Three years ago I met Ahmed Ashoush at a demonstration in Cairo. He and his fellow Salafi-Jihadis gathered outside the French Embassy to protest against French military intervention in Mali, where an Islamic insurgency was pressing toward the capital. It was a calm but angry affair, with many pictures of Osama bin Laden and chants for the worldwide supremacy of Islam.
A little later Ashoush agreed to an interview. We and three of his colleagues met with Cornelis Hulsman at the Arab West Report office in Maadi, Cairo, and discussed the philosophy behind their movement, their dreams for the future, and the activism to help them get there.
I have previously written about this encounter and the Salafi-Jihadis here, here, here, and here, but for the first time a full transcript of the interview is available. AWR is preparing a book on the post-Arab Spring Islamist movements of Egypt, post-Arab Spring but pre-fall of Morsi. In support of the chapter on Salafi-Jihadism, Jeanne Rizkallah has provided a full translation.
Ahmed Ashoush is currently in prison, convicted for attacking a satellite telecom facility in Maadi.
It was a fascinating interview, and very strange. Almost the entire time Ashoush directed his answers toward his colleagues, and avoided eye contact. This was neither evasive nor shy, but it felt as if he wished to address a friendly audience. But in terms of interaction he was most often direct in providing clear answers to challenging issues, however much resemblance they bore to common Salafi or jihadi themes.
Here is an excerpt, and please click here to read the full transcript at Arab West Report.
JC: With regard to the aspect of administration, would you define Al-Salafiyia al-Jihādiyia as an organization?
AA- No, we do not define ourselves in terms of organizational structures. We are concerned with matters of our faith and religious doctrines. We are now a Da`wa, an open call that invites to all what is good, enjoining to face the psychological warfare that the United States of America and the western colonialism is raiding against us, to rectify wrong and erroneous terminologies like the words ‘terrorism’ and ‘moderate Islam’.
In fact, the term ‘moderate’ has been used to distort the religious concepts of Islam, and to distort the concepts of real facts, such as the treason practiced by Arab rulers. These terms have been distorted to serve the interests and gains acquired through the American psychological warfare.
Let me cite an example: the number of car types, of airplanes you produce in your country, America if compared with the production in Arab countries, or in Egypt. Who is responsible for the state of underdevelopment the Arab countries are in? Not the peoples but the governments; the politicians, not the common people, are to be held accountable. This state of backwardness is unbearable.
When we in the Muslim world want to defend our nations, we import arms and ammunition from the West; when we want to cure illnesses, we have to import medication; when we need medical treatment, we seek a medical doctor from Europe. Who is to be held accountable for all these detrimental situations? A serious crime of betrayal of this nation has been committed, and the Arab rulers should be punished now on the ground, and in the process of history.
Our peoples are not aware of these facts. We will place these realities before them.
JC: How do you perceive the change of Egypt from within?
AA – Our major concern now is to achieve a change in thought and mentality. Our struggle as Salafi Jihādis is to first change the Egyptian mentality that has been strongly afflicted by the corrupt media structure, the treacherous liberal politics that had succeeded to systematically distort the people’s thought.
Our goal is to bring back the authenticity of [Islamic] thought to the people, to disclose the truth, to revive in them the power of their belief. The Egyptian common people need to identify and define what is good for them, and around who they want to coalesce; with Islam, or with America, or with Russia? With the rulers or with the non-ruling?
This dynamic battle is crucial for us. We are fighting the mentality of colonization, of abduction that has been imposed by both the American and European occupations. We are combating Muslims, Arabs, and Egyptians that had linked their existence and interests to the European oppressor.
JC: How would you classify your activities?
AA – We have a number of activities. We also publish books and articles; we organize lectures, meetings, and mass appearances. We are active on a number of levels, however, we work under oppression, and we are still forced into a position of weakness, and after so many years spent in prisons, we do not have the financial means.
All our resources, the financial as well as the physical ones, have been destroyed. But we do not succumb. The Salafi Jihādi is a warrior who rather dies on the battlefield rather than on his bed deprived of self-determination. To die in striving to raise the banner of Allah until victory is much better than to live in submissive compliance.
For many Christians in Egypt, customary reconciliation sessions (CRS) represent one of the most visceral symbols of discrimination against their community. Existing outside the scope of formal law and justice, CRS offer a quick alternative to the lengthy judicial process as village elders and religious leaders decide matters of guilt, innocence, and punishment.
In some cases, however, punishment against Copts has been collective. In others, the only guilt is in breaking local custom, not law. At times, Muslims guilty of crimes have been ‘reconciled’. And often the CRS is conducted in the presence of police, lending the appearance of state legitimacy to proceedings.
But does this description characterize the CRS in its entirety?
In 2010 Arab West Report conducted a major study into the practice, entitled Social Reconciliation: Pre- and Post-Conflict in the Egyptian Setting. Using a case study from Izbat Bushra, it examined the factors behind and efficacy of this common practice.
In July 2015, AWR investigated a CRS with Georgetown University PhD candidate Matthew Anderson which drove a Christian family from their village in Kafr Darwish. Matthew’s report was published on January 14 and can be found here. In November, 2015 AWR translated a document supplied by a CRS practitioner, Sheikh Hamdi Abd al-Fattah of Maghagha, detailing the proscribed penalties for various offenses.
And on January 16, 2016, AWR returned to Maghagha to allow Sheikh Hamdi to field questions from a collection of interested Egyptians and foreign residents. The session was held in a church in the village of Qufada, where Fr. Yu’annis maintains a strong friendship and CRS cooperation with Sheikh Hamdi.
The following is a summary of the questions asked of the sheikh and the answers he provided.
CRS can be compared to the origins of English common law. Do you find it to be widely practiced in Egypt because of social and cultural acceptance?
Yes, this is correct. CRS is completely different from the judiciary system in terms of speed, but it is like it in terms of Muslims and Christians being equal before the law. But in Upper Egypt people respect our traditional customs more than the law, and fear the punishment of the CRS more than the judiciary. Our proceedings help contain problems before they spread, whether they are between Muslims, Christians, or one of each party.
What is your background as a CRS practitioner?
I have studied Shari’a, obtained a diploma in international arbitration from Cairo University, and am a consultant with the International Arbitration Association and a member in the Egyptian Committee for Customary Arbitration.
How did the rulings in the translated document come to be agreed upon?
Most were the judgments given in actual cases, but others were decided by local sheikhs in order to help prevent these cases from occurring in reality.
Why are all the penalties given in terms of specified fines?
The formal law system can prescribe either a fine or a jail sentence, but not the CRS. But in three cases the CRS is sometimes able to authorize a greater punishment and kick the offending party out of the village, with security implementing the terms. These involve murder, sectarian conflict, or sexual assault.
Do both parties have to agree in order to enter a CRS?
Yes, usually the victim comes to us first, and then we try to get the accused to come also. [At this Sheikh Hamdi showed an official CRS document with the signatures of both parties.]
If the accused does not present himself there are two methods to gain his assent for the CRS. First, we can threaten to involve the police. Or second, we bring the issue to the elders of the village, who are generally greatly respected. They then know how to get all parties to comply.
Are witnesses needed in the proceedings?
Yes. If there is conflicting testimony both sides present their witnesses and we decide between them. But if there are no witness both parties are put on oath by swearing on the Qur’an or the Bible, and then we evaluate the case by what they say. Sometimes police are present, but they do not interfere and lend only their legitimacy.
Some of the penalties demand a very high fine. What if they person cannot pay?
Customary law does not judge the person alone, but his family as well. If the person cannot pay on his own the family must assume the responsibility, or someone else on their behalf.
In the case of murder and if the accused admits to the crime, he will take a symbolic burial shroud to the victim’s family. This signifies him saying to them, ‘My life is yours, you can kill me or not as you choose.’ But always the custom is to forgive and accept the shroud in place of his life.
What about domestic disputes between husband and wife? Can they be part of CRS?
Marriage relations have their own set of regulations, as do other inter-family relationships.
How are the people educated in customary laws?
This is the responsibility of parents, who assume it naturally as part of society. But one important aspect of the CRS is that it is public. A lesson is always stronger if it is both seen and heard.
How can your example of cooperation with Fr. Yu’annis spread throughout Egypt?
We are not a backwards people; we have values and a heritage of civilization. The type of relationship I have with Fr. Yu’annis is not unique, it is found nationwide. Western media is not just, for it shows you only what will reinforce the image it wants to present, and misrepresents our reality of cooperation.
In Kafr Darwish, I blame our local media, for when the Christians were kicked out of their village, it failed to report that in another location a Muslim was kicked out of his village for similar circumstances.
A man was insulting women on social media in Ishneen al-Nasara, both Muslims and a few Christians. I presided over the session and banned him from the village for a period of five years. This penalty was proscribed regardless of his religion, and resembles the circumstances found in Kafr Darwish.
What I want now is for you to return to your countries and speak about us correctly. Will you do that?
Among the many battlegrounds between liberal and conservative visions for Egypt is the blasphemy law, with Islam al-Beheiry and Fatima Naoot its latest victims.
Naoot was recently sentenced to three years and fined 20,000 Egyptian pounds ($2,500) for statements critical of the Eid al-Adha ritual of slaughtering animals. Beheiry’s very public spat with Al-Azhar, meanwhile, concerns the right of the citizen to question, research, and promulgate revisionist interpretations of Islamic heritage.
That his one year prison sentence for contempt of religion followed an acquittal from another court on similar charges reveals a society and judiciary not yet settled on the proper balance between freedom of belief and expression and the protection of religion, both demanded by the nation’s constitution.
Public figures criticized both the Beheiry and Naoot verdicts. In Beheiry’s case, one prominent politician penned an op-ed in the national daily, Al-Ahram, calling the blasphemy law “disgraceful to Egypt.” Many have expressed alarm over what appears to be a recent increase in formal accusations. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) noted in a 2014 report that blasphemy cases increased from three in 2011 to 13 in 2013, averaging about one per month since the revolution. EIPR lead researcher Ishak Ibrahim told EgyptSource that another 17 cases were filed last year.
While local and international rights groups have called for the law to be amended or repealed, Ibrahim favors the strategy of referring a case to the Supreme Constitutional Court (SCC). He fears that kind of legislative push might backfire and result in an increase in punishments. There is greater hope, he thinks, that the SCC might rule the blasphemy law to be unconstitutional. This would be on the basis of Articles 64 and 65, which to Ibrahim are clear. They state that freedom of belief is “absolute” and freedom of thought and opinion is “guaranteed,” inclusive of the right to express and publish.
But in an interview with EgyptSource one of Egypt’s senior judges described his understanding of the legal context of blasphemy law, more formally known as contempt of religions. He requested anonymity due to the fact that Beheiry’s file is still working its way through the judicial system, and made clear his comments do not refer to any specific case. In principle, he believes the law in current form to be just and in accordance with the constitution.
The SCC, he said, has already settled the issue. Case 44 of 1988 on the organization of political parties confirmed that “freedom of expression is a fundamental right, inherent in the very nature of a democratic regime and essential to the free formation of the public will.” Meanwhile, Case 8 of 1996, which addressed the question of wearing the veil in schools, described the relation of the right of expression to religious belief. “Freedom of belief, in principle, means for the individual not to be forced to adopt a belief he does not believe in,” the judge related from the court brief. But it also prohibited one “to side with one belief in a manner that would be prejudicial to another by denying, belittling, or ridiculing it.”
According to Khaled Hassan, a liberal Muslim researcher with the Center for Arab-West Understanding, this what Beheiry has done. It is not the content of his argument that is inappropriate, but the presentation. Beheiry’s style on television, he says, is provocative, on occasion offensive, and belittles the belief of millions of Muslims.
EIPR’s Ibrahim explains thatin the court verdict that saw Beheiry sentenced, he was found guilty of “insulting Islamic sanctities, the Sunnah, and the four imams [referring to the founders of the four principle Islamic schools of jurisprudence], considered a tearing down of the constants of Islam.” But the judge who acquitted Beheiry, Ibrahim related, ruled that nothing he said was in violation of the law. The case demonstrates that determining the boundaries of ridicule is left in the hands of the individual judge, who issues a verdict according to his own judgement.
Lawyer Hamdy al-Assyouti has defended many accused on a pro bono basis, and is the author of Blasphemy in Egypt which details 23 cases. He told EgyptSource that he tries to keep the judge’s focus on the law, not religion. Too often, he said, either mob pressure or a judge’s personal conservatism will cause him to ignore legitimate reasons to dismiss a case.
Beheiry was prosecuted on the basis of Article 98(f) of the Penal Code, passed in 1981 following sectarian riots in the Cairo neighborhood of al-Zawiya al-Hamra. Originally meant for protection against sectarian violence, it has become a tool exploited for oppression, Assyouti said. But this article, the judge explained, is not in the blasphemy section at all. Rather, it is included under the section dealing with crimes against the state. The text of the law designates a fine or jail term “against any person who exploits religion to propagate … extremist thoughts with intent to enflame civil strife, defame or show contempt for a revealed religion … or harm national unity.” In the judge’s opinion it only applies when one intends to cause disorder in society.
The formal contempt of religion laws are Articles 160 and 161, which prohibit the disturbance of religious rituals, printing and publishing distorted religious texts, and the public mocking of religious ceremonies. These, along with Article 98(f), do allow prosecution against those who attack religion, such as Abu Islam who was sentenced to five years in prison, after appeal, for tearing a copy of the Bible while protesting the anti-Islam film, The Innocence of Muslims. The judge believes a “sarcastic manner” that attacks the “core of religious belief” is necessary to establish guilt. This, he says, is required to protect society from instability, especially societies like Egypt which show great respect toward religion. He quoted former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, saying, “Freedom of speech is not a license. It does entail exercising responsibility and judgment.”
But he is clear this does not represent a curb on freedom of expression. “The mere propagation of non-belief in the revealed religions or of Islam,” he told EgyptSource, “does not in itself violate the provision of the Penal Code.”
For this reason there is no need to change the legislation, he believes, and in any case such efforts will not be successful. He explained that the legal process is long, involving review by the Ministry of Justice, the State Council, and the High Committee for Legal Reform, and in this case likely also Al-Azhar, which he expects will never accept diminishing the protection of religion. Legislation must also reflect social realities, he added, as necessary public dialogue would reveal non-acceptance by the great majority of a religious society.
So despite the controversies—and perhaps injustices—witnessed in recent cases, the judge’s opinion is firm. “The blasphemy law will never change,” he said. “It secures the faith of Egyptians and is not in conflict with the constitution.” Meanwhile in defense of individuals like Beheiry, Naoot, and many others, activists labor on, fully aware of all the challenges. “I believe in the freedom of belief,” said Assyouti. “But in the climate we are living in, expanding this freedom will be very difficult.”
Please click here for my earlier article that provides an alternate take on the blasphemy law.
Amr Saleh, a 33-year-old lecturer in Islam in English had never met a Christian until he moved to Cairo. He believed monasteries were places of torture and black magic.
Now the respected scholar who is based at al-Azhar, the Sunni Muslim world’s most prestigious seat of learning, enthusiastically studies liberation theology.
He also wants to transform the traditional approach to comparative religion.
Saleh’s change of heart was sparked by an unlikely friendship with a French priest. It prepared him for a groundbreaking decision by al-Azhar to allow its students to learn about Christianity in Rome.
‘We should understand people as they want to be understood,’ he told Lapido. ‘To teach Christianity you should start with Christians and learn from their perspective.’
Saleh was the first al-Azhar lecturer to go to Rome for the inaugural Summer School for Christian Sciences at Urbaniana Pontifical University.
Now, after five long years, full-fledged relations between the Vatican and al-Azhar are set to resume ‘very soon.’
Dr Kamal Boraiqa of al-Azhar’s Centre for Interfaith Dialogue (formed in February 2015) told Lapido new efforts are underway to rebuild ties between the leading institutions of the Christian and Muslim world.
He praised the groundbreaking educational partnership, which graduated the first ever Azhar scholar with a Vatican-certified diploma in Christianity.
Boraiqa described it as a step to ‘pave the way’ to restoring cooperation that had ground to a halt.
In 1998 Pope John Paul II and Grand Imam Mohamed Tantawi created the Joint Committee for Dialogue. In 2000 he became the first ever pontiff to visit al-Azhar.
But relations soured in 2006 when his successor, Pope Benedict, quoted a Byzantine emperor who criticized Islam.
And in January 2011 al-Azhar astounded the world by officially suspending dialogue following the Pope’s call for protection of Middle East Christians after the New Year’s Eve bombing of a church in Alexandria.
Thaw
A thaw came in 2013 as Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb sent a message of congratulations to newly elected Pope Francis.
Six months later the pope sent a letter expressing his respect for Islam and a desire to build ‘mutual understanding.’
A further boost came in November 2014, when Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi visited the Vatican and agreed with the Pope to renew dialogue.
It has been mostly quiet since. Boraiqa met with Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran of the Joint Committee at high level interfaith meetings in Jordan in 2015, and conveyed to Tayyeb his wish to resume dialogue.
‘It proves we don’t mind our sons studying at the Vatican,’ Boraiqa said. ‘It is a message that we trust you.’
Saleh was the only Egyptian in the group of three Turks and two Chinese in the inaugural class. He said academics were eager to build good relations.
Originally from Fayoum, 100 kilometers south of Cairo, Saleh first came to al-Azhar as a student.
Dominican priest Fr John Jacques Perenes, from France, who was director of the Dominican Institute for Oriental Studies in Cairo (IDEO), stumbled upon him struggling through a book on Christianity, and their eventual friendship ‘completely altered’ his outlook.
Now he is the one altering others. Most of his students at al-Azhar are from Indonesia and Malaysia, and never even heard of the Vatican.
The month-long intensive Urbaniana programme includes courses in theology, Old and New Testament, ethics, and church history.
But it also provides students an opportunity to witness the darker side of interfaith relations.
In the northern city of Padua, the authorities passed a law requiring immigrant kebab shops to close earlier than other restaurants, Saleh said. In Rome, he visited a Bangladeshi mosque marked by stark poverty.
But it was his visit to the Jewish ghetto and the stories of Jewish eviction to death camps in Germany that left the strongest impression.
‘I was deeply moved. Look what we can do to each other,’ he said. ‘And this was only a hundred years ago.’
Network
The programme director is one Fr Roberto Cherubini. He told Lapido the school is meant to create a network of relations in the non-Christian world.
‘Often their perceptions are not correct,’ he said. ‘It is important to help them get information from the source.’
Cherubini blamed the media, and described the school as an effort to help Christian minorities by helping the majority religion better understand the Catholic faith.
To do so he interacts with reputed academic institutions. Saleh’s participation had been secured via direct conversation with al-Azhar’s Grand Imam.
Cherubini has requested five Egyptian scholars for next year, with plans to draw also from India and Indonesia.
Boraiqa also blamed the media for misrepresenting Muslims. He has travelled in the West, describing first-hand experience of Muslim stereotyping as potential terrorists.
But in the UK his experiences were better, owing, he said, to its multiculturalism. Once a visiting scholar at Birmingham University, he now joins al-Azhar’s Centre for Interfaith Dialogue in official discussions with the Anglican Communion.
Al-Azhar hosted the Bishops of Bradford, Southampton, and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s secretary of interreligious affairs, arranged through Archbishop Mouneer Hanna Anis of Egypt. Together they examined how religious texts could be used to justify violence.
‘Extremists take a verse out of context, and use it as a pretext,’ he said. ‘If you clarify issues for religious leaders, they will foster better understanding, promoting respect and cooperation.’
Anglican dialogue will with al-Azhar will resume in the UK in autumn 2016, mirroring a pattern that used to exist with the Vatican.
Meanwhile, all the signs for imminent resumption of relations with the Roman Catholic Church are there, aided by a joint effort to transcend religion with the most basic of human interactions.
‘We are warming the relations that have recently cooled,’ said Saleh. ‘What al-Azhar and the Vatican need is mutual friendship.’
STOP PRESS: We have just learned today that al-Azhar has approved a scholarship from Urbaniana for Amr Saleh to read for a PhD in Christianity and Comparative Religions.
Egypt’s Secular Party has called on President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to support legislation which cancels the blasphemy law, because, in the words of lawyer Hamdi al-Assyouti, it has “become a tool in the hands of extremists against minorities, thinkers, and the creative impulse”. And, in his experience as a defence lawyer, 90% of charges are filed against Christians. The first session of Egypt’s new parliament is due to open on 10 January.
“There has been a case each month,” he said at the launch of his new book, Blasphemy in Egypt. “If I have gotten any detail wrong, let me be judged accordingly, but everything is taken from judicial rulings.”
The research confirms the Egyptian lawyer’s claim. World Watch Monitor readers might have read the cases of Gamal Abdou, Gad Younan, and Bishoy Garas, each a Christian who has been tried for insulting Islam. But Muslims who question traditional interpretations of Islam are also targeted, as seen in the recent one-year prison sentence given to Islam al-Beheiry.
According to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR), alleged blasphemy cases increased from three in 2011 to 12 in 2012. Thirteen cases were recorded in 2013, and of 42 defendants during that time, 27 were convicted. EIPR lead researcher Ishak Ibrahim told World Watch Monitor that 17 new cases were filed in 2015.
Egyptian lawyer Hamdi al-Assyouti, author of ‘Blasphemy in Egypt’
Assyouti’s book, which he believes is the first Arabic language book of its kind to be published in Egypt, details 23 cases. But in only two cases did he say the defendants expressed actual contempt for Islam. Oftentimes social media postings provided an excuse for extremists to file charges against local Christians. Then either mob pressure in court, or a judge’s own religious conservatism, resulted in a guilty verdict.
“I try to turn the judge’s focus from religion to the law,” Assyouti told World Watch Monitor, “or else he will bypass legitimate reasons to dismiss the case.”
Law 98(f) of the penal code, he said, was originally passed by parliament in 1981 following deadly riots between Muslims and Christians at al-Zawiya al-Hamra in Cairo. The text of the law designates a fine or jail term “against any person who exploits religion to propagate … extremist thoughts with intent to inflame civil strife, defame or show contempt for a revealed religion … or harm national unity”.
But since then, he said, “it has reversed application and become a tool in the hands of extremists against minorities, thinkers, and the creative impulse”.
Articles 64 and 65 of the constitution declare freedom of belief to be “absolute” and freedom of thought and opinion to be “guaranteed”, inclusive of the right to express and publish. In their legal representation, both Assyouti and EIPR’s Ibrahim aim to convince a judge to refer a blasphemy case to the Supreme Constitutional Court.
But because of the difficulty in persuading a judge to do so, some rights advocates argue for a change in the law itself, if not its outright cancellation. In advance of the first session of Egypt’s new parliament, the Secular Party called on President Sisi to support such legislation.
‘Blasphemy in Egypt’, by Hamdi al-Assyouti
Assyouti expressed hope his book might result in the issue being tackled in parliament, but gradually: first the law should be amended to lessen the penalties, and only thereafter should cancellation be discussed. “Otherwise it will shock the population,” he said. “Even those who are not overly religious will cling to their religion during a controversy.”
But Ibrahim was cautious, wishing to focus on freedom of expression in general, with blasphemy included under the umbrella. “If we request this article be cancelled, it will result in an increase of the punishment,” he said, fearing a reversal. “No parliamentarians have the courage to raise this issue in parliament.”
Perhaps Anwar Esmat al-Sadat, nephew of the late president, will prove him wrong. Last year, during an open session in the upscale Cairo suburb of Maadi, he spoke boldly to the gathered assembly of foreigners and upper-class Egyptians.
“We are not in agreement with the blasphemy law,” said the president of the Reform and Development Party, recently elected from his district of Menoufiya in the Nile Delta. “Everyone has the right of expression, but it has to be organised. We will work on these laws in the coming parliament.”
But will he? Mahmoud Farouk, head of one of Egypt’s leading liberal lobby groups, is doubtful the new parliament will take on the challenge. His Egyptian Centre for Public Policy Studies advocates not only to cancel Article 98(f), but also to remove the religion marker from national ID cards.
In 2014, Farouk presented his centre’s paper on freedom of belief to most of Egypt’s leading political parties. At the time he estimated that 30 per cent of party members believe in cancelling the blasphemy law. But in a follow-up conversation with World Watch Monitor, he said he thought only five per cent of the elected parliament would be brave enough to speak on this issue.
Mahmoud Farouk, head of the Egyptian Centre for Public Policy Studies
The problem lies in his estimate of only 10 per cent of the population being in favour of such a change. To spread the message, he invited Paul Marshall, author of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide, to a public lecture, and promoted the Arabic version of his book online. But similar translation efforts, such as Brian Whitaker’s Arabs without God, can reach only a limited segment of Egypt’s population.
For this reason, Farouk wants to lobby directly, but quietly. Of the major political parties, he sees the Free Egyptians Party (FEP) as one of the few ideologically inclined to support changes to the blasphemy law. Osama al-Ghazali Harb, one of their leading figures, who only recently resigned, penned an article in Egypt’s largest daily calling the law a “disgrace”. But though the FEP is the largest party in parliament, with 65 seats, they are dwarfed by the non-ideological independents that make up just over half of the 596-member body.
But even among these, Farouk sees possibility. Given the current depoliticised playing field, many might not actively stand in the way of greater religious freedom if it does not cost them.
“The majority of people are not politically aware,” he said, “and if the atmosphere is right, legal reforms can be enacted without causing offense.”
Given President Sisi’s many statements about the need to reform religious discourse, rights advocates wonder if the atmosphere has ever been better. Farouk said the issue must be kept before parliamentarians in committee, urging them to take a stand, but like William Wilberforce, who won his fight against slavery in the early 1800s by slowly cobbling together a coalition, Farouk knows the challenges ahead.
“We have to find people who will work with us while keeping good relationships with the parties and their leaders,” he said.
“But to change the climate of ideas in Egypt, we need a politician who will stand and lead the charge, and right now we don’t have him.”
Until one emerges, Farouk, Ibrahim, and Assyouti labour on through each challenge. Even Blasphemy in Egypt has to fight to win a hearing, having been apparentlysubjected to an informal ban. Nevertheless, its back cover makes clear the stakes: Freedom of religion and belief is the first freedom, from which every other freedom emanates – speech, assembly, press, and the supreme right to life.
Please click here for my later article that provides an alternate take on the blasphemy law.
Myriam (L) and her friend Sandra reunite at school (via SAT-7)
Last spring, a 10-year-old Christian girl famously forgave ISIS for driving her family from their home in Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city. Myriam’s video interview with Christian broadcaster SAT-7 went viral, witnessed by more than 3 million people on television and social media.
When Myriam fled from ISIS, so did her friend Sandra. Sandra’s family first took refuge in Lebanon, while Myriam’s family headed for Erbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq. Eventually, both families settled into a refugee camp at Mar Elias Catholic Church in Erbil.
Myriam previously told SAT-7 she had three wishes. The first: For her message of forgiveness to reach the world.
Now her second and third wishes have also been fulfilled. She has returned to school, and Sandra has joined her. She now shares a desk with her childhood friend.
“I can’t describe the joy that I felt,” Myriam told SAT-7.
But the joy of school is unknown to most of the approximately 3.5 million internally displaced children of Syria and Iraq. World Vision estimates that 2.5 million Syrian children—including both the internally displaced and refugees—are not attending school.
Terry Ascott, CEO of SAT-7, told CT that without school, money, or dignity, these children are at great risk.
Please click here to read the full article at Christianity Today.
Gathered at Cairo’s prestigious Dar al-Mudarra’at military complex in early December, 150 imams and priests heard some of Egypt’s highest religious authorities praise their participation in a three-year programme to deepen religious unity.
“Working together for the sake of Egypt – we are in great need of this slogan,” said Grand Mufti Shawki Allam, in reference to the Imam-Priest Exchange, an initiative of the Egyptian Family House. “But it is also the reality in which we live.”
The Egyptian Family House was created shortly after the 25 January, 2011 revolution against President Mubarak – in partnership between al-Azhar (Sunni Islam’s leading authority), the Coptic Orthodox Church, and Egypt’s Protestant, Catholic, and Anglican denominations. The Imam-Priest Exchange began in February 2013, as popular opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and then-President Mohamed Morsi was coalescing throughout the country.
According to Abdel Rahman Moussa, an advisor to Grand Imam Ahmed al-Tayyib and speaking on his behalf for al-Azhar, “This scene is what we have dreamed of – a sincere expression of what Egypt is, the Egypt that God has preserved.”
“We were all wondering where Egypt was going,” said Bishop Mouneer Hanna Anis, whose Anglican church sponsored the training. “But now we celebrate the return of love and the brotherly spirit.”
Each year the Exchange brought together around 70 imams and priests from across the country. Four trainings of three days each had them live and eat together as they were encouraged towards a gradual but escalating partnership.
The themes? “Let us know each other. Let us coexist. Let us cooperate. Let us work together for the good of Egypt.”
Participants not only listened to academic lectures, but also actively toured the country. Egyptian citizens looked on astonished, but proud, taking selfies with imams and priests as they walked hand-in-hand down busy streets.
Their distinguished long robes, caps, and beards added to the gravity of ancient mosques, churches, and monasteries. Together they joined fellow citizens in celebrating the opening of the Suez Canal expansion. They rediscovered a shared heritage while exploring the Coptic, Islamic, and National Egyptian museums. And in the final session they visited practical examples of interfaith development work.
“We want to go where people have done things,” said Saleem Wassef, project manager for the Exchange. “The idea is to help them think out of the box, and consider how they can repeat these experiences back in their own communities.”
Moving from remedy to prevention
Religious leaders from the two different faiths visited each others’ places of worship.
This last marker is an important departure from the previous model of imam-priest cooperation, said Nady Labib, representing the Protestant Churches of Egypt. He criticised the “hugs and kisses” displayed in the media after incidents of sectarian tension, to present an image that “all is fine” between Muslims and Christians.
The Family House has been active in quelling sectarian tension, said Fr. Augustinos Elia, assistant head of the branch in Mallawi. But the focus now is on prevention, not remedy.
“We are removing walls and building bridges,” he said. “A certain extremism still persists in society, and we are working to educate and spread awareness.”
One of the best examples is found in Ismailia, where Sheikh Abdel Rahman and Fr. Surial have visited four schools a week for the past two years. Having never before seen such respect and friendship between an imam and a priest, the girls often cry when they see the two together, they said.
Consider also the work of Sheikh Ahmed and Fr. Boula in Menoufiya, where the “My Church, My Mosque” campaign collected money from Muslims to build a church, and from Christians to build a mosque.
Even in Delga, a community whose church was destroyed following the removal of Morsi from power, Sheikh Fayed and Fr. Ayoub have worked to bring Muslims and Christians together. Medical and sport outreaches have tried to unite the people, with youths brought to Cairo to witness the Family House in action.
Wassef said the local branches of the Family House are one of the best successes of the Imam-Priest Exchange. And those trained have gone on to help establish branches in Port Said, Alexandria, and Luxor.
“At first the participants were afraid to be involved,” he said. “But once they knew about the goals, they were convinced about the need to work together for the benefit of their communities.”
Bishop Armia, assistant general secretary for the Family House, related the story of an imam who told him he used to cross to the other side of the street if he saw a priest coming his way. Now, after spending a year together in the Exchange, he has become friends with a priest from his town.
Sheikh Muhi al-Din al-Afifi related a similar experience. Head of the Islamic Research Academy, as well as the Family House committee for religious discourse, he told those gathered of his first visit to a monastery, where he was pleasantly surprised to see such faith and activity mix for the good of Egypt.
“This project works to change the inherited teachings that have sown hatred among us,” he said. “It is the tip of the spear that confronts all manner of civil strife.”
Sincerity and continuity questioned
But not all participants were totally convinced by the project, with one Sheikh saying there was ‘not enough connection between words and actions’.
Not all participants, however, were as convinced. Some grumbled that the “religious other” was present only from obligation. Others complained that there was little contact between them once they left the training.
One leader in one branch confirmed this impression. Only 20 per cent of the roughly 100 members acted from full and sincere conviction, he said. Forty per cent came because they were assigned by their religious institution, and another 40 per cent were active for personal or political gain.
Another issue is that the Family House has not yet been able to win wide national media attention. “We are here, but no one sees us,” said Sheikh Said Shoman, a participant from the Sohag branch, who encouraged much more open mixing of imams and priests in the streets. “The problem is there is not enough connection between words and actions.”
The work is slow going, the branch leader admitted, but he is not discouraged. Their branch has held 10 seminars about national unity, and smaller meetings in youth centres and villages throughout the area. As a leader, he is frequently invited to government and civil society events as a Family House representative. But he considers it natural that cooperation between religious leaders takes time.
“Progress develops as someone first sees you, then later will talk to you, and only later might work with you,” he said. “There is a will to make the Family House work but it still needs more interaction.”
Wassef estimated that around 50 per cent of Exchange imams and priests have been active in pursuing the goals of the training. But if engaging men of religion has been hard work, convincing a sceptical public has been harder.
“Some of my colleagues in the ministry used to laugh at me, and some Christians say I am wasting my time,” he said. “But you meet some people who are ready to change. The progress is slow but sure.”
Bishop Mouneer echoed this long-term perspective, telling Exchange graduates that Egypt deserves their effort to rebuild.
“We must look not to what Egypt can give us, but what we can give Egypt and the future generations,” he said. Adding a word to their slogan, he urged them, “Always, together for the sake of Egypt. This is a beginning, not an end.”
UAE Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Saif bin Zayed and his sons at the inauguration of Oasis Hospital’s new maternity centre. Photo: Peddle Thorp
The ruling family in the United Arab Emirates have transformed the country’s maternity facilities, thanks to a multi-million pound investment in Christian medical care.
Oasis Hospital in al-Ain, once just a mud-brick affair built at a date-palmed caravan crossing point before oil wealth modernized the area, will become the top childbirth facility in this former Trucial State.
Four members of the royal family inaugurated the new facility on 15 November this year, with hospital staff old and new.
‘This hospital may be better equipped and integrated than ninety per cent of the hospitals in the United States,’ said Dr Daryl Erickson, a missionary surgeon who served at Oasis from 1976-1985.
The expanded complex now includes 98 rooms over three floors and a state-of-the-art neo-natal intensive care unit. There are twelve delivery rooms – doubled from six – and more specialist staff.
Still present throughout the hospital are Arabic translations of the Gospel of Luke, the physician.
American missionary doctors Pat and Marian Kennedy founded the hospital in 1961, coming at the invitation of the nation’s founder, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.
They scaled sand dunes by Land Rover in a rugged two-day trek to arrive at the desert oasis, tasked with developing modern medical care.
‘Before the hospital, thirty per cent of women died in childbirth and sixty per cent of children died before they were six years old,’ said Erickson, after whom the new surgical wing is named.
‘Immediately after delivery women had their vaginas packed with rock salt. As a result the post-partum period was incredibly painful and any subsequent labour could last up to four days because of severe scarring,’ he explained.
Honour
Among the Kennedys’ first births was Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed, younger brother of Sheikh Khalid, President of the UAE.
Gertrude Dyke, author of the definitive history of Oasis Hospital, delivered babies for twenty-six years. She related to the National that Sheikh Mohamed told her, ‘If you had not come, we would not be here.’
From the beginning, Erickson said, the Kennedys were up front about their desire to share their Christian faith. The tolerance – even honour – afforded to them and the hospital by the royal family continues to this day.
Hulsey: Free care for poor migrant workers. Photo: Oasis Hospital
‘The founding doctors came as missionaries, which was allowed and accepted by the rulers of that time,’ Oasis President Dr Trey Hulsey told Lapido.
‘Because we have kept to the spirit of treating everyone and turning no one away, we are allowed to keep Bibles out for people to take if they choose.’
Oasis is part of CURE, a network of Christian hospitals in thirty countries that has assisted more than 2.5 million patients, performed more than 180,000 surgeries, and trained over 7,200 medical professionals.
The hospital provides free care worth almost £1.8 million per year, mostly to migrant workers from Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Dignity
Equal dignity to the poor, said Hulsey, is integral to the CURE slogan: Healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom of God.
But so too is top-notch professional service to wealthy Emiratis. The hospital has twenty VIP suites fitted out with floor cushions and carpet: Emiratis prefer to sit on the floor.
‘We want people to understand they are cared for, both by us and by God,’ said Hulsey, ‘because God has cared for us first through Christ.’
Oasis hospital employs sixty doctors, about half of whom are Muslim. One-quarter are Christians of traditional missionary spirit.
They deliver three thousand babies a year, but are in need of more staff. The hospital is operating at only two-thirds capacity following the expansion.
Oasis Hospital: Better equipped than most US hospitals. Photo: CURE International
At the grand opening UAE Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Saif bin Zayed especially honoured the Kennedys’ two daughters, Kathleen and Nancy, thanking them publicly for their parents’ service, the nature of which he said he highlighted to all his international visitors.
Saif also acknowledged their faith, saying whether Muslim, Christian, or Jew, everyone must follow God in their own way.
Freedom
Christians represent 13 per cent of the UAE’s population, according to the Pew Research Center, drawn entirely from the migrant worker community.
The UAE constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of religion, and guarantees freedom of worship if consistent with public morals.
But according to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, the UAE is among a number of Muslim-majority countries that make insufficient provision for individual religious freedom.
Open Doors ranks the UAE at number 49 on its list of countries showing degrees of Christian persecution. Though persecution is ‘scarce’, and there is wide freedom for non-Muslims to worship, evangelism is prohibited and the law does not recognize conversion from Islam to Christianity.
Preaching at the hospital had to cease in 1978, and the Christian bookstore was forced to close. In the 1980s, Bibles were banned from patient rooms.
But today they are available again, while the church adjacent to the hospital hosts a Bible Society of the Gulf kiosk.
Oasis Hospital recently delivered its one-hundred-thousandth baby, and certainly enjoys the favour of both citizens and government.
Coordination is now underway with a national charitable foundation to provide medical and surgical aid in Syria and Yemen.
Erickson muses: ‘I wonder if the UAE is as peaceful as it is today as a result of God’s blessing on the local people—citizens and leaders alike—because of their long-term interest in and tolerance of the Gospel.
‘I don’t know how you prove this, but just look at what the rest of the Middle East is like.’
List of Churches within the Evangelical Church of Abu Dhabi
Christianity Today recently interviewed me about my September article on the churches of the Persian/Arabian Gulf.
There are about 2.3 million Christians in the Arabian Peninsula—more than nearly 100 countries can claim. What does that look like on the ground? Christianity Today‘s Middle East correspondent Jayson Casper recently spoke with assistant editor Morgan Lee on his fascinating story on why Christianity is surging in the heart of Islam. In the interview, Casper explains why Gulf States want churches, how globalization affects religious freedom in the region, and what most surprises him about the region’s Christianity.
As judged by the Facebook shares (over 6,000), this story surprised many of our readers. To what extent did you “stumble” on this story?
The story was suggested by CT’s News Editor Jeremy Weber, but I was eager to take it on. I was aware that there were churches in the region for a long time, but always curious about what local Christianity looked like.
Would the number of churches come as a surprise to those who live in the Gulf?
As far as the Gulf is concerned, the presence of churches is well known. If one is nonreligious, they would not necessarily be spotted, but anyone looking can find them easily. Many churches have an active web presence.
Christian leaders in the United Arab Emirates, as well as a high ranking member of the royal family, told me the government wants to do all it can to facilitate the worship of Christian foreign workers. They value the wholeness the church can provide.
Otherwise they deal with the normal vices found in Western society but out of place in the Gulf, and on top of it suffer from loss of productivity when workers suffer loneliness and depression.
What was hard about doing the reporting for this piece?
Balancing the good news—foreign Christians have been largely welcome to the country—with the reality that this freedom does not extend to Gulf citizens. Overwhelmingly, Christian leaders wanted to accentuate their appreciation to the authorities.
But there was also a tenor among some — off the record — that a glowing portrayal would not be right. The focus of the story is to help correct the wide assumption among many Western Christians that the Islam of the Arabian Peninsula is intolerant to Christianity in general. But getting the right tone of ‘yes-but’ was not easy.
What did you find most surprising in your own reporting?
The physical size of the church buildings, how they are part of the landscape of the community and not hidden away as eyesores. There is money in the Gulf, so everything is big. But while I knew that Christianity existed within a level of tolerance, I had no idea about the level of normalcy these buildings imply. (See pictures here.)
What’s something you wish you could have included in the final draft that didn’t make its way in?
There were several charming stories of interactions normal Christians had with their neighbors. A Sunday School teacher. A military instructor. An IT manager. Each one came for a job, but was living their Christian life—and often speaking of it—in winsome ways.
I also heard about churches organizing service trips into the migrant labor camps, and some of the difficulties experienced by the majority Asian population. Not all of these stories made it into the article, but they served to confirm what leading sources conveyed.
In the article you write, “Thanks also to global capitalism, that freedom is not going away.” To what extent do you think this freedom will expand?
It is difficult to say. Because the nations of the Gulf are so young and their economies are expanding so rapidly, many sources told me that the authorities sort of make it up as they go along.
Concerning the churches, this means there is often no set of regulations that can be followed in a clear cut manner. So much depends upon decisions of higher-ups that come through relationship more than bureaucracy. They prefer to deal with a head of denomination and let them regulate affairs internally. So one measure of expanding freedom can be seen if this freedom simply gets written down into law.
Another measure of freedom, perhaps, exists in comparison between the Gulf States and Europe, both of which have received many migrants over the past decades. Europe has extended citizen rights to many, while the Gulf does not. Will the Gulf ever offer a similar opportunity? If so, can they accept Christians as citizens as opposed to guest workers?
Globalization and multicultural realities often produce a liberalizing effect, even as they can spark backlash. Over time will these realities fundamentally change Gulf attitudes? It is a fascinating possibility to observe.
[Note: Both Bahrain and Kuwait have a tiny number of Christian citizens originally from other Arab countries.]
In the article you write “that Gulf churches exist at all stems from relationships, not economics or law.” Who are those relationships open to? In other words, is it only between Arab men and Western white men? Or are these accessible regardless of ethnic background or gender?
In the article, that sentence meant the origin and continuance of the churches is due to the very specific relationship between Christian leaders and the ruling authorities. In terms of relations between guest workers and Gulf citizens, I think the general culture does not facilitate mixing.
In many settings the migrant workers are the majority, and many citizens do not work except in management at the level of “boss.” This would include the vast sector of domestic labor, which I did not sufficiently encounter. Non-Western migrants also complained about a level of hierarchy, with increasing discrimination felt by the darker of skin and the lower of economic level.
In your observation, how has the Western Protestant church been affected by Gulf State culture?
Most leaders celebrated a far greater level of diversity than would be experienced by most Christians in America. They would say that our congregation is a ‘taste of heaven’ as they listed the number of nationalities and languages worshiping together. This is certainly part of Gulf culture stemming from economic realities—not necessarily the Arab Muslim culture they maintain among themselves, though in some settings it is also seen here.
Morgan Lee is assistant editor of Christianity Today.
Abu Osama al-Masry, blurred in a Wilayat Sinai propaganda video; from SITE Intel Group
Who downed Russian airline flight 9286 as it left tourist resort Sharm el-Sheikh in October, killing all 224 on board?
Russian officials have confirmed a bomb brought down the plane, while Whitehall has labelled shadowy leader of the new ISIS affiliate Wilayat Sinai – Abu Osama al-Masry – ‘a person of interest’ in on-going investigations. Egypt has yet to release details from their investigation.
‘Foreign tourists, workers, and troops in Egypt are at greater risk than ever’, wrote Zach Gold in Egypt Source.
‘Whether [WS] was responsible or made an opportunistic claim, the group’s willingness to even rhetorically target foreign interests in Egypt is another dangerous marker in a pattern of threats’, he added.
A former Azhar student and clothing importer Abu Osama al-Masry claimed responsibility on behalf of Wilayat Sinai. ‘They were shocked by a people who sought the hereafter, loved death, and had a thirst for blood’, he said.
‘We will inherit your soil, homes, wealth, and capture your women! This is Allah’s promise’.
Jurisprudence
‘Eloquent in quoting the Qur’an’: Abu Osama al-Masry, blurred in propaganda video. Photo: SITE Intel Group
Al-Masry, a nom-de-guerre indicating he is Egyptian, is said to have been born in northern Sinai but grew up in Sharqiya in the eastern Nile Delta.
The 42-year-old former student at the Muslim world’s most prestigious seat of learning, al-Azhar in Cairo, al-Masry is said to be ‘well versed in Islamic jurisprudence’ and ‘eloquent in quoting the Quran’.
Wilayat Sinai, meaning ‘the province of Sinai’, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State on 10 November, 2014.
It was previously known as Ansar Beit al-Maqdis (ABM), translated roughly as ‘Supporters of Jerusalem’ – implying the same apocalyptic zeal as IS.
Lapido Media nailed this affiliation a year ago – and the fact of the reluctance of the West to believe it amid the complexity of Egyptian culture and the prevalence of ‘conspiracy theories’.
On 5 November 2014, we wrote: ‘Ali expects the “Supporters of Jerusalem” – a home-grown terrorist outfit operating out of Sinai – to soon announce their allegiance to ISIS. Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, he said, was an associate of Abu Musad al-Zarqawi in the Islamic State of Iraq and believed to be killed by US forces in 2010.
‘But some evidence suggests he is still alive and operating out of the Sinai with the Supporters of Jerusalem,’ Ali said.
Shifting
If the Russian airline attack is confirmed, it will not have been the first time Wilayat Sinai has targeted foreigners.
Strategy, however, is shifting from attacking tourism in Egypt as part of an economic war, to attacking tourists in retaliation for their nation’s policies.
In February 2014 the group killed two South Koreans and an Egyptian driver in a bus traveling from St Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai.
They also claimed responsibility for the hideous executions of American oil worker William Henderson in August 2014, and the Croatian Tomislav Salopek in August 2015.
Wilayat Sinai’s fighting force is estimated between a low of one to two thousand militants, and as high as five to twelve thousand.
The sparse population of North Sinai is approximately 435,000, or forty per square mile.
Unlike the Islamic State, WS’s composition is mostly local, consisting of veteran jihadists, disaffected Bedouin, and disillusioned youth. Some foreign fighters come from Palestine, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, and WS have issued a call for more.
Egypt has accused Turkey of providing support for Wilayat Sinai, posting names and pictures of alleged operatives they have captured.
Wilayat Sinai also benefits from members who previously served in the Egyptian military, before defecting or being expelled.
Walid Badr, a former major in the army, was the suicide bomber in the September 2013 assassination attempt on the interior minister. One month later former officers Emad Abdel Halim and Hisham Ashmawi led an assault on a checkpoint in Sinai killing 31 people.
History
WS, under its original guise of Ansar Beit al-Maqdis was formed sometime in 2011 in response to the Egyptian revolution of 25 January.
Egyptian security says ABM breathed new life into existing bands of militants such as al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, which had conducted operations against tourism hotels in Sinai in 2004, 2005, and 2006.
After formally merging, ABM originally targeted Israel, launching a few cross-border attacks and several acts of sabotage against the Egypt-Israeli gas pipeline.
President Mohamed Morsi authorised military action against ABM after it killed 16 border guards in August 2012. But he is also understood to have preferred negotiation and tried to limit their influence through dialogue with other Sinai parties.
After Morsi’s removal from office on 3 July, 2013, ABM shifted focus and deliberately targeted Egyptian security forces.
Abu Osama al-Masry deemed Morsi an apostate and equated democracy with atheism – a typical militant Islamist trope.
But ABM sought to take advantage of the military-versus-Muslim Brotherhood conflict to paint itself as the defender of Muslims.
Al-Qa’eda
A leaked Egyptian security document from February 2015 accused the Muslim Brotherhood of working with Al-Qa’eda to send three thousand fighters to the Sinai.
Morsi, like the transitional military council before him, released jihadis from prison.
But an Egyptian researcher says that while he permitted militants a degree of operation, he did not nurture them as a ‘last resort’ to protect his office.
In addition to the acts of terrorism listed above, ABM has been a leading force in a long list of attacks in Sinai and the Egyptian mainland.
The small Christian population of roughly 650 families in the Sinai have also suffered at their hands. Many have relocated, though local Muslims have promised to protect them.
Logo of Wilayat Sinai
Imitating
Four hundred attacks killing seven hundred soldiers: Wilayat Sinai. Photo: SITE Intel Group
Targeting Christians is only one of the ways Wilayat Sinai is imitating the Islamic State.
Mixing terror and piety, they have beheaded opponents and moved against drug trafficking. They have appealed to the sympathy of Bedouin tribes and distributed money to those whose homes have been destroyed in the conflict.
But Wilayat Sinai has so far failed to reproduce the primary marker of the Islamic State – territorial acquisition. They hide out in the desert, mix with the people, plant roadside bombs, and adopt guerilla tactics, but have failed to claim and hold land.
It has not been for want of trying.
Wilayat Sinai has led over four hundred attacks on security forces between 2012 and 2015, killing an estimated seven hundred soldiers.
On 1 July, 2015 militants led a full-day assault on the city of Sheikh Zuweid, following multiple coordinated attacks on surrounding checkpoints. The effort failed when the military employed F-16s in the city’s defense.
Reporting on Sinai is difficult as the government has criminalised publication of information that contradicts official statements.
One month ago on 22 October, an army spokesman declared ‘full control’ over the Sinai, but terror attacks continue.
An anonymous officer said failings stemmed from unfamiliar terrain and a scorched-earth policy that alienated the population. There are alsoconflictingreports as to whether local tribes are joining the fight or just watching idly by.
But an anonymous militant admitted the military have severely restricted their operations, and the closing of tunnels on the Gaza border has dried up the weapon supply.
Europe
Human Rights Watch has criticised the government over the creation of a buffer zone meant to destroy the network of tunnels long exploited by traffickers and terrorists alike. Between July 2013 and August 2015 HRW reported the destruction of at least 3,255 homes and properties.
Israel claims that Hamas is aiding Wilayat Sinai, though leaders deny any connection to this ‘black extremism’.
But on Egypt’s Western border the Islamic State has been more successful in setting up a franchise. They call Libya ‘the strategic gateway’, noting its proximity to Egypt, Tunisia, African nations of the Sahel, and Europe.
In spring 2014 Libyans in Syria returned to Derna near Benghazi and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Fledgling states have been created for each of Libya’s three traditional regions: Cyrenaica, Tripoli, and the Fezzan.
This has sparked terrorist activity in Egypt’s Western Desert as well. In July 2014 ABM claimed responsibility for an attack in Farafra that killed 22 soldiers. Last month in pursuit of terrorist targets, the military accidentally killed eight Mexican tourists in the Bahariya oasis.
Splits
The terrorism network in Egypt is fluid. Abu Osama al-Masry indicated his support for the Islamic State as early as 30 June, 2014, praying for them to conquer Baghdad. By September reports of co-operation and training emerged.
But by November the eventual pledge of allegiance was disputed, with veterans said to support Al-Qa’eda, yet with the youth vote winning out.
Since then splinter groups have formed, though there is no evidence of direct conflict. Jihadi Ribat was created in December 2014, eschewing support for Islamic State claims to the caliphate. The aforementioned former military officer Ashmawi split with others in July 2015 to formal-Murabitoon.
Ajnad Misr declared its intention to focus on attacks against security personnel in Cairo, in January 2014. It has been implicated in over 25 attacks, but focuses on Egypt rather than a global cause.
There even appears to be diversity within the Islamic State network. Recent attacks on the Italian Consulate in Cairo and on a security directorate in Shubra el-Kheima were claimed by Islamic State in Egypt, not Wilayat Sinai.
The Egyptian government claims progress in the fight against terrorism, and last week killed Ashraf el-Gharably, reportedly a top commander in Wilayat Sinai. The UK has offered the support of special forces to help kill or capture Abu Osama al-Masry.
The British government declared Wilayat Sinai, then ABM, a terrorist entity in April 2014.
‘Egypt deserves support, not punishment,’ Anglican Bishop of Egypt Mouneer Hanna Anis told Lapido Media, critical of Russian and British decisions to restrict air travel to Egypt estimated to cost the nation nearly £185 million per month.
‘My prayer is to see the international community working together to fight terrorism.’
Yesterday I received the unexpected news that Ezzat al-Salamony died … back in August. He was a leader in al-Gama’a al-Islamiya (the Islamic Group), designated a terrorist entity by the United States. Over the past few years I was able to interview him a couple of times.
According to al-Shuruk, Salamony died in the Tora Prison hospital, from an intestinal blockage. He had been jailed as part of the ‘Alliance to Support Legitimacy’ case.
Here is a picture of Salamony demonstrating in support of former President Morsi, proudly wearing a Rabaa sign.
(from al-Shuruk)
Originally from Sohag in Upper Egypt, Salamony studied at al-Azhar Univerisity, graduating with a BA in Commerce. He joined the Islamic Group in 1979, served on its Shura Council in Cairo, and preached in mosques throughout the city, unaffiliated with the Ministry of Endowments.
He was married with three daughters. I do not know his age, though his youngest daughter was in college at the time.
As Salamony recounted, his first arrest came at the hand of President Sadat in 1981, lasting for a year and a half. Jailed repeatedly thereafter for short periods of time, he spent fifteen years in prison under President Mubarak, finally released in January 2006.
Salamony stated he was never involved in violence, though he admitted members of the Islamic Group committed ‘mistakes’ throughout this period. But on the whole he defended their record, stating they were much maligned by the regime and that most violence was defensive.
Our conversations ranged over many topics, including the history of the Islamic Group, the practice of hisba (commanding right and forbidding wrong), Islamist figures Morsi released from prison, the Innocence of Muslims film, and the Blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman.
I always found Salamony to be friendly, engaging, and eager to give a correct impression about Islam and the Islamic Group. Given his appearance and reputation, I was surprised he always arranged our meetings in a popular and upscale Nile River meeting area administered by the Egyptian military. He appeared to be a member, and we drank tea together.
I do not know if he was involved in violence following the fall of Morsi, though he certainly opposed what he considered to be a coup. We lost contact after this period.
But I was somewhat surprised also to find him prior to Morsi’s fall at a Salafi-Jihadi demonstration outside the French Embassy. He took the microphone and shouted:
“We tell these grandchildren of the Crusaders, we are the grandchildren of Saladin.”
“It is not right for the fields of battle to be in our lands, we must carry the battle into theirs.”
“We have the duty of jihad.”
Among the many chants that day was this, adapting the January 25 revolutionary cry: Al-Shaab, Ureed, Khilafa min Jadeed
“The people want a new caliphate.”
It was difficult to reconcile the peaceful, friendly character I encountered in the cafe with this one angrily shouting before a crowd. I understood that whatever kind of preacher he was, whether he employed violence or not, both then and now he was certainly a threat to the state.
Even so, his explanations of jihad and hisba were always nuanced, though his commitment to the eventual worldwide application of sharia was clear. I cannot imagine he would be in support of the current claimant to the caliphate, but I cannot be sure.
And now he is dead, so I cannot know.
The three years from January 25 to the last throes of popular pro-Rabaa resistance against President Sisi were a very strange time in Egypt. All constraints were thrown off, and every activist element of society took full advantage of the freedom available.
So it is hard to look back and evaluate Ezzat al-Salamony. Was he a long misunderstood Islamist finally anticipating success? Was he a conman deceiving a naive American into sympathy?
God – and likely the Egyptian intelligence – only knows, and now he will judge. May Ezzat al-Salamony rest in peace.
A man whose young brother has just been slain by an Israeli soldier is restrained by friends. Photo: ‘William’, Peace Parcels
The Israeli government appears to be shunning a Palestinian peace studies course – even as a third intifada escalates.
The Arab world’s first Master’s degree in Peace Studies – developed by a Bethlehem college – is getting the brush-off from a government whose commitment to peace is already being questioned from within the Jewish world.*
Bethlehem Bible College (BBC) aims to train Muslim, Christian, and Jewish peacemakers to build bridges instead of walls.
But 24-year-old ‘William’, a Canadian, and one of five international students in the inaugural class, cannot obtain a student visa.
Instead he must come and go every three months as a tourist. Afraid of deportation, he shields his identity online and makes no mention of his studies to the authorities.
‘My fear is maybe they would become aware of what I’m doing and reject any subsequent tourist visas,’ William, using a pseudonym, told Lapido.
‘It has been a step of faith, but I figured I would just take the risk and do it.’
BBC was established in 1979 to offer theological education to Palestinian Christian leaders. William is motivated to help Christians in the West shift away from theological positions that are biased towards Israel.
Accredited by the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education, BBC has a long history of opposition to the Israeli occupation. It was founded by Bishara Awad, brother of Mubarak Awad, who in 1983 created the Jerusalem-based Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence.
Often called the Gandhi of Palestine, Awad was deported by Israel in 1988. He returned to teach the first MA module, but like William and the team of international professors, he also had to come as a tourist.
According to the 2012 European Commission report, Higher Education in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, international students are able to enrol in Palestinian universities.
In practice, however, it is ‘very rare’ due to the difficulty of obtaining Israeli permission to enter the country.
Education
William was advised by the BBC not even to try. But this has not stopped him from full immersion in Palestinian society, gaining a first-hand education that peace studies students in other universities can only read about.
On 5 October he witnessed an angry crowd of hundreds passing by campus. They chanted ‘Allahu Akbar’ and threw stones at security after 13-year-old Abdel Rahman Abdullah was shot in the chest by Israeli security.
He describes witnessing the agony of Abdullah’s brother [pictured above in blue hat]. ‘It was heart wrenching,’ he says.
‘He was weeping and flailing, his anguish was so horrible to see. I’m tearing up just thinking about it right now.’
Hashlamoun: ‘I choose nonviolence’. Photo: Watan Centre
For Nayef Hashlamoun, a veteran Muslim activist from Hebron and one of two Muslim students in the programme, witnessing such anguish has become commonplace.
‘My life is for my homeland, but I cannot kill,’ he said. ‘I choose the way of nonviolence, I choose instead to carry a camera.’
Hashlamoun worked for twenty years with Reuters as a photojournalist, and founded the Watan conflict resolution centre in 1985.
He has pursued peace studies at American University and the School for International Training in Vermont, but events in Palestine always brought him back.
Over time he became friends with the Awads, who invited him to BBC. Mubarak Awad went on to found Nonviolence International, which has translated much of the literature on peace studies into Arabic.
‘They are Christians and I am Muslim, but I will be proud to have a degree from BBC as our relations are as brothers,’ he said. ‘And now I can pursue my education at home.’
Nonviolence
The three-semester MA is taught in English and requires 39 credit hours, including a practicum or thesis.
It features distinguished professors from around the world including Nancy Erbe, Fulbright Specialist in Peace and Conflict Resolution, Mohamed Abu Nimer, Director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University, and Edward Kaufman, formerly of the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University.
Jews are welcome at the centre, but none has so far enrolled. Two of the twelve students identify as nonreligious, and four local Palestinians are auditing.
Kuttab: ‘Violence has not promoted our rights’. Photo: World Can’t Wait
Jonathan Kuttab, chairman of the BBC board and a human rights lawyer in Israel and Palestine, hopes officials from Fatah and Hamas will also join.
‘Nonviolence is far more effective than violence, which certainly has not helped us in working for our rights,’ he told Lapido. ‘For me, this is an easy sell.’
In the current context Kuttab is critical of Benjamin Netanyahu for provoking violence from Palestinians. But he also criticises Mahmoud Abbas for policing his own people on Israel’s behalf at the expense of nonviolent resistance.
‘There is a lot of acceptance of nonviolence in the Palestinian community,’ he said, ‘but the Palestinian Authority has been so weak in pursuing our rights that it has given peace a bad name.’
Education is limited in its direct impact, said Kuttab. But he is hopeful that beyond increased international attention in peace studies circles, the programme will deepen local commitment to nonviolence through strong engagement with the academic literature.
‘We have to revive what real peace and real nonviolence mean,’ he said.
‘Bethlehem is the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, where else should we have this programme?’
No spokesman was available from the Israeli government as this story went to press.
*War Against the People: Israel, The Palestinians and Global Pacification by Jeff Halper, published by Pluto Press. 2015.
From my article on Christianity Today, co-written with Tim Morgan, published September 18:
Menes Abdul Noor, who served as pastor of Kasr el-Dobara Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt, for over three decades, died on Monday, September 14, from Parkinson’s disease. He was 85.
Under his leadership, the 8,000-plus Presbyterian congregation became the largest Protestant church in the Middle East.
Abdul Noor authored and translated over 100 books, and taught at the Haggai Institute and Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo for more than 25 years. He is survived by his wife, Nadia, his son Farid, and his daughter Violet. He had six grandchildren and four great grandchildren.
His memorial service Wednesday was attended by officials of the Orthodox, Catholic, and Anglican churches, as well as a representative of Al-Azhar, the foremost Muslim institution in the Sunni world. It was also broadcast live on the SAT-7 Arabic satellite television network.
Please click here to read the full article at Christianity Today, including quotes and anecdotes from an unpublished CT interview with Abdul Noor in 2008.
If the Islamic State is uprooting civilization, one response is to plant a tree.
At Palmyra in Syria, religious fanatics took an axe to the witness of generations past.
At Ismailia in Egypt, religious leaders take a shovel to secure a witness for generations future.
And by the banks of the Suez Canal, Egypt’s recently expanded national project, imams and priests both learn and demonstrate a lesson that transcends religion.
‘We want to open their eyes to see how great their country is,’ said Saleem Wassef, ‘not in terms of their Muslim or Christian heritage, but for all of us as citizens.’
Wassef is the coordinator of the ‘Imam-Priest Exchange’, a three year project run by the Egyptian Family House. Each year 35 pairs of Muslim and Christian leaders are brought together in friendship, trained to cooperate in practical expressions of national unity.
The ‘Exchange’ is supported strongly by Bishop Mouneer of the Anglican Church. Supervised by the head of the Islamic Research Council, Sheikh Muhi al-Din al-Afifi, and a leading figure in the Orthodox Church, Fr. Butros Bastorous, it urges participants to dialogue.
The Family House was created in partnership by the Azhar and Egypt’s Christian denominations shortly after the 2011 revolution, in an effort to preserve good religious relations.
Despite much trauma locally, as the whole region exploded in religious violence, Egypt stayed relatively stable.
Last month, to great celebration, Egypt opened a new waterway in the Suez Canal to permit two-way traffic, decreasing travel time and potentially doubling revenue. Funded entirely by the local investments of businessmen and farmers, Muslims and Christians, it was a moment of pride after four trying years.
(from Michel George)
Consecrate
On 1 September the Imam-Priest Exchange followed behind to consecrate the effort.
At the oldest church in Ismailia the imams planted three olive trees. Then at the Young Men’s Muslim Association, priests did the same.
‘It is necessary to bring our people together,’ said Wassef. ‘Planting a tree means love and prosperity, and is sign for the future that you are working for the coming generations.’
In a previous generation under then-President Mubarak, Egypt would often make a great show of national unity. Religious leaders would come together at major events and exchange what became locally known as ‘hugs and kisses’.
But many felt they were only patching over religious tensions. ‘Hugs and kisses’ would often follow an episode of violence.
So the Family House mandate is to diffuse tension and preempt violence in practical projects of great symbolism. Branches have been created in Alexandria, Asyut, and other major cities throughout the country. One of the most active is in Ismailia.
Sheikh Abdel Rahman (R) and Fr. Suriyal
‘The Grand Imam of al-Azhar [Ahmed al-Tayyib] wants us to move from closed meetings out to the streets and the people, walking among them,’ said Sheikh Abdel Rahman Mahmoud, a leading figure in the local branch.
‘When they see so many imams and priests walking together they are amazed; they have not seen this in Egypt or elsewhere.’
Rehabilitation
Hundreds attended their public lecture. Dozens came up to them on the street, took pictures, and asked how they could participate.
Mahmoud and Fr. Surial Aziz coordinate with other imams and priests to visit up to four local schools a week, demonstrating religious unity. They are even working to open sub-branches in two of Ismailia’s larger neighborhoods.
Ismailia is a success story of the Family House vision, but for Wassef in the Imam-Priest Exchange, the visit is only one step of the process. The next day he took them to a drug rehabilitation center.
A patient gives his testimony of recovery. The director lectured on the spiritual role in healing. Wassef wants each participant to return home, find his religious opposite, and together meet the needs of their shared community.
And the Suez Canal is a reminder.
‘If imams and priests visit our national projects it will inspire their role in society as religious leaders in promoting citizenship,’ Wassef said.
‘They go back to their cities and villages and tell the story of pride in their country. Egypt is serving not only its own people, but the whole world.’
If religious unity holds in Egypt as Iraq and Syria burn, they just might.
Accusations against the Coptic Orthodox Church are many. It is in bed with the regime. It desires a political role. It monopolizes the Coptic voice, keeping the faithful within its walls. It is not difficult to find evidence that can fit the accusations. But as the church talks to its own people, not only is it aware of these perceptions, it is actively working to dispel them.
“The church is a pure spiritual institution,” Pope Tawadros said to the gathered crowd of 700 youth, emphasizing also a societal role. “It is the national church of Egypt, it is ancient. But we must not be closed upon ourselves.” Tawadros was speaking at a conference entitled “Building Consciousness,” organized by the Coptic Media Center (CMC), the media arm of the church. Hosted in Cairo, it followed two gatherings in Upper Egypt, with an upcoming meeting in Alexandria and the Delta. Participants are handpicked as active and influential leaders able to carry the message back to their churches.
Building Consciousness, according to CMC head and church spokesman Fr. Boules Halim, is a multi-year campaign designed to create educated, enlightened Orthodox Christians, able to think for themselves and engage with society. “They should vote and join political parties,” he said. “They should build their society and not be secluded. Connection to [the] church should not encompass their whole life.”
For many Copts this would be a radical departure. During the long era of now-ousted President Hosni Mubarak and the late Pope Shenouda, Egyptian citizens, including Copts, were depoliticized. As the state withdrew from social service provision, the church stepped in to fill the gap for its flock. Spiritual programs also multiplied, but as devotion increased so did the sense of the church as an alternate society, a place safe for Copts away from the trials of the world.
The state presented itself as a bastion of stability and semi-secularism against an Islamist threat. The church received the mantle of Coptic political leadership. The relationship had its ups and downs as it negotiated issues of sectarian violence, family status laws, and Coptic criticism from the diaspora.
The thrust now is to prepare Coptic citizens for leadership, but Building Consciousness is not a new emphasis of the church, according to Halim. It is the renewed application of Christian teaching to replace a reality that was forced upon them. “Society refused us,” he said, citing, for example, discrimination in state youth centers and sport programs. Speaking on the relationship between Mubarak and Shenouda, he said, “This is how the state wanted it, it was the nature of that stage.”
Egypt is now in a new stage, having passed through revolutionary tumult. While a large majority of Copts have strongly endorsed the regime of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Halim is cautious, though encouraged. “Until now we still don’t have a convincing picture of citizenship, but there is hope,” he said. “The early signals say to us, ‘Come and participate,’ and the government is creating a conducive climate.”
Both Tawadros and Halim emphasized that the church will play a national role to encourage electoral participation. Attempting to allay concerns that this initiative opens up the church to similar criticisms made of Egypt’s short-lived Brotherhood government, they say it calls on all citizens to vote for the most qualified candidates and not on the basis of religion. It will use church networks to urge Copts to the polls, but will not endorse candidates, nor filter Coptic politicians through the political parties. This may happen at the local level, Halim conceded, but it is refused. There is no central electoral strategy in the church.
Besides politics, the Coptic citizen should be active also in the development of the country. But this area reveals potential contradictions in the message. The church has an organizing role, said Halim. He envisions a future in which every diocese has both a Coptic hospital and a Coptic school, open to all, without discrimination. As registered private schools, they will follow the national curriculum. The few schools currently operating have only a handful of Muslim students, as Copts have flocked to enroll. But once there is sufficient number, Halim hopes the student body will be distributed equally according to religion.
“If we can have a role in education, it will contribute greatly to better consciousness and open minds,” he said. “When enlightenment reaches the other it is more powerful. It produces coexistence, knowledge, love, and common cause.” During his presentation Tawadros advocated similarly. “We must serve society within the possibilities available,” he said, “completing the government in the provision of services.”
Such plans have provided fodder for Islamist critics accusing the church of proselytizing. While nothing in the conference suggested this aim, it is clear the church preaches a certain conception of society. One of the pillars of Building Consciousness is emphasis on the dual nature of Coptic and Egyptian identity. This, while at peace with Muslims, may be at odds with an Islamist agenda.
Viewed through the lens of the last four years of struggle and polarization, the issues are also quite political. The church insists it is not involved in the micro issues of elections and policies. But its vision is to shape society in the acceptance of macro issues of citizenship and national identity.
Here, the church wants Coptic citizens up to the task, even as it leads the effort. But in their eyes there is little contradiction, as the church with its members is the body of Christ. If it desires Coptic citizens to play an active role in society, it falls upon church leadership to teach them to do so. Where does the church stop, and the Christian begin?
According to Halim, the church as an institution desires strongly to leave these matters aside and return strictly to a spiritual, shepherding role. But too much is at stake in this transitional period. “If one calls for the church to have no role whatsoever, this will be when full citizenship becomes a reality,” he said. “But as long as citizenship is lacking, the country needs us.”
Public baptism service in the Gulf, in front of Dubai’s Burj al-Arab. Photo courtesy of Fellowship of the Emirates.
My article for Christianity Today was published September 11, 2015. Here is an excerpt:
Espada, an architect, is one of the millions of foreign workers transforming the former desert oasis into a global center for business and travel. The UAE’s Dubai is the fifth-fastest-growing city in the world; its population is now more than 80 percent migrant.
The great majority of migrant workers in the region come from India and Southeast Asia, sometimes suffering exploitation in labor camps to send a collective $100 billion back home. As an American, Espada is unusual.
But as a Christian, he is not. Today the Pew Research Center numbers Christians in the Arabian Peninsula at 2.3 million—more Christians than nearly 100 countries can claim. The Gulf Christian Fellowship, an umbrella group, estimates 3.5 million.
These migrants bring the UAE’s Christian population to 13 percent, according to Pew. Among other Gulf states, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar are each about 14 percent Christian, while Oman is about 6 percent. Even Saudi Arabia, home to Islam’s holiest cities (Mecca and Medina), is 4 percent Christian when migrants are counted.
Together, they represent the largest Christian community in the Middle East outside of Egypt. But their experiences vary considerably.
In Bahrain and Kuwait, Muslims can enter church compounds. In Qatar, guards allow only foreigners. Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti (the nation’s highest official of religious law) has called for all churches in the peninsula to be destroyed.
Surprising to many observers is how many of these churches there are.
Please click here to read the full article at Christianity Today. Next post I’ll share some photos of church buildings.
Thousands are in jail for breaking the protest law. Revolutionary hope takes a backseat to stability and security.
Yet, despite the crackdown on opposition politics, an unlikely source of protest is taking back the streets.
‘Even now, I am calling for the revolution to continue and the rejection of dictatorial paths,’ Fr William Sidhom told Lapido. ‘But I have no weapons except my words.’
The motivation is liberation theology. The medium is street theatre.
The 68-year-old Jesuit is one of the few Egyptian Christians influenced by the Latin American movement. He has written fourteen books, five on the subject.
In the 1960s and 1970s, activist Catholics pushed the church not just to care for the poor, but to liberate them from political and economic structures that held them in place.
Pope Francis has warmed to this heritage, designating the murdered Salvadorian bishop Oscar Romero a saint. But in Egypt, Sidhom said, the church is afraid.
Fr. William Sidhom
‘There is no faith without justice,’ he said, ‘but the understanding in the Arab world is to stay far away from politics or you will go to prison.’
So instead, Sidhom, the self-proclaimed Christian Marxist, has surrounded himself with Muslim activists.
From 2011 onward they were at the forefront of the Egyptian revolution. Youssef Ramez, the youthful Coptic general-coordinator of Sidhom’s Nahda Association, said the NGO was a centre for much of the early artistic graffiti in and around Tahrir.
Nahda is located in the working-class neighborhood of Faggala, only a thirty-minute walk from the iconic square. For the past fourteen years Sidhom has sponsored acting, painting, music and literacy for residents and artisans alike.
In 2005 he partnered with Mostafa Wafi’s ‘Popular Imagination’ street theatre troupe, placing the Muslim leftist and human rights activist in charge of art and cultural activity.
In 2012 they created the Nahda Art School, whose acronym deliberately forms the Arabic word for ‘people’.
Saturday before sunset prayers, the people hit the street.
‘What are their demands?’ asked an intrigued resident playfully as the group of twenty moved from the centre to an open sidewalk in front of the local chemist.
With five Sudanese refugees at the head of the procession, the students chanted an African tune before launching into a fifteen-minute sketch.
Then they marched back to the centre, again in song. Several peered from their balconies. Traffic along the narrow side street came to a halt.
‘This is new,’ laughed a driver as his four-year-old daughter gaped from the passenger seat on her mother’s lap. ‘We haven’t seen this in Egypt before, but it is good.’
The Nahda effort to share culture with local residents is rare but not quite unique. ‘Our Street Cinema’, funded partially by the British Council, shows current and vintage films in the streets of Salam district in Cairo.
‘Mahatat for Contemporary Art’ stages opera presentations in residential balconies in the Delta cities of Port Said, Damietta and Mansoura.
But ‘Art is a Square’ grew too popular—and perhaps too provocative—for its own good. Despite receiving on-and-off funding from the Ministry of Culture, security forces shut down its monthly offerings of art and music.
The Nahda sketch had an ‘indirect’ political message, said Italian-trained acting coach Hamdy el-Tounsy.
His students designed content under his supervision, consisting of several short scenes from everyday life. Issues included racism, sexual harassment and drug use. But nestled in was also a reference to an opposition newspaper, doubling as a pun about absent human dignity.
‘There are many messages that can be received,’ said Tounsy, ‘but it is up to each person what impacts him.’
Wafi’s ‘Popular Imagination’ troupe has produced street theatre performances about public space, freedom for women, and emigration. But it was The Colours’ Revolution that carried a direct political message.
‘Dictatorship destroys diversity,’ he told Lapido. But Wafi’s greater concern is ‘daily politics’, the kind that organizes neighborhoods and clears garbage from the streets.
Last year, as Islamist protests were squashed under President Sisi, Colours was performed over 150 times throughout Egypt.
Each performance is cleared first with local neighborhood leaders—café and chemist owners in the most recent example. Should the police show concern they assure all is OK.
Even so, Wafi considered and then declined a revision of Colours. ‘The atmosphere is not right,’ he said. Currently in production is a play about water pollution.
Wafi considers himself a non-practicing Muslim, but is positive about Sidhom’s liberation theology. Copts’ strong attachment to the church, he believes, hurts the concept of citizenship. But Christians in Sidhom’s circles are driven to help the poor and marginalized.
The sponsorship of the church also gives cover to Nahda’s work, he said. Independent activists have much less space to operate.
Catholic Church spokesman Fr. Rafic Greiche said that Egyptian church hierarchy distances itself from liberation theology because of Latin American associations with communism and violence.
Ramez said that apart from Christian activists, almost no Copts have even heard of it.
But for Sidhom, the believer must ‘defend justice, build society, and secure the interests of the poor’. There are many methods, some revolutionary.
His path is development through the sharing of culture.
‘Revolution is not to change ten officers with ten others, but to change society,’ he said. ‘This requires great patience.
‘So rather than people going to the theatre, we take the theatre to the people.’
This article was originally published at Lapido Media.
Ten years after its founding, the Anglican Alexandria School of Theology (AST) celebrated its first graduating class to receive the degree of Masters of Arts in Theology. The four students joined the July 18th commencement exercises with 27 others who received a Bachelors in Theology, plus one who completed a two-year diploma program.
Rev. Samy Fawzy, principal of AST, congratulated the graduates for their efforts over the past four years, despite the difficulties Egypt has experienced. Rev. Atif Mehany, dean of the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo, urged them further in his commencement address to overcome the challenges following the Arab Spring and fulfill their responsibilities to serve both church and society.
Rev. Fawzy conferred the degrees with Bishop Grant LeMarqand, vice-chairman of the board of AST, and Rev. Mouneer Hanna Anis, chairman of the board of AST, bishop of Egypt, North Africa, and the Horn of Africa, and president bishop of Jerusalem and the Middle East. They were joined by Bishop Peter Tasker, representing the archbishop of Sydney and AST partner institution Moore College in Australia.
Class representative Philip Bishay offered thanks to the staff and professors of AST on behalf of a diverse body of many denominations, who through dialogue and unity completed each other, he said. He encouraged all in attendance to let the light of God fill their hearts, which will then shine no matter the darkness around them.
This article was first published at the Anglican Diocese webpage.
The Egyptian Family House is an institution created to preserve and promote religious unity between the nation’s Muslims and Christians. Its mandate includes both advising the government on proper policy and encouraging the grassroots by multiplying branches throughout the country.
I have writtenpreviously on its general structure. Recently with Arab West Report I had the opportunity to publish summaries of its committee work, which I will excerpt below. Please click on the link in each section to read the full article.
But it was the work of the family culture committee in the governorates that was most impressive. Ghālib was meeting with representatives of the family culture committees from the various cities which have created Family House branches.
In only three months, five regional branches had conducted four seminars each. The majority of these were not in the larger population areas, but in the villages, even in open squares. They were giving their reports, telling also of at least two incidents of sectarian conflict in Mallawi and Luxor where committee members were able to recruit Family House affiliated religious leaders to reconcile feuding families. There were also more mundane examples where peace was achieved within single families—parents with children, husband with wife.
It consists of five Muslims, all associated with the Azhar, and five Christians, two from the Orthodox Church and one each from the Anglicans, Catholics, and Protestants. Two of these Christians are retired policemen, able to help facilitate relations with security when trouble arises. Azhar members, meanwhile, ensure religious institution cooperation.
The committee activates when trouble arises, and Jirjis and his team have intervened to quell sectarian conflicts in Aswan, Minya, Mallawi, Deir Mawas, Hurghada, and Jabl al-Tayr. Details of the work can be sensitive and are often to be off the record. But by engaging trusted people the committee is able to research the true report of what took place, from which they can issue recommendations. At times, though, a security solution takes priority.
Sometimes the dispute involves conversion from one religion to another. Other times it is over church building. In all cases the committee goes to the source. Have official conversion papers been issued by the Azhar? Has security given written license to the church? Media reporting can often give conflicting opinions, but engaged with officials at the highest levels, the committee is usually able to make a sound determination.
These values are promoted by the Family House in a general way, and having priests and sheikhs work together is important. But what relation does this have with the media committee?
Our committee must shine the light on this work. If we do this, it will become a pattern for other media to follow. What we are waiting for is it to be stimulated.
What about the website? It is laid out well but seems underdeveloped.
It is still experimental. We want to use it to cover events, but actual accomplishments are not yet that many. The website is somewhat empty, and I have an appointment with Dr. Matanī to select two from our media center [of the church] to work on it. But centralized organizations can be slow.
In our media center we have press releases and our website is active because it has someone dedicated to it. The Family House media committee could stand also to be decentralized a bit. But first we must meet, then take a decision, and so on.
Dr. Matanī and I must press on the other committees to be active and give us the news of what they do.
What will you do when you begin to receive reports?
My idea is that in highlighting the positive values we want society to see, we do more than just put it on the website. We should make something professional and then give it directly to media outlets and satellite channels. But it is clear the financial resources are not yet allocated sufficiently for something like this.
The idea of the Family House is that we are a family, all together. But how can we live together when each one is raised in an incorrect way? We have witnessed this, and in the education committee we are trying to do something about it.
The first problem is that there are no teachers of religious education, whether Muslim or Christian. The teacher of Islamic religion is often the Arabic teacher. And the teacher of Christian religion, almost anyone can become a school employee no matter their weak qualifications.
So the problem is that they teach religion, but not religious education?
As you said, the subject is religious education, and it should be education, but most of it is just religion. There is no prepared cadre of religious education teachers in the ministry. We are asking the Ministry of Education to create such teachers, both Muslim and Christian.
Yes, even though there is a wide shared space. I was responsible for the national standards in education committee for the cabinet as concerns religious education, and we sat with the committee in the ministry responsible for Islamic education. We discussed concentrating on our shared items and put aside areas of difference like doctrine. But concerning things like relationships, civilization, and contemporary issues like cloning, for example, let us find the common ground in the two religions.
Values are also shared around the world, even in places that do not have religion. Security, cleanliness, order – these are represented in verses from both the Quran and the Bible.
So do you want to substitute doctrine and in its place put values within the religious education curriculum?
Religious education should teach the spirit of Islam to Muslims and the spirit of Christianity to Christians. The goal is to give the right practices in life. How do you interact with the other? How do you interact with someone who is different than you? This is the educational component we are looking for, from within religion.
We are a religious country, whether Muslims or Christians, and it was this way from the age of the Pharaohs. We live, we eat, we die, and we will be held accountable. This is a constitutional part of the Egyptian character, for us to fear God. Even the thief, before he steals, will say, ‘God protect me.’ From deep within us, religion is important.
So we cannot remove the essence of religion from the schools. Not everyone will go to mosque or the church. We have to take the opportunity in schools to teach it. But the new idea, and it has actually happened, is to have a new book simply entitled, ‘Values’. It takes the common values from Islam and Christianity and teaches them to everyone, in the same classroom.
So this is a new book for a new course? Where will it be taught?
It is a course titled ‘Values’ for all class levels. It will not be tested, but will be taught during activities, such as when the school takes a special excursion to camp, or have a seminar, for example. We have prepared it for the elementary, and will complete it for the other levels. It has been approved by the pope, the grand sheikh of the Azhar, and the minister of education, who have all written introductions. I believe it will be used starting next year.
This, then, will be offered alongside the regular religious education classes?
The regular religious education books will continue to be used, but we are taking these books – along with the Arabic and social studies books – and will try to remove those elements which injure or harm the religious other.
In the days when Fathī Sarūr was the minister of education, there was an elementary book issued and its first lesson was, ‘I am a Muslim’. So what of the Christian student? The minister became aware and had it removed, but things of this manner remain. Things that call Copts ‘infidels’, for example.
This exists in the curriculum?
It was. But this is present in verses of the Qur’an. So if it is included for memorization in the Arabic class, the Coptic student will be harmed. Our committee is taking all the curriculum books to study them, but the ministry has also begun to study this to make sure they are removed. Last year we witnessed this, but we are continuing our review.
As a committee we can only issue recommendations, but there is a response from the ministry. There is a very good relationship between us.
Please click on the links above for the full articles, at Arab West Report.
Multiple assassinations and repeated threats fail to make Egypt’s judges buckle.
The hammer of terrorism meets the rock of faith, with Muslim and Christian alike proclaiming a reality of inner peace.
‘What is the worst that can happen?’ Judge Adel Maged, vice-president of the Court of Cassation, the highest judicial court in Egypt, asks. ‘If they kill us, we become martyrs in our holy mission to dispense justice.’
Western media is full of explosive images of ISIS and others seeking death for the sake of Islam. Maged calls it ‘distorted’, seeking political gain.
Quietly, Egypt’s judges paint a different picture as the fight comes to them.
Bombs have been planted outside the homes of several. In mid-May bullets riddled the car of three judges travelling to their courthouse in the Sinai.
Six weeks later the Islamic State published agonising video of the atrocity. Hours afterwards a remotely detonated bomb killed Egypt’s public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, on his way to work.
No one has yet claimed responsibility for the outrage on 29 June, and investigations are ongoing.
‘It is wrong for the tyrants to jail our brothers,’ Islamic State’s affiliate in Sinai said in a statement, referring to the judges in an audio message translated by Reuters one month earlier. ‘Poison their food . . . surveil them at home and in the street . . . destroy their homes with explosives if you can.’
But it is not just hardline extremists threatening judges. Lapido Media previously detailed Muslim Brotherhood endorsement of a document calling for ‘retribution’.
At issue is the death sentence issued to former president Mohamed Morsi and several hundred of his supporters. Thousands of others languish in prison.
Duty
The 52-year-old Maged thinks it is ‘ironic’ that such groups, like himself, see death as martyrdom. But while God will judge between them, he says, it will not deter him from his religious duty with the law.
‘The Quran says, “Do not let the hatred of a people prevent you from being just,”’ said Maged, a founding member of the research group Islam, Law and Modernity at Durham University, UK, where he is an honorary professor.
‘These threats will never stop us from treating all parties fairly and impartially, regardless of their social, political, or religious affiliation.’
Despite the threats against the judiciary, Maged’s daughter is following in his footsteps, studying law in Cairo. His eight-year-old son is undergoing British schooling. His family is nervous, and his wife is praying for the circles of violence to cease in all Arab countries.
Those under the direct target of terrorists should be given more security, Maged said. But the killing of random judges in the Sinai show that all are vulnerable.
But though he has taken ‘extra precautions’ at home in his upscale suburb in Cairo, Maged is undaunted. ‘We are used to working with all sorts of criminals,’ he said. ‘These incidents will never make us afraid, as God is our protector.’
Ramzy: ‘Everything is in God’s hands’. Photo: Ahram.org.eg
Meanwhile, on his way to work Judge Amir Ramzy lazily gazes at the water buffalo browsing in green fields alongside the agricultural canals.
It is a strange serenity for someone whose name is on a death list.
Ramzy is among those directly targeted, his name found on a list on a terrorist captured in January 2014. Even then he declined an offer of extra security.
It is no different now.
‘I believe in God and everything is in his hand,’ the president judge of the criminal court in Benha told Lapido. ‘But I will die when it is written, no one can add a single day to his life,’ referencing the Biblical wisdom.
Ramzy’s driver navigates narrow roads and frequent speed humps during the 55-kilometer-trek north of Cairo through the Nile Delta.
His courthouse is fitted out with extra security, much of which he can bypass due to his position.
At the door to his chambers two policemen stand guard.
Cameras should be installed at every entrance, he says, but there are simply too many judges to guard on a personal basis. And so he commutes, alone.
Religion
Ramzy counts 7,000 judges and 6,000 prosecutors in Egypt. Ninety per cent, he believes, are as religious as he is.
‘All of us know very well that we are targets for these murderers,’ said the 41-year-old father of two, a boy of 14 and girl of 11.
‘My family is afraid, but we are Christians and we pray every morning, putting our lives in God’s hands.’
But religious or not, fear is natural. Remaining anonymous, some judges express it.
‘I am concerned about going to work,’ one judge told Egypt Source after the public prosecutor was killed, adding that other colleagues were concerned for their safety.
‘We feel a lot of pressure now,’ he continued. ‘If they can get to him, they can get to anyone.’
Perhaps. But for Maged, he and his fellow judges have a sacred duty.
‘Ours is a practice of the Prophet that must be performed,’ he said. ‘We are going about our normal lives.’
Both images are from the web. Copyright applied for.
Jayson Casper 