Category Archives: Egypt

Egypt Brotherhood candidate says sharia is main goal

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H/T TL

Reuters: 

April 4 2012

CAIRO (Reuters) – The Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate for the Egyptian presidency, Khairat al-Shater, declared that introducing sharia law would be his “first and final” objective if he wins elections in May and June.

Making his first reported statements since the Brotherhood’s surprise decision to field him in the elections, Shater also promised to reform the Interior Ministry which long played a leading role in suppressing dissent.

However, he denied he had struck a deal with the military on his candidacy, announced last Saturday, even though it may help candidates close to the old order of ousted President Hosni Mubarak by splintering the Islamist vote.

“Sharia was and will always be my first and final project and objective,” Shater was quoted on Wednesday as telling a meeting of the Religious Association for Rights and Reform – a group of which he is a member, along with figures who belong to the hard-line Salafi school of Islam.

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Egyptian parliament names constitution panel

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Egypt Independent: 

Sat, 24/03/2012 – 22:34
A general view of the first Egyptian parliament session after the revolution that ousted former President Hosni Mubarak, in Cairo January 23, 2012. Egypt's parliament began its first session on Monday since an election put Islamists in charge of the assembly following the overthrow of Mubarak in February.

Photographed by Arabic Edition

CAIRO — Egypt’s Islamists looked poised Saturday to gain control of a key lever of power that will help steer the country’s political future as parliament selected a panel to draw up the country’s new constitution. Liberal lawmakers denounced the process as a “farce” and walked out in protest.

The constitution, which will be written by the 100-member committee, will determine the balance of power between Egypt’s previously all-powerful president and parliament, and define the country’s future identity, including the role of religion and minority rights. With so much at stake, the question of who should sit on the panel has sparked fierce debate in Egypt.

Many secular and liberal Egyptians fear that the Islamist parties that dominate parliament will pack the panel with their supporters and ignore minority concerns. Those fears have spiked over the past week after parliament decided to allocate half of the panel’s seats to its own members, and following comments from a leading Islamist deputy who said the country’s most prominent democracy advocate, Mohamed ElBaradei, would likely not be included.

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INFLUENTIAL EGYPTIAN CLERIC ISSUES FATWA BANNING MOTHER’S DAY

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And they say Islam respects women.

The darker the zebiba (a raisin bruise created on the forehead from time spent slamming it into the prayer rug) the more likely the person will say, let alone believe such a thing.

More here.

Via: Zip

Egypt’s Coptic Christian pope dies at 88

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Whatever one may say about religion, Christianity or the Coptic faith (the oldest Christian tradition on earth most certainly) there is no denying that this man led a group that has managed to preserve it’s own identity against an increasingly hostile, violent, even barbaric majority that considers all non-members to be without even the most basic imaginable rights. Rights such as not having your daughter forcibly abducted, ‘married’ to a member of the kidnappers family and forcibly have their official religion changed.

One can only wonder if the death of this man may mean more, or less restraint on behalf of the Coptic peoples of Egypt against their Muslim oppressors. I suspect we may not have to wait so long to know.

From CBS:

Pope Shenouda III, in 2010 (KHALED DESOUKI/AFP/Getty Images)

CAIRO, Egypt – Pope Shenouda III, the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church who led Egypt’s Christian minority for 40 years during a time of increasing tensions with Muslims, died Saturday. He was 88.

 

His death comes as the country’s estimated 10 million Christians are feeling more vulnerable than ever amid the rise of Islamic movements to political power after the toppling a year ago of President Hosni Mubarak. The months since have seen a string of attacks on the community, heightened anti-Christian rhetoric by ultraconservatives known as Salafis and fears that coming goverments will try to impose strict versions of Islamic law.

 

Tens of thousands of Christians packed into the main Coptic cathedral in Cairo on Saturday evening hoping to see his body. Women in black wept and screamed. Some, unable to get into the overcrowded building, massed outside, raising their hands in prayer.

 

“He left us in a very hard time. Look at the country and what’s happening now,” said Mahrous Munis, a Christian IT worker in his 30s who was among the crowds. “Copts are in a worse situation than before. God be with us.”

 

Munis’ friend, Sherif Sabry, interrupted. “He was our rock. God help us find someone who can fill his place.”

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300 Muslim Lawyers Storm Egyptian Court, Prevent Lawyers for Christian From Entering

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AINA.ORG:

(AINA) — More than 300 Muslim lawyers inside and outside a courthouse in the southern Egyptian province of Assuit today prevented defense lawyer Ahmad Sayed Gabali, who is representing the Christian Makarem Diab, from going into court. Mr. Diab was found guilty of ‘Insulting the Muslim Prophet’ and was scheduled today a hearing on his appeal.

Attorney Dr. Naguib Gabriell, head of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization, said there was “terror in the Assiut Court today.” He added that he was on his way to court when he was advised that Muslim lawyers have issued death threats to any Christian lawyers who attend the court session. “Makram Diab was assaulted by Muslim lawyers during his transfer from the courtroom and security failed to protect him.”

Peter Sarwat, a Coptic lawyer, said that Muslim lawyers representing the plaintiffs prevented the defense team from entering court. “They said no Muslim will defend a Christian. It was agreed that Christian lawyers would take over and two Coptic lawyers volunteered, but the Muslims decided later that even Christians would not defend him.” Sarwat said the Muslim lawyers wanted to assault the chief judge but he managed to leave the court via a rear door.

Adel Ramadam and Ahmad Mohamad Hossam, two Muslim lawyers and activists from the renowned NGO Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) went to court to defend Diab’s right to a fair trial but were assaulted by the other Muslim lawyers. “They were assaulting us in a beastly and strange way just because we went there to defend a citizen who happened to be a Christian,” said Adel Ramadam. He also said that to get out of court was a complex operation and a huge task for the security personnel. “We left court in a security vehicle which took us to Security headquarters, otherwise, we don’t know what the outcome would have been for us.”

Makram Diab, a school secretary was sentenced by the Abanoub misdemeanor court two weeks ago to six years imprisonment on charges of insulting Islam’s prophet. His defense lawyer, Ahmad Sayed Gabali, was also prevented during that session from entering the court by Muslim lawyers (AINA 3-5-2012).

“I went to court today because I believe this citizen was stripped of all his rights,” said Adel Ramadam in an aired interview today. “He had a quarrel with a Salafi school colleague and then 11 days later, it was suddenly decided by Muslims that they will report the case. He was detained by the prosecution for 4 days and two days later in a 10-minute session and without any defense lawyer present, he was sentenced to 6 years, which is way above the maximum of a misdemeanor case.”

Eyewitnesses reported that the Muslim lawyers were armed with clubs. A police captain, b two EIPR lawyer, and two reporters from Ros-el-Youssef and El-Bashayer Egyptian newspapers were injured in the milieu.

Human rights groups reported that they were also forced out of the courtroom by the Muslims.

Adel Ramadam said the court session never started because the judge knew that the defense were prevented from entering the court, and knew of the assaults. “He just postponed the appeal session to April 5.”

By Mary Abdelmassih
http://www.aina.org/news/20120315194739.htm

Egypt: MP proposes Sharia punishments: crucifixion and amputation

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Jihad Watch:

From the beginning of the “Arab Spring,” I said here and elsewhere that it was not a democracy movement, as the Western press was claiming, but an Islamic supremacist pro-Sharia takeover that would result in the creation of Islamic states that would be far more hostile to the U.S. and Israel than the Arab nationalist regimes they were supplanting. This assessment was greeted with the usual scorn: the Islamic supremacist media machine charged “Islamophobia,” on Fox Juan Williams said I was “fearmongering,” and the usual suspects made the usual ad hominem attacks. Yet everything that has happened since then has shown that I was right all along.

But Islamic supremacists and their allies and useful idiots in the mainstream media continue to peddle their soothing lies. The Islamic supremacist and adolescent mudslinger Reza Aslan was at West Virginia University last night speaking about the developments in the Middle East, and heaping more steaming piles of what he calls analysis on the hapless marks in his audience.

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Jihad Watch: Egyptian Presidential Candidate: ‘I am the Mahdi’

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I always wondered when that little boy trapped in the well would manage to climb out.

Jihad Watch:

According to today’s edition of Egypt’s Al-Wafd, a popular political website, the latest candidate for the Egyptian presidency, Muhammad Muhammad Musa, claims he is the hidden Mahdi — a savior figure in Islamic eschatology.

After exiting from the Supreme Council for Elections, Musa said that “he is the awaited Mahdi who will liberate the Arab world, and that the anti-Christ [al-Masih al-Dajjal] appears to him daily in dreams trying to prevent him from running for the presidency and liberating the Arab countries from tyranny. He confirmed that he ran for presidency in 2005 against [ousted Egyptian president Hosni] Mubarak, but that the military intelligence service and police arrested his son in an effort to force him to withdraw from the race,” which he did.

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RTV Interview with Israeli Ambassador to Egypt on the new status as “greatest enemy Egypt”

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The Israeli ambassador to Egypt spoke some plain and hard truths that one didn’t hear too often in public very long ago. Clearly, the diplomatic and political classes of the world have realized that pretending things are other than they are holds little to no value. If one is to face hostility, one may as well not lie to one’s own people. His analysis on the nature of Islam Vs. democratic values was spot on and frankly, i was shocked to hear the truth being told by someone in his position. But delighted none the less. Perhaps if the rest of those with real authority actually get with the truth-telling-program I can go back to my own life.

Eeyore

Egyptian Court Sentences Priest to Six Months for Excess Church Height

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Read this carefully. This is sharia law. It is utterly and completely incompatible with any rational notion of justice. Only of Islamic supremacy in every imaginable way. It will be applied in Western nations exactly as it is here in Egypt at the first possible opportunity to do so.

Eeyore

AINA.ORG:

(AINA) — A court in Edfu has sentenced Reverend Makarios Bolous, pastor of St. George’s Church in the village of Elmarinab, Edfu, in the Aswan province, to six months prison and a fine of 300 pounds for violations in the height of the church building. The court also ordered the removal of the excess height.

The church had received a license from the Governor of Aswan and was still under construction, but it was torched by a Muslim mob on September 30, 2011 (AINA 10-1-2011). Construction workers had started removing the excess height before the torching of the church.

“Since then no work has been done to it. We are not allowed to pray there or come near it by order of the authorities,” said father Salib el-Deek of the Coptic diocese of Edfu. He said that they had proof that the church applied several times to the police to remove the excess, which it had started before the torching of the church, but were not granted permission. The police records were refused to be admitted as evidence by the court.

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American in Cairo: Egyptian protesters wanted to trade us for terror leader

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FOX News:

  • IRI_Egypt_embassy_mccain_graham.jpg

    Courtesy IRI

    February 2011: Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham met with International Republican Institute democracy workers John Tomlaszewski and Sam LaHood while they sought refuge at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo while facing trial in Egypt.

The pressure to detain democracy workers in Egypt was the work of remnants from former President Hosni Mubarak’s regime, but the calls for Americans’ heads by protesters outside the courthouse in Cairo show the country has a long way to go before achieving true democracy, said one of those Americans formerly trapped there.

John Tomaszewski, the deputy program director for the International Republican Institute in Egypt, said that while the mission of groups like the IRI and other nongovernmental organizations is to promote democracy, Egyptian demonstrators wanted to swap one of the most notorious terrorists in U.S. federal custody in exchange for lifting a travel ban imposed on the Americans.

  • tomlaszewski_john_IRI_Egypt.jpg

“There’s this longstanding demonstration camp, but the day of the trial this group of individuals had demonstrated outside of the courtroom — essentially saying ridiculous things like ‘trade the Americans for the blind sheik.’ And then hang the Egyptians who were accused, and this is how we’ll deal with this problem,” he told Fox News exclusively

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Egypt Demands Prisoner Swap: Terrorist Detainees for NGO Civilians

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Big Peace:

Are the bitter fruits of Senator John McCain’s “diligent diplomacy” a humiliating prisoner “exchange”—innocent US NGO workers, for hardened jihadists, including the notorious “Blind Sheikh” Umar ‘Abd-al-Rahman, who orchestrated the murderous 1993 World Trade Center bombing?

My colleague at Translating Jihad has fully translated an Arabic Al-Arabiya story entitled (pathognomonically), “ ‘Umar ‘Abd-al-Rahman at Forefront of Egyptian-American Prisoner Exchange Deal.”

The Egyptian government began taking steps to respond with the American offer to release 50 Egyptians being held in American prisons–including Shaykh ‘Umar ‘Abd-al-Rahman—in exchange for the release of 19 Americans accused in the case of foreign funding of civil society organizations. This is according to what was confirmed by Major General Muhammad Hani Zahir, an expert in military studies and international counterterrorism.

Zahir in comments to the newspaper ‘al-Masriyun’ said it was necessary for Egypt to exploit America’s weak position, especially after condemning its citizens in cases affecting Egyptian sovereignty over its territory. He added that Egypt should not permit this exchange to take place unless the American administration agrees to release more than 500 Egyptians being held in American prisons, of whom the Egyptian foreign ministry knows nothing.

If the crux of this story is accurate, it will represent a modern variant of capitulation to the anti-modern dictates of jihad warfare. Jihad, this ancient, but vibrant Islamic institution grounded upon hatred of the non-Muslim infidel, has long used captured infidels—including, prominently, non-combatants seized as “booty” during endless, unprovoked incursions into the lands of the infidel—to ransom in exchange for captured murderous jihadists.

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Egyptian Official: War with Israel, US in Three Months

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Israel National News:

MEMRI: Egyptian presidential candidate declared that Egyptian Army will engage in armed warfare against Israel, US, EU within three months.

By Rachel Hirshfeld

First Publish: 2/21/2012, 4:52 PM

MemriTV
MemriTV
Israel news photo: MemriTV.org

Egyptian Presidential Candidate Tawfiq Okasha declared last week that the Egyptian Army will engage in armed warfare against Israel, the United States and the European Union within three months.

The declaration, made in a segment translated into English by The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) on February 9, Okasha slso said that “like the Nazis, the Jews aim to rule and own the world.”

“Hitler’s principle was that the best race must become master of the world… Hitler established German Nazism to rule and own the world. On the other hand, we find that this is precisely the same philosophy as that of the Israelites and the Jews who say: we are the Semitic people, we are the best in the world, and we must rule and own the world, because the Semites are the kings of the earth and all that is upon it,” he said.

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Female genital mutilation rife in Egypt despite ban

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Voice of the Copts:

BBC News 

female-genital-mutilation
female-genital-mutilation

“Of course she must be circumcised,” said Olla, referring to the timid 11-year-old girl sitting beside her.

I asked Olla if I could find out from the child herself, her daughter Raaja, who sat shaking with fear, what she thought.

“There is no need to ask her,” her mother declared. “She doesn’t understand what we are talking about.”

I thought that unlikely. We were sitting in the family room of a two-storey house in a village in Upper Egypt. Besides Olla and her daughter, Raaja, present were her mother-in-law, who nodded approvingly at everything she said, and three young teenage girl cousins.

What else would the girls talk about when they were alone but that single event that can traumatise them for life – the dread of the inevitable, the incomprehension as they are held down by mothers, aunts and grandmothers, the indescribable pain as the midwife takes a blade to the clitoris.

Muslims and Christians

Astonishingly, in 21st Century Egypt, the latest figures suggest that more than 90% of the women have been subject to female genital mutilation (FGM). The figure comes from a Unicef approved survey carried out in 2008, the year that the practice was banned.

A new set of figures are due to be published later this year and doctors expect them to show a 10% decline. That still leaves the majority of women in Egypt exposed to unimaginable physical and psychological pain and denied what the rest of us would call a normal sex life.

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20,000 Muslims Attempt to Kill Pastor and Torch Church in Egypt

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AINA.ORG

 

By Mary Abdelmassih

(AINA) — A mob of nearly 20,000 radical Muslims, mainly Salafis, attempted this evening to break into and torch the Church of St. Mary and St. Abram in the village of Meet Bashar,in Zagazig, Sharqia province. They were demanding the death of Reverend Guirgis Gameel, pastor of the church, who has been unable to leave his home since yesterday. Nearly 100 terrorized Copts sought refuge inside the church, while Muslim rioters were pelting the church with stones in an effort to break into the church, assault the Copts and torch the building. A home of a Copt living near the church and the home of the church’s porter were torched, as well as three cars.

The mob demanded the return Rania of Khalil Ibrahim, 15, to her father. She has been held with the Security Directorate since yesterday. Christian-born Rania had converted to Islam three months ago after her father, who had converted to Islam two years ago and took custody of her. She had disappeared from the village on Saturday, after claiming to go shopping. According to Reverend Guirgis Gameel, she had a disagreement with her father, who had arranged a marriage for her with a Muslim man.

Click to continue at AINA.ORG