On the occasion of our church s celebration of the half-century anniversary of the apparition of our lady on the domes of her church in Zeitoun. Some Coptic leaders made statements to provoke other dominations in an unacceptable absence of the spirit of love according to the teachings of the Bible. Therefore, I present this form of love proclaimed by a Japanese philosopher more than a century ago. He said: Unless love is rooted in the soul of human being, it cannot understand God s love…love knows all including sadness, laughter, tolerance, work, hunger, accepting danger, respect. It knows almost everything. Love accepts suffering and pain and can make wonders. Thus, it is able to do everything.

The homeland is not necessarily a land, water, sky, or human being with the similar skin color and the same language. It could be a doctrine or a religion or even goal or a dream. People may feel isolated by retardation or political regimes. This may lead a citizen to live marginalized and not belonging to his or her homeland. There is no doubt that the media, as much as they represent a measure of belonging in any society, it may affect it negatively or positively in supporting belonging and citizenship. I can see a number of positive attempts of media in that account, but the majority of examples are unfortunately negative.

Three years ago, there was a great advertising posted on more than 800 buses roaming the streets of London carrying the words God may not be there, stop worrying and enjoy your life The words of course belong to atheists who disbelieve the existence of God. It also carries a message that life away from God Almighty can be better and fun. Even though we refuse such message, 800 Christian associations moved followed by Islamic societies to demand the ban of these advertisements. The media watchdog has received 110 claims to stop it. The British Humanitarian Society, which contributed to the funding of the advertising campaign, said the watch dog has a big responsibility to rule whether or not God existed.

In the midst of several recent bombings in our Egyptian churches, I was happy as a Coptic Christian citizen to see the religious discourse of the Coptic church focusing on the beauty of life and its value after it used to focus on the other life. Abba Raphael, secretary of the Holy Synod, sent three messages in a sermon he delivered at one of these funerals. First, we believe in the heavenly justice, second, we love our country; third, we won t abandon our faith. The fathers of the Egyptian Church told us that martyrdom in the Arabic language means being killed for the sake of God. It simply means being summoned for witness on one s faith. Our martyrs sacrificed their souls as they declared their faith before extremist murderers.

Terrorism is like a virus that spreads everywhere, and there is constant injection of it by all evil forces that supports terrorism. No doubt that intellectual people and supporters of culture and enlightenment are at the forefront target of the extremists who claim they protect religion, but they spread myths among the simple people. I believe that our cultural and educational institutions have a great deal of work to consolidate illuminating human thought and to create better reality in Egypt supported by war waged by Egyptian army against terrorism. Therefore, we have to define sources of terrorism and extremism that are supported by ignorance what should be faced by culture and a plan of renewal of religious discourse.

In his wonderful book Kirialison in the love of the Copts , Hamdi Rizk wrote that his book is a gift for the Copts at the Christmas Day. He said that these are lines of love erupted from the moment of the bombing of the Saints Church in January 2011 until the opening of the new Cathedral in 2018 by President Abdelfattah Al Sisi. As a Coptic citizen, I accept such lovely gifts including his writings and TV program in which he discusses problems of citizenship as a loyal Egyptian citizen. The book also talks about the church and its internal affairs as well as the Pope and the guardians of the faith. It also deals with the relation between the Pope and Sheikh of Al-Azhar as well as the position of the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood. He included dialogues with His Holiness Pope Twadros II, and His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, in addition to a number of meetings with a number of Egypt thinkers.

There is no doubt that Egypt has gained a lot of experience in dealing with terrorist attacks. This was revealed during the crises of Al-Rawda mosque. It was such a brutal attack that caused a great loss of lives (311 martyrs and more than 100 wounded). The terrorist had developed weapons more than any criminal militias all over the world! During the crisis, media reporters tried to interrogate the imam of the mosque to get a scoop, but the media coverage was accurate in general and the officials did a good job in the crisis. The real problem is the lack of reform of the cultural and religious discourse that President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi called to fix three years ago but in vain. The religious discourse is not even able to reach to the public. Therefore, the simple people remain the precious hunting of the fanatics and extremists.

No one succeeded is a banner that was hanged on the doors of private schools in the sixties, where private schools were the solution and refuge for those with low grades. At that time, our government schools were an example of success unlike its current really bad situation. I remember this frustrating sign while remembering the following scenes: Scene 1: President Sadat confessing he left the extremists tampering with the future and capabilities of the country. He announced in a famous speech the arrest of Christian and Islamic leaders including Pope Shenouda III which was received by a hysterical and joyful round of applauds by members of the Parliament.

On the occasion of the new instructions issued by some bishops to prevent girls and women from wearing certain clothes inside churches, I would like to present this story in a short way, which was published in the photographer s magazine on August 26, 1927. The magazine reads: "A delegation of Italian women met with His Holiness Pope of the Vatican asking for his blessing and support in their fight against indecent fashion considering it corrupted taste. Head of the delegation said that women should spread awareness and awaken their conciseness. For his part, Pope said in a very brief speech that such act is part of the role of women in the society.

As we face our problems in Egypt, we may stop by offering solutions to them without really applying these solutions. We may believe these solutions will solve the problems, but they really don’t. Such illusion of solving our problems should be turned into reality. These solutions may include to establish a Council of citizenship, or to let the National Council for Human Rights do the job? Should we establish a higher committee that includes the sheikh of Al-Azhar and Coptic Pope, or should a committee of sages do the job away from clergy? Should we activating the code of press honor, or apply mechanisms union accountability?

As some of our MPs are calling to legalize virginity check on university students and non-criminalization of female genital mutilation, the Egyptian women are supposed to fight for their freedom like their mothers did many years ago. Egyptian women should remember «Merritt Nate» the first queen to take control in history, Khentkaus, Queen of Ancient Egypt during the 4th dynasty. They may also remember Nitocris, the last pharaoh of ancient Egypt's Sixth Dynasty, and Sobekneferu, the Egyptian woman reigning as pharaoh after the death of her brother Amenemhat IV. Hatshepsut was the fifth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt and the second female pharaoh in history. There were other great female rulers in Egyptian history like Nefertiti, Nefertari, Cleopatra and Shajar al-Durr that modern women should be proud of.

After the revolution of July 23, 1952, the headlines of newspapers called to trial those who used their influence and corrupted the political life. Newspapers called to deprive those of citizenship, political rights, and public jobs and compel them to return the money they took. The result was not quite good since corruption increased supported by the successive governments. The same calls were repeated after the revolutions of January 25. Major General Ahmed Abdel Halim, security expert, said that political corruption has a general definition which is violating legality in all its forms. This proves that having a definition for political corruption is very hard. However, we should not think about exceptional laws thinking this is the only way to fight corruption. We have committed this mistake after the retardation of 1967.

I was delighted to hear the following statement of His Eminence Bishop Rafael, secretary of the Holy Synod. He said: “Orthodox teaching is against occult. Please make sure before spreading any news. Such obsession does not glorify God and doesn’t benefit our faith. On the contrary, it gives a negative impression about the Orthodox faith. The Holy Fathers handed us over dignified, practical and respectable faith. Miracles and revelations are not common events, but the real miracles in our faith are the Holy Bible, the Eucharist, piety and love of God and people in addition to the practice of virtue.

Although "Tiran and Sanafir" crisis has escalated and grew bigger very fast like a snow ball, which spoiled the achievement claimed by the Egyptian administration by the visit of the Saudi King to Cairo. The reactions to the crisis exposed failure and ignorance of many public figures. However, the religious institutions refused to comment, support or oppose. Al-Azhar and the Church announced that they don’t have comment on such political decision since they only work in spiritual matters. However, many Egyptians had comments including professors who know nothing about the matter and even changed their points of views by changing the televisions they were hosted at.

After the Egyptian Parliament was elected, a group of TV presenters won elections as members of the house of representatives. They use their televisions and newspapers to affect the public opinion and the decisions of the Parliament. One of the private televisions talk day and night about reconciliation with the icons of the overthrown regimes that Egyptian young people died to get rid of. A famous journalist announced days ago that he accepts reconciliation and doesn’t mind to take a selfie with Morsi! This comment reminded me of another writer called Aiman Sayad who worked as adviser to the ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Sayad said that the united Egyptian people during the revolution of January 25 shouldn’t have cast their votes without one party of them, he means the Muslim Brotherhood.

There is no doubt that justice is the main target and dream of human beings. However, the Egyptians are seeking justice in all court rulings that may prove to them that participating in two revolutions was one move towards achieving justice. Couples of days ago, 31 members of the Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced to life imprisonment and 57 were sentenced to 15 years in prison on charges of burning St. George Church in Suhag. For 50 years, such crimes are committed in my country without even having a criminal to judge. The Saints church bomb attack is a sad example for that tragedy that has nobody even to be accused!

No doubt that we are in bad need to spreading tolerance in our society. We sometimes can’t see one another because of intolerance. Thomas Hobbes said the perfect state is based on mind with a social contract. In the sixteen century, Catholics and atheists were not subject to tolerance in certain countries since they were considered dangerous to the regime. At that time, people decided that church’s authorities should stay at the church. Politics and religion don’t mix! The religious discourse has to be renewed since clergy insist on presenting the same content at the same methods. They expect their attendees to accept that even if they don’t understand their language.

El-Watan Egyptian newspaper published an article about organizing a trip by the Coptic church to visit Jerusalem. It said that the southern United States Diocese announced to organize such trip for the Copts living in the United States of America to visit the holy places in Jerusalem and Egypt from 3 to 20 May, 2016. The newspaper said that such trip has been organized several times in violation of the decisions of the Holy Synod of the Coptic Orthodox Church to ban such visits of the Copts. It added that this came after Pope Tawadros II visited Jerusalem to attend the funeral of Abba Abraham, Bishop of the holy land, and sent a delegation to attend the forty-day memorial service of the late bishop.

The government has recently created a body to ensure quality of Education. However, such quality has nothing to do with the free university education. At the same time several disasters and accidents happened in Egypt include traffic and means of transportation, I found a book in my library that was issued in 1929 by the Ministry of Public Knowledge as part of the curricula 75 years ago. The Minister of Education Ali Maher wrote to Mr. Ahmed Amin asking him to write such book about National Education after the rest of the curricula were changed.

Christian citizens in Egypt dream of being martyrs. This is how their church teaches them. They believe they are very weak and less important before the government than other citizens. They fight in order to get permits to build houses of worship. Such facts tuned Coptic Christian into such weak personalities. The dream of obtaining leadership positions became sort of impossible.

Black boxes have some magic and ability to disappoint by revealing masks of important people whom we used to believe and trust. Dr. Mustafa al-Feki, the former chairman of Foreign Relations Committee of the Shura Council, said that lots of people thought that Coptic Christians supported the Muslims Brotherhood at the beginning of their rule. He added that they didn’t mind as long as the MB was going to be moderate. However, the reason they failed was that they had no experience with politics or authority. The great diplomat is considered one of the most important people in most sectarian incidents and used to analyze and write books about the suffering of the Copts along history.