Egypt's Christians Fear New
Islamist Government
The Washington Times,
July 16, 2012
Gracy Howard
When Souly Farag was growing up
in Egypt, Christian houses were marked with crosses for burning. Coptic
Christians were second-class citizens.
Forty-four years ago, Mr. Farag
emigrated to the United States to provide a better future for his
family. But even in the wake of the ouster of longtime dictator Hosni
Mubarak and Egypt's first democratic elections, the Farag family is in
no hurry to return to their homeland.
When they found out Mohammed
Morsi had been elected president, they were afraid. Mr. Farag's niece,
visiting from Egypt, began crying as she told him, "I am not going
home."
Egypt's democratic elections have been hailed as the dawn of a new era.
But Mr. Morsi's election victory
has not alleviated the fears of Coptic Christians and other minorities
who foresee their freedoms disappearing under the rule of an Islamist
state.
Michael Rizk, Egyptian-born
co-founder of the Texas chapter of Copt Solidarity, an organization
that advocates for the rights of Egyptian Copts, hears daily reports of
persecution and mistreatment from his Egyptian relatives. Church
burnings are a regular occurrence in villages across the country. Angry
mobs - often incited by local sheikhs or imams - continue to torch
Christian homes and businesses. Forced conversions to Islam and
kidnappings of young girls have become hazards of daily life for
Christians in Egypt, Mr. Rizk said.
"If I had a sister there is no
way I would let her walk down the street," Mr. Rizk said.
Uncovered women are easy to pinpoint as Christian.
"In Islam, you are the equivalent of cow
dung if you are a Christian," he said. "You are immediately
treated as a second-or third-class citizen." Ihab Marcus,
communications director for St. Mark Coptic Orthodox Church in
Washington, D.C., said many Egyptians turn to the American Coptic
Church for support and encouragement-but "sometimes they can't talk
openly for fear of
further persecution."
Mr. Marcus said he could not speak with complete openness about the
situation in Egypt, for fear that Christians
there will suffer
reprisals.
Mr. Morsi, a former member of
the Muslim Brotherhood, has strong
connections to fundamental Islam. In the past he
opposed diplomatic
relations with Israel,
decried
American influence in schools, and had a
tense relationship with
more liberal Brotherhood youth. But
today, as
president, Mr. Morsi
speaks
supportively of Western allies,
promises to
uphold the rights of women and Christians, and
tells protesters and
youth he will be their representative. Mr. Morsi's new sentiments
could
be genuine--
or deceptive
tactics to elicit Western support for his
office.
"The Muslim Brotherhood has
pushed forward an agenda over the
past 80 years," said Mr. Rizk. "It is a system that runs
extremely
smooth, and is extremely powerful. ...
They make you hear whatever they
WANT you to hear."
Mr. Rizk said it is unlikely Mr.
Morsi will speak
publicly in support of Sharia law or the veiling of women. Rather, he
will "let the street do it for him."
The current political state in
Egypt reflects a growing "Islamic awakening" that has swept the region.
Seventy-five percent of the
electorate voted for Islamist parties in
Parliament (half of that vote went to the Muslim Brotherhood's
Freedom
and Justice Party). Cairo's Tahrir Square protesters have exhibited a
decidedly anti-Israel, anti-Western sentiment.
Mr. Rizk said
Western
media have romanticized the Tahrir Square protests of 2011 "with
the
flag waving" and youths crying out for democracy.
This year's protests
have been
completely different,
he said.
"It's TWO different
revolutions," he said. "The people
then were just trying to stop
corruption, military trials, and human rights abuses.
Originally,
that's what the revolution was about.
But
the Muslim Brotherhood saw an
opportunity. This was their time. They stepped in, kicked the
revolutionaries and activists out of Tahrir Square, raped women in
public. ... All of a sudden, the square was occupied by Islamic
fundamentalists...."
Coptic Church representatives in Egypt have warned
they may quit the constitutional assembly over
concerns with the
constitution's second article: It now states that government should
legislate through "principles" of Sharia law, but hardline Salafists in
the assembly want to impose LITERAL Sharia governance,
force
conversions, kidnap Christians, and put veils on all women. All these
are part of Sharia law."
This trend is most disturbing to Coptic
Christians like Mr. Farag and his family.
"
They [the Islamists] don't
want to be with Israel, they want to erase it from the face of the
Earth," Mr. Farag said. "They want to boycott America. They
don't want
civilians or ladies to go uncovered. It's just how
they want to put us
a few hundred years back."
David Aikman, who covered Israel
and the
Middle East as a former correspondent for Time magazine, said the
election of a Coptic vice president would not help the Egyptian church.
"There IS an important part of
the [Egyptian] population that is
secular, liberal, and would LIKE to see something closer to democratic
politics emerge," Mr. Aikman said. "But this is a minority, and the
OVERALL tendency in Egyptian politics seems to be that the population
is getting more favorable towards Sharia governance."
Mr. Rizk agreed.
He said such promises of a Christian or female vice presidents are a
"joke."
"You're dealing with SNAKES," he
said. "I don't know how to put
it clearer than that."
Times of
lsrael reporter Elhanan Miller says
unity is a "very big
buzzword" in Egypt right now, and
could
counter or
at least diminish Islamist dominance there. Moreover, Mr.
Morsi's
government will continue to rely on U.S. financial and military aid.
Any unilateral action against Christians or Jews would [or at least
could] present dangerous repercussions for Egypt, which is suffering
from serious economic instability.
But Mr. Aikman fears Mr. Morsi
will
inevitably bow to pressure from the Muslim Brotherhood. "It is very
unlikely he can act independently of the Muslim Brotherhood. He
may
have some tactical latitude in international policy.
He may not
immediately curtail the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, but the whole
thrust of the Muslim Brotherhood is opposed to Jews, and opposed to
Israel. If he strays more than tactically from that line, he'll be
removed ... and replaced."
President Obama and his State
Department
have expressed cautious support for Mr. Morsi. Sen. John Kerry,
D-Mass., and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged
Americans not to "pre-judge the Muslim Brotherhood." But Mr. Aikman
warned that it would be extremely dangerous to underestimate the
organization. "It is a complete delusion.... that these people have
somehow become moderate and gentle and democratic. It is one of the
grossest deceptions I've recently seen ...."
Rizk believes ....
"The
U.S. gave the green light for a lot of this to happen.... You
can't
ever take what the Muslim Brotherhood says at face value, Re the U.S.
government has. I think the government is totally blind to what is
happening over there."
Meanwhile, Mr. Farag and his family watch, and
pray.
"We as Egyptians need to be
heard, and we as Christians need to
be supported," he said. "We who live in peace don't want the chaos to
continue." [Emphasis added].
*
*
*
* *
The serious concern voiced in the article just cited (dated
July 16th)
was prescient. Eric Trager, who holds a fellowship at the Washington
Institute for Near East Policy, published the following report in the
Wall Street Journal for
August 16th on the
emerging transformation of
Egypt's new president, Mohammad Morsi, into an Islamist
dictator.
*
*
*
* *
Egypt's
New President Moves
Against Democracy
The Wall Street Journal,
August 16, 2012
Eric Trager
Egypt's "full transition to
civilian rule," long sought by the Obama
administration, has finally come to fruition. But it is neither liberal
nor democratic.
On August 12, having purged top
military officials,
Muslim Brotherhood veteran and new President Mohammed Morsi issued a
sweeping CONSTITUTIONAL DECLARATION. It grants him complete EXECUTIVE
AND LEGISLATIVE power, plus the authority to select the writers of
Egypt's new constitution. Eighteen months after Hosni Mubarak's ouster,
EGYPT HAS A NEW DICTATOR-and the WAY in which Mr. Morsi grabbed power
says much about what he will do with it.
These moves follow an attack
last week in the notoriously unstable Sinai Peninsula, where militants
killed 16 Egyptian soldiers, stole a military vehicle, and attempted to
breach Israel's borders.
The incident
gave Mr. Morsi an excuse to sack
the security officials who posed the greatest threat to his domestic
authority-particulariy the leaders of Egypt's now-defunct military
junta, which in June had issued
its
own constitutional declaration
limiting the newly elected president's powers.
More important, Mr.
Morsi used the Sinai crisis to assume the powers that the junta had
undemocratically asserted for itself in a March 2011 constitutional
declaration.
He thus claimed
unprecedented executive power, including
complete authority over legislation, public budgets, foreign affairs,
pardons, and political and military appointments.
Mr. Morsils
declaration also gives him the power to select a new assembly for
writing Egypt's constitution. And since the new constitution must be
approved by popular referendum before new parliamentary elections can
be held, Mr. Morsi can intervene in the constitution-writing process to
delay legislative elections-and thereby remain Egypt's sole
legislator-indefinitely.
Based on the evidence to date,
Egypt's
president will use his expanded power to advance the Muslim
Brotherhood's RADICALLY INTOLERANT DOMESTIC AGENDA.
Consider the
editors he appointed to lead Egypt's two largest state-run newspapers.
The new editor of Al-Ahram is
an old Mubarak regime hack who called
last year's uprising "foreign funded" and
lost his column in 2010 for
writing anti-Christian articles. The new editor of Gomhoriya shut down
a conference on religious freedoms in 2008 and called for the murder of
a well-known Babai activist in 2009. The new editor of
Al-Akhbar
recently censored an article that criticized the Brotherhood.
Meanwhile,
Mr. Morsi's newly
appointed defense minister, Abdel-Fattah
El-Sisi, admitted that the military had subjected female activists to
"virginity tests" in its brutal crackdown on Tahrir Square
protests in March 2011. In its first major move against
dissenters,
the Morsi regime this
month began prosecuting the editor of Al-Dustour,
a PRIVATE daily, for "harming the president through phrases and wording
punishable by law. "
While the consequences of Mr. Morsi's power grab are primarily being
felt domestically, this is unlikely to last.
His recent actions suggest that he will
SOON turn his attention to Egyptian FOREIGN policy, steering it in a
direction decidedly HOSTILE to U.S. interests.
His constitutional declaration empowers him to do just that. His
amendments to last year's interim constitution give him
the authority to sign-and presumably
abrogate- treaties. Although many expected that de facto
foreign-policy power would remain with the generals, Mr. Morsi's quick
reshuffling of the military leadership has brought the armed forces
under his command.
Then there are his OVERTURES TO
ADVERSARIES OF THE WEST. In a mere six weeks as president, Mr. Morsi
has hosted top-level Hamas delegations twice and, despite the flow of
militants from Gaza into Sinai, promised to keep open the Rafah border
crossing. Last week he welcomed Iran's vice president and was invited
to attend the Non-Aligned Movement's upcoming meeting in Tehran.
If he does, he'd be the first Egyptian head of state to visit Iran
since the 1979 revolution. Accompanying him could be
his new chief of staff, Mohamed Rifaat
al-Tahtawi, a former ambassador to Libya and Iran who
has declared Israel to be Egypt's "main
threat," praised Syria as "a fundamental pillar of the
resistance camp [against) Israel," and called for closer relations with
Iran and Hamas.
Many Washington analysts believe
that Mr.. Morsi won't make any major foreign- policy moves, such as
revoking Egypt's peace treaty with Israel. They take his verbal
assurances at face value and reason that he won't rock the boat at the
very moment that he needs international investment to boost Egypt's
ailing economy.
But this same logic once
dictated that he wouldn't rush to challenge Egypt's generals. After
all, he sat smiling next to Egypt's top military officer (now fired) at
military events, and
Washington
observers widely assumed that the Brotherhood would be content to focus
on Islamizing domestic policy while leaving national-security matters
to the military.
Mr. Morsi's modus operandi, it turns out, isn't accommodating or
gradual. And now that he has declared extensive powers for himself, the
only way to prevent him from moving swiftly against American interests
is by pushing back immediately.
Rather than touting him as a democratically elected leader-as the Obama
administration has frequently done-
Washington
should denounce his power grab and insist that he demonstrate his
commitment to democratic rule with action or risk losing the
international goodwill that followed his election. Failing to
do so will enable him
to continue
building his power
domestically
without paying a price
abroad.
And that raises the likelihood of another- much more damaging-Sunday
surprise. [Emphasis added].
*
*
*
* *