President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi returned home after his visit to New York. The church has taken the right decision to support the president, and paid the price for such support, which will be forgotten soon, just like they forgot about aunt Sauad, the Coptic lady that was stripped nude in the streets of Minya. In fact, this was not the first sectarian attack against the Copts and won’t be the last. The Copts are still suffering after they offered many sacrifices for their homeland hoping for better future, and a civil democratic state with a decent constitution.
The Egyptian media has failed several times to cover many events like the visit of the Egyptian president to Hillary Clinton. It only published the statement of the presidency. Egyptian media ignored statement of Hillary Clinton in which she called to release Aya Hijazi and respect freedoms in Egypt. Egyptian media thought that half of truth is more than enough. However, this is failure of our media since it didn’t report the full truth and ignores half of it.
The visit of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to America to speak in the UN caused many disputes, especially between the Copts in Egypt and abroad. The Muslim Brotherhood started to prepare for the visit by demonstrations and media campaigns in order to distort the reputation of Egypt and its president. They used rumors about poverty in Egypt, which was amazingly used and supported by few Coptic traitors like Mr. Magdy Khalil who claimed to defend the Coptic persecuted Christians by a demonstration in front of the white house. This is expected to be followed by statements to denounce the situation in Egypt and promises to intervene in order to protect the Copts as planned to divide the nation.
Last week’s article Egyptian Traditions Part V that was in fact a re-write of the overdue article Egyptian Traditions Part IV never published due to a system crash and lost the file, that is 2 to 3 weeks ago I saw the clear and present danger and was trying to warn Egyptians no to fall in to the generation 4 wars traps where; “You do what I want you to do!” without any forces or fights!
Most of the time we look at any crime only from one side. We always think that this person is crazy or bad by nature and at the same time we forget that the criminal person is a person like any other person except for the enviroment that he was living in. This intrdouction is important to understand what push the people to illegally try to immigrate to Italy. The crime is realted most of the time to the situation of the economy. I read a statement to one of the saved people that sank lateley and he was confirming that he will try million times to escape Egypt even he is going to die.
Egypt's participation this year in the United Nations General Assembly is different from the previous years since Egypt is currently a non-permanent member of the Security Council. Furthermore, President al-Sisi is president of the African Council for peace and Security. This means that Egypt is representing countries in Africa and the Middle East. This means we have to support the president in his mission. It’s known that the Coptic church has always been a national one. Thus, Pope Tawadros decided to support the president in his visit to the UN. This is not new to the Pope who called the Copts in America to support the president.
Eng. Ibrahim Samak (his last name means fishes in Arabic) is a great Egyptian engineer who was Awarded the Federal Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by the German President, Horst Köhler. The man refused to abandon his Egyptian citizenship and decided to join the scientific Advisory Board of the Egyptian president in order to help his country, and plans to make Egypt the first country in the world solar-powered and makes people produce energy from the panels on top of their homes and sell them to the government.
I read a statement to one of Coptic leaders in America in which he claimed that the president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is persecuting the Copts in Egypt. In fact he proved that some Egyptians can’t understand the situation in Egypt while they are far in the west. The situation in Egypt is not perfect, and we have too many problems including the officials who can’t deal with sectarian issues. We were hoping that the law of building churches would be better. Yet, we should realize that we have a law for building churches for the first time in history. Moreover, the current unlicensed churches are already licensed according to the law. The Copts are still suffering, but this doesn’t compare to the three years after the revolution of January 25, 2011. We still remember attacking and demolished several churches under the auspices of policemen. The great cathedral of St. Mark was attacked for the first time in history and thousands of terrorists were given the Egyptian citizenship by the former president Mohamed Morsy.
This week I resume the Egyptian Tradition as if part VI of last week was published but in fact this week's re-write of article Egyptian Traditions P VI of last week that unfortunately the program and my computer crashed and was lost, I could not even apologize via e-mail as Internet was on/off and my laptop keeps crashing and over hitting and very slow due to over hitting! Moreover, I had a copy on Drive One a network site offers free space to save files kind of backup but the site was down and since then this file is out of limits of free space offered and can not open, in brief I would say either that file has a virus or it is cursed!
From long time and our Coptic church involved by chance or by force in the Egyptian political scene, however, is this path will continue and is it in the interest of the church to be involved in the political scene always? The reason I open this subject now because I can’t imagine that our Coptic church to announce that she sent messenger to prepare for Al Sisi visit to New York. Not only the Coptic Church will send a messenger to the states but also the Anglican Church announced that it will send a priest to prepare to Al-Sisi visit.
Egypt is facing a fierce war, but it is not new, since Egypt has experienced all kinds of wars like economic blockade, tourism targeting, preventing the supply of arms, wars of rumors. This happened under the rule of Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mohd Anwar Sadat, and Mohamed Hosni Mubarak. However, these wars became slightly different under the rule of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi who faced more traitors on the inside including journalists, media and human rights activists. They complained the increasing prices like the poor, but received millions of dollars from foreign countries and organizations.
Egypt and the region is experiencing a critical moment during which we need to talk more than mobilization. We have to discuss our problems without imposing an opinion or guardianship of any party on the others. Coptic Christians have never carried weapons except against the foreign occupation. They care for their land before they think about their religion. Therefore, they are called Coptic Orthodox or Coptic Catholic, or Coptic Evangelist.
Over the past few days, I heard many statements concerning the four children accused of contempt of Islam and seeking asylum in Switzerland. The four children (Albert Shehata, Clinton Faraj Allah, Mueller Yassa, and Bassem Younan) had appeared in a video criticizing ISIS. However, those who support ISIS in Egypt decided to revenge for it by destroying theses children using the law of contempt of religion. This law that only punishes people for contempt of Islam since nobody was actually punished for contempt of Christianity. Nobody wants to stop those inciting hatred in our society.
I do not think that any president in Egypt has ruled Egypt with so many problems and crises like what we have today. During the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, the fascist religious regime that does not realize patriotism or belonging to the nation, Egypt was approaching a civil war that would divide the nation and destroy the rest of it.
The Egyptian economy suffers more from debts due to the borrowing policies that the government and the president tout lately. More debt means next generation will not have good future and they will be burden by how to pay all of these debts back in the future. The borrowing policies weren’t just from the international bank but also from the local banks. I can assure that the only people will get benefit from this debts are the rich people not the poor people.
On September 9th, the cultural circles all over the world celebrate the commemoration of the birth of the great Russian writer Lev Tolstoy (1828-1910). Tolstoy was able to achieve great fame as thinker, philosopher and social reformer. He led many battles against wealth and feudalism and even the church. Despite his faith, he refused human mediation between man and God, and was punished by the church. He distributed his wealth on the poor, which caused many disputes between him and his wife.
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.
I don’t talk here about the reaction of the church when choosing to accept the new law of building churches. I’d rather talk about the role of the person or organization that knows how to play politics. In a meeting between this person or organization with the Salafis, they refused the law that was accepted by Abba Paula. Yet, they were told they can manipulate the draft later. After they did, the churches refused it, which strained the atmosphere even more. The same organization held meeting with the church representatives to tell them what happened and to offer a formula of compromise. This was the final law that was passed, but not accepted by the Salafis.
Dr. Ahmad Subhi Mansour says: "If Omar bin Khattab has not accepted to impose Jizya tax on Christians, they would have enjoyed equality with the Arabs. Yet Jizya was imposed on them proving they are less significant and second-class citizens. This was the beginning to persecute the Copts in Egypt. They were called Dhimmis, which became an insult for those who refused to convert to Islam. Christians in Syria, Iraq and Egypt have carried that description for centuries and suffered for long time because of it. Such despise for the Christians was legalized in Islamic holy books, even by false sayings of Prophet Mohammed.
In old times a mother's only job was to take care of her house meaning her husband and kids, they all needed food so she had to cook and this included lot of kitchen side work like washing dishes and sometimes she had to go in the market to buy vegetables and other cooking staff, she had as well keep every thing in the house clean clothes or bed shits carpets and the floor! Sometimes kids would help around as they grow but was not a must it was pure volunteer same holds with the husband some would help and it had nothing to do with men being overworked or tired, it was a pure affection and wanting to be part of his wife's life!
Others
First, I offer my sincere condolences to the martyrs who shed their pure blood as a result of the vicious terrorist act that targeted the Petrine Church in Cairo.