85 — that the military will impose on those who did not cast their ballots. In a country where nearly half the people earn less than a dollar a day, the fine may have convinced most of them to make it to the polls. In Alexandria, the Globe and Mail reports that people brought their elderly parents to the polls, standing in line with them so they could avoid paying the fine. “You think any of these candidates can change anything? Of course not. Ask anyone here – wouldn’t see these lines without the fine,” said one voter.

Now that the Brotherhood is on the cusp of seizing power, what is it exactly it wants to do with it? Prior to the vote, the Brotherhood backed the military’s position on the Tahrir Square protestors, withdrawing its supports of the latest demonstrations early on. It made adeal with the military to move up the presidential election from July of 2013 to July of 2012. The Brotherhood also negotiated the electoral process itself and steered clear of suggesting an early return to civilian rule.

But the coming electoral victory appears to have emboldened the Islamists. Despite what FJP leaders say was a “convergence” of interestswith the military in the past, the party is now demanding the right to form a government without interference from the military, and subsequently choose a civilian cabinet. This almost certainly won’t sit well with the military council because it is likely that parliament would want to set up its own process for writing a new constitution — a deadly threat to the military, which has made it clear it will tolerate no scrutiny of its budget, no change in the economic advantages members hold, and will expect to have a strong voice in running the new parliament.

“The Brotherhood wants a strong parliament and the military council wants a weak one. The reason the Brotherhood fought for parliament is because they’re going to use it as an agent of change,” says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar. He adds that the path the FJP has chosen has put it on a collision course with the military.

That change is what has Egypt’s 10 million Coptic Christians so worried. Since Mubarak’s ouster, many violent incidents have taken place pitting extremist Muslims against the small Coptic communities. There have been murders of clergy, church burnings, oppression by local government officials, and just last month, a demonstration by Copts in Cairo that saw the military actually open fire on the demonstrators and run them over with armored personnel carriers. The violence has driven 100,000 Coptic families from the country with more leaving every month.

But the Copts have been in Egypt since the first century AD and most of them have no intention of leaving. Father Ishak, a priest at a Cairo church said, “We picked the Egyptian Bloc because it’s the most liberal group and because they are against religious parties, including the Muslim Brotherhood.” He added, “And if elections are free and fair, it will mean that Copts are more clearly represented and be more active in building a new Egypt.”

The Brotherhood will probably move cautiously in fulfilling its Islamist agenda. The military is still very powerful and is opposed to the idea of Egypt becoming an Islamic state. To protect its position in Egyptian society, it might resort to armed force. This will make the FJP’s job doubly difficult because the party has promised free market reforms that would put a crimp in the military’s control of the economy. Rather than give the military an excuse to kick it out, it is more likely that the FJP will follow the example of the Turkish Justice and Development party that has gradually established control over the courts, the parliament, and finally the military since its victory in 2002.

A new day dawns in Egypt. Elections are a fine and wonderful thing, but elevating the Muslim Brotherhood to power, whose hatred of Israel and whose real agenda is undemocratic and injurious to personal freedom, will undoubtedly usher in a dark age after the dawn, which the Egyptian people will come to bitterly regret.

By Rick Moran
Frontpage Magazine

Thousands of Muslims Attack Christians in Egypt, 2 Killed, Homes and Stores Torched

admin2 — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:26:04 +0000

(AINA) — Thousands of Muslims attacked and besieged Copts in elGhorayzat village, population 80,000, killing two Copts and severely wounding others, as well as looting and torching homes and businesses. A quarrel between a Copt, John Hosni, and Mahmoud Abdel-Nazeer, who later died in hospital, turned into collective punishment of all Copts in the majority Christian village of elGhorayzat, in the Maragha district of Sohag province. Muslims vowed not to bury Abdel-Nazeer until John Hosni is punished. Mr. Hosni fled from the village with his family, “fearing a wholesale massacre of Copts,” reported activist Mariam Ragy.

The events started on Monday, November 28, when John Hosni, a building supplier, had a quarrel with his neighbor, Mahmoud Abdel-Nazeer (48), over some steel rods and cement Mr. Hosni had left in the street to use for erecting a wall around his house. This was perceived by Mr. Abdel-Nazeer as extending the home into the street, which is public property. “Instead of reporting this building transgression to the police or local authorities, Abdel-Nazeer took the matter in his own hands and brought some Salafists and torched the store and the home of the Copt,” said an eyewitness.

In the altercation between the neighbors, Mr. Hosni hit Abdel-Nazeer in the head with a wooden branch, which lead to his death later in hospital.

Angry Muslims murdered two Christian brothers, Kamel Tamer Ibrahim (55) and Kameel Tamer Ibrahim (50), in revenge. The brothers were not a party to the altercation. Kamel Tamer, who was defending his shop from looting, was murdered in front of his wife. His brother was also murdered in front of his wife for defending his home (video of the murdered Copts. WARNING: contains highly graphic content).

Three other Christians, Maher Samir Gota, his wife, and his brother Osama Samir Gota, were severely injured and are in intensive care. They were in their homes when their shop was broken into and looted by Muslims. Maher and his wife were stabbed and Osama received a blow on the head. The ambulance could not go to them to transport them to hospital. He was privately transported by his friends. There were reports of Muslims preventing the fire brigades from reaching the burning homes.

After killing the Copts, Muslims went on a rampage, looting and burning Christian owned homes and businesses.

Despite killing the two Coptic brothers the Muslims insist they have not yet avenged Abdel-Nazeer’s death.

“This is not revenge; this is simply an excuse to kill people because they are Christians, as well as loot their property,” said an eyewitness.

“Security was present in all the streets, and protected the churches, but they did nothing in the face of Muslims killings, looting and torching of Christian property,”, said another eyewitness, who managed to get out of the village “by a miracle,” as he put it, leaving all his belongings and money behind. “We do not know whether we will be able to go back to the village as the Muslims refuse to bury the dead Muslim before killing all Copts in the village.”

He added that Muslims are openly walking the streets carrying firearms and clubs while the police standby and do nothing. The number of police is not enough, there are 500 Muslims for every one policeman.

Copts have been prevented from fleeing the village by Muslims, who have imposed a blockade. Some were able to flee with the aid of some Muslims, who drove them out in a truck, telling the guards at the exit point these people have nothing to do with the ongoing problem.

Christian inhabitants are still afraid to venture into the streets.

Father Lucas Aghapios, pastor of St. George’s Church in alGhorayzat, described the situation in the village today as “cautioned” peace. He said that although the Muslim attack started at 11 AM, security forces turned up late in the evening, and Muslim transgressions occurred in the presence of the security forces. Father Lucas said that yesterday Muslim attacks resulted in 25 incidents of looting and torching of Christian-owned shops, in addition to 8 homes. He confirmed the eyewitness accounts of the events, but could not confirm that John Hosni had surrendered to the police. “Yesterday John Hosni was in a safe place, but he is not in the village, I do not know his whereabouts.” He does not know whether any Muslims were arrested in connection with the slaughtering of the two Coptic brothers.

A funeral for Abdel-Nazeer was held on Tuesday.

Bishop Bachoum of Sohag said this evening on CTV Coptic Channel that funerals for the two Copts were held in Sohag and they were buried in their village of elGhorayzat, under heavy security. He said that efforts are under way for a “reconciliation” meeting between Muslim and Christians elders.

Commenting on the elGhorayzat events, Dr. Fawzi Hermina, a Coptic activist who lives in Sohag, said that Copts are living in a state of Statelessness — with no state, no security and no law. “Unfortunately the Copts, being the weak party in society, are paying the price.”

By Mary Abdelmassih