This week brought several surprising events and surprising reactions as well. The government in Egypt decided to raise prices of fuel which increased the already increasing prices in Egyptian markets. At the end of the week, Donald Trump won the elections in the United States of America after he issued negative statements about Muslims and immigration. I thought that the two incidents will bring gloomy faces at work and streets. Yet, I was surprised to find my colleagues still smiling and telling jokes. I think that the Egyptians tend to have such unexpected reactions in such very difficult situations. We may think like: the worst has already happened and we have faced our fears! There is no use losing our smiles as well!

After Egypt’s government announced to offer investors and small farmer around 500,000 feddans, as part of the country’s mega project to reclaim one million and half feddans, the Minister of agriculture is currently taking serious steps to cultivate 100 thousand acres of greenhouses in north Sinai. Another positive thing is that the Arab Organization for Industrialization is making the greenhouses through cooperation with the Netherlands and Spain in this field. This project will exploit arable land using modern systems to consume small amounts of water.

As the economic situation in Egypt is getting really bad and among the increasing prices and unemployment, Egypt’s government announced to offer investors and small farmer around 500,000 feddans, as part of the country’s mega project to reclaim one million and half feddans. This project that should increase the Egyptian agriculture land by 20% may be able to solve many problems in Egypt like the unemployment and traffic by moving millions of people away from the main cities, and most importantly will provide food for the Egyptians as alternative for importing.

Cairo University, one of Egypt’s top universities, finally realized that developing education should be reflected on developing minds, and that resisting retardation comes with resisting discrimination. This was revealed with a decision by Cairo University’s President Gaber Nassar to abolish religious identity from all official paper work. In fact, the Egyptian constitution has been talking for long time about freedom of religion and equality among citizens, but has always supported discrimination among citizens based on religion with the ‘religious identity’ field from Egyptian national identity cards.

Several articles on the internet claim that Israel has won the war of October 1973, but the truth is that Israel had much more losses in the war that it can’t be called a victorious after all. One of the articles that claims Israel has won said that the use of intelligence massively benefited the Israelis, and that the Arab nations did not fight as one unit as their command structure was not unified and each fighting unit (in the Sinai and the Golan Heights) acted as individual units. It added that with up to nine different nationalities involved on the Arab side, mere co-ordination would have been extremely difficult. It also claims that the Israelis had to work to one simple equation: if they lost, the state of Israel would cease to exist. Therefore, for Israel it was a fight to the finish – literally “death or glory”

The dream of immigration has always been a dream for young people in Egypt. This dream becomes more intense with the deteriorated economy and increasing prices. The migrants pay a huge price estimated at 50.000 LE in order to reach Europe, but the price sometimes is their lives. Last week, a boat carrying almost 600 people capsized off Egypt's coast, killing at least 204, in the latest disaster among migrants trying to reach Europe. I understand that those young people are despite enough to do so, but giving the possibility that one may lose his life as well as the nest egg may force him or her to search for alternatives.

As an Egyptian citizen, I feel that my developing country has a lot of work to do in order to develop, especially as the situation is too bad on many scales like economy, security and socially. Many resources are wasted in my country including the power of youth that we are in bad need to benefit from! We can’t build our country without achieving our unity. Yet, fanaticism hinders our steps and leads us to more vital losses and affects the sense of belonging to this country very badly. At the time we are in bad need to build our country, we are fighting to issue a law of building churches that tries to keep the Coptic Christians as suffering minority that struggles to achieve freedom of worship.

In Egypt, we have several economic problems that many people think they will not be able to provide food for their children very soon with the increasing prices. However, the majority of those people forget about such problems and prefer to think about sectarian issues like building churches and football games between Ahli and Zamalik. The regimes in Egypt used to incite such sectarianism among the Egyptian people till the people became ready to do that on their own. It’s amazing to see people who don’t have enough food and medicine for their children only complaining about building a new church in their village, in which God is going to be worshipped!

After a Coptic old woman was stripped off in the streets as punishment for her son after rumors about a romantic relationship between him and a Muslim girl, I searched the internet to find out that similar accidents occur in several parts of the world including an one accident in Uttar Pradesh, India on April 26, 2016. The story said that a 60-year-old woman was stripped and tortured in a village in Uttar Pradesh on Monday after her son allegedly eloped with a girl, police said. The woman's face was blackened and chilli powder was thrown on her private parts as "punishment", they said. Senior police officer Akhilesh Chaurasia said the woman was attacked by the family members of the girl with whom her son had allegedly run away on Sunday.

On May 2nd, Egyptians celebrate the feast of Sham El Nesim, which is an old feast dates back to the Pharos. On that day, Egyptians go out and enjoy the green parks and eat colored eggs and different kinds of fish as well as spring onion. This feast was prohibited by the extremist Islamic scholars several times; however, the Egyptians love to celebrate that feast and enjoy its traditions in the open.

Egyptian newspaper “The Seventh Day” launched a website to measure the credibility of news published about Egypt in international media including BBC, CNN, RUETERS and Associated Press. It said that the news published about Egypt were not accurate and there were much more news about Egypt than Turkey and Qatar. In fact, it’s a nice idea to listen to what is being said about Egypt in the West. However, the problem is that we will only listen without actually listening to reason. We may keep accusing the world of targeting Egypt, but we have to realize that we are not always right and the world is not always wrong.

I had a chance to study in the United States of America in 2009-2010. It was a distinguished grant that turned my life upside down. I studied media production and graphic design and took them as profession after I had spent years working as journalist. However, when the grant was over, I decided to go back to my homeland in order to be with my family and share all good and bad things with them. At that time, rumors spread among the Copts in America that the Muslim Brotherhood were about to take power in Egypt. I simply said that if my family has to suffer under such autocratic regime, I will be suffering with them out there.

Tomorrow, Egypt will open the new Suez Canal Project, which was funded by the Egyptians hoping for better future for their children and for Egypt. Thus, they were able to collect more than 60 billion Egyptian pounds (US$8.4 billion) in just one week to fund the project. The chairman of the Suez Canal Authority announced that the revenues from the Suez Canal would jump from 5 billion dollars to 12.5 billion dollars annually boosting the hard currency earnings for the Egyptian national income.

Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of St. Mark See, has been recently receiving increasing criticism and attacks from several people including his spiritual sons. Two weeks ago, a group of attendees of his weekly sermon started talking loudly at the beginning of the sermon. Arguments quickly broke out among attendees before the Pope cancelled the sermon. The protest has been based around restrictive personal status laws. On the next week, the pope surprised everybody by his decision to cancel the meeting for three years. Wednesday's weekly meeting at the cathedral was the last until 2018, Pope said. Of course, this was linked to the criticism he had received by some people of his congregation. This raised many questions as well as the anger of many Copts. They demanded the Pope to cancel this decision and deliver his weekly sermons as usual.

After long debate with homosexuals, United States of America has legalized same-sex marriage. Such marriage is not acceptable by most Muslims, Christians and Jews; however, passing a law for gay marriage in America was easier than passing a unified law for building houses of worship in Egypt. For years, Coptic Christians have been suffering discrimination based on religion in their own country. They faced several hardships each time they decide to build a new church. Such suffering is likely to last for years before they are able to build a new church and perform their prayers.

At the anniversary of the revolution of June 30, Islamists in Egypt promised several terrorist attacks in Egypt. One day earlier they killed Egypt's general attorney and one day after they carried out several attacks in Sinai killing dozens of civilians and soldiers. Several countries condemned the attacks, but it was a silly joke to hear that the US embassy in Cairo has issued a statement condemning the assassination of Egypt's prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat on Monday, describing it as "heinous terrorist attack". "The United States steadfastly stands with Egypt in the fight against terrorism," said the US embassy. It's known that the CIA gave birth to Osama Bin Laden and breastfed his organization during the 1980_s. Former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, told the House of Commons that Al Qaeda was unquestionably a product of Western intelligence agencies. Mr. Cook explained that Al Qaeda, which literally means an abbreviation of “the database” in Arabic, was originally the computer database of the thousands of Islamist extremists, who were trained by the CIA and funded by the Saudis, in order to defeat the Russians in Afghanistan.

Today is the first day of the holy month of Ramadan, which is celebrated by Muslims worldwide, but in Egypt is celebrated by both Muslims and Christians. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting to commemorate the first revelation of the Quran to Prophet Muhammad according to Islamic belief. This annual observance is regarded as one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month lasts 29–30 days based on the visual sightings of the crescent moon, according to numerous biographical accounts compiled in the hadiths. It’s clearly an Islamic religious occasion,

I had this discussion with a retired police officer who was talking about discrimination in Egypt based on religion. I said that writing the religion in the national ID card is a dangerous tool to define and target Coptic Christians in Egypt. The man defended the importance of this information on the national ID card assuring that this is very useful to decide where to bury dead people whose families are unknown, whether in Muslim or Christian tombs! Indeed, he was defending the right of the dead to be buried properly! Yet, he forgot that some living people among the Copts don’t have the right to live in their homes at all. This is true with several Copts whom are expelled from their homes for no reason excep

I met with many atheists in the United States of America, and was surprised to find the words "In God We Trust" on its banknotes, which was adopted as the official motto of the United States in 1956. I’ve always wondered which God they mean or accept if many of them don’t really believe in God. Finally, I found it responds to mercy and tolerance rather than any other God or religion. In the Middle East, we have so many religious people that the Egyptian people for example are generally called “religious people”; however, we are losing many beautiful human values and morals including mercy and tolerance, and left those morals and values for the atheists to adopt and apply since they have mercy by nature and apply them away from written commandments.

After ISIS had released a video showing the beheading of the Copts that were kidnapped in Libya, many people denounced the brutality of the extremist group. However, it should be known that the Coptic Church has presented too many martyrs across the history. Coptic years are counted from AD 284, the year Diocletian became Roman Emperor, whose reign was marked by tortures and mass executions of Christians, especially in Egypt. Hence, the Coptic year is identified by the abbreviation A.M. (for Anno Martyrum or "Year of the Martyrs"). The A.M. abbreviation is also used for the unrelated Jewish year (Anno Mundi).

I know that many people all over the world are interested in the Egyptian history and antiquities. However, most of them don’t even know that Christians represent 10 - 15% of the Egyptian population. Therefore, they don’t know to what extent the Copts are being prosecuted in their home country, where they are pretty much ranked as second degree citizens and are discriminated against through writing the religion in the identification card.