generalspeaking

Throes Of Religious Bigotry

Once the first blush of excited expectations in the wake of the success of the protests at Tahrir Square subsided it became evident that nothing earth-shattering as far as a change in administration from military rule to civilian would occur to satisfy the demands of the young and the restless. They have gained nothing whatever from the forced departure of Hosni Mubarak. In fact, Egypt is far poorer today than it was when President Mubarak was in place.

Tourism is down, foreign investment is down, trade opportunities are not as plentiful; an Egypt ready to erupt into dissatisfied revolt from time to time does not present as the most secure of social and economic environments. Before the Arab Spring took hold in Egypt, people felt oppressed, but most of all they were concerned about rising food and energy prices, poverty, lack of employment, a dismal looking future and they coalesced around a leaderless movement to demand change.

Leaders have since stepped forward, stepping on the toes of the inspirers of the young and the idealistic. In their place have loomed large the Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood who are making common cause with the Egyptian military, concerned that it remain the power broker for the country, while they are looking to advance the fortunes of their political parties.

The police are said to be as brutal as ever, the declining GDP is problematic, and the struggle for hegemonic supremacy between Turkey and Egypt is just beginning to bubble over.

As with every country of the Middle East, from Syria to Lebanon, the Palestinian Territories to Tunisia, and Egypt, Iraq and Iran, the once-large Christian minority, an island of historical heritage in a sea of Islamism, is being targeted with the kind of attention once reserved for Arab Jews who had for a thousand years and more been resident in those countries, and since expelled.

Christian churches are being torched, their congregations threatened and molested as relations between Muslims and Christians continue to deteriorate. Now the latest incident sees the Egyptian military ordering its recruits to deal harshly with Egypt's Copts - of which there are ten million among 70 million Muslims.

"I love this country to the bottom of my heart. But there are some here who do not like us. It is not all the people. We live side by side with the Muslims. And we don't want to leave. We cannot build Coptic churches and there are bad men who destroy our churches, especially in the countryside, because the state is weak right now."

The military governing body insists that the problem is aggravated by 'foreign' elements seeking to make trouble for the new Egyptian administration. It was no foreign element, however, that drove an armoured military vehicle directly into a crowd of peaceful Christian protesters, killing over 20 people. These were people who were singing hymns, holding in their midst a cross which someone had held aloft.

"We are accusing the army and the police who used vagabonds, a rabble force of street fighters, to attack the demonstrators", said Father Rafic Greiche, the official spokesman for the Catholic Church in Egypt. From peace to carnage, in one fell swoop, in the middle of Cairo. "They were armed with swords, sticks and stones - some of them had rifles it seems. They did not have to use force. It was a peaceful demonstration."

Father Greiche must be mistaken. On Egyptian media, news readers repeated appeals for "honest Egyptians" to rush to the scene of the violence to do what they could to help protect the soldiers against the murderous Christian "mobs". Television footage was shown with soldiers denouncing the Copts as "sons of dogs". Well, it was not just Christians in the crowd who accused the military; moderate Muslims witnessing what occurred, condemned the military.

And although Egyptian Copts believe that the situation they are now suffering through is the result of the growing confidence and political power of the Muslim Brotherhood, it has publicly denounced the violence. The secretary general of the Brotherhood's Freedom and Justice Party claims that he agrees "with the national consensus that Christians should have complete rights because a good Muslim must be fair to everyone".

Almost everyone, presumably: Jews need not apply.

Labels: Egypt, Human Relations, Human Rights, Political Realities, Religion

posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, October 11, 2011