I felt really bad upon reading in Alwatan newspaper that father Salib Matta Sawirus supports the application of the death penalty against the person who defames God, religions, or prophets. The man is member of General Congregation Council and head of Salam international center for human rights as well as a church leader.
I want to remind him of what Jesus said to His disciples (James and John) when they told Him about the Samaritan village that rejected the Lord saying: Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them, just as Elijah did? But He turned and rebuked them, and said, You do not know what manner of spirit you are of. For the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives but to save them (Luke 9).
Dear father, have you really said so? If not, you should do something as this may cause many problems for the church and for your children. However, if this was real, let me discuss it with you. First, does our bible say so? Have Jesus told us to do so? He rather forgave those who crucified him. He said, “And anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but to him who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven. And of course you know that “blasphemes against the Holy Spirit” means refusing its work throughout the whole life. There is no punishment on earth like the one mentioned in the newspaper. Jesus also said in the parable of tares and the wheat, “Lest while you gather up the tares you also uproot the wheat with them, let both grow together until the harvest, and at the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, 'First gather together the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them, but gather the wheat into my barn”. Second, does this mean you're getting close to the extremists like MB and Salafis? I mean do you want to replace the National Democratic Party (that you were one of its leaders in Shubra) by the Islamists?
Do you want the Islamic Hudud to be applied against the person who insults God, which is the same idea of the Salafis and MB? Third, do you know that you as well as your children will be the first to be killed according to such law as the extremists believe that Christians insult the divine self (Allah) according to what sheik Mohammed Hassan told the Saudi king recently.
We are the first people who will suffer from such laws. We don't accept such talk as we don't accept that Abba Pecenty says he accepts that our children have to study verses from Quran in schoolbooks. We don't accept that Abba Bishoy asks Christian women to imitate Muslim women in their dress, or that Christianity in Egypt derives its strength from the presence of Islam. We totally refuse all of this.
I don't like anyone to think that Christian clergy supports the establishment of religious state in Egypt. We should fight such ideas and not visa versa.
Dear father, let's support the truth no matter what happens after. More importantly, what was said is against the Christian teachings and the bible.
Shall we be subject to the project of Mursy and his ideas, and abandon our rights in a civil state of Egypt? I wish you would be more careful as our next battle shouldn't be with each other. Finally, I don't mean by this article to announce our disagreement, but rather to criticize his ideas taking an example of St. Paul when he criticized the ideas of St. Peter.
