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.
