"Most of the Christians do not want the president," said Father Rafic Greiche, the spokesman for the Greek Melkite Catholic Church in Egypt. "We have to be clear about this."

"Most of the Christians have felt during this year that nothing of his promises toward the Christians has been implemented," Father Greiche told Vatican Radio.

"And it is very important to know that this year nearly every day we have a sectarian problem: Burning churches, deporting people, and this big attack on the Copt Orthodox cathedral that happened two months ago."

The Christians who joined the protests said discrimination and violence against minority faiths had increased since Morsi took office at the head of a political party was founded by the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Coptic Pope Tawadros II gave his view in a tweet: "It's wonderful to see the Egyptian people — through the idea of Tamarod and its youth — taking back their stolen revolution in a peaceful way."

Tamarod is the protest group that led the campaign against Morsi.

Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sidrak said "a year from the election of President Mohammed Morsi, we see the country going backwards, instead of forwards".

Last year, representatives of all the Christian churches resigned at the same time from the Constituent Assembly as a gesture of protest against attempts by Islamist forces to impose a Muslim identity on the country.

During the latest demonstrations, President Morsi tried to persuade Pope Tawadros to tell Coptics not to protest. So did the American ambassador, Anne Patterson. Pope Tawadros told them his spiritual authority over the Copts did not extend to political matters.

According to the Middle East News Agency, leaders from Egypt's Muslim and Christian communities will now meet with military leaders and opposition figures to discuss an end to the current political crisis and pave the way forward for Egypt.

Sources:

Vatican Radio

Catholic Online

Vatican Insider

Image: Hindustan Times

Egypt's strongman was sitting in the first row of the mosque. "Anyone who criticizes the president is worse than the heretics who attacked the Prophet in Mecca," the imam preached in his sermon. Then he handed the microphone to Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, saying that he should address the faithful himself. But he never got a chance.

"Down with Morsi! Down with the Muslim Brotherhood!" chanted hundreds of men who were now pushing their way to the front. "Enough is enough!" they shouted. "No to tyranny!" For them, it was intolerable to hear the president being compared with the Prophet Muhammad. Morsi, surrounded by bodyguards, had to leave the mosque on Friday. It was both a scandal and a first forEgypt.

But it was only the beginning. Later, more than 100,000 people gathered on Tahrir Square again to protest the actions of their president.

There are no signs that tensions will ease in Egypt, and it is difficult to predict the outcome of the current power struggle. The president, who gave himself dictatorial special powers, seems unimpressed by the storm he has unleashed among secular Egyptians. In rushed proceedings, he also held a vote on a new constitution, in which the Constituent Assembly, dominated by Islamists, clearly voted in favor of Sharia law. The draft constitution will soon be put to a referendum. But the opposition will not accept this, because it is determined to stop the Muslim Brotherhood's Morsi.

This says a lot about the most important country in the Arab world, which is only at the beginning of its democratization. It also says a lot about the emotional state of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, which came to power as a result of a revolution that it had only halfheartedly supported. The Islamist movement has decades of experience in dealing with authoritarian rulers, but it knows nothing about freedom and pluralism. Continue reading

Sources

• Spiegel Online
• Image: Al Arabiya News

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi has declared that Egypt will "control all parts of Sinai", where clashes have been occurring between militants and Egyptian soldiers. The Al-Qaeda-inspired militants are seeking to set up an Islamic state in the area.

The Catholic bishops of the Holy Land — including Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal, Melkite Archbishop Elias Chacour and Holy Land Custos Father Pierbattista Pizzaballa — urged Egypt to act on the crisis facing Sinai asylum seekers.

"We, the heads of the Catholic Church in the Holy Land, continue to call out to the world in our deep concern for the fate of the African asylum seekers who have been kidnapped as they pass through Sinai," they said.

The bishops said hundred of victims, many kidnapped in Sinai while on their way from Eritrea and Sudan, "are being tortured — suspended by the limbs, burnt by white hot irons, electrocuted on their body parts and systematically raped."

"At this very moment, the relatives of the victims are paying extortion money to release their loved ones," they said. "May the cry of the oppressed be heard by those who now have the opportunity to release them from their bondage."

Up till now, Egyptian authorities have cited the 1978 Camp David agreement with Israel as a reason for being unable to act effectively in the demilitarised Sinai Peninsula.

But now that forces have been deployed against the Islamic militants, the bishops said, the Egyptian authorities should seize the chance to come to the aid of Sinai asylum seekers "and make sure the trafficking in human beings stops".

Source:

Catholic News Agency

Image: Mondoweiss