April was a terrible month for Ethiopian migrants. Tescma Marcus and his brother Alex were burned alive during xenophobic attacks in South Africa. One week later, Eyasu Yekuno-Amlak and his brother Balcha were dramatically executed in Libya by ISIS, along with 26 others.
One reason Ethiopians were involved in high-profile tragedies at opposite ends of the continent: Their nation is the second-most populous in Africa as well as the second-poorest in the world (87 percent of Ethiopia’s 94 million people are impoverished).
Roughly two-thirds of Ethiopians are Christians. The majority of these belong to the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church; the rest primarily to Protestant denominations such as the Ethiopian Evangelical Church Makane Yesus (which recently broke ties with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over theological concerns).
The Orthodox and Protestants have long had in common the search for a better life. Increasingly, they share even more.
Veteran SIM missionary Howard Brant celebrates that “the two groups are coming closer and closer together” in Ethiopia, which he calls “one of the great success stories of evangelical Christianity.”
Please click here to read the full article at Christianity Today.
Forgive Emad Youssef if he and his extended family felt quite confused. The crowd welcoming them back to the village had only a few days earlier demanded they leave.
“They said this is the first time something like this has happened in our village,” he told private satellite channel, OnTV “and that, Inshallah, it won’t happen again.”
Yet it happens frequently in Egypt – at least 23 times in the last four years, according to new research released by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Whose Customs? – a 78-page report by the group – points out that the period from 2011-2014 saw 45 instances in which sectarian strife was settled, in different ways, outside the law through “Customary Reconciliation Sessions.”
In concept, Customary Reconciliation Sessions are community-based conflict resolution, long established in Egyptian tradition. If two residents have a dispute, solving it through the judicial system is long and costly. Instead, “wise men” of the village will hear both sides and issue a binding ruling. Religious leaders are often involved.
If the dispute is violent, the Customary Reconciliation Session is a method to calm tensions and prevent escalation. Police are usually present to enforce security.
But in the case of Youssef and his relatives, all Coptic Christians, the session took place because police did not do their job in the first place.
”This (the forced ‘relocation’) happened while the police were in the village, and they did nothing to stop them,” a local Copt, choosing anonymity, said.
Emad’s brother Ayman is a migrant worker in Jordan, accused of sharing pictures deemed insulting of Muhammad on Facebook via his cell phone. Ayman claims he is innocent. Nevertheless, on May 27 a mob gathered in his home village back in Egypt, attacking the houses and fields of his family and their Coptic neighbors. The village of Kafr Darwish, about two-thirds Muslim, is located in Beni Suef, 70 miles south of Cairo.
Reports say that some local Muslim neighbors tried to defend the family, but the mayor was not able to control the situation. Officials and village leaders conducted a Customary Reconciliation Sessions and issued a verdict placating the mob. In Ayman’s absence his family was punished, resulting in the expulsion of 18 individuals, including Ayman’s mother and his 71-year-old father.
The displaced told of their ordeal as they were “traveling from one town to another and not finding a place to accommodate us.”
In this one instance, five families of 18 members had to contend with living in one room. “They expelled us while we have done nothing, we are struggling to provide for ourselves,” they said before their return.
Media is often inattentive to Upper Egyptian issues, but in this case the outcry was immediate. Popular broadcaster Ibrahim Eissa declared, “How is that we have an enlightened president but a Salafi [ultraconservative Muslim] state? We don’t have the courage to say: These are their homes and their life is here. Whoever stands against them and the law will be judged by the law!”
A day before Eissa said this, the Beni Sweif state governor had tried to intervene, announcing the displaced families would return. This only resulted in further attacks in the village. But the following day control was established. The governor convened a meeting in the village, with high profile political, religious, and security figures – and more than 2,000 residents.
According to Mideast Christian News, the governor announced that the law does not allow the displacement of any Egyptian from their home. He promised to restore the properties that had been damaged.
But Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of the Coptic newspaper Watani, which helped first report the story, is not aware of even one Muslim arrested for the attacks. MCN reported that Christian villagers submitted the names of 20 individuals involved.
“I don’t consider this a happy ending, it is not a healthy situation and the law is not enforced,” Sidhom told World Watch Monitor.
Fanatics ”may harm Christians,” he said, ”but the greater harm is done to the sovereignty of the state.”
Ishak Ibrahim (right) with Amr Abdulrahman at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights press conference in Cairo, 10 June 2015
The incident was unique in that the state intervened to overturn the results of a Customary Reconciliation Session. But Ishak Ibrahim, lead author of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights report, said the non-prosecution of offenders is common. In the vast majority of cases studied, no arrests were made. In the few that were, the accused were released shortly thereafter. The reconciliation agreements often stipulated the relinquishing of legal procedures.
“If people reject the ruling it can result in more sectarian attacks,” said Ibrahim, “but accepting it helps the aggressors escape the consequences of their actions. We put responsibility on the government because it is the one tasked to protect citizens and their rights.”
Article 63 of the Egyptian constitution forbids the forced displacement of any citizen. Article 95 insists all judicial rulings must be personal, not collective. And while Article 185 of the penal code allows for a victim to waive prosecution in certain circumstances, these do not include looting, arson, or intimidation.
But the waiver of prosecution has not applied to Christian aggressors.
Not all incidents begin as sectarian. In 29 per cent of the studied cases, community tension resulted from a romantic relationship between a Muslim and a Christian, and in 16 per cent conflict emerged from land or other property disputes.
In each one where the Christian was at fault, legal prosecution continued after penalties, often exorbitant, had been stipulated by a Customary Reconciliation Session. But when the Muslim is at fault, reconciliation and social peace are emphasized. Sometimes there are no penalties whatsoever; other times the church has opted for waiving them to keep the peace.
Bias against Christians is also apparent in disputes with religious origins. Thirty-one percent of cases have to do with the practice of Christian religious ritual, including attempted church construction and repair.
Only one case was resolved in their favor.
‘Relocated’
Even the “Martyrs” Church, established by a presidential decision to honor the 20 Egyptian Copts killed in Libya by the self-proclaimed Islamic State, had to be “physically relocated” following protests and a subsequent Customary Reconciliation Session.
Eight per cent of cases had to do with expressing opinions on religious matters. The majority involved simply “liking” a Facebook page deemed insulting to Islam, and resulted in expulsion of the offender from his village.
World Watch Monitor previously reported on Gad Younan, a teacher from Minya arrested with some of his students for a video in which they made fun of Islamic State. Mideast Christian News has recently reported that judicial procedures resulted in his release on bail pending further trial, but that the Customary Reconciliation Session agreement continues to demand he not return home.
“Customary reconciliation sessions are said to stop sectarian tension, but our analysis shows that they only serve to ignore it,” said Amr Abdulrahman, head of the civil liberties unit at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.
Abdulrahman explained that those who conduct the reconciliation sessions often view them as above and apart from the law. This status is buttressed by the police presence that implicitly endorses the process.
And in a rare departure from Coptic restraint in criticism of the government, Bishop Aghathon of Minya accused local authorities of collusion with conservative Muslims in Customary Reconciliation Sessions. He told a Coptic satellite television channel that, in one incident in his diocese, the typical mob protest was instigated by security.
General Sayyid Nour el-Din, former director of security in Minya, defended the use of Customary Reconciliation Sessions. “It does not conflict with the law at all, it has to do with the prevention of bloody conflicts,” he told OnTV. “The security presence is there to protect the sessions, not to come up with their solution.”
Nour el-Din said security has to be especially vigilant as Islamist groups are looking for any excuse to explode the situation. Strong especially in the poorer southern governorates, their presence coincides with the use of Customary Reconciliation Sessions following sectarian incidents. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights reported 48 per cent of cases are from Upper Egypt, 33 per cent from Minya alone.
The Muslim Brotherhood officially condemned the forced displacement of Copts in Kafr Darwish, while blaming the church for tearing apart national unity through its support of the government.
This latter sentiment was emphasized by Amr Abdul Rahim, a former member of parliament from al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, an Islamist group implicated in many attacks on Copts in Upper Egypt during the 1990s.
“The church is part of Sisi’s regime,” Abdul Rahim said. “(The church clergy) have to wake up and realize they are playing with Coptic lives and leading them to a holocaust.”
Though Abdul Rahim insists that “Muslims” are not against Copts, his criticism makes no distinction between Islamist ideology and Muslim identity.
‘Roots of the Problem’
Statistics assembled by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights indicated the use of one Customary Reconciliation Session per month during the interim rule of the military, when, following the fall of Mubarak, a security vacuum existed and Islamist groups felt themselves in the ascendency. During Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-led presidency, the rate rose to 1.25 per month.
It declined under interim president Mansour and incumbent president Sisi following the removal of Morsi, but the practice continues all the same. The report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights noted six incidents, outside the scope of its report, in the first half of 2015 alone.
“From Mubarak to today, no regime has dealt with the roots of the problem,” said Ibrahim, the report’s lead author.
Sidhom tied Customary Reconciliation Sessions to an unreformed educational system that does not properly instill the values of citizenship. Related is a weak state apparatus that submits to the pressure of militant action apart from the law.
But Ibrahim emphasized he is not against Customary Reconciliation Sessions in principle.
“Anything that extinguishes sectarian tension is beneficial, as long as the process of law continues,” he told OnTV. “The problem is that it is a replacement for law, often compelled upon the weaker party, reflecting the local situation of power.”
But where power is balanced and tension is not high, Christians, like Muslims, avail themselves readily of a Customary Reconciliation Session, especially in view of a judicial system saddled with millions of new and pending cases.
“In 90 per cent of the cases, CRS is beneficial,” Fr. Yu’annis Anton of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Minya told World Watch Monitor. “Relationships are reconciled and everyone takes his rights.”
Anton speaks from a long experience with Customary Reconciliation Sessions, underlining their utility in non-sectarian cases. This is not the case of Kafr Darwish, he said, which was an emergency situation.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights noted that its 45 cases detail only Customary Reconciliation Session use following sectarian clashes, not the practice itself.
Perhaps following in the footsteps of Jesus, Emad Youssef chooses to reflect positively.
“This trial was from God, who has used it to increase the love shown to us by Muslim neighbors,” he said.
“They have made reconciliation,” added the 71 year old father. “We have returned home, in goodness and peace.”
Sheikh Saeed Ibrahim was very keen to see my parents. He canceled an appointment to meet them, making sure the opportunity was not missed before they returned to America.
He wanted this picture taken, and he wants you to see it. He would be very pleased if you share.
“I want the world to see that normal Americans can meet a Muslim leader, and be friends,” he said. “Too many are equating Islam with what they see in ISIS and other extremist groups.
“We have to change this picture.”
I met Ibrahim during training sessions for the Egyptian Family House. He was one of 70 religious leaders – half Muslim, half Christian – learning to be friends with one another and then partner together in their local area to preserve and promote national religious unity.
Ibrahim mentioned it is slow going, and that due to various reasons his overtures to area priests have not yet succeeded.
So he was especially interested to go international.
Not that he has not been active at home. The Azhar is Egypt’s central Muslim institution, perhaps the most influential in the wider Sunni world. Its graduates lead the great majority of the nation’s mosques, and generally control the national religious discourse.
Ibrahim is a supervisor of Azhar preachers in Giza. In addition to this task he delivers a sermon each Friday, offers daily religious lessons, and gives a weekly lecture to police, youth, and women.
In recent months he has been especially active. Following the election of President Sisi the Azhar launched a campaign called Love of Country. Following an international Azhar conference last December to condemn ISIS, it launched Eliminating Violence and Terrorism.
Since then he has spoken in at least an additional 100 area schools, with a three-fold message:
First, Islam does not know terrorism nor call for it because it is a religion of peace and security.
Second, Islam in its doctrine accepts the religious other no matter the religion.
Third, Islam treats all people well and with proper morality.
So while Ibrahim and his colleagues work to spread this message to Egyptians young and old, he holds a special burden to communicate with foreigners.
He wants tourism to return to the country, and he wants the image of Islam to improve. He hopes that as they take pictures together, the world will become more aware.
If any in Egypt read this and take note, I would be happy to introduce you. It would be good to draw in also a Coptic priest, and encourage the Family House in working together.
“We are doing this because of the circumstances our country is going through,” Ibrahim said, “but the reward we receive is from God.”
The police stand in service to the people. They stand also in service to the law. At times there is heroism, at times there is error. But at all times there must be accountability.
This week there was.
An officer was sentenced 15 years in prison for the killing of an unarmed protestor. The case of Shaima al-Sabagh, carrying flowers to lay at Tahrir Square for the revolutionary anniversary, took both media and presidential attention. Perhaps he did not mean to kill. Perhaps there are others needing accountability beside. Perhaps this ruling is an exception. Perhaps it is a precedent.
A human rights organization released a report implicating police in implicitly endorsing the forced displacement of Copts from their homes. The case of Copts in Beni Suef, where a Facebook post by a relative in Jordan resulted in 18 forced from their home, took both media and presidential attention. They have returned home, but so far none have been held accountable, either in the mob or the police.
Perhaps it is an exception, but perhaps media accountability can also set a precedent.
But in Luxor, the police foiled the plans of a suicide bomber to kill visiting tourists. Intercepted beforehand, he blew himself up but few suffered injuries. Positive accountability is in order.
God, honor the police. Equip them to do their job faithfully. Give them the support necessary, both popular and legal.
Deal justly with things go awry. Deal justly with superiors. Deal justly with the system. Preserve the faith of the people and the rule of the law.
Comfort the family and colleagues of Shaima in this verdict. Reconcile the Copts of Beni Suef to their neighbors. Let freedom of expression be received without bullets. Let community justice be issued without exile.
And amid all the controversies, help the police in the hard job against terrorism. Spare Egypt further tragedy. Stabilize the nation, bring back tourism and investment, and help Egyptians to live in peace.
May the police enable as they serve the people. But hold them—and all—accountable, in service to the law.
Yesterday I posted about religious contradiction in Saudi Arabia. Today posts a Guardian article about Iran, in the other direction:
The 32-year-old midfielder, known as Ando – or Samurai, due to his hairstyle – is not shy of showing his Christianity, often crossing himself on the field. In April, Teymourian, who has played for Bolton Wanderers and Fulham, became the first Christian to lead Iran’s football team as its permanent captain. “I’m happy that as a Christian I play in a Muslim team,” he said in a recent interview. “I have Armenian roots but I hold the Iranian passport and I’m proud of that, I hold my flag high. I hope I can enhance the good reputation of Armenian people in Iran.” Ethnic Armenians make up the majority of Iran’s estimated 300,000 Christians.
This is their situation:
Although Islam is Iran’s official religion, it recognises Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians as accepted religious minorities. They are permitted their house of worship and usual religious services, and have reserved seats in the Iranian parliament. In a country where alcohol and pigmeat are forbidden, Christians are allowed to distil booze and eat pork. There are at least 600 churches in Iran, including the sixth-century St Mary Church of Tabriz, mentioned by Marco Polo in his travel book. The adjacent province of West Azerbaijan boasts the ancient St Thaddeus Monastery, a Unesco world heritage site. When Hassan Rouhani came to power in 2013, he appointed Ali Younesi, a former intelligence minister, to serve as his special assistant in minorities’ affairs. It was the first time such a position had been created. Significant improvements have since been made but many big challenges remain.
Among them:
Iran also remains highly sensitive towards the issue of conversion. Muslims who convert to other religions risk being arrested. More than 90 are behind bars, including pastor Saeed Abedini, who holds an Iranian American citizenship. Muslims whose denominations are not accepted by Iran, such as Gonabadi dervishes, face persecution, with many of their members in jail.
Perhaps Iran is trying to polish up its image, especially vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia. In their regional battle for supremacy, everything counts. But being the captain of the national soccer team is a big deal. I’m guessing they don’t play political games with that. But here is an interesting question for Christians in the West:
As Iran’s national football team prepared to head to the World Cup last year, Andranik Teymourian stood next to his teammates while they lined up to kiss the holy Islamic book, the Qur’an, as part of the farewell ceremony. Although he is not a Muslim, the Iranian Armenian didn’t want to rock the boat and so performed the ritual for travellers, which is a quintessential part of Iranian culture. The cleric holding up the Qur’an could hardly disguise his amusement at the scene.
The description here doesn’t seem quite right. If it is ‘a quintessential part of Iranian culture’ surely he has done it already, before becoming captain. And if so, why would the cleric be in amusement? Or, did they previously allow him to decline, but as captain he thought best to do so and represent his team? More information is necessary, but let us assume the article is correct in both this description and in the sincerity of Teymourian’s Christian faith. There is always a mix between religion and culture, but Western Christians don’t often have to think too deeply about this, as the mix is in their favor. Perhaps this is changing, some would say. But for Christians within a different mix, where should the lines be drawn? Teymourian has been honored for his play and leadership. Did he do well, or compromise? What would you have done?
Damage in a Shia Mosque in Saudi Arabia after a terrorist attack by the Islamic State
The Washington Institute interprets the targeting of Shiites in Saudi Arabia as hitting at a vulnerable point in their religio-political ideology:
Over the past two weeks, the so-called “Islamic State” (IS) has claimed two attacks on Shiite mosques in Saudi Arabia’s Shiite-majority Eastern Province, one in Dammam and the other in Qatif. While the incidents might not have an immediate impact on the kingdom’s overall security, they are relevant to long-term IS strategy of weakening the Saudi government by exposing its alleged hypocrisy.
A nation-state is home to all its citizens. But …
By attacking the Eastern Province, IS seeks to place Riyadh in the position of defending or appeasing Shiites, at the expense of a Saudi Wahhabist state ideology that does not tread too far from that of IS (e.g., Saudi schools teach students that Shiites are unbelievers and not Muslims).
The article describes how official government response has been to condemn the attack and offer condolences to its victims. By international standards this is the absolute minimum requirement. Not mentioned is the bounty Saudi Arabia offered for information leading to the criminals.
But The Islamic State is not interested in the international standards:
From the Islamic State’s perspective, such actions highlight Riyadh’s rank hypocrisy, showing “true” believers in the “land of the two holy places” how the Saudi state is contravening both God and its own founding standards. By casting themselves as the true bearers of Islam, IS leaders hope to draw more recruits and supporters.
The Saudi government is in a tricky spot. A long time ago they made a deal with you know who. Is it now coming due?
It is Egyptians who must determine their leadership. Bless her with enduring independence and government of the people.
But Europe has a significant influence in legitimizing. President Sisi visited Germany and Hungary to strengthen ties and secure trade. Meanwhile a group of international Islamic scholars gathered in Turkey to give religious justification to resist and take retribution.
Egypt barred a human rights activist from a conference in Berlin. Meanwhile the world awaits the judgment of London if the Brotherhood has terrorist links.
God, make clear in Egypt both reality and righteousness. Let there be transparency over every crime and allegation. Let there be accountability for every failure and offense.
And in Europe, where transparency and accountability are presumably stronger, let there be more than interests and leverage. May they respect both rights and sovereignty.
Balancing both, may peace – with all legitimate pressure – prevail.
Preserve good relations, God. Preserve good government.
Mohamed Abdel Maksoud, a Salafi signatory of Egypt Call.
A leading American academic has denounced the latest Muslim declaration against elected Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as a call for ‘religious violence’.
Samuel Tadros of Hudson Institute in Washington DC told Lapido that ‘Egypt Call’, a 13-point document published last week by 159 Muslim scholars from 35 nations, and endorsed by the Brotherhood, provided ‘Islamic justification’ for the fight against Sisi.
‘This document is as direct a call for violence as you may ever get,’ Tadros said. ‘This is a religious verdict on the regime as unbelievers.’
As President Sisi visited Germany and secured an eight-billion-Euro energy deal, two policemen were shot dead near the Giza pyramids.
Meanwhile, the Muslim Brotherhood sponsored protests in Berlin. ‘Tell Merkel to stand up for democracy and human rights in Egypt,’ tweeted Ikhwanweb, their official English account.
Both activities find justification in the new document which reinforces already grave questions about whether the Muslim Brotherhood is behind violence in Egypt.
Question
The text of Egypt Call declares, ‘It is a religious obligation to resist the regime, working to finish it off through all legitimate means.’
Points 11 and 12 recognize the international struggle, condemning nations that have stood with Sisi, while praising governments, politicians, human rights organizations, and others who have criticized him. Point 13 specifically mentions civil disobedience.
But point 4 makes it personal. Mentioning specifically rulers, judges, policemen, soldiers, muftis, media, and politicians, it says: ‘Retribution against them is necessary.’
Press conference in Istanbul for Egypt Call. Ghoneim (mentioned below) is back row, 5th from left.
The sharia views them as killers, it says, and they deserve the judgment of those who kill. But the text also insists – without specificity – that this must be according to legitimate methods.
So: What is legitimate?
Ambiguity
Jihad as a concept can be viewed along a spectrum from the struggle to submit to God, to the fight to submit the world to him.
The Brotherhood has long perfected the art of ambiguity. In January, it called on followers to prepare for a ‘relentless jihad.’
It has issued statements that condemn ongoing violence, but also praised previous Brotherhood militancy.
For Tadros, the ambiguity is now gone.
He sees in Egypt Call the concept of ‘loyalty and disavowal’, often interpreted in the modern world by jihadis as the rejection of all who do not fit their definitions of sharia.
The doctrine requires viewing those disavowed as non-Muslims, or unbelievers.
Tadros recognizes, however, that the word ‘unbeliever’ is not found in Egypt Call. Rather, in detailing how the Sisi regime has fought against Islam, allied with enemy Zionism, and killed and imprisoned thousands of innocents, it lets readers make this judgment for themselves.
Over 500,000 have indicated their support on the official website.
According to Joas Wagemakers, a prolific writer on political Islam and lecturer at Radboud University in the Netherlands, ‘loyalty and disavowal’ has some Quranic inference.
But it was developed by the early Kharijite movement that rebelled against the caliphate.
Wagemakers, in his chapter in editor Roel Maijer’s Global Salafism, says Sunni Islam rejected the concept until ibn Taymiyya resurrected it in the fourteenth century. Modern-day extremists use it to justify rebellion against a Muslim ruler.
Point 2 of Egypt Call references one of the principle Quranic verses underpinning the doctrine.
But it does not specifically use the terminology, nor label the regime as non-Muslim.
Tadros attributes this to internal philosophical disputes on technical points about legitimate rebellion. But these religious scholars, he says, do not see themselves as offering points on strategy.
According to the research of Michael Cook, a professor at Princeton University and author of Forbidding Wrong in Islam, majority scholarly Sunni opinion is against the idea of opposing even an oppressive ruler.
Most say it will result in more harm than good, even if legitimate.
But the heritage of sharia includes voices which advocate a quiet rebuke, and others who advocate outright militancy. Where does the Brotherhood fall?
Some ask whether retribution is to come from formal judicial tribunals after they restore Morsi. A recent report from the semi-governmental National Council for Human Rights said 1,250 Muslim Brotherhood members had been killed in the eighteen months after Morsi’s overthrow.
Others question whether they have advocated the kind of assassinations seen at Giza. The same report said seven hundred security forces had been killed during the same time period.
Perspective
Egypt Call does not provide details, but a brief look at the signatories offers perspective. Tadros has identified several of them from previous research he did into Egyptian Islamism.
While in Germany the Brotherhood tweeted about democracy and human rights, one of the signatories Said Abdel Azeem, an Egyptian Salafi leader denounced democracy on YouTube as ‘an idol that people worship apart from God,’ and said that it permits all sorts of excess in personal freedoms. The film has received more than 28,000 views.
Azeem has taken a stand against jihadis who kill Muslims they deem apostates, but another signatory, Atiya Adlan, adheres to the Sorouri strand of Salafism that adopts the concept of ‘loyalty and disavowal’, declaring the ruler who does not govern by sharia to be an unbeliever.
And signatory Mohamed Abdel Maksoud, a pro-Brotherhood Salafi leader, has previously hailed the jihad of Osama bin Laden.
More acutely applicable to the Egyptian struggle, he called for the killing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and praised the vengeance taken against Egyptian police.
Though not a signatory, Wagdy Ghoneim spoke at the press conference in Turkey that introduced Egypt Call.
‘The military regime headed by the infidel and apostate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is fighting Islam and religion,’ he said. ‘He led a coup against Morsi because Morsi desired to bring back the Islamic caliphate.’
Ghoneim has called for the killing of pro-Sisi journalists. When the Islamic State beheaded Copts in Libya, whom he called ‘Crusaders’, Ghoneim had no condemnation but launched a diatribe against the Coptic Church.
At a popular level, the official Facebook page of the Brotherhood’s political party in Maadi, Cairo, shared video of ‘revolutionaries’ firebombing an empty train.
None of this is proof that the Brotherhood is behind the violence in Egypt. But it chips further away at the veneer of ambiguity, even as they cling to it.
The editor-in-chief of the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website did not respond to a request for clarification.
This article was originally published at Lapido Media.
From Bishop Mouneer in his diocesan newsletter, on the recent visit of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby:
In the Middle East, Africa, and much of the non-Western world, extending honour is among the chief virtues. Our Anglican Communion is blessed to have a leader who embodies not only this cultural value, but also its Biblical roots.
“Without doubt, the lesser person is blessed by the greater,” writes the author of Hebrews. “Honour one another above yourselves,” writes Paul in Romans. On April 20, our diocese of Egypt was blessed by the visit of Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury. He came to offer condolences over the martyrdom of 21 Christians killed by ISIS in Libya. But in humility, as a man of the West visiting the East, he proved the reality of these verses in his life and leadership.
In attendance were Coptic Orthodox Bishop Angaelos and Coptic Catholic Bishop Antonius Aziz, themselves men of humble service there to honour his visit. Aware the representatives of these churches could not share in an Anglican Eucharist, the archbishop desired to demonstrate his appreciation for their churches in a land whose children produced such a testimony of faith.
Archbishop Welby left the communion table, knelt before the two bishops, and asked them to pray a blessing for him. Immediately moved in spirit, they knelt as well, and asked the same of him. He then returned and offered body and blood to God’s holy church. Both privately expressed how they were touched by his gesture.
“Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,” said Jesus to his disciples. “Those who honour me,” said God in I Samuel, “I will honour.” Following communion, Archbishop Welby joined me in demonstrating this call and promise of God.
For the past seven years, Rev. Drew Schmotzer has worked tirelessly not only as my personal assistant, but also in assuming vacant pastoral positions in Maadi, Menouf, and at All Saints Cathedral. He is now leaving the diocese to return to the United States. Archbishop Welby’s visit was Rev. Drew’s last day in Egypt. During the service, we were able to honour Rev. Drew’s humble service to the Diocese of Egypt. I presented him with the shield of the diocese in gratitude for his ministry.
“God is not unjust,” it is written in Hebrews, “he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people.” The virtue of honour is one the Eastern Church can share with the Western. Our Anglican Communion is blessed to have so many from all cultures who, in humility, exhibit it already.
Two Egyptian granddaddies are going through growing pains. Both predate the modern state, and are striving to remain relevant.
The Muslim Brotherhood is taken over by its youth, who are forcing a revolutionary path. A new statement says resistance is an Islamic obligation, with all means possible to undue the fall of Morsi. There is no mention of peacefulness. A bid by the historic leadership to reassert itself appears to have failed.
The Egyptian Wafd, meanwhile, is also in crisis. Despite the intervention of President Sisi, agreements to reconcile two conflicting factions have fallen apart again. The wing which advocates reform is connected to historical families, while the current president is a prominent businessman – who has won elections. Though the party has a venerable name, its general support on the street is unclear.
God, forgive tepid prayers in others’ business. Where there is virtue, unity is paramount. Where there is discord, sin eats itself. Where there is partisanship, these distinctions are charged. Prayer can offer discernment, but it is dangerous to take sides.
So God, resolve these crises toward the good of Egypt, as you interpret best. Sideline those who prevent positions of virtue. Allow the mutual failures of those who compete in partnership with vice. In both, protect the innocent from all collateral harm.
And protect Egypt, God. Protect her from the spirit of retribution. Protect her from the spirit of subservience. Honor zeal. Reform society. Establish justice. Develop polity. Give stability.
The Brotherhood and Wafd have a long history of rhetoric toward these principles. May the principles outlive the parties.
And may the parties continue only as long as they are faithful stewards of this trust. They are both grandfathers; may their children act with the wisdom of the aged.
Islam Yakan, an Egyptian jihadi, not the character described in this story.
Powerful testimony from Rana Allam, about her former work colleague and fellow Tahrir demonstrator, in Daily News Egypt.
The difference between us, and it was quite minor back then, that he came from a family that believed in the Muslim Brotherhood and he was a religious young man, while I believed in a secular civil state. We never had a problem discussing such matters, and just as he was neither a hardliner nor ultra conservative, we agreed on the basis of democracy.
But then Rabaa happened.
Eventually he found his young brother, after weeks of torture at some detention facility. He could tell the torture was brutal by the marks on his brother’s face and body. They were then informed that the student was facing charges of terrorism and that his trial was due in a few days. By then, and because of the extended absence from work along with his psychological status, our friend was out of a job. He did not appear to mind the unemployment much, being too busy with his mother and sister who lost a husband/father and his tortured brother in detention facing terrorism charges.
Other troubles followed, and eventually he fled the country with his family. He is not described as in Syria, as I was expecting. But the attitude is similar.
My genius sweet colleague has become a bloody, vengeful, bitter man. He has joined the flock of those who rejoice at the murder of police officers, judges and soldiers. He is hailing the Almighty every time a death toll is announced. He is praying for God’s strength to be given to those “martyrs” dying for the cause. He goes on and on about jihad in Islam against those infidel murderers. He also calls for the heads of their supporters, from government officials to idiotic pro-army demonstrators. Right now, I do not think he minds killing his neighbour if he was a mere verbal supporter of the regime.
Early on after the fall of Morsi, many Islamists and others warned that in keeping the Brotherhood from democratic gains it would push them into violent efforts for power. I recognize the power of the logic, but have argued against it, though with troubled reservation of spirit. It is too akin to blackmail, even as many principles are violated.
But to the extent this account is an accurate description of the post-Morsi environment, the logic is different, and more unassailable. It is not the whole story of extremism, but Allam sums it up, in rhetoric surprising to appear in Egyptian media, even if in English.
Our rulers still deny this fact and continue to breed violence completely oblivious or uncaring of what that leads to. There are almost five million Brotherhood sympathisers in Egypt, given the parliamentary and presidential elections figures. The number might have decreased after the Brotherhood’s rule indeed, but how much? A few hundred thousands are enough to turn this country upside down. We should also count those who are not Brotherhood sympathisers but had their loved ones go through the same suffering. The families and friends of the tortured, murdered, unjustly imprisoned will be bitter enough to hate everyone else, and hatred is the root of evil. Does no one in this regime see that?
Life can sometimes be much less expensive in Cairo than in other cities of the world, and what better test can demonstrate this than the Oreo cookie?
Or rather, the Borio.
I am not sure about any of the legalities in this locally produced knockoff of the popular Nabisco product, but it is ubiquitous in Egypt. Many restaurants, especially those that cater to foreigners, will also offer a Borio Madness ice cream treat, or a Borio smoothie, or varieties of this sort.
But as my wife was shopping the other day she saw the Borio and the Oreo side-by-side.
The foreign Oreo costs 1.5 LE for a pack of three – the equivalent of 22 US cents.
The local Boreo costs 1 LE for a pack of six – the equivalent of 14 US cents.
By contrast, a quick internet search revealed that Walmart in the US is offering a variety 12 pack of Oreos, each containing four cookies, for $18.72, or, $1.56 each.
Anyone with a sweet tooth care to join us?
Sure, the wrapper will probably be thrown on the garbage littered streets, and there is the pesky problem of riots and occasional explosions and all, but think of it differently…
Who can turn down a Borio, especially at these prices?
Staff, students, and local friends of the al-Amana Center
Imagine David Cameron in Norfolk, about to speak on ‘British values’. He then invites forward a Muslim Brotherhood leader, and asks him to explain Islam.
And in the Zippo’s Circus-like atmosphere, the audience leaves pleased.
Transfer the scene to the Sultanate of Oman, and witness an American Christian pastor make clear the gospel in the austere heartland of Ibadi Islam.
Now picture a tolerance that predates Britain’s embrace of multiculturalism—on the border of Saudi Arabia.
The analogy is not perfect. Sultan Qaboos bin Said is an absolute monarch, ruling since 1970. Proselytisation is forbidden in any direction.
But the Shiva Temple in the capital of Muscat has served the Hindu community for over 200 years. Since the early 1900s the government has given land to build churches.
Saudi Arabia’s chief cleric has repeatedly called for all non-Muslim houses of worship in the Arabian Peninsula to be destroyed in accordance with sharia law.
Clearly, Oman does not share Wahhabi convictions. There appears a similarity in strict practice, but not in the approach to others. The Ibadi branch of Islam is far older than the eighteenth-century Saudi creed, dating to its formative scholar from the old capital in Nizwa in AD 711.
And to this region where Islam originally took hold, the Ministry of Religious Affairs invited Revd Douglas Leonard to speak.
Heritage
Leonard is the director of al-Amana Centre in Muscat, an outgrowth of the Reformed Church in America’s (RCA) mission dating back to 1893. Today its focus is on interfaith dialogue.
Leonard expected a quiet discussion with twenty imams. He found a huge tent full with 500 people, over a thousand outside, and twenty imams seated in the front row. Three television stations were present, broadcasting his lecture to the whole nation.
It was a lecture, not a Billy Graham crusade. But it focused on countering misconceptions about Christianity, dealing with differences and not content to settle for ‘common ground’.
A kindly reception was guaranteed by his official introduction as part of the heritage of ‘Dr Thoms’, an RCA missionary-surgeon remembered fondly. Omani’s eyes soften, Leonard said, and tell stories of how he healed their grandparents, or delivered then when they were born.
Leonard also teaches a course each semester at the College for Sharia Sciences. Its thousand strong student body goes on to become imams, jurists, lawyers, and bureaucrats.
‘The government wants every Omani to gain appreciation of other religions,’ he said.
Piety
Ibadism sees tolerance amid conviction as the essence of original Islam.
Twenty years after the death of Muhammad the nascent caliphate was in civil war. Unlike the eventual Shia, they rejected Caliph Ali when he agreed to negotiate with Muslim rebels deemed insufficiently pious. And unlike the eventual Sunni, they did not reconcile with the rebels after their victory established a hereditary throne.
History records one of the leading rejectionist parties as the Kharijites, a violent and puritanical sect who declared anyone in disagreement a non-Muslim, much like ISIS today. But though they emerged from the same political position, Ibadis separated completely from the Kharijites and became quietists. They insist on piety but do not judge, as only God can know one’s heart.
Ibadis are less than one per cent of Muslims worldwide. But in Oman they are a majority, with a substantial Sunni minority. Shia are roughly five per cent, though the government does not keep official statistics. In law and practice, all mosques are open to all faith interpretations.
According to the CIA World Factbook, Oman’s population is 3.2 million, 30 per cent of which are foreign workers. An estimated 85 per cent are from India, mostly from the southeastern state of Kerala where Hindus and Christians together have shaped the culture.
Centuries of trade across the Indian Ocean have nurtured an open spirit. A few Hindus and Christians have become citizens.
But nearly all Omanis are Muslim, and the demographic explosion of foreigners since the oil boom has put pressure on traditional society. Sultan Qaboos has developed interior cities such as Nizwa, but despite employing extensive foreign labor the city has not been allotted a church.
Doing so would be sensitive, Leonard said, just as building a mosque can be sensitive in parts of the West. But in his experience the people are kind and the government wants to do all it can to facilitate the ability of foreign Christians to worship.
Appreciation
And one reason Leonard is trusted is because he does all he can to facilitate the ability of Omani and Christian alike to appreciate the other.
Over the past five years al-Amana has hosted 42 American university students in a semester-abroad program. Besides taking introductory classes on Arabic and Islam, they have been matched with 40 Omanis in ‘scriptural reasoning’.
Much interfaith dialogue does not go into the details of religious difference, afraid to cause offense or devolve into argument. Scriptural reasoning seeks to honor each faith at its core, studying the texts as holy in the eyes of the other, and not just stop at common ground.
Each year for the past four the Omani government has sent ten religious sector employees to Cambridge University for training, where Leonard is an instructor. One became emotional reading the Sermon on the Mount, saying he would now tell other Muslims that what they say about Christians is wrong.
An experience mirroring that of Kory McMahan, a junior at Northwestern College in Iowa and al-Amana’s most recent graduate.
‘At my school there is no Muslim voice, but it deserves to be heard,’ he told Lapido Media. ‘I can’t speak for Muslims but I can share what I have seen and learned.’
Leonard hopes the pattern of religious tolerance in Oman can be replicated throughout the Middle East, as well as combat anti-Muslim sentiment in the West.
‘Ours is a 120 year example of Muslims and Christians working together,’ he said. ‘Imagine what would happen if instead of being suspicious, we came together for the common good.’
Whether in Norfolk or Nizwa, British and Omani values may not be that far apart.
This article was originally published at Lapido Media.
Do you remember what the Egyptian revolution was like? In an op-ed on Ahram Online, Hani Shukrallah gives these poignant paragraphs in a long essay considering if Egypt is now less ‘Islamic’.
For background context, he considers the recent call to remove the veil, the emergence of television programs questioning traditional Islamic interpretation, and the renewed effort of the Azhar to assert its prerogative in all such matters. These are reactions to an old paradigm, he believes, that was dealt a blow by the revolution in a peculiar way:
The Egyptian Revolution was profoundly secular, if not secularist. After more than nearly four decades of the inexorable rise of Islamism came a popular revolution of millions that conspicuously made a point of putting religion (with all its uncomfortable impedimenta) on the backburner. Similarly to all the Arab Spring uprisings, Egyptians in motion spoke not of Sharia, rule by what God ordained or the restoration of the Caliphate. As the whole world came to know, the banner of Tahrir was freedom, democracy and social justice. They did not speak of an Islamic nation, but rather reclaimed the flag, redefining Egyptian nationhood as one arising from the fundamental human dignity of its citizens.
It went even further. As if picking up from where the previous popular revolution in their history (the revolution of 1919) had left off, the young men and women of Tahrir and elsewhere around the country took the hitherto stunted notions of citizenship and equality to new and unprecedented heights. Women, veiled or unveiled, were now fully equal to men — their bodies, which for decades had been put at the very heart of the symbolic battle over the nation’s identity, its political, social and cultural makeup, its present and future, were rendered a non-issue. The Egyptian Revolution did not debate the hijab; it ignored it — and in doing so dismantled its very basis, symbolically and practically.
Similarly, Coptic/Muslim Brotherhood was an overriding theme of the Egyptian Revolution. Previously inconceivable images of demonstrators holding aloft the Quran and the Cross, Coptic human shields around Muslims performing their prayers, seemed to roll back, within weeks, decades of effective disenfranchisement of Egypt’s Christian minority, holding Copts hostage to the Islamist/police state contestation, with each side taking a swipe at what had become the country’s preferred whipping boy.
And herein lay a fundamental feature of the Egyptian Revolution (indeed, the whole Arab Spring), which many commentators have failed to grasp. And this is that in neither targeting nor deploying religion, it sidelined it, pushed it out of the political realm, and rendered it politically, ideologically and culturally neutral. It was not anti-Islamic or pro-Islamic; it simply was non-Islamic. Not anti-religious but non-religious.
This is the very definition of secular.
The Egyptian revolution was many things, fueled by many parties with diverse goals. But fundamentally he is right, at least in presentation. All these groups, including the religious ones, largely put forward a secular image if only for pragmatic reasons. It was not named ‘secular’, but acted so.
His is an astute observation in retrospect, however much he longs for it to have been true, or at least, to have continued truly.
Solidarity of group is good. But there are many groups in the world. Who stands with whom?
Give wisdom to the Tarabin of Sinai, who pledge to support the government in the fight against ISIS.
Give wisdom to the government, to know if and how to accept.
Give wisdom to the other tribes, to navigate this minefield.
ISIS holds no territory in Sinai, but they appear to have some freedom of movement. The role of the tribes is key, but uncertain. Do they protect or simply tolerate, or are they themselves intimidated?
The Tarabin have suffered losses at their hands, having cooperated with the state. ISIS, meanwhile, is doing what it can to exploit tribal fault lines to win support and create division.
Their solidarity seems right, but should it be armed? Theirs is a separate group, no matter how loyal.
The loyalty of other groups is being tested. The stakes are high.
Defeat the menace, God, with the support of all. As for the solidarity of government and tribes, show Egypt the best polity. Make a state of citizenship; honor an ancient code.
But there is another ‘tribe’ that operates within the field of citizenship, within the fold of the state. The Brotherhood has suffered losses, having antagonized the state.
One leader died in prison from a stroke. They accuse of lack of timely medical intervention.
A popular soccer star has assets confiscated from a business began with their partnership. He says he is independent, but where does his loyalty lie? Should the question even be asked?
The solidarity of the Brotherhood gives them great strength; it also creates networks that can be pursued. After a year in power, and a year without, many are vulnerable.
So bless them God. Reveal the innocent, convict the guilty. But help their solidarity find right relation to the state.
In Sinai or in cities, in secret cells or prison cells, give wisdom. Honor the solidarity that serves a higher cause. But meld each solidarity with the competing others, and make the state an effective, arbitrating servant.
That each one, in solidarity with all, might serve you. Make this the largest tribe.
A view shows a damaged police station burnt in a blaze by supporters of former president Mohamed Mursi in Kerdasa, a town 14 km (9 miles) from Cairo in this September 19, 2013 file photograph. REUTERS/Mohamed Abd El Ghany
Here is a recent report from Reuters, showing the difficulty in covering Egypt well. Kudos for going there, but we can only trust the journalist for his/her impressions.
The pronoun is not specified, as he/she requested anonymity. The fear, likely, is of covering anti-regime sentiment. The question is if he/she covered it well.
The brief story is that Kerdasa, Giza was the site of an Islamist take-over following the dispersal of the pro-Morsi sit-ins at Rabaa and Nahda. That day locals stormed the police station with rocket-propelled grenades, killing 12 officers. Authority was not reestablished until a month later. Since then, 185 Brotherhood supporters have been sentenced to death for their role in the violence.
The headline states: Sisi’s Crackdown on Islamists Yet to Win Over Egyptian Village.
Fair enough, as Kerdasa would be a difficult village to win over. The article reports that night raids on suspected Brotherhood members continue, and the police man checkpoints into and out of the village.
But the following first-hand anecdotal description could be found almost anywhere in Egypt:
A look around Kerdasa offers plenty of reminders that arrests and intimidation have never succeeded in silencing enemies of the state.
Idle teenagers who can be easy recruits for jihadists. Women covered from head to toe in black. Profanities scribbled on a burned-out police station insulting President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and calling for Mursi’s return.
This is one of the troubles in reporting about Egypt — those reading don’t know the commonality of everyday life. Teenagers are idle in every city. Many women wear the full niqab. And anti-Sisi graffiti from the past year and a half has rarely been scrubbed from the walls.
None of this necessarily suggests a dissatisfaction with him, nor ongoing support for Morsi.
Good reporting gets local opinion, on the record. But still the journalist must be trusted in selection of sources. Some quotes against the current atmosphere were given anonymity, but the following are bold in their public criticism:
Ayman al-Qahawi works at Al Azhar, a center of Islamic learning seen by Sisi as an ally in the fight against extremism.
“Kerdasa has become a black spot in our lives even though there are only a small number of criminals. They treat all of us as if we are terrorists,” said the professor, adding that a colleague was not allowed to leave Egypt because his identification card showed he lives in Kerdasa.
Bus driver Sayed Hassan, 31, says that when he went to renew his vehicle license, police stopped him at a checkpoint.
“Pull over you terrorist. You are from Kerdasa. You will spend a lot of time with us,” he quoted an officer as saying.
What should be inferred from these voices? Is Kerdasa so Islamist they don’t fear to give their names, safe in the protection of village solidarity? Or that Kerdasa is in the process of being restored, and thus there is no fear to voice complaint?
Probably no inference is best, but the willingness to go on the record is a positive development.
Of course, the fear of the correspondent is still telling.
Even so, he/she did a good job of balancing opinion:
“We are sure that Mursi is oppressed and his case is political,” said student Abdel Rahman Mohamed, 22.
“The country will not calm down. The only solution is Mursi’s release and the release of the 40,000 people detained since the military coup.”
A pharmacist blamed both sides for the deterioration in Kerdasa and in his finances.
“Please don’t mention my name,” he told a Reuters reporter. “The Brotherhood are already boycotting my pharmacy because I don’t agree with their viewpoint. I don’t want to anger them even more. They are still around.”
Fear, apparently, is shared by many. It makes reporting difficult.
The police usually do not belong in the papers. The criminal should take the headlines, with the officer behind the scenes. In Egypt, sadly, this has not been true. The pendulum, hopefully, might yet reach balance.
Police abuse and corruption was a prime catalyst of the revolution. Demonized, the papers scrutinized every fault. Later, the police stood with the army and multitudes of demonstrators against Morsi. Lionized, the papers rehabilitated their reputation.
But once again the police are back in the papers. Carefully, cautiously, reports of abuse and corruption hit the front page.
Some say it is sanctioned directly from the top. To reform an institution requires public will; shaping public will requires media dissemination.
Sisi may be saying: Get your house in order.
The police chief has also been vocal: We will treat citizens humanely, we will train in human rights.
And a few police have been arrested, accused in the deaths of detainees.
God, you know the realities of how Egypt works. You know the practices inside police stations. You know the relationship between government and press. And you know the sincerity of each man’s heart.
May good laws be enforced by good men in good institutions. Reform all to the extent necessary.
Let public rhetoric shape public behavior, and curb private but official violations. Let media shaming evolve into legal accountability. Let police take pride in their performance. Let justice and rule of law characterize the social order.
And give wisdom to Egypt to know how to get there.
‘Be sure your sins will find you out,’ says the ancient wisdom. Perhaps this is the longest application on record.
But it is still incomplete, as the culprit remains hidden by the obscurity of history. Surely he is mentioned in the hieroglyphic records somewhere, but as the all-thumbs sloppy apprentice to the famed embalmer of Thebes.
From The Guardian, describing the CT scan results on a number of ancient mummies, on display in London.
There will be eight mummies in the show. Details of two were revealed yesterday. The unknown Thebes man, mummified around 600BC, is particularly interesting because of the bits of tool that were left in the poor man’s skull.
Daniel Antoine, who is responsible for the museum’s human remains collection, said embalmers had “great skill and knowledge of human anatomy”, managing to extract a brain through a hole no bigger than 2cm by 2cm.
In this case, something went wrong. The embalmer would probably have used a metal rod to break the bones at the top of the nose to then extract the brain with a wooden or perhaps reedy spatula – it is this that somehow broke and remains in the man’s skull.
So what happened? Was this poor man, who was also suffering from severely painful dental abscesses, thrown to the young student for his training? When he made his error, did he just cover it up and trust no one would notice? Did he show such contempt for the afterlife that this poor worker would live his next life with tool bits in his head?
Or does the scandal go deeper? The chief embalmer was a man of great skill, working on the finest of corpses:
Tamut lived in Thebes around 900BC and had a top job as a temple singer, or chantress, of the god Amun. Because of her high status she was given the best possible mummification. Researchers have scanned and made 3D copies of amulets that adorned her body.
They have also detected a pair of small metal plates which cover the incision that the embalmer would have made in her left abdomen to drain out her internal organs. They have on them carvings of a protective eye, presumably to help heal the wound magically.
Would such shoddy student mummification have escaped the notice of this renowned embalmer? It seems more likely there was a love triangle between Tamut, the surgical chief, and the worker with dental issues. The high executive in the mummy office maintained an affair with her, one of the notoriously loose temple singers. As one last expression of high class snobbery, he botched the operation of her jilted working-class husband and left him brain-dead in the afterlife.
Tamut, he planned, would be preserved for him forever.
That is, until his modern-day equivalent in London discovered the scandal. Ancient wisdom proves true after all.
As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concludes cantankerous negotiations to finalise his right-wing cabinet, Palestinian-Israeli evangelicals are hoping for something better.
Alienated by campaign rhetoric stigmatising Arab citizens as an electoral threat, they turned in response to the source they know best: the Gospel.
In doing so, they seek to reverse a disturbing trend of isolation from society as a whole, and in particular their Jewish neighbors.
‘Are we not asked to be the salt and light of the earth?’ asked Revd Azar Ajaj, president of Nazareth Evangelical College, in an open letter shortly after the Israeli elections.‘How important, then, to show love to those who have been styled as our “enemies”. In fact we are asked to be peacemakers.’
And from April 16-18, he gathered 60 local and international leaders to discuss how.
The ‘Evangelicals and Peacemaking’ conference was sponsored in part by the Baptist Mission Society UK. It urged participants as Palestinian Christians in Israel to seek justice and reconciliation to create a state for all its citizens.
Present at the conference was Salim Munayer, head of Musalaha, which since 1990 has bucked the trends of intifadas and settlement building to call for peace between Israeli Jews and Palestinians.
The election rhetoric was quite discouraging, Munayer told Lapido Media.
Netanyahu rallied his supporters saying the Arabs were coming out to vote ‘in droves’. His foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told Ayman Odeh, head of the Arab Joint List which placed third in total Knesset seats, ‘you’re not wanted here.’
Meanwhile the Joint List – a merger of secular, communist, and Islamist parties – included the symbolic presence of a politician calling for a caliphate in Jerusalem. It received the strong endorsement of Hamas.
Pressed between a regional rise in Islamism, mirrored by the gains of religious Zionism, Christians are being squeezed.
And as a result, they are withdrawing from both.
Separation
Evangelical leaders estimate their numbers in Israel are only around 5,000, among 157,000 Christians and 1.4 million Muslims. Israel’s population is 7.91 million, according to the 2012 census.
‘Most interaction between Palestinian Christians and Israeli Jews comes by necessity, not as a result of a relationship,’ Munayer told conference attendees. ‘We see them at school, at the bank, but much more must be done.’
And it has never been worse, according to his research co-authored with Jewish professor Gabriel Horenczyk from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The October 2014 issue of International Journal of Psychology details how Christians have soured toward Jews.
In 1998, the predominant attitude of over 200 Arab Christian adolescents surveyed was of integration with Israeli Jewish culture. By contrast, the attitude toward Arab Muslim culture was one of separation.
But 10 years later, adolescents exhibited a primary posture of increasing separation from both.
‘Many of us have given up on trying to improve our relationship with both the Jews and the Muslims of Israel,’ Munayer said. ‘We say it is a waste of time, they are not going to change, they are becoming more religious, and they don’t want us.’
Munayer’s Musalaha is doing all it can to fight the reality of this withdrawal. It has created a three-hundred-page curriculum on reconciliation between distinct peoples, applying its principles during inter-ethnic summer camps and encounter groups.
But he increasingly aims to influence society as a whole, not only at the grassroots but also in academic engagement. Munayer received his PhD from the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies at Cardiff University, and is collaborating with a number of young Israeli Christian and Jewish scholars to further his research.
For example, in a survey of 700 Muslims, Christians and Druze, Sammy Smooha of Haifa University found only fifty per cent of Christians have Jewish friends they have visited at home. But 57 per cent have experienced discrimination, and thirty per cent reported receiving threats or humiliation.
These and other findings were presented at a January conference on Palestinian Christian Identity in Israel, co-hosted by Musalaha and the Hebrew University. It was unprecedented, Munayer said, for an Israeli university to sponsor such an event.
Bridges
And it is an Israeli Jew who is helping Ajaj take his baby steps toward peacemaking, moving beyond his simple convictions.
‘Very little is being done to build bridges with the Jews,’ he told Lapido Media. ‘I’m still in the beginning of the journey and I pray that good things come out of it.’
In October last year Ajaj participated in an interfaith dialogue at a Jewish conference centre. A rabbi from the village of Kiryet Tiv’on, ten miles from Nazareth, invited him to speak at his synagogue during Hanukah and explain the Ten Commandments on his radio program.
In May they begin a six-month experiment to bring eight from each community to discuss matters of faith and society.
‘We are classified as enemies, but we don’t accept this,’ Ajaj said of the national political discourse. ‘So we must encourage those who are silent to take action and express respect for the other.’
Ajaj hopes the April conference can empower Nazareth Evangelical College as a centre for theological education in peacemaking. But as a minority within a minority within a minority, there is only so much they can do.
To help, Ajaj recently invited leaders from seven different denominations to a conference on Christianity in the Holy Land. Several said it was their first meeting with an evangelical.
But with Christians withdrawing into a self-imposed ghetto mentality as Israeli Arab citizens are labelled a demographic threat, these evangelicals are calling for a halt.
‘If we want a better future built on respecting and loving the “other”, then let us take part in building it,’ Ajaj wrote. ‘Otherwise, those with other values will determine what this future will be.’
So boasted the black-clad narrator of the latest ISIS video, this time chronicling their slaughter of 30 Ethiopian Christians captured in Libya. Two months earlier, the victims were Coptic Christians, whose beheadings came entitled: A message signed with blood to the nation of the cross.
But what is the ‘nation of the cross’?
Some have embraced the terminology. The Christ Church United Methodist of the Woodlands, Texas, posted a Je Suis Charlie inspired message of support: ‘Here am I, I too, am a member of the nation of the cross.’
But Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Orthodox Church in the UK thinks they are making a grave mistake.
‘This divisive terminology implies that we as a “nation” of Christians are at war with the “nation of Islam”,’ he wrote to the youth of his church.‘Of course this is not the case, and we must not be coerced into a state of enmity.’
ISIS labeled the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church an ‘enemy’, likely for the ongoing Ethiopian military response against the Islamist terrorist group al-Shabab in Somalia. Likewise, the Coptic Orthodox Church is targeted to a great degree for the Egyptian government’s crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.
But ISIS is not just after these churches. ‘Our battle is between faith and blasphemy,’ the narrator declared. ‘We swear to Allah: You will not have safety, even in your dreams, until you embrace Islam.’
In seeing itself as a caliphate, Angaelos told Lapido Media, ISIS wants to put itself at war with Christianity.
Alarmed
‘Because there is a Muslim ummah, there must be in their eyes a Christian ummah, the nation of the cross,’ he said, using the Arabic word that can be translated as ‘nation’.
‘This is why I am very alarmed when people use it naively, because they are buying into a rhetoric that is not ours.’
And according to Muslim scholars, ‘nation of the cross’ is not part of Islamic rhetoric either.
The word ummah is used 62 times in the Qur’an, sometimes referring to ‘peoples’ in general. But over time it becomes more specific to the Muslim community, according to Frederick Denny’s chapter, ‘The meaning of ‘ummah’ in the Qur’an’, in The History of Religions.
Christians and Jews are viewed as an ummah as recipients of divine revelation, but Christians are labeled ahl al-kitab, or ‘people of the book’.
‘This phrase [nation of the cross] is unknown, ISIS has invented it to divide people,’ Muhga Ghalib, dean of Islamic Studies at al-Azhar University told Lapido Media. ‘We have the three religions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and we are brothers in humanity.’
The editor-in-chief of the Muslim Brotherhood’s official English website agreed. ‘I cannot really make any reference of “nation of cross” to Islamic heritage, or history, and I’m not sure what the origin is,’ Hazem Malky told Lapido. ‘It looks like something they use in their own literature to serve their needs and ideology.’
But even where the rhetoric turns negative in Islamic history, terms like ahl al-dhimmah or kuffar are employed, to refer either to a protected community paying jizya tax, or to infidels.
ISIS’ video also highlights the fact that Syria’s Christians admit paying the tax, having been brought to the point of submission. Rejecting the nation-state system, ISIS sees the caliphate at war with distinct religious communities with the aim of subjugating them.
Obscure
Its extremist scholars have made a science out of reviving obscure concepts in Islamic history, like the selling of sex slaves and the burning of captives. These are rejected by the vast majority of Muslims today.
But even a group with traditional animosity against Christians finds the term ‘nation of the cross’ unfamiliar. Hany Nour Eddin, a member of Egypt’s dissolved parliament with the formerly militant al-Gama’a al-Islamiya, told Lapido Media ISIS tries to invoke the Crusades in its effort to pit East against West.
‘ISIS uses the logic of power and jihad in order to create conflict,’ he said. ‘They are trying specifically to recruit the Islamist current to their side, telling them the democratic experiment has failed.’
Bishop Angaelos, on the other hand, interprets it as the recruitment of an enemy.
He says ISIS wants a military response motivated by Christian sentiment. ‘The West must not give in. This ideology must fall, otherwise those killed will be replaced by others,’ he says.
Instead, those motivated by Christian sentiment have a responsibility to exhibit their faith.
After the beheading of the Copts by ISIS, Angelos tweeted #fatherforgive, and it quickly went viral. When BBC and CNN reported it, the popular discourse shifted.
Angaelos is calling for his own redefinition of terms to be taken up more broadly, to prevent the world being sucked into a false dichotomy.
‘When we disengage from this language, we move away from the simplicity of Christian West versus Muslim East, because it’s wrong,’ he said. ‘I find this concept of the Muslim world quite offensive. Do I not have a place? For millions of Christians, this is our world also, plus Baha’is and non-believers beside.’
He adds that ‘the nation of the cross’ does not fit the West in its religious diversity. Coining a phrase foreign to Islam, Christianity, and modern civilization, ISIS is threatening to set the terms.
‘They are killing Muslims not just Christians’ says Angaelos. ‘This ideology considers everything unlike itself an enemy.’
Jayson Casper 