Sunday, October 9, 2011

Persecution of Christians Intensifying in Egypt

I don't get it. Wherever Muslims have power over Christians, Christians are persecuted by Muslims. Don't these Muslims realize that, according to the Western media, Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance? Who would have thought that Muslims would follow Islamic law rather than CNN?

CAIRO (AP) — On her first day to school, 15-year-old Christian student Ferial Habib was stopped at the doorstep of her new high school with clear instructions: either put on a headscarf or no school this year.

Habib refused. While most Muslim women in Egypt wear the headscarf, Christians do not, and the move by administrators to force a Christian student to don it was unprecedented. For the next two weeks, Habib reported to school in the southern Egyptian village of Sheik Fadl every day in her uniform, without the head covering, only to be turned back by teachers.

One day, Habib heard the school loudspeakers echoing her name and teachers with megaphones leading a number of students in chants of "We don't want Ferial here," the teenager told The Associated Press.

Habib was allowed last week to attend without the scarf, and civil rights advocates say her case is a rare one. But it stokes the fears of Egypt's significant Christian minority that they will become the victims as Islamists grow more assertive after the Feb. 11 toppling of President Hosni Mubarak. It also illustrates how amid the country's political turmoil, with little sense of who is in charge and government control weakened, Islamic conservatives in low-level posts can step in and try to unilaterally enforce their own decisions.

Wagdi Halfa, one of Habib's lawyers, said the root problem is a lack of the rule of law.

"We don't want more laws but we want to activate the laws already in place," he said. "We are in a dark tunnel in terms of sectarian tension. Even if you have the majority who are moderate Muslims, a minority of extremists can make big impact on them and poison their minds."

In the past weeks, riots have broken out at two churches in southern Egypt, prompted by Muslim crowds angered by church construction. One riot broke out, near the city of Aswan, even after church officials agreed to a demand by local ultraconservative Muslims, called Salafis, that a cross and bells be removed from the building.

The violence is particularly frustrating for Christians because soon after Mubarak's fall the new government promised to review and lift heavy Mubarak-era restrictions on building or renovating churches. The promise raised hopes among Christians that the government would establish a clear legal right to build, resolving an issue that in recent years has increasingly sparked riots. But the review never came, and Salafi clerics have increased their rhetoric against Christians, including accusing them of seeking to spread their faith with new churches. (Read more.)

3 comments:

Jabari said...

I will be putting this on my blog right now.

If anyone wants to see it go to this website:

http://www.persecutedfourchrist.blogspot.com/

GreekAsianPanda said...

Wow, it took riots to get any media attention for the church attacks.

Last time I checked, 24 people are dead, mostly Copts. 500 people were injured. The state-run Egyptian media was actually calling for Muslims to come and fight alongside the army against them. What hell that ended up being.

GreekAsianPanda said...

Whoa, sorry. 322 or more injured. I don't know where I got 500 from...