A Busy Twenty-Four
By Sally Bishai (01/20/06)
The past 24 hours have brought many new developments in my homeland, but unfortunately, neither of the major ones have actually been for the good of Egypt.
Actually, they could be seen as setbacks.
In the first big story for today, we find that a dozen Copts from Odaysat (which is near Luxor) were injured yesterday as they were trying to spruce up a house.
Actually, they were trying to convert the house into a church.
A pack of Muslims apparently set the building site on fire, in an effort to keep the makeshift church from being built.
This group of ten (unofficially) extremist vigilantes DID get arrested, but unfortunately, so did the owners of the house.
Of course, this isn’t uncommon in the least. Not in Egypt, anyway.
So interesting, isn’t it, how the Copts got arrested, too, despite their ‘victim’ status.
Interesting how—not a month ago!—Hosni Mubarak quasi-repealed the ancient Hamayouni Decree, which made any church repairs, modifications, or start-ups impossible without his decree.
Hamayouni, it should be noted, is a leftover relic from the Ottoman Era (as in, 1800s). But that’s not even the bad part! The law was actually put into effect (originally) to HELP the Copts, which it obviously hasn’t. Not recently, anyway.
For those of you who haven’t been paying attention until now, let me fill you in on some things; Mubarak, the president of Egypt, has (quite recently, actually) finally passed the buck to the 26 governors of Egypt.
Meaning, the requests to build, modify, or fix a church now go directly to the governor, rather than to dear old Hosni.
This may strike people—Ok, Westerners (and others)— who mightn’t follow Middle Eastern politics—as “good,” or, at least, as an “improvement,” since the governor of your own town should, ostensibly, be easier to reach than the president of 70 million other countrymen of yours. Right?
Wrong.
This doesn’t take into account the fact that one (or more) of these governors might actually be more of a Copt-hater than another. And bullying the destitute people that the law practically allows you to bully can’t be as uncommon as one would think.
Especially when only one governor of the 26 are Coptic. (And this phenomena—that of a Copt in ‘power’—hasn’t even happened since Anwar Sadat was around, aka when bellbottoms were popular.)
At any rate, that’s enough about Incident One, we should really stop tarrying, shouldn’t we! I mean I should stop. Ok. Incident Two...
Despite the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is actually banned in Egypt, the extremist party, founded in 1928, has secured 88 of 444 seats in Parliament.
Over 700 of the Brotherhood were taken in during the Parliamentary elections, but only 300 remain behind bars today, because Incident Two, aka “The Release of 450 Members of the Brotherhood,” has just happened, unfortunately. (I don’t have a problem with them as people, but I have heard nasty rumours that the good old boys have a bit of a tendency to persecute Copts more than the Average, erm, Youssef.)
But the 450 “Brothers,” (who are no brothers of mine) weren’t the only ones to be let out of Egyptian prisons yesterday!
233 Sudanese refugees (from Darfour) were also let out of jail in the past 24 hours. (27 of their brethren weren’t so fortunate, however, and died in a clash with police last week.)
For the record, yesterday also marks the day that Nigeria (which is near to Egypt, relatively) banned same-sex marriages. (I know, I know.. what does that have to do with Incidents One through Three? Not much, apart from happening “near” Egypt and having happened yesterday...)
At any rate, enough updates for one day, and here’s hoping that tomorrow brings better news—for Copts, Africans, and all humans!
(Printer friendly version) Email: Sally Bishai
