Egypt political crisis sends cost of debt insurance soaring
By Robin Wigglesworth in London and Heba Saleh in Cairo
Egyptian financial markets have been rattled by a deepening political crisis in the pivotal Arab state, sending the cost of insuring against a government debt default to a record this week.
A combative speech by Islamist president Mohamed Morsi late on Wednesday plunges the market and failed to assuage fears that Egypt’s various political movements could clash violently at a planned mass demonstration of government opponents on Sunday.
The lynching of four Egyptian Shi’a citizens by mobs is raising alarm bells with regard to the potentially tragic consequences of Islamist endorsement of sectarian policies, which threaten not only to rip the country apart but the region as well.
Mobs in the Egyptian village of Abou el Nomros lynched four Shi’a citizens on June 23 and injured many others in an assault that extended over several hours. The accounts of human rights organizations’ fact finding missions and eyewitness accounts tell the same story: Sheikh Hassan Shehata, a leading Shi’a figure was on a visit to one of the 200 or so Shi’a followers who live in the village of Abou el Nomros in the governorate of Giza. The village chief (al omda) warned Sheikh Hassan Shehata to leave as the inhabitants were enraged by his presence: he refused. Shortly thereafter, 5,000 residents, led by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis attacked and destroyed the house in which he resided, pulled him and others out, dragged them through the streets, hitting them with sharp and hard objects and fatally wounding them. The Arab Network for Human Rights’ (ANHR) fact finding mission discovered that the police previously knew of the planned attacks on the Shi’as but did nothing to prevent them, and that the very attacks which lasted for over three hours happened in their presence.
As Egypt gears up for big demonstrations against the Muslim Brotherhood, it's time to remember that you can't have genuine democracy without respect for religious freedom.
BY DWIGHT BASHIR
What's going to happen in Egypt on June 30? That's the question many are asking as Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) leader Mohamed Morsy marks one year in office as president of Egypt.
According to a recent Zogby poll, while 57 percent of Egyptians were full of hope after Morsy won a democratic election that was seen as a positive development for the country, today that support has dropped to 28 percent, and almost all of it comes from the FJP and the Muslim Brotherhood. The poll found a whopping 70 percent of the electorate is dissatisfied with President Morsy's policies and performance and are concerned that the Brotherhood "intends to Islamize the state and control its executive powers."
As Egyptians of all factions prepare to demonstrate in mass against the Muslim Brotherhood and President Morsi’s rule on June 30, the latter has been trying to reduce their numbers, which some predict will be in the millions and eclipse the Tahrir protests that earlier ousted Mubarak. Accordingly, among other influential Egyptians, Morsi recently called on Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II to urge his flock, Egypt’s millions of Christians, not to join the June 30 protests.
While that may be expected, more troubling is that the U.S. ambassador to Egypt is also trying to prevent Egyptians from protesting—including the Copts. The June 18 edition of Sadi al-Balad reports that lawyer Ramses Naggar, the Coptic Church’s legal counsel, said that during Patterson’s June 17 meeting with Pope Tawadros, she “asked him to urge the Copts not to participate” in the demonstrations against Morsi and the Brotherhood.
The ties between the Muslim Brotherhood and the Muslim Students' Association (MSA), found on hundreds of campuses across Canada and the USA, are well documented. At the University of Toronto, Canada's largest university, the MSA has a formidable presence and a membership of over 1,500 students, faculty and staff. They present themselves on campus as a legitimate faith group that seeks to serve students. However, their radical Islamic ideology is more than evident.
An American aid worker on trial in Egypt was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday after being found guilty of illegally promoting democracy.
More than 18 months after he was arrested at gunpoint by Egyptian authorities and placed on trial for the crime of promoting democracy, Robert Becker will likely appeal the decision.
Tony Blair today makes his most powerful political intervention since leaving Downing Street by launching an outspoken attack on ‘the problem within Islam’.
The former Prime Minister addresses the shocking killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich by going further than he – or any front-rank British politician – has gone before over the issue of Muslim radicalism.
Torture and other ill-treatment and killing of opposition journalists and political activists:
Most recently on 30th April 2013 Egyptian authorities jailed an anti-Islamist activist on charges that included insulting President Mohamed Morsi, state news media said. After turning himself in to prosecutors, the activist, Ahmed Douma, was transferred to a prison to be held for four days.
Mr. Douma has been a vocal critic of Mr. Morsi and his allies in the Muslim Brotherhood, using social media and joining anti-Islamist protests.
Human rights groups have accused Mr. Morsi and his allies of targeting their critics in politically motivated prosecutions — a charge Mr. Morsi’s aides deny.
On 10 May Ahmed Maher the Chairman of 6 April movement was detained for insulting the interior Minster.Several activists and opposition journalists were killed during demonstration in mysterious circumstances for example El-Hossini Abu-Dif who was killed outside El-Ethadiah palace during a demonstration against president Moursi many fingers point to government agencies assassination rather than the official post-mortem report attributing his death to Car accident.
Egypt's President Backs Controversial NGO Law
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi submitted to parliament on Wednesday a controversial bill regulating NGOs and human rights groups but said it did not impose restrictions on their activities.An earlier draft had drawn criticism from activists, Western governments and the United Nations human rights chief, who said it was more stifling than regulations under the deposed President Hosni Mubarak. “This law remains restrictive because it allows the government to control NGOs access to funding, both foreign and domestically and it allows for government interference in NGO activities,'' said Heba Morayef, Egypt director for Human Rights Watch.
The new draft stipulates that a steering committee supervising NGO activities “may seek assistance” from whoever it wants, including security officials.
On this Memorial Day, it’s important to remember that the very same U.S. policies that created al-Qaeda in Afghanistan in the 1980s—leading to the horrific attacks of 9/11—are today allowing al-Qaeda to metastasize all around the Muslim world. As in the 80s, these new terrorist cells are quietly gathering strength now, and are sure to deliver future terror strikes that will make 9/11 seem like child’s play.
Once limited to Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, thanks to U.S. policies, has metastasized around the world, and is in the consolidation/training phase for the new jihad.
To understand this dire prediction, we must first examine the United States’ history of empowering Islamic jihadis—only to be attacked by those same jihadis many years later—and the chronic shortsightedness of American policymakers, whose policies are based on their brief tenure, not America’s long-term wellbeing.
In the 1980s, the U.S. supported Afghani rebels—among them the jihadis—to repel the Soviets. Osama bin Laden, Ayman Zawahiri, and countless foreign jihadis journeyed to Afghanistan to form a base of training and planning—the first prerequisite of the jihad, as delineated in Sayyid Qutb’s Milestones.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry shakes hands with Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi at the Presidential Palace in Cairo, Egypt, March 3, 2013.
WASHINGTON — Almost a year after a Muslim Brotherhood candidate was elected president of Egypt, the United States is still trying to recalibrate its relations with a country that for decades has been one of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East.
Muslim Brotherhood candidate Mohamed Morsi won the presidency last June promising voters they would have more civil rights than under former president Hosni Mubarak, who was forced from office during the Arab Spring uprisings that shook the Middle East and North Africa.
In the fall of 2012, three mothers, along with their infant children, begin serving one-to-two-year prison terms in Iran. Their crime? Being Baha'is in the birthplace of their faith. In February 2012, a man is jailed without charge in Saudi Arabia. Why? According to authorities, for his own safety because he allegedly "disturbed the public order" by tweeting comments deemed to insult the religious feelings of others. In December 2012, an atheist blogger is sentenced to three years in prison in Egypt. His offense? Posting online content that allegedly "insulted God and cast doubt on the books of the Abrahamic religions."
These are just some of the many examples of the contempt that governments in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) often exhibit toward freedom of religion or belief. Since the onset of the Arab Awakening in early 2011, religious freedom conditions have not improved, but declined. While larger hopes for justice and democracy are experiencing convulsive birth pangs, majority and minority religious believers alike face increasing government repression in many MENA countries; sectarian violence is on the upswing; and violent religious extremism is fueling regional instability.
Jihad! Terrorist! Radical Islamist! Are those words difficult to pronounce? Apparently, the administration and the mainstream media are unable to let those terms pass their lips. Since the Boston Marathon bombings, the brothers have been proven to be actual terrorists via emails, Facebook postings, interviews with relatives and indisputable evidence, such as munitions strapped to the body of the elder of the two.
There are those who claim that the Islamization of Egyptian society reflects "the will of the people." But history teaches us that the "will of the people" is not always beneficial.
Egyptian identity, like so many others, made up of several layers, begins in Ancient Egypt, a civilization that flourished for nearly thirty centuries. Further layers derive from the Coptic Age, when Egypt in its entirety was an Eastern Christian society. Then there are countless layers from the Islamic and Arabic-speaking Egypt.
There are still more layers deriving from modern Egypt, the founder of which, Mohamed Ali, ruled from 1805 to 1848, and whose kingdom continued for over a century after his death.
Finally, there are the many layers produced by Egypt's geographical location as a Mediterranean society, more specifically, as an Eastern Mediterranean country with its opulent diverseness from trade.
This complex construct, which formed over millennia, the rich and multi-layered Egyptian identity – a product of fruitful interaction and cross-fertilization among different civilizations and cultures – is today in grave peril, facing as it does systematic and deliberate attempts to destroy its very essence as represented in the many layers that make up its variegated character.
ON A crisp Sunday morning, the start of the Muslim week, a burgeoning congregation of Christians files into a church in Ankawa, a suburb of the Iraqi Kurds’ capital, Erbil, to which several thousand Christians have fled in the past decade from the violence of Baghdad. Though physically fairly safe in their new abode, it is hardly a happy haven. Many are struggling to survive. Jobs are scarce, so some make the perilous journey back to the Iraqi capital every week to work.
The lot of Iraq’s Christian population is particularly glum. Though a steady trickle had been leaving for decades, the exodus became a flood after the American invasion in 2003, when radical Islamists unleashed a sectarian onslaught against Shia Muslims, Christians and others. The ferocity of attacks such as the one against the church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad in 2010, which left at least 58 Christians dead, speeded the departure of many more. In the past decade as many as two-thirds of Iraq’s 1.5m Christians are thought to have emigrated.
Muslim Cleric Calls U.S. Aid to Egypt ‘Jizya’ (Infidel Tax)
by: Raymond Ibrahim
The Salafi sheikh on Egyptian TVUnlike the Muslim Brotherhood, which was founded much earlier, doublespeak is not second nature to the Salafis.
The most recent example comes from Al Hafiz TV, an Egyptian Islamic station. During a roundtable discussion on the U.S. and foreign aid to Egypt, an Islamic cleric, clearly of the Salafi bent—he had their trademark mustache-less-beard—insisted that the U.S. must be treated contemptuously, like a downtrodden dhimmi, or conquered infidel; that Egypt must make the U.S. conform to its own demands; and that, then, all the money the U.S. offers to Egypt in foreign aid can be taken as rightfully earned jizya.
Historically, the jizya (tribute) was money that conquered non-Muslims had to pay to their Muslim overlords to safeguard their existence (as indicated in Koran 9:29). And this is not the first time of late that Muslims have called for non-Muslims -- especially Christian minorities under Islam -- to resume paying the jizya, which was abolished in the nineteenth century thanks to European intervention.
سمعت انهم يجرون هذا الاختبار لنزلاء مستشفى المجانين بعد فترة من علاجهم للتأكد ما إذا كانوا إستعادوا عقلهم أم لا يزالون يحتاجون للعلاج. فيدخلون المريض الى غرفة خالية بها صنبوراً يفتحونه فتمتلىء أرضية الغرفة بالمياه و يعطون المريض "خيشة و جردل" لتجفيف الأرض. فإذا ما قام المريض بمحاولة تجفيف الأرض مباشرة دون غلق الصنبور أولاً فهذا دليلاً و علامة على أن ذلك المريض لا يزال يحتاج للعلاج. أما إذا قام أولاً بغلق الصنبور و بعدها استخدم " الخيشة و الجردل" فإن ذلك يدل على سلامته و حسن إدراكه للمشكلة. و ما يحدث فى مصر يا سادة هو تجاهل لحقيقة ما يحدث أو عدم إدراك للمشكلة الحقيقية. ما الفائدة أن نسترد أموال المصريين التى نهبها النظام السابق لتقع بين أيدى من ينهبها فى النظام الجديد ؟؟
Media labels Arab Spring pro-democracy as Muslim Brotherhood fulfills jihadist vision
In late December 2010, the Tunisia uprising was sparked by a tragic public suicide-burning of a twenty-something street vender in an act of civil disobedience. Instantaneously, media commentary like wildfire around the world labeled this event “Arab Spring,” branding it the beginning of a struggle for democracy in the region. Correspondents in the tumultuous Middle East barraged the airwaves with the fast impression that this dreadful incident had value in leading to freedom in that part of the planet, and the image of this terrifying catalyst went viral.
Even those who know me well do not fully understand how my early childhood in Egypt shaped me into the spokesperson I am today. As an outcome of my upbringing, I am an avid fighter for free speech and openly expressive about the need for religious tolerance in society. I was born in Cairo, Egypt, into a Coptic Christian family during the time of King Farouk, just before his overthrow and replacement by President Nasser – a significant turning point for Islam and for Egypt which would influence my life forever.
Insight: Egypt's army tiptoes through democracy's minefield
By Marwa Awad and Alexander Dziadosz
CAIRO | Thu Feb 28, 2013 7:29am EST
CAIRO (Reuters) - As cities along the Suez Canal erupted in violence in late January, the leader of Egypt's armed forces feared for the future of the fledgling democracy. General Abdel Fattah Sisi told the elected president, Mohamed Mursi, that the situation was critical, according to Egyptian security sources familiar with the events.
"The military leadership advised the president that national security was threatened following the chaos and vandalism that befell the cities of Suez and Port Said," a security source with links to the military told Reuters.
The two men discussed ways to contain the unrest along the Canal, which is vital to Egypt and global trade, agreeing the army could not stand by and let the turmoil spread. Early on Saturday January 26 troops deployed in the riot-torn cities; in Suez armored vehicles arrived to protect government buildings. Mursi announced a night-time curfew in the towns.
On the long wait for Morsi’s interview, and the Harlem Shake!
Rana Allam
We waited and waited, hour after hour for the airing of the President’s interview on TV, disgruntled at the disrespect the presidency insists on showing the Egyptian people. I personally waited until past midnight, then decided to sleep, which was in fact a good decision. I have work in the morning, like most Egyptians (those who still have jobs).
Our rulers work at night, though. They make statements and speeches and interviews after midnight. Announce decisions and presidential decrees and constitutional amendments on the wee hours of the morning. Pass constitutions at dawn.
صرح المخرج رفيق رسمى رئيس اللجنه الاعلاميه بائتلاف اقباط مصر ان جبهه الضمير الوطنى ""الجديده والتى جاءت كرد فعل اخوانى "" لجبهه الانقاذ الوطنى ""ومحاولا لشق صفها والاستحواز على الحكم والمعارضه معا ، فكل ما هو موجود الان على الساحه السياسيه الان متاصل فيه الازاحه والاستحواز والانفراد بقهر الاخر بالسيطره بدرجه من الدرجات المتعدده والمختلفه ، وهو بقايا فكر من عفن من ثقافه الماضى ، و علاجه سيستغرق وقتا طويلا حتى ينموالوعى للشعب وينضج
فقد تعدد الجبهات الكارتونيه التى لاتملك فقط سوى الكلام والتصريحات الاعلاميه وليس لديها اى رؤى علاجيه عميقه اوبرامج مبدعه ومبتكره لعلاج الامراض المزمنه فى الوطن ،ولاتملك اى هياكل اداريه على الاطلاق سواء منظمه اوحتى غير منظمه وليس لديها سوى البوق الاعلامى الاجوف
CAIRO — President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt took responsibility on Wednesday for “mistakes” during the run-up to ratification of the new Constitution and urged Egyptians to appreciate the fierce disagreements about it as a “healthy phenomenon” of their new democracy.
Tunisia and Egypt are emblematic of the Arab Spring. Both similarities and contrasts have marked their paths. Now they seem to be heading into a new Arab winter.
Moncef Marzouki has been Tunisia’s president since December 2011, a secularist human rights activist.
Egypt’s president since June 2012 has been Mohamed Mursi, candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The people of both countries elected each democratically, the first time they’d had the chance, after getting rid of their respective dictators, Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt.
The Tunisian vote handed the Ennahda Islamists a 42% majority of parliamentary seats, so they are the senior partner in a coalition government with the secularists, with Ennahda’s Hamadi Jebali as the prime minister.
But hopes swiftly soured, replaced with disappointment. Turbulence returned, becoming more and more violent.
Salafist groups attacked anyone or anything they found contrary to hardline Islamic sharia law, which they sought to impose.
Tens of thousands of Coptic Christians took to the streets in the Maspero section of Cairo to protest the government’s failure to protect them from attacks on their churches. While the protests began peacefully, violence ensued after the Christians were attacked by civilians. The Egyptian military exacerbated the situation when army personnel carriers plowed through the crowds, crushing protesters as soldiers fired on unarmed civilians.
This horrifying massacre occurred on Oct. 9, 2011. What began as a peaceful protest to express frustration over attacks on Coptic churches ended in the staggering loss of innocent human life. Nearly 30 protesters died, many of them Copts, and 500 people were injured on that tragic day. The Rev. Filopater Gameel, a Coptic priest and eyewitness to the Maspero massacre, stated that “tens of thousands were devastated as they watched innocent civilians crushed and shot to death, and their only crime was participating in a peaceful march to reject the destruction of their church.”
Until this week, many observers may have still wondered what kind of rulers the Muslim Brotherhood are in Egypt. Since assuming office last June, questions were being raised around the dubious power-consolidation strategy carried out by President Mohammed Mursi, the democratically elected Brotherhood candidate who came into power on the back of the demise of the Mubarak regime in 2011.
However, there was very little room left for uncertainty recently, when a highly disturbing video of Egyptian police brutality went viral. The footage shows police officers stripping middle-aged protester Hamada Saber naked, and beating him senseless in front of the presidential palace; this was said to have taken place last Friday.
No reason to celebrate
Eight months into its rule, the Brotherhood managed to waste a real and valuable opportunity when the whole world was ready to support the resurgence of Egypt
Schoolchildren primed with pre-persecution slurs against ‘infidels.’
By Nina Shea
I have researched and written about the toxic content of school textbooks published by the Saudi Ministry of Education for almost a decade and have found that little has changed in them over this period. Last year, I had the opportunity as a commissioner on the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to travel to Riyadh and meet with the Saudi minister of education, who is King Abdullah’s nephew and son-in-law, Prince Faisal Bin Abdullah Bin Muhammad al-Saud.
‘No Glimmers of Hope’: Two Years After Egypt’s Revolution, an Economic Crisis Looms
By Jared Malsin
Ann Hermes / The Christian Science Monitor / Getty Images
A boy runs along cliffs in the Manshiet Nasser slums on the outskirts of Cairo
Ramadan Khalaf Amin, 24, a microbus driver who earns the equivalent of $4.50 a day, is one of the myriad faces of the Egyptian revolution the world does not know. “I was going down to Tahrir the whole time,” Amin remembers of the uprising, whipping out a cell phone to play a video of a demonstrators chanting, “Down with Hosni Mubarak!”
Egypt: Hard-line Islamic backers of draft constitution clash with opposition ahead of referendum
A supporter of Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood holds a copy of the Koran, Islam's holy book, as he shouts slogans during a demonstration in Cairo's Nasr City on December 14, 2012. / MARCO LONGARI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Waving swords and clubs, Islamist supporters of Egypt's draft constitution clashed with opponents in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria on Friday as tempers flared on the eve of the referendum on the disputed charter — the country's worst political crisis since the ouster of Hosni Mubarak.
The immediate response to the Sahara atrocity must be revulsion, and deep sorrow for the families of those British and other hostages who were murdered in cold blood or killed in the rescue attempt.
Condemnation of the Algerian authorities for the loss of those hostages’ lives, in what has been termed a ‘bungled’ operation against the Islamist terrorists who stormed the Algerian gas complex, is nevertheless inappropriate.
The Prime Minister yesterday struck a more supportive note than his earlier reported fury that the Algerians had gone in with all guns blazing without even informing the UK government.
Mastermind: Militant militia leader Moktar Belmoktar was behind the hostage crisis in which three Britons lost their lives
Morsi's power grab has made headlines, but the world's most populous Arab country has even bigger problems on its hands.
Amr Dalsh/Reuters
The international media have made a huge story out of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi's power-consolidating decrees and the balloting on his proposed constitution. How the fundamental political disputes -- between factions of the religious and secular, Islamic and Christian, and civilian and military, and between rich and poor and urban and rural -- will be resolved in the Middle East's most populous nation is seen as a harbinger for the political impact of the Arab Spring.
In February, 1987 Pope Shenouda III read my article about the Egyptian National hero Saad Zaghloul (1859-1927) and the Copts.
This article was thence published by the famous Egyptian daily al-Akhbar (the article entitled " Saad Zaghloul and the unity of the two elements of the Egyptian nation " is posted in Arabic, French & English by
http://www.tarek-heggy.com) .
Between February, 1987 and February, 2012 I had in excess of 60 long meetings (from a minimum of two hours to two full days together in the desert). In these four-eye meetings, we talked about post-Mohamed-Aly Egypt, the history of the Alexandria Cathedral (St. Marc Cathedral) that was established by St. Marc the Evangelist in 42 AD, Egyptian Monasticism, the famous Coptic Patriarchs, the First Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and Chalcedony 451 AD in particular and spent numerous hours discussing extremely complicated theological problematics ( particularly the history of Monosphyites).
An Egyptian atheist convicted then released from prison on bail this week told The Associated Press Wednesday that the new Islamist government is no better than the dictatorial regime it replaced.
The blasphemy case against Alber Saber, 27, is seen by rights advocates as part of a campaign by Egypt's ultraconservative Islamists to curb free expression. It underlines the growing divide between the country's powerful Islamists and those who say their uncompromising approach is creating a new authoritarian system that does not represent all Egyptians.
Egypt's Coptic Christians fleeing country after Islamist takeover
Tens of thousands of Egyptian Christians are leaving the country in the wake of the Egyptian revolution and subsequent Islamist takeover of politics, priests and community leaders say.
A woman prays hours before an Orthodox Christmas mass at a Coptic church in CairoPhoto: GETTY IMAGES
Coptic Christian churches in the United States say they are having to expand to cope with new arrivals, as priests in cities like Cairo and Alexandria talk of a new climate of fear and uncertainty.
"Most of our people are afraid," Father Mina Adel, a priest at the Church of Two Saints in Alexandria said. "Not a few are leaving - for America, Canada and Australia. Dozens of families from this church alone are trying to go too."
The processes of transition in the Middle East and North Africa that were kick-started by uprisings last year in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen have been experiencing a predictably rough ride over recent months, as new administrations struggle to turn the page on past abuses and to bring in lasting changes to institutional and legislative frameworks.
Minorities in these countries had hopes raised by the ousting of regimes that had subjected them to discrimination, failed to recognize their cultural rights or denied their identity altogether. However, while the diversity of those who participated in the uprisings has been celebrated, members of certain groups, including Copts in Egypt and particular Amazigh communities in Libya, have been the target of deadly attacks, leading them to be anxious about the future of ethnic and religious relations in their countries.
The Islamists are fast losing their popularity, but their opponents are still too weak and divided to vote them out of office
Jan 5th 2013 (CAIRO)
IN A new year’s message Muhammad Badia, the Supreme Guide of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, advised his followers to temper resilience with magnanimity. “Be like the tree which, when battered by stones, drops its finest fruit,” he said.
His most prominent adherent, President Muhammad Morsi, has certainly proven resilient. Ignoring a tide of opposition that has swollen since he took office in June, Mr Morsi pushed through a controversial referendum in December to endorse a new constitution. Since then he has faced down challenges from Egypt’s restless judges, braved serial resignations of advisers and ministers, and parried opponents by sponsoring a national dialogue that is actually being held just by Brothers and their allies. At elections next month for the lower house of parliament, the Brotherhood’s party looks set to do well. In the interim, thanks to an election last year when only 10% voted, it controls the previously weak upper house, which the new constitution has helpfully turned into Egypt’s sole if temporary legislature.
Mohammed Badie, head of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. (AFP-Getty Images)
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood is the biggest opposition group running in the country’s parliamentary elections this week, but don’t expect to see its name on the ballot: the movement is banned and its candidates run as independents. In 2005 the group swept 20 percent of the seats, but a repeat performance seems unlikely. Hundreds of members have been arrested in recent weeks. Mohammad Badie, 67, a trained veterinarian who has spent more than 12 years in jail, was chosen to lead the group at the beginning of the year. He faces strong pressure from outside as well as internal dissent. He spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Babak Dehghanpisheh in Cairo. Excerpts:
Egypt strengthens Islamist role in cabinet, eyes IMF deal
By Tom Perry and Maria Golovnina
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt reshuffled its government on Sunday to strengthen Islamist control and pledged to complete talks with the International Monetary Fund on a $4.8 billion (2.9 billion pounds) loan deal to stave off a currency crisis that risks igniting more unrest.
A senior IMF official is due in Cairo on Monday to meet Egyptian leaders over the deal, which was postponed last month to give Egypt more time to tackle political tensions before introducing unpopular austerity measures.
Finance minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy was sworn in by President Mohamed Mursi as part of a reshuffle that expanded the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood's direct control over ministries.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt reshuffled its government on Sunday to strengthen Islamist control and pledged to complete talks with the International Monetary Fund on a $4.8 billion (2.9 billion pounds) loan deal to stave off a currency crisis that risks igniting more unrest.
A senior IMF official is due in Cairo on Monday to meet Egyptian leaders over the deal, which was postponed last month to give Egypt more time to tackle political tensions before introducing unpopular austerity measures.
Finance minister Al-Mursi Al-Sayed Hegazy was sworn in by President Mohamed Mursi as part of a reshuffle that expanded the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood's direct control over ministries.
Egyptian constitutional referendum marked by low turnout, allegations of fraud
By Johannes Stern
On Saturday, the first round of voting on Egypt’s draft constitution took place in ten of the country’s 27 governorates, including Egypt’s two largest cities, the capital Cairo and the coastal town of Alexandria. Egypt’s remaining 17 governorates will vote on December 22.
Coming after three weeks of mass protests against Egypt’s new Islamist President Mohamed Mursi and the ruling Muslim Brotherhood (MB), the referendum was marked by low voter turnout, violence and allegations of fraud.
First Christmas for Egypt Copts under Islamist rule
Members of an Egyptian Muslim family light candles at a Coptic Christian church in the historical centre of Cairo on January 6, 2013. Egypt's minority Coptic Christians celebrate on Monday their first Christmas under Islamist rule and amid a climate of fear and uncertainty for their future.
An Egyptian Coptic Christian woman stands outside a church in the historical center of Cairo on January 6, 2013. Egypt's minority Coptic Christians celebrate on Monday their first Christmas under Islamist rule and amid a climate of fear and uncertainty for their future.
AFP - Egypt's minority Coptic Christians celebrate on Monday their first Christmas under Islamist rule and amid a climate of fear and uncertainty for their future.
"I do not really feel safe," says Ayman Ramzi, who feels his community threatened by the rise of Islamists in the world's biggest Sunni Arab nation.
For years, Mohamed el-Gebba bristled under the dictates of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, the secretive and hierarchical organisation he had embraced as a teenager, only to be told by his elders that it could not emerge as either a real political party or a bona fide charity under the rule of Hosni Mubarak.
But even after Mr Mubarak was overthrown in last year’s revolution, Mr Gebba said, he found the Brotherhood refused to open up and, in many ways, became less transparent once it began to acquire real political power.