Tag: Muslim Brotherhood

Jihad on Egypt’s Christian Children (Human Events Re-Blog)

By: Raymond Ibrahim – posted on Human Events
6/6/2013 03:27 PM

Attacks on Christian children, both boys and girls, are on the rise in Egypt.

Agape Essam Girgis Age 14
Agape Essam Girgis, Age 14

Last week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy named Cyril Yusuf Sa‘ad was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid off the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, he still killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy’s “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy, was exhumed.”

Weeks earlier, ten-year-old Sameh George, an altar boy at the Coptic church of St. Abdul Masih (Servant of Christ) in Minya, Egypt, was kidnapped by “unknown persons” while on his way to church to participate in Holy Pascha prayers leading up to Orthodox Easter. His parents and family reported that it was his custom to go to church and worship in the evening, but when he didn’t return, and they began to panic, they received an anonymous phone call from the kidnappers, saying that they had the Christian boy in their possession and would execute him unless they received 250,000 Egyptian pounds in ransom money.

And about a month before this latter incident, yet another Coptic boy, twelve-year-old Abanoub Ashraf, was also kidnapped right in front of his church, St. Paul in Shubra al-Khayma district. His abductors, four men, put a knife to his throat, dragged him to their car, opened fire on the church, and then sped away. Later they called the boy’s family demanding an exorbitant amount of money to ransom the boy’s life.

While the immediate motive behind these kidnappings is money, another purpose appears to be to frighten Christian families from sending their children to church. Otherwise, why were both boys kidnapped right in front of their respective churches? Continue reading “Jihad on Egypt’s Christian Children (Human Events Re-Blog)” →

Photo Essay: The Muslim Brotherhood Has Turned Cairo Into A Dystopia – Re-Blog

Peanut Gallery: Once again Photo Essayist Robert Johnson has lifted the veil of Cairo and exposed the shattered dreams of the “Arab Spring”… now a long winter under the Muslim Brotherhood. Will they ever recover? Not likely in any foreseeable future.

Please follow the link below to Johnson’s essay posted at Business Insider. The photos tell all….
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The Muslim Brotherhood Has Turned Cairo Into A Dystopia [PHOTOS]

by Robert Johnson, businessinsider.com / May 23rd 2013 12:55 PM

Robert Johnson/Business Insider
Robert Johnson/Business Insider

When Egyptians took to the streets to overthrow an oppressive government in 2011, the world was on their side. But in the two years that followed, as Arab Spring turned to Arab Winter, and Egyptians fell under the rule of the oppressive new government of Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood, the world has looked away.

This is what Egyptians told us when we visited Cairo at the end of March 2013.

Many disillusioned Egyptians say things are worse than ever. Thugs often run the streets, crime rates have skyrocketed, and police feel they’re outgunned, faced with the flood of weapons filling Cairo’s streets. Making matters worse, everything from utilities to gasoline is both more expensive and more difficult to acquire than it was before the Muslim Brotherhood.

Click here to see what has become of Cairo >

EGYPT – No ‘Happy Easter’: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Bizarre Religious Intolerance (Re-Blog)

No ‘Happy Easter’: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Bizarre Religious Intolerance

Egyptian President Morsi and his party only get specific on random religious decrees, not policy.

 / MAY 3 2013, 10:30 AM ET

Supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and members of the Muslim Brotherhood chant pro-Morsi slogans while holding up a poster with a crossed out picture of ousted President Hosni Mubarak and Morsi during a rally in Cairo on December 14, 2012. (Amr Dalsh/Reuters)
Supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and members of the Muslim Brotherhood chant pro-Morsi slogans while holding up a poster with a crossed out picture of ousted President Hosni Mubarak and Morsi during a rally in Cairo on December 14, 2012. (Amr Dalsh/Reuters)

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s decision not to attend this coming Sunday’s Coptic Easter mass was entirely predictable. Morsi, after all, declined to attend Pope Tawadros II’s November investiture and, during his previous stint as chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, Morsi visited a church on Christmas but made a point of emphasizing that he exited before services started. Yet because Morsi’s decision comes on the heels of a Brotherhood fatwa prohibiting Muslims from wishing Christians a “Happy Easter,” Morsi’s coldness towards Christians reflects a central paradox of the Brotherhood’s Islamism: despite its longtime promise to “implement the sharia” upon achieving power, the Brotherhood only offers specific interpretations of Islamic legal principles when it needs to justify its most intolerant impulses.

The fatwa, authored by Brotherhood leader Abdel Rahman al-Barr, is noteworthy for its degree of analytical detail. In it, Barr quotes extensively from the Qur’an to argue that Muslims should only greet Christians on their holidays “so long as this greeting does not come at the expense of our [Islamic] religion.” In other words, Barr writes, Muslims cannot wish Christians a “Happy Easter,” because “our belief as Muslims, which makes ambiguity impossible, is that [Jesus] wasn’t killed or crucified,” though Muslims can greet Christians on Easter with the non-sectarian Arabic salutation ” kulu sana wa-entum tayyibun,” which roughly means “hope you are well this year” and is used for all sorts of occasions, including birthdays. By contrast, he adds, wishing Christians a “Merry Christmas” is permissible, because Muslims view Jesus as a human prophet and thus acknowledge his birth. Continue reading “EGYPT – No ‘Happy Easter’: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Bizarre Religious Intolerance (Re-Blog)” →

Egypt update: Funeral Attacked at Egypt’s Biggest Church as Religious Violence Kills Six Copts (Christianity Today)

Peanut Gallery: Please click on the links scattered throughout this article. They will give you a quick overview of what’s taking place in Egypt today.
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Funeral Attacked at Egypt’s Biggest Church as Religious Violence Kills Six Copts

(UPDATED) President Morsi to Pope Tawadros: ‘I consider any aggression against the cathedral an aggression against me personally.’
Melissa Steffan

Update (April 8): CT’s Cairo correspondent offers a thorough roundup at Arab West Report.

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An injured man was helped outside the main Coptic Christian Cathedral in Cairo on Sunday. Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population.
An injured man was helped outside the main Coptic Christian Cathedral in Cairo on Sunday. Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population.

A riot during a funeral for four Coptic Christians has ignited sectarian tensions in Cairo once again. A clash that killed four Christians in a northern suburb simmered over into the funeral at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the capital city, killing two people and injuring at least 90.

The weekend, which left six people dead in three days, marks the worst violence against Christians, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population, since the election of President Mohamed Morsi late last year.

The Associated Press reports that “the clashes at the St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Cathedral began just after hundreds of angry Christians left the complex to stage an anti-government march following the funeral for the four Christians killed in sectarian clashes Saturday.”

A Coptic Christian hurt in attack on mourners Sunday. (Morning Star News photo)
A Coptic Christian hurt in attack on mourners Sunday. (Morning Star News photo)

The scores of Muslim rioters who attacked funeral goers “[pelted] the mourners with stones … flash-bang grenades, tear gas, fire bombs, and other improvised weapons [and] set cars ablaze,” according to Morning Star News.

Following the fighting at St. Mark’s, Morsi condemned the attacks and ordered an investigation of the violence, promising protection for both Muslims and Christians.

CT previously has reported on Egypt and violence against Coptic Christians there, including a dispatch from Cairo on how Egyptian Christians were feeling on the first anniversary of their nation’s revolution. Egypt’s Copts are facing the future under an Islamist regime, including a hastily completed constitution that limits some previously guaranteed personal freedoms. Most recently, CT reported on the possible rise of Coptic evangelism in Libya and Sudan.

In addition, CT reported on the death of Pope Shenouda, the former leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church, and also on the election of Pope Tawadros last year.

posted by Melissa Steffan

Egypt Update: “Eat less.” – David Goldman Re-Blog

Peanut Gallery: Egypt has a huge food shortage problem – it imports about half its food and is rapidly running out of money.

breadline in Egypt
TO HAVE IT IS TO LIVE: The Government sent shockwaves across the nation when a Cabinet minister disclosed a plan to offer every Egyptian just three loaves of the baladi (round) bread every day at the state-subsidised price.

A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state, and that’s why the Egyptian state is at the brink of collapse, as Egypt’s defense minister warned last week.

The Islamists didn’t cause the problem… it’s been coming on for years (as David Goldman has documented). But now they own it because they’re in charge.  And it’s not going away any time in the forseeable future.

Goldman’s latest article brings us up to date. It’s a sad state of affairs for the 40+ million Egyptians living on less than $2 a day.
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“Eat Less, Egypt’s Government Tells Its People” by David P. Goldman

“Even Islamists have to eat,” I wrote under the headline “Food and Failed Arab States” in February 2011. Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood government takes a different view, the Washington Post reported yesterday. The trouble, the government says, is that Egyptians are eating too much. In a separate report, the government proposed to cut back its bread subsidy to three hand-sized loaves of pita bread per person per day, about 400 calories’ worth. A state that can’t feed its people is a failed state, and that’s why the Egyptian state is at the brink of collapse, as Egypt’s defense minister warned last week.

According to the Post report, the government is telling Egyptians (almost half of whom live on less than $2 a day) to eat less. You can’t make this sort of thing up. Egypt lost another $1.4 billion in foreign exchange reserves in January, and probably is flat broke after figuring in arrears to oil and food suppliers, and it imports half its food, so something had to give. In response, Egypt’s Islamist government is emulating North Korea’s approach to food shortages: Continue reading “Egypt Update: “Eat less.” – David Goldman Re-Blog” →