the egypt blog

Cairokee ft. Aida El Ayyubi - Yal Midan / كايروكي وعايدة الأيوبي - يا الميدان

2011-11-30T07:34:00.000+02:00

'It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Arab straight or lesbian': Israeli women strip in support of nude Egyptian blogger

2011-11-21T23:25:00.001+02:00

By MAYSA RAWI
The Daily Mail UK

When an Egyptian activist posted a nude picture of herself online in protest at the lack of freedom of expression, it sparked outrage in her country.

Now, a group of women in Israel have also stripped off in a show of solidarity.

Inspired by 20-year-old Aliaa Elmahdy's bold move, the 40 Israelis posed naked for a 'copycat' shot - holding a banner to cover their modesty.

The sign read 'Homage to Aliaa El Mahdi. Sisters in Israel' with the slogan 'Love without Limits', written in Arabic and Hebrew.

Led by 28-year-old Or Templar, who set up a group on a social networking website inviting women to join her, the girls put their political differences aside to express their support.

On the Facebook group, Templar wrote: 'Girls, let's give the world a good reason to see the unique beauty of Israeli women.

'Regardless of whether they are Jewish, Arab, straight or lesbian – because here, as of now, it doesn't matter.

'Let us show the doubters that our international discourse doesn't depend on governments.'

Templar's plan came as a response to Elmahdy, who posted the image of herself wearing only stockings and red flat shoes on her blog last week.

The country is currently preparing for elections following the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak.

Elmahdy's blog received millions of hits but thousands took to her site to make negative comments.

Tepler told Israeli new website Ynet: 'I got the idea the day that the blogger's photo was posted.

'I didn't expect that she would get the response that she got.

'It got on my nerves that she received a quarter of a million abusive comments and death threats.

'I felt that when a liberal, enlightened woman in Cairo cannot express herself and gets threats from her state, I should show solidarity.

'Of course there's the nationalistic aspect, and I won't deny being a leftist and a seeker of peace.

'I feel like the governments don't represent the enlightened, simple people who want peace.'

Elmahdy, a self-proclaimed atheist who recently dropped out of university, insists she will continue to fight for her freedom.

She told CNN: 'Women under Islam will always be objects to use at home.

'The (sexism) against women in Egypt is unreal, but I am not going anywhere and will battle it til the end.

'Many women wear the veil just to escape the harassment and be able to walk the streets.

'I am a believer of every word I say and I am willing to live in danger under the many threats I receive in order to obtain the real freedom all Egyptian are fighting and dying for daily.'

The Maspero Massacre | 10/9/11 | What Really Happened

2011-11-13T01:53:00.000+02:00

Iranian Christian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani to be executed for “apostasy”

2011-10-05T23:05:00.002+02:00

Sharifa Ghanem, BikyaMasr.com | 30 September 2011

DUBAI: An Iranian Christian pastor is facing possible execution for apostasy, international human rights groups have reported. Yousef Nadarkhani refused to renounce his Christian beliefs and now faces the death penalty.

The 33-year-old appeared at an appeals court on September 25 and reports indicate the court asked him to renounce his faith and “embrace Islam” to avoid execution.

“Iranian authorities should immediately free pastor Yousef Nadarkhani and drop all charges against him,” Human Rights Watch said today.

A Supreme Court ruling in June initially overturned a lower court’s sentence of execution against Nadarkhani, but now rights groups are worried that he could still be executed after refusing to give up his Christian beliefs.

“Iran is one of the very few countries in the 21st century where authorities would drag an individual before a court of law and force him to choose between his faith and his life,”said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human RightsWatch.

“Nadarkhani should not have to spend one more day in jail, let alone face execution.”

Security forces initially arrested Nadarkhani, a member of the Church of Iran and pastor to a 400-member congregation in the northern city of Rasht, in October 2009.

In November 2010, a lower court sentenced Nadarkhani to death for “apostasy from Islam,” despite the fact that no such crime exists under Iran’s penal code. On September 22, Branch 11 of the Gilan Court of Appeals affirmed Nadarkhani’s death sentence for apostasy, but in June the Supreme Court remanded the case to the lower court for further investigation, ruling that Nadarkhani could not be executed if he had not been a Muslim after the age of maturity – 15 years for boys according to Iranian law – and he repents.

He is currently waiting for the Gilan appeals court to issue its verdict and sentence, and plans to appeal again any death or imprisonment sentence to the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court rejected arguments that apostasy is not a crime under Iran’s laws simply because it is not codified in the Islamic Penal Code, and held that the crime is recognized in Sharia (Islamic law) and by the founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Nadarkhani’s lawyer told Human Rights Watch that his client converted to Christianity at the age of 19, and that prior to that he did not consider himself a Muslim or an adherent of any religion. The lawyer said the debate surrounding whether Nadarkhani was a Muslim before reaching puberty was also not based in law since apostasy does not exist as an offense in Iran’s Islamic Penal Code.

Since 2009, intelligence and judiciary officials have carried out many arrests against evangelical or Christian converts in Iran. One of their main targets is the Church of Iran, an evangelical congregation with members throughout the country. Earlier in September an appeals court upheld one-year sentences against six members of the Church of Iran who were convicted on charges of “propaganda against the state,” reportedly for proselytizing. Authorities initially threatened to charge the pastor of the Shiraz Church of Iran, Behrouz Sadegh-Khanjani, with apostasy, but dropped the charge.

Officials have also targeted and arrested other evangelical or Protestant groups, including home churches. In December 2010 and January 2011, security forces arrested about 70 Christians reportedly affiliated with evangelical churches.

On July 18, 2010, security forces had arrested 15 Christians in Mashad as they were leaving for a meeting with fellow members in the city of Bojnourd. Authorities rarely charge evangelical Christians with apostasy, and instead rely on more traditional charges such as “acting against the national security,” “propaganda against the regime,” or “insulting Islamic sanctities.” Christian groups claim that authorities have arrested more than 250 Christians throughout Iran between June 2010 and February 2011.

Unlike traditionally recognized Christian minorities in Iran, like Armenians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, evangelical Christian churches conduct their services in Persian. Authorities accuse them of spreading religious literature in Persian in an attempt to attract Muslims to their faith. In February, Morteza Tamadon, the governor of Tehran province, compared evangelical Christians to Sunni extremists and the Taliban, telling the Islamic Republic News Agency that they were “false, deviant and corrupt cults.” “We have caught the leaders of this movement in Tehran province and numerous others will be arrested in the near future,” he added.

During a visit to Qom in October 2010, the supreme leader, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, spoke of the “need to combat false and misleading beliefs,” a reference to evangelical orProtestant churches, the Nematollahi Gonabadi Sufis, and Baha’is. High-level Iranian officials, including leaders of the clerical establishment, have expressed concern at what they see as the rising popularity of non-Muslim faiths or beliefs, especially among youth.

In 2006 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad empowered the General Cultural Council to implement policies aimed at confronting “deviant groups,” especially those of a spiritual or religious nature. The General Cultural Council is an arm of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution, an executive agency charged with promulgating regulations in public sector employment and education.

International law strictly prohibits discrimination and persecution based on religion. Article 18(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), ratified by Iran, states: “No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice.” Article 27 of the ICCPR says that members of religious minorities shall not be denied the right to profess and practice their own religion.

Article 13 of Iran’s constitution recognizes Christianity as a protected minority religion, and article 14 provides that “all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights.” Article 16 guarantees freedom of association for religious societies.

“Both international and Iranian law require Iranian officials to safeguard the equality and human rights of all Christians, regardless of whether they are historic communities such as the Armenians, Assyrians, and Chaldeans, or Christian converts,” Stork said.

Earth Hour 2011

2011-03-26T20:16:00.000+02:00

In 19 minutes from now (8:11 pm Cairo time) I will be turning off the lights all over my house for one hour, from 8:30 pm to 9:30 pm, as part of the global symbol of hope and movement for change for planet Earth.

Earth Hour.

Experiencing the Egyptian Revolution

2011-03-21T13:57:00.003+02:00

San Franciscan man video records his experience entering Egypt for the one-week anniversary of the revolution in Tahrir Square

By Samuel Vengrinovich

CAIRO, Egypt—Everyone has their own definition of what an opportunity is for them. For me, it was the chance to get to Cairo and experience the one-week anniversary of the Egyptian revolution in Tahrir Square. While most foreigners were fleeing the country and trying to get out, I was waiting for the opportune time to get into the country and document what was happening.

Living in Tel Aviv, I was only a few hundred kilometers away by land to Cairo. The Egyptian embassies in Israel provided me no information about whether the border crossing between Israel and Egypt was open in the Sinai Peninsula. From Tel Aviv, I took an overnight bus to the border and paid the Egyptian border officers my way into Egypt. The next task at hand was arranging a ride with the local Bedouin to drive me to Cairo. On my way to Cairo, I passed nearly ten military checkpoints. At the last checkpoint before entering Cairo, I was caught filming the area by an ecstatic and excited young Egyptian soldier, hoping to brag to his friends about catching me. He couldn’t stop smiling at me while I was waiting to be interrogated. The Egyptian military detained me for about an hour and examined all my photos. They were insistent and determined to find footage of the military checkpoints that I had filmed. They told me that they had heard I was photographing them. That was the first of many arrests and interrogations on my trip to Egypt.

In Alexandria, I was arrested at a checkpoint, held in a minivan for hours, photographed, and continuously moved from place to place throughout the night until 5am in the morning. They asked me what I was doing here in Egypt? They were convinced I spoke Arabic fluently. I’m pretty sure they thought I was an Israeli Mossad agent. I don’t really blame them though. Egyptian state television supposedly had been broadcasting reports of foreign agents or Israeli spies covering as reporters and instigating the revolution. The Egyptian intelligence officers were intently trying to figure me out. At the end of my interrogation, one of them quietly asked me, “No one cared about Egypt before. Now the whole world cares. Why?”

I came to realize that events had happened so quickly for them in Egypt that they could not even comprehend the speed at which change was occurring. One of the Egyptian navy officers told me he hadn’t slept properly or been home in weeks. They were working non-stop, tired, and acting as police officers and the army at the same time. His last words to me while they were dropping me off at the checkpoint where I was arrested were, “I hope you do positive things with the photos and videos you have.”

I frequently get asked why did I want to go to Tahrir Square? And I always think to myself who wouldn't. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to witness a nation breathe democracy and freedom for the first time in their lives. I was so close, being here in Israel. I knew I had to get there. I’m sure there are millions of people around the world who would agree with me and would have loved to experience what I saw: a nation releasing decades of repressed emotions for the first time in their lives without fear. But now, with an optimism—for a better future.

Experiencing the Egyptian revolution will be something I will never forget.

Samuel Vengrinovich is from San Francisco and currently lives in Tel Aviv-Jaffa. He is a musician, mountain biker, and coffee connoisseur. He has a bachelor’s degree in international relations and a master’s degree in diplomacy and conflict studies. He has worked in various political offices and campaigns in California and Washington, DC.

For further information and to contact the writer/filmmaker, then please send an email to egypt.footage@gmail.com

Popular Uprisings: Marriage Equality and Gay Rights in Egypt

2011-03-08T08:42:00.000+02:00

This is taken from Gender Across Borders.

The most talked about issue in the gay rights movement in America is marriage equality. And Wednesday signified a historic moment for the LGBTQ community, when the Obama administration announced that, “Section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — which prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages — is unconstitutional and [we] will ask the Justice Department to stop defending the law.” (I agree with others that this should have come sooner. But it is something.)

For me, marriage equality is less about a burning desire to sign a legally enforceable marriage contract with the one I love and more about an expression of my personal freedoms and liberties. I believe every person should have the right to choose whether or not they want to enter into marriage (and have access to the 1,138 federal benefits that come with a marriage contract).

Yet, just like reproductive rights do not encapsulate the entirety of women’s rights, marriage equality is not synonymous with gay rights. Marriage is, in fact, a relatively recent strategic focus (and, some might argue, not necessarily the most important). The issues that we—LGBTQ folks and allies—mobilize around have inevitably changed with time. In America, today our issue is marriage equality; in the past it was decriminalizing sodomy, fighting housing discrimination, etc.. etc., etc.

In the face of changing times and evolving issues, a consistent basis for the LGBTQ movement, and any social movement, is our freedom of association—the individual right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests.

I found myself thinking a lot about this right as I watched the protest movement in Egypt unfolding. And now that the revolutionary masses have left Tahrir Square, I wonder: When people talk about the future of human rights in Egypt does this include equal rights for gays and lesbians? What are the most pressing issues facing the Egyptian LGBTQ community—the issues a movement could be built around (and, perhaps, the issues already being discussed in hiding)?

To date, although Egypt does not have an anti-sodomy law on the books, other laws have been used to target and arrest gays and lesbians, including claims of violations of the “Public Order & Public Morals” code and “violating the teachings of religion and propagating depraved ideas and moral depravity.” The most widely known attack on homosexuals occurred in 2001 and was dubbed “The Cairo 52” — 52 gay men aboard a floating nightclub called the Queen Boat were arrested. The detainees were subjected to forensic examinations, apparently in order to determine whether they had engaged in anal intercourse. They were also forced to say “my name, my job, my address and say ‘I am gay.’” Despite the pleas of international humanitarian organizations, 23 of these men were imprisoned.

I am not the only one wondering “what now?” for the LBGTQ community in Egypt. Last week in the Huffington Post, Keli Goff posted an article in which she expressed skepticism about what the regime’s demise would mean for gays and lesbians. Goff wrote,

“While I hate to be a “Debbie Downer,” it must be said that amid the worldwide jubilation that greeted the news of Hosni Mubarak’s retirement from his chosen profession of dictator, not all are celebrating. A big question mark remains regarding what this new era in Egypt will mean for gays and lesbians.”

And in light of last week’s announcement that the state’s emergency laws might be lifted in six months Katherine Franke offered a thoughtful perspective on the “Gay Rights Angle on the Egyptian Revolution?” Franke wrote,

“As Egypt and its supporters begin to dismantle the decades-old institutionalization of the State of Emergency, it is important to bear in mind the ways in which the denial of basic civil and human rights for sexual minorities can be used to undermine larger projects of democratization that seem not to “be about” gay rights at all.”

On a slightly more optimistic note, the website Gay Middle East (GME) featured an interview with the well-known Egyptian gay blogger IceQueer, in which he stated:

GME: “I suppose it’s too risky and even counter productive to ask directly for LGBT rights in the protests, but how do you see these issues in the context of the revolution and a larger human rights agenda?”

IQ: “You can’t ask for lots of changes that have different affect on people. I mean already asking for “freedom” and “fall of regime” bedazzled the whole country and its people. So imagine what would happen if we asked for LGBT rights?

“I believe that Egypt’s LGBT community can only have its rights when Egypt becomes a real secular country.”

To date, no organization exists in Egypt whose explicit aim is to improve the legal or social position of LGBTQ Egyptians. Furthermore, Egyptian human rights organizations have largely avoided LGBTQ-rights issues for fear of a backlash from the government or socially conservative citizens.

Hopefully, this can and will change now.

Rasha Moumneh—a researcher with Human Rights Watch who works with feminist and LGBT groups in the Middle East—was interviewed on The Gist and provided a nuanced description of what the protests might mean for LGBTQ Egyptians.

“I think the key issue to look at going forward is if there is a democratic transition and if there is a popular government that is truly representative and that does respect human rights. I think the most important thing to look at is whether freedom of expression and freedom of association are going to be guaranteed. I think those are going to be the most indicative things moving forward to see whether work on sexual rights or gender rights is going to be pushed forward.”

It remains to be seen what the popular uprising will mean for every sector of Egyptian society, including gays and lesbians. Whatever it is, it seems likely that meaningful change will be slow to emerge. As a friend of mine likes to say, “Evolution is more complex than a revolution.”

Something that went largely unmentioned in all of the reporting on the recent uprising in Egypt is that before Tahrir Square was the center of the pro-democracy movement it was the most popular place for gay cruising in Cairo. Let’s hope that now it can be home to both democracy and the LGBTQ community.

And as change unfolds, let’s—as an international LGBTQ community—actively support Egyptians. Our issues may be different but our right to express our sexuality and the freedom to collectively promote, pursue and defend common interests is the same.

Mubarak: leave us now!

2011-02-05T17:29:00.000+02:00

When is a good time for Mubarak to leave then? He's been there for over 30 years already and the suitable time for his retirement never seemed to come, so the people had to make it so clear that "we're fed up, go get a life!"

He will leave and the army will then secure the state against certain threats like the Muslim Brotherhood. We have a strong army. And, anyway, the Muslim Brotherhood isn't really that popular, they're just loud.

When Mubarak leaves, we will be a democracy: we'll elect our president once every 4 years or so, and no one president will stay in power for more than two terms... No more Mubarak-like gods that seem like they will always be there no matter what.

The people proved indeed that "come on, when you stress us for too long we explode, and then nobody's gonna be happy..."

In the future, whoever rules the country will then learn from this historic mistake.

I'm very optimistic about the future. Wish Egypt the best please and God bless Egypt.

CONGRATULATIONS

2011-02-02T13:22:00.001+02:00

Congratulations to all Egyptians for democracy!

Feeha Haga Helwa - فيها حاجة حلوة

2010-11-06T13:36:00.000+02:00

Video clip for a song from Egyptian movie "Assal Esswed", performed by Riham Abdel Hakeem.

Created by Mamduh Schauki.

From the heart of a Muslim

2010-10-17T05:23:00.000+02:00

This post was taken from islamreview.com.
Written by Tawfik Hamid

I was born a Muslim and lived all my life as a follower of Islam.

After the barbaric terrorist attacks done by the hands of my fellow Muslims everywhere on this globe, and after the too many violent acts by Islamists in many parts of the world, I feel responsible as a Muslim and as a human being, to speak out and tell the truth to protect the world and Muslims as well from a coming catastrophe and war of civilizations.

I have to admit that our current Islamic teaching creates violence and hatred toward Non-Muslims. We Muslims are the ones who need to change. Until now we have accepted polygamy, the beating of women by men, and killing those who convert from Islam to other religions.

We have never had a clear and strong stand against the concept of slavery or wars, to spread our religion and to subjugate others to Islam and force them to pay a humiliating tax called Jizia. We ask others to respect our religion while all the time we curse non-Muslims loudly (in Arabic) in our Friday prayers in the Mosques.

What message do we convey to our children when we call the Jews "Descendants of the pigs and monkeys"... Is this a message of love and peace, or a message of hate?

I have been into churches and synagogues where they were praying for Muslims. While all the time we curse them, and teach our generations to call them infidels, and to hate them.

We immediately jump in a 'knee jerk reflex' to defend Prophet Mohammed when someone accuses him of being a pedophile while, at the same time, we are proud with the story in our Islamic books, that he married a young girl seven years old (Aisha) when he was above 50 years old.

I am sad to say that many, if not most of us, rejoiced in happiness after September 11th and after many other terror attacks.

Muslims denounce these attacks to look good in front of the media, but we condone the Islamic terrorists and sympathize with their cause. Till now our 'reputable' top religious authorities have never issued a Fatwa or religious statement to proclaim Bin Laden as an apostate, while an author, like Rushdie, was declared an apostate who should be killed according to Islamic Shania law just for writing a book criticizing Islam.

Muslims demonstrated to get more religious rights as we did in France to stop the ban on the Hijab (Head Scarf), while we did not demonstrate with such passion and in such numbers against the terrorist murders.

It is our absolute silence against the terrorists that gives the energy to these terrorists to continue doing their evil acts. We Muslims need to stop blaming our problems on others or on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. As a matter of honesty, Israel is the only light of democracy, civilization, and human rights in the whole Middle East.

We kicked out the Jews with no compensation or mercy from most of the Arab countries to make them "Jews-Free countries" while Israel accepted more than a million Arabs to live there, have its nationality, and enjoy their rights as human beings. In Israel , women cannot be beaten legally by men, and any person can change his/her belief system with no fear of being killed by the Islamic law of 'Apostasy,' while in our Islamic world people do not enjoy any of these rights. I agree that the 'Palestinians' suffer, but they suffer because of their corrupt leaders and not because of Israel.

It is not common to see Arabs who live in Israel leaving to live in the Arab world. On the other hand, we used to see thousands of Palestinians going to work with happiness in Israel, its 'enemy'. If Israel treats Arabs badly as some people claim, surely we would have seen the opposite happening.

We Muslims need to admit our problems and face them. Only then we can treat them and start a new era to live in harmony with human mankind. Our religious leaders have to show a clear and very strong stand against polygamy, pedophilia, slavery, killing those who convert from Islam to other religions, beating of women by men, and declaring wars on non-Muslims to spread Islam.

Then, and only then, do we have the right to ask others to respect our religion. The time has come to stop our hypocrisy and say it openly: 'We Muslims have to Change'.

Opium

2010-10-04T06:58:00.001+02:00

Egyptians like to think that they're the best in the world, but my question is "what for?" It's understandable that the inhabitants of a country would have pride in their country for one reason or the other, but when all you've got to be proud of is some 6,000 or so year old history then you're doomed. If all your pride is in your past while you do nothing in the present in order to have a better future, then you're holding on to basically nothing in reality and you'd end up in the world's biggest trash can; the past won't be of any help, then.

What is there to be proud of at present? Absolutely nothing. Nothing, period. No industry, no home-made technology, nothing at all. Egypt makes nothing, it imports everything. What do we add to our world? Nothing. We always take and never give.

We import technology, computers, cars, planes, cell phones, it's endless... And, in return, all we hold on to is some 1,400 or so year old dead morals.

Double standards: take pride in the pharaohs, but teach and promote bedouin morals. How pathetic! You guys need to understand that the ways of 1,400 years ago are of no use in today's world.

Anwar Sadat Square in Haifa

2009-12-22T22:01:00.000+02:00

I just read now about the planned naming of a square in Haifa after Anwar Sadat. I think this is a nice gesture on Israel's part. I'm not sure if all Israelis are fine with this happening, but I still think that's a peaceful move on their part. I wonder if Egypt will ever have a square named after Menachem Begin in any of its cities. I doubt it's gonna happen.

I personally like Sadat. I didn't live in his time, but from what I've read, heard, and seen about him, I do respect his courage as the first president in the region to sign a peace agreement with Israel.

Links: here and here.

EGYPT: Defend a blogger’s right to freedom of expression

2009-12-22T04:29:00.001+02:00

Source: Amnesty International

Karim Amer is a 25-year-old law student — but you will not find him at Cairo’s Al-Azhar University. On 6 November 2006, he began a four-year jail term. His “crime” was to publish material on the internet that was critical of both Islam and of Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak.

Amnesty International considers Karim Amer a prisoner of conscience, jailed only for applying his right to express himself, peacefully, through his blogging activity. The United Nations Human Rights Council agrees. Its experts concluded that Egyptian authorities have detained him unlawfully for his online criticisms.

Some Muslims might take offense at Karim’s views on Islam. However, this does not justify prosecution and imprisonment under Egypt’s Penal Code. The offenses in the Code that relate to insulting the President of Egypt and to publishing greatly limit freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The Code provides for jail time for anyone who publishes materials that provoke attacks against a community or “disturbs national peace.”

Amnesty International is further worried that the persecution of Karim Amer threatens other Egyptian bloggers. The internet has emerged as a major forum for expressing views critical of Egyptian authorities and exposing human rights abuses such as illtreatment in police stations.

Karim told his lawyers that on 24 October 2007, a prisoner and a guard punched and kicked him, resulting in bruises and a broken tooth. They took him to a disciplinary cell, bound his arms and legs and beat him. He existed in solitary confinement with little water and one daily meal until 7 November 2007 when they moved him back to the section where they hold petty criminals. No one conducted an investigation.

One year ago, they moved Karim to the political prisoners’ section. He is allowed TV, radio, newspapers, and exercise time. He is also allowed longer visits from his lawyers but in fact authorities have denied them access to Karim since March 2009.

“I oppose everything that can restrain anyone’s freedom of expression… Terrorizing me, ousting me from university, imprisoning me, none of that will affect my spirit. ”
- Extract of letter from Karim Amer, 4 September 2007

Please write to Egypt’s president.

Describe who you are.
Acknowledge that Karim Amer’s blogs offended him and some Muslims but that the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression demands his release.
Ask him to launch an independent and exhaustive investigation into Karim’s claims of ill-treatment. Provide a detail or two about them in your letter.

President Hosni Mubarak

‘Abedine Palace
Cairo, Egypt

Start your letter: Dear President Mubarak

Postage: $1.65
Fax: +20 2 2390 1998 or +20 2 2795 8016
Email: webmaster@presidency.gov.eg

Send a greeting to Karim!

Please use his full name when you address the envelope.

Abdel Karim Nabil Soliman Amer
Bog Al-Arab Prison
Alexandria, Egypt

Use any type of card or paper except religious cards/greetings.
Write in Arabic, English, or your own language.
You may mention Amnesty International and include your return address.

Sample letter in Arabic:

عزيزي كريم،

أتمنى أن تسترد حريتك قريباً و نحن نعمل من أجل إطلاق سراحك.

لقد أرسلت خطاب إلى الرئيس المصري أحثه على إطلاق سراحك. و قد طلبت أيضاً التحقيق في سوء المعاملة التي تعرضت لها بالسجن.

Dear Karim,
I hope that you will soon be free. We are working towards your release.
I have sent a letter to the Egyptian President asking him to release you. I have also asked for an investigation of the way you have been ill-treated in prison.

Fi Balad El Weladفي بلد الولاد

2009-07-11T14:24:00.006+03:00

Fi Balad El Welad (In the Country of Boys), by Mustapha Fat'hee, is a book that tells the story of one young Egyptian gay man's everyday life with all its ups and its many downs in this conservative Muslim country that rejects homosexuality. This is the first ever book that tells of the misery of being gay in Egypt and that speaks for respecting and accepting the oppressed Egyptian gay community on a human level.

The book is now available to buy at "El Balad" bookshop opposite the American University campus downtown Cairo, located on the second floor in the building next to Cilantro café. The book costs E£10.

"في بلد الولاد"، من تأليف مصطفى فتحي، هو كتاب يسرد قصة حياة رجل مثلي مصري بحلوها القليل ومرها الكثير في هذا البلد المسلم المحافظ الذي يرفض المثلية الجنسية. هذا الكتاب هو الأول من نوعه بحيث أنها المرة الأولى التي يسرد فيها كتاب مصري مشاكل المثليين ويدعو إلى تقبل واحترام المجتمع المثلي المقموع في مصر.

الكتاب متوفر بمكتبة البلد مقابل الجامعة الأمريكية في وسط البلد بالقاهرة. ثمن الكتاب 10 جنيهات.

My first HIV test at a government lab

2009-06-23T17:10:00.003+03:00

To my amazement, the way I was received by the doctors prior to the actual testing was pretty welcoming. I found that they didn't ask for a name, but rather for a pseudonym and a birthdate to be my identity there. Then, I was sent to a counselor whose job was to give simple information about AIDS and HIV. The guy didn't show any signs of disrespect for the fact that I'm going to check if I have HIV, which was astonishing. I heard that until very recently AIDS was seen as such a tabboo even by doctors. And after the counseling session they gave me a few condoms and lubricants, and three booklets with information about AIDS, and then I went to have the test. I'll go get the results next Sunday, hopefully it'll be negative, wish me luck!! :-)

Oh, I also didn't pay a penny for any of that.

It was a very nice experience that I didn't expect to have at a government lab, and I'm happy my country is having a more liberal approach to sexually transmitted diseases and is actually propagating against the whole stigma that's associated with them, especially HIV and AIDS.

Egypt moving forward?

2009-06-21T07:53:00.003+03:00

I've been hearing from people who work with UNAIDS in Egypt that we're moving forward as far as AIDS patients are concerned. As I mentioned years ago, there's now free AIDS medication and testing. There's also been talk that we're getting one step closer to gay rights here. A new book about to be published on July 1 discusses the dilemmas that the gay community faces in Egypt, so it seems that things are not as much of a tabboo as they used to be, following the openly gay characters in recent Egyptian movies. It seems like Egypt is trying to clean its dirty human/[sexual-]minority rights history now.

Another 30 years like these

2009-03-28T01:58:00.004+02:00

By Zvi Bar'el

Source: Haaretz.com

It's hard to say about the peace between Israel and Egypt that "time flies when you're having fun." This week will mark 30 years since the signing of the peace agreement, and Egypt is still suspect. It never passed the test of "tourist peace"; masses of Egyptians never came to vacation on Tel Aviv's beaches. Israeli authors do not appear at Egyptian book fairs, and the Israeli embassy in Cairo is closely monitored, not only by Egyptian intelligence but also by intellectuals, journalists and reporters ready to pounce on any Egyptian "spy" who penetrates the besieged structure to ask for a visa to Israel. Professional associations forbid their members from visiting Israel, and when an Egyptian parliamentarian wants to insult his colleague he tells him that "even the Israelis would not do what you are doing."

This is a peace that from the start was based not on love but on the slogan that has remained so important for Israel: "No more war. No more bloodshed." A peace not only free of war but also from the threat of war. Because of this peace, the Arab world's leading country found itself isolated by the Arabs, but maintained its diplomatic ties even when Israel occupied another Arab country, Lebanon, killed and wounded thousands of Palestinians and destroyed hundreds of homes over the past 30 years. And it has kept these ties going even when Israel's current foreign minister-designate, Avigdor Lieberman, called for bombing the Aswan Dam, and when Israel embarked on a war in the Gaza Strip.

One can only guess Israel's reaction if some country did to the Jewish people even one tenth of what Israel has done to the Palestinians. And after all, Egypt still lauds Anwar Sadat as "the hero of war and peace," and President Hosni Mubarak continues to challenge extremist Arab leaders by saying that anyone who wants to wage war on Israel should do so from his own territory. Egypt took the strategic decision not to play this game. True, the Egyptian ambassador may not participate in the 30-year anniversary celebrations because Lieberman is about to become foreign minister, and Egyptians prefer to celebrate the victory of the October War and not the day that peace was signed. But it is only in Egypt where the head of Israel's Shin Bet security service and the head of the military wing of Hamas have been within touching distance of each other.

Cold or hot, this is a more successful peace than that between India and Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon or Egypt and Syria. All maintain full diplomatic ties, replete with a deep sense of revulsion for each other.

This is a strategic peace between states and not between nations. A peace of interests, the kind that suits precisely the threats that Israel has tried to neutralize.

Its test, like that of the peace with Jordan and the peace Israel aspires to have with Syria, is not in the "quantity" of normalization but in the number of border incidents that are prevented. A peace where the meeting of intelligence chiefs is considered by both sides to be a greater achievement than another meeting in Cairo or Jerusalem between an Israeli and an Egyptian author.

The expression "cold peace" has carved out a place in Israel's diplomatic and public lexicon.

But it is interesting to speculate how Israel would respond if a million Egyptian tourists visited Tel Aviv's beaches, hitting on Israeli girls and flooding the hotels, and the Egyptian dialect was heard in every corner of the malls of Rishon Letzion or Ga'ash.

And what would happen to that same peace if hundreds of thousands of Egyptians tried to take advantage of it to work in Israel, or if Egyptian businessmen bought strategically important Israeli companies? Are you feeling a little nervous already? Yes, we want a warm peace with Egypt, but at a distance. Tourists from Scandinavia? Yes. French apartment buyers? Sure. Just not Egyptians - Arabs, I mean.

It seems that both sides enjoy the peace's coolness. In Israel it serves as an excuse for lazy diplomacy because, after all, it's not worth giving up territory for a "cold peace" like this. For Egypt, this "cold" grants it the appropriate degree of distance that allows it to enjoy the status of "respectability" in the Middle East. All we want is to have the opportunity to reach another 30 years of this sort of peace.

Popping up once more

2009-01-29T21:39:00.000+02:00

I haven't been doing much writing much lately, true. The thing is, well, sometimes I regret having told so many people about this blog that I can't really use it anymore as my own, secret place, if you will. You know, my own dirty place where anything can be thrown in and off my back.. So, other than all these cultured articles, the political talk and the religious talk and the minority talk, not much personal talk can be spat out here, 'cuz it'll probably end up the talk of my surrounding society heheh. There's all sorts of shit in my life that I'd like to share with you here, but don't have the courage to risk it being known by my mom for instance (mom, are you reading this? ;-).

Leave you in peace. Enjoy the winter!

What Is It Like to Be HIV Positive in Egypt?

2008-09-05T03:09:00.002+02:00

An Interview With Ayman, an HIV-Positive Egyptian

By Terri Wilder (Source: TheBody.com)

August 1, 2008

The XVII International AIDS Conference (AIDS 2008) is a magnet that attracts thousands upon thousands of HIV-positive people, activists and community leaders from all walks of life and all parts of the globe. We were fortunate enough to meet a few of these people and talk to them about their perspectives and their experiences. In this interview, Terri Wilder talks with Ayman, an Egyptian, about what it's like to live with HIV in his home country.

Ayman, what is it like to live with HIV in Egypt?

Living with HIV in Egypt is very tough, because the stigma is very high in Egypt against people who are living with HIV. We are having a very tough fight in our country to do what we have to do. To be able to have a safe living environment, away from stigma, away from many other things, we have to fight. [We have to fight for] support and care -- we do not have it professionally. We have [HIV] medications, [but] only one line. If you get resistance from this line, you will not be able to get another one. I think we have a very tough life with HIV in Egypt, and we have to fight more and more, so we can get our rights.

What do you think the biggest challenge is?

Our biggest challenge is to lessen the stigma, and also to make our leaders and our government [provide us with better] support, care and treatment.

What do you mean by "stigma"? Are people losing their jobs or their housing?

It's there by all its meanings. People avoid you. They don't know how HIV is transferred. They don't know anything about anything, and they treat you very badly. You can be kicked out of your home. If it's not your property, if you are renting it, you would be kicked out. In your job, you cannot say that [you have HIV], because if you said it, you would be fired. They would find many other reasons to fire you. It would not be HIV. I have been working in a place for one and a half years. I didn't say anything, and I couldn't say that.

Where do people get their medical care?

They give out medications only in our Ministry of Health [in Cairo]. This is the only way we can get it, because it's very expensive. We are a third-world country. Many of us cannot buy medications by ourselves, so we can get it only from one place, which is the Ministry of Health. Even if you live far away, you have to come all this way -- from any place in Egypt, any region in Egypt, you have to come to Cairo so you can get your medication.

There is no other support or care. If you go to a doctor for an operation and say that you have HIV, he will not give it to you. Actually, right now, we have HIV-positive pregnant women, and we don't know how and where they are going to give birth. And the places the government does give us are of very, very low standards. The kid, if he does not get HIV, will get another disease.

What kind of support do you get from family and friends?

My family, they are very supportive. When I first knew [that I was positive], I did not have that much information [about HIV]. I was waiting for death. My mother, she was the one who first told me that what has happened has happened, that I had to look ahead. How you are going to live -- what happens to you -- this is decided by God, so you have to try to live your life in a normal, nice way.

I don't have too many friends whom I can tell. One friend is my sponsor in a Narcotics Anonymous program. The other one is an HIV-positive person who is living with me -- not "living with me" [in a romantic sense], but she is the closest one to me. She has been helping me in many things.

You get your medical care from the Ministry of Health. Are you on medications right now?

Yes, I am.

What medications are you on?

I am on Norvir [ritonavir], Invirase [saquinavir] and Combivir [AZT/3TC].

How have you been feeling since you started taking these?

I have been taking medications almost for two years. I'm getting well. I remember that when I started, my CD4 count was about 68. I weighed about 60 kilograms [130 lbs.]. Now my CD4 count is 164, and I'm past 95 kilograms [209 lbs.]. So it's good.

Do you feel good?

Yes. I feel much, much better.

In what year were you diagnosed?

It was 28 June 2006.

Thank you so much for speaking with us today.

Thank you very much, Terri.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Egypt: Court Upholds HIV Sentences, Reinforces Intolerance

2008-09-05T02:59:00.002+02:00

Five Convictions in Fear-Driven Crackdown a Blow to Health and Justice

(Cairo, May 29, 2008, Human Rights Watch) – A Cairo appeals court’s decision to uphold the sentences imposed on five men jailed in a crackdown on people living with HIV/AIDS underscores the Egyptian government’s dangerous indifference to public health and justice, Human Rights Watch said today. The May 28 ruling upheld the maximum three-year prison terms for each of the five, following a months-long campaign targeting men with HIV/AIDS. A total of nine men have been sentenced to prison so far.

“To send these men to prison because of their HIV status is inhuman and unjust,” said Joe Amon, director of the HIV/AIDS program at Human Rights Watch. “Police, prosecutors, and doctors have already abused them and violated their most basic rights, and now fear has trumped justice in a court of law.”

On May 7, a court of first instance in Cairo had convicted the five men on charges of “habitual practice of debauchery,” a phrase that in Egyptian law encompasses consensual sexual acts between men.

Before their first trial, a prosecutor told the men’s lawyer that they should not be allowed to “roam the streets freely” because the government considered them “a danger to public health.”

Since October 2007, Cairo police have arrested a dozen men on suspicion of being HIV-positive. The crackdown began when one man, stopped on the street during an altercation, told officers he was HIV-positive. Police arrested him and the man with him, beat and abused them, and interrogated them to name sexual contacts. Police then began picking up others based on information from those interrogations.

On January 14, 2008, a Cairo court sentenced four of those men to one-year prison terms on “debauchery” charges. An appeals court upheld those sentences on February 2. The present five defendants were referred for trial separately in March. Authorities released three other men, who tested negative for HIV, without charge, after months in detention.

While the 12 were in detention, doctors from the Ministry of Health forcibly subjected all of them to HIV tests without their consent. Doctors from Egypt’s Forensic Medical Authority performed abusive anal examinations on the men to “prove” they had had sex with other men. Human Rights Watch has documented that such examinations conducted in detention constitute torture. Police and guards beat several of the men in detention. A prosecutor told one of the men that he had tested positive for HIV by saying, “People like you should be burnt alive. You do not deserve to live.”

The prisoners who tested HIV-positive were chained to their beds in hospitals for months. After a local and international outcry, the Ministry of Health ordered the men unchained on February 25.

“Putting these men in prison serves neither justice nor public health,” Amon said. “The Egyptian government and the country’s medical profession must act to end this campaign of intolerance.”

Egypt Tourism Ad

2008-08-19T16:18:00.000+03:00

Nothing compares to Egypt...

Persepolis 2 (Trailer) - Safeguard the Innocent

2008-08-19T16:11:00.003+03:00

Sequel to Persepolis exposes the reality of the suffering of the Baha'is in Iran since the Revolution and until today, and calls for action on their behalf. Note: The images for this clip were borrowed from Marjan Satrapi's film "Persepolis", an admirable work which serves as inspiration to us all.

2,500 years ago, Cyrus the Great penned down what is regarded as the first declaration for human rights, affirming the right of freedom of worship. But centuries later, what is the condition of Iran's largest religious minority?

For more information on Baha'i human rights abuses please visit: www.bahairights.org

To see more MEY work please visit: www.mideastyouth.com/censeo

Egypt demanding data from cyber cafés users: NGO

2008-08-10T15:49:00.000+03:00

Source: Middle East Times

CAIRO (AFP) An Egyptian NGO on Saturday accused the Egyptian authorities of forcing cyber cafés to gather personal information on Internet users, saying the measure was a violation of privacy.

"The Egyptian government imposed a new measure which increases the extent of censorship on Internet users and violates their right to privacy," the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information said in a statement.

According to the NGO, clients at Internet cafés must provide "their names, email and phone numbers, before they use the Internet."

Once the data is provided, clients will receive a text message on their cell phones and a pin number allowing them to access the Internet, the NGO said.

The rights group called this a "censorship procedure" which it said has "become a widespread reality" in Egypt.

"This severely abusive procedure proves that the security policies aim to impose constraints and censorship on Internet users," it said.

An Egyptian security official told AFP on condition of anonymity that "the measure is not an official one" although he acknowledged that "some cyber cafés have been instructed" to obtain such data from their clients.

Egypt earlier this year arrested bloggers and Internet activists for security reasons, prompting criticism by Amnesty International and calls for their release.

© 2008 Agence France-Presse

Religion on ID cardsالديانة في بطاقات الهوية

2008-08-07T05:59:00.002+03:00

Of what use is the mentioning of religion on official papers? Or, more specifically, what's the need for it on identification cards? This kind of discrimination is not consistent with the principle of citizenship mentioned in the Egyptian constitution. What different type of treatment should one receive if "Christian," "Baha'i," or "Muslim" is written in their ID card? For instance, if someone goes to see a doctor, would they be treated with Bible verses if they're Christian and with Koran verses if they're Muslim? Or if they go to get their driving license, would they be forced to have a Star of David hung in their car if they're Jewish and a cross if they're Christian? How strange! These examples are mere imagination, but even if such ways of discrimination occur somewhere in the world, they still are not compatible with the principle of equality on the basis of citizenship. What's the importance of knowing someone's religion in matters of civil dealings that have nothing to do with the personal type of religiousness an individual has.

ما هو استخدام خانة الديانة في الأوراق الرسمية؟ أو بشكل أكثر تخصيصًا، ما حاجتنا لها في البطاقات الشخصية؟ لا يتماشى هذا الأسلوب من التمييز مع مبدأ المواطنة المذكور في الدستور المصري. أي نوع مختلف من المعاملة يتلقاها مواطن ما إن كان مكتوب في بطاقته مسيحي أو بهائي أو مسلم؟ مثلاً إن ذهب شخص ما إلى الطبيب، هل يعالجه الطبيب بالإنجيل إن كان هذا الشخص مسيحيًا أو بالقرآن إن كان مسلمًا؟ أو إن ذهب لاستخراج رخصة القيادة، هل يعلــَـق له نجمة داود في السيارة إن كان يهوديًا أو صليب إن كان مسيحيًا مثلا؟ هذه الأمثلة هي من وحي الخيال وإن كانت تحدث في بعض الأماكن في العالم فهي لا تتوافق ومبدأ المساواة على أساس المواطنة. إذًا فما هي حقــًا أهمية معرفة دين شخص ما في أمور المعاملة المدنية التي لا علاقة لها بنوع التدين الخاص بالفرد؟

Egyptian identification card controversy

2008-07-28T00:03:00.005+03:00

Source: Wikipedia

The Egyptian identification card controversy resulted from a ruling of the Supreme Administrative Council of Egypt on December 16, 2006 against the Bahá'ís stating that the government may not recognize the Bahá'í Faith in official identification cards. The ruling left Bahá'ís unable to obtain the necessary government documents to have rights in their country unless they lied about their religion, which conflicts with Bahá'í religious principle. Bahá'ís cannot obtain identification cards, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage or divorce certificates, or passports. Without those documents, they could not be employed, educated, treated in hospitals, or vote, among other things. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) stated that the press release issued by the Chief Judge of the Supreme Court did not respond to any of the evidence and legal arguments presented by the EIPR in the case and that instead the press release discussed only the tenets and beliefs of the Bahá'í Faith, which should have had no effect on the decision of the court. On January 29, 2008 Cairo's court of Administrative Justice, ruling on two related court cases, ruled in favour of the Bahá'ís, allowing them to obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents. The ruling accepted the compromise solution offered by the Bahá'ís, allowing for them to obtain identification papers without the Bahá'í Faith being officially recognized, however as of April 22, 2008 the Egyptian Ministry of Interior has yet to implement the ruling, and Bahá'ís remain without identification cards.

Historical context

In 1924, Egypt became the first Islamic state to legally recognize the Bahá'í Faith as an independent religion apart from Islam. Despite a historically active Egyptian Bahá'í community during the early twentieth century, Bahá'í institutions and community activities are currently banned by Law 263. This law came into being in 1960, seven years after the declaration of the Arab Republic of Egypt, at the decree of then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser. All Bahá'í community properties, including Bahá'í centers, libraries, and cemeteries, were confiscated by the government. The current Egyptian Bahá'í community, estimated to number between several hundred and two-thousand, has also had fatwas issued against it by Al-Azhar's Islamic Research Center, which charges Bahá'ís with apostasy.

Legal context

The Egyptian identification card controversy stemmed from the Egyptian government's decision, now being implemented, to computerize the national identity card system. The system had been set up to exclude Bahá'ís, depriving them of valid ID cards, making them virtual non-citizens, without access to employment, education, and all government services, including hospital care. Individuals without a valid ID card would even be unable to buy groceries from state markets. A number of Bahá'í young people are without valid ID cards, a situation that has forced them out of universities and the army, placing them on the margins of society.

All Egyptian citizens must carry ID cards, which must be presented not only for any type of government service, such as medical care in a public hospital or processing for a property title or deed, but also to obtain employment, education, banking services, and many other important private transactions. ID cards are also required to pass through police checkpoints, and individuals without such cards are accordingly deprived of freedom of movement.

In Egypt, ID cards require a statement of religious affiliation. Moreover, the system allows for one of only the three recognized religions of Egypt — Islam, Christianity, or Judaism — to be entered. Bahá'ís have long refused as a matter of principle to falsely list themselves as Muslim, Christian, or Jew. Not only would such a step constitute committing fraud against the state, but also such a denial of faith would effectively play into the hands of those who seek to eliminate the Bahá'ís in Egypt. Accordingly, Bahá'ís have simply left the religious affiliation slot blank, made a dash, written "other," or even sometimes listed "Bahá'í." With the old paper ID cards, Bahá'ís were thus able to obtain cards and survive as individuals in Egyptian society.

In the 1990s, the Egyptian government announced it would be upgrading its identification card system by issuing computerized cards that would be less susceptible to forgery. This, the government indicated, would help to combat militant Islamic unrest, and improve data collection and access. The government indicated the shift to the new system would be gradual, but set January 2005 as the deadline for everyone to have the new cards — a deadline which has apparently been extended to 2006.

The system had apparently undergone modifications since it was set up. In 2003, for example, four Bahá'ís sought and obtained new computerized cards in which the religious affiliation field listed "other" — a designation to which the Bahá'í community does not object. More recently, however, the software had been updated so that only one of the three recognized religions can be entered. If the field is left blank, the computer refuses to issue the card.

The Bahá'í community of Egypt had approached the government on numerous occasions to plead for a simple change in the programming, if not the law, so that they could be issued valid ID cards under the new system. Such pleas, however, had been met with rejection and refusal.

Accordingly, all members of the Egyptian Bahá'í community faced the prospect of being left wholly without proper ID cards by 2006 — a situation in which they would essentially be denied all rights of citizenship, and, indeed, would be faced with the inability even to withdraw their own money from the bank, get medical treatment at public hospitals, or purchase food from state stores.

As the new cards were being issued, the government had asked young people to start coming in for the new cards, and a number of Bahá'í youth had accordingly been stripped of paper identification cards. Once stripped of ID cards, the Bahá'í youth essentially become prisoners in their own homes, since the authorities often set up evening checkpoints to verify the identity of young men. Individuals without proper ID face detention. Likewise, young people without ID cards are denied entrance and continuing enrolment in colleges and universities, as well as service in the armed forces.

Court case

On April 4, 2006, a three-judge panel of the Egyptian Administrative Court upheld the right of a Bahá'í couple to lawfully state their religion on their ID cards. The cards had been confiscated by the government after the couple sought to have their passports updated to include their daughters. The couple, Husam Izzat Musa and Ranya Enayat Rushdy, sued, stating that the confiscation of the cards was illegal under Egypt’s Constitution and international law. The court ruled for the couple, citing existing precedents and Islamic jurisprudence that allow for the right of non-Muslims to live in Muslim lands "without any of them being forced to change what they believe in." and ordered the civil registry to issue new documents that properly identify them as Bahá'ís.

The court wrote:

It is not inconsistent with Islamic tenets to mention the religion on this card even though it may be a religion whose rites are not recognized for open practice, such as Bahá’ism [sic] and the like... On the contrary, these [religions] must be indicated so that the status of its bearer is known and thus he does not enjoy a legal status to which his belief does not entitle him in a Muslim society.

In the aftermath of the court ruling, various news media in Egypt and the Arab world reported on the ruling. Human rights groups in Egypt were supportive of the decision, while representatives of the Al-Azhar University and government were negative. Newspapers in Bahrain, Kuwait and elsewhere in the region also wrote about the case, with many going into long explanations about the Bahá'í Faith. Some statements by other organizations after the initial ruling include:

▪ IRIN, a news service of the United Nations serving the region, wrote, "Human rights activists have welcomed a landmark ruling by the Administrative Court recognizing the right of Egyptian Bahais to have their religion acknowledged on official documents."

▪ Al Arabiya, an online service of the television network, carried the headline, "They were forcing them to register themselves as Muslims; An Egyptian court recognizes the Bahá’í religion despite refusal by the Azhar."

▪ Al-Watan (Homeland), a newspaper of Kuwait, carried the headline: “They described it as the Greatest Setback; Al-Azhar scholars demand that the Egyptian judiciary review the ruling of acknowledging ‘Al-Bahá’íyyah’ [the Bahá'í Faith] as a religion.” The lead of the article says: "A number of Al-Azhar scholars condemned the ruling of the Egyptian judiciary that acknowledged the Bahá’í creed, stressing that it is considered a great legal setback and a tragedy that must be drawn back, emphasizing that Bahá’ís are not Muslims, rather, they are agents of Zionism and colonialism and are enemies of the country; they demanded a review of the ruling that acknowledges this creed."

▪ Al-Ahram, one of Egypt’s leading daily newspapers, carried the headline: "Crisis in Parliament Over a Judicial Ruling About the Bahá'ís; The Deputies: ‘Al-Bahá’íyyah’ [the Bahá'í Faith] is not a Divine religion … and the ruling contradicts the constitution." The article also stated that the government had decided to appeal the ruling.

On 28 April 2006 after reading that the Egyptian government has asked for information on the Bahá'í Faith from members of Al-Azhar University, and knowing that much misinformation about the Bahá'í Faith has been published in the Egyptian media, the Bahá'í International Community’s United Nations Office wrote to leaders of the Al Azhar Islamic Research Council to explain the essential principles of Bahá'í belief. The letter, which contained a brief statement of basic Bahá'í principles and doctrine, also asked that facts about the Bahá'í religion be obtained from trustworthy sources that were "uninfluenced by the misconceptions" that are being spread about the Bahá'í Faith.

The Egyptian government formally appealed the Administrative Court's ruling on 7 May 2006. The appeal came after attacks on the ruling in the Egyptian parliament and by representatives of Al-Azhar Islamic Center. According to the IRIN news service, an Interior Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said: “We presented an appeal to revoke the previous ruling on the basis that neither the Egyptian constitution nor Islamic law recognize Bahaism [sic] as a religion unto itself.” Then on 13 May 2006 Kifayah, a loosely organized group of civil society organizations, journalists, writers, artists and academics, issued a collective statement calling for an end to discrimination against Bahá'ís. The group which is composed of the Popular Group for Change, the Egyptian Democratic Centre, the Centre for Socialist Studies, Socialist Horizons, the Arabic network for Human Rights Information, and Civil Watch for Human Rights, along with some 40 journalists, writers, artists and academics wrote:

"We confirm that this is not a case of the followers of the Bahá'í denomination only; it is the case of all minorities and faiths that are suffering from discrimination in Egyptian society for decades... Our attitude springs from a deep belief that calls for constitutional and political reform cannot be separated from demands for the guarantee of freedom of belief and expression equally for every citizen, regardless of religion, ethnicity, gender or color, otherwise, reform would become merely ink on paper and lose all meaning ... Today, the followers of a small denomination are sacrificed to fanaticism, but whose turn will it be tomorrow….if we be silent now?"

Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court on 15 May suspended the implementation of the earlier lower Administrative Court ruling that allowed Bahá'ís to have their religion recognized on official documents. The court agreed to hear the appeal starting on June 16, which continued to September 16. During this time, the state-sponsored National Council for Human Rights held a major symposium on the issues surrounding religious affiliation and identity cards, at which the Bahá'í community offered some testimony. The hearing was, however, postponed by the Supreme Administrative Court on 21 September 2006 until 20 November, to await the completion of an advisory report by the State Commissioner’s Authority.

During the court's wait, the Egyptian newspaper Rose al-Youssef published a story on October 14, 2006 stating that the advisory report was completed, and that the State Commissioner’s Authority is urging the rejection of the lower court’s ruling. Then on 2 December a final hearing was held; the court indicated that its judgement would be issued in the case on 16 December. The Supreme Administrative Court issued its final judgement in the case of Husam Izzat Musa and Ranya Enayat Rushdy on 16 December, upholding the government’s policy of allowing only three religious affiliations on state ID cards and government documents.

After the ruling, various Egyptian human rights organizations, such as the Cairo Centre for Human Rights Studies, issued statements of support for the Bahá'í community of Egypt in their struggle for basic civil rights. The Universal House of Justice, the highest governing body of the Baha'i Faith on 21 December addressed a message to the Baha'is of Egypt in the wake of the Supreme Administrative Court's decision stating that they should continue in striving to continue to uphold the principle of the oneness of humankind and other Bahá'í principles.

On January 29, 2008 Cairo's court of Administrative Justice, ruling on two related court cases, and after six postponements, ruled in favour of the Bahá'ís, allowing them to obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents; the government may, however, still appeal against the judgement. The director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, who has brought the two cases to court, stated "This is a very welcome decision. It addresses a great injustice suffered by Bahai citizens who face arbitrary and discriminatory practices based on their religious beliefs. We urge that the authorities implement the Administrative Court's decision." The chief judge in the court case stated that while the Baha'i Faith is still not recognized as one of the three officially recognized state religions, they will enjoy the right to refuse to identify oneself as one of those three religions, and will have access to state religions. As of April 22, 2008, however, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior has yet to implement the ruling, and Bahá'ís remain without identification cards.

Other court cases

Since the December 16, 2006 decision by Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court, two other court cases addressing the rights of Egyptian Bahá'ís to obtain basic identity documents and education have been brought up. The first case, which was filed on February 2007, was brought forward by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) on behalf of a Bahá'í university student, Hosni Hussein Abdel-Massih. Abdel-Massih was suspended from the Suez Canal University's Higher Institute of Social Work since he was unable to obtain an identity card due to his religious affiliation. The Court of Administrative Justice in Cairo was to decide on this case on September 5, 2007 but postponed the decision to October 30, 2007. The case was further postponed, for the fifth time on January 22, 2008, for an anticipated verdict during the 29 January 2008 court session. On January 29, 2008, Cairo's court of Administrative Justice ruled in favour of the Bahá'ís, allowing them to obtain identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents.

The second case involved two 14-year old twins who were unable to obtain birth certificates unless they converted to a recognized religion. While the father of the twins had originally obtained birth certificates when the children were born in 1993 with their religious affiliation as Bahá'í, he was unable to obtain new birth certificates which contain the national number. Without the national number on the birth certificate, the children were unable to enrol in public schools. Since the Supreme Administrative Court's decision in 2006 found that the government had the right to deny Egyptian Bahá'ís identity documents recognizing their religious affiliation, the EIPR modified the requested remedies in the case; the issue before the Court of Administrative Justice is whether Bahá'ís can obtain documents without any religious affiliation or without falsely identifying oneself as one of the recognized religions. This court case was also set to be decided up on September 5, 2007, but the decision has also been postponed to October 30, 2007. As with the other court case, Cairo's court of Administrative Justice also ruled in favour of the Bahá'ís, allowing them to obtain birth certificates, if they omit their religion on the documents. The EIPR stated that they will immediately seek to obtain papers for the twins.

"I Dream of the Day of Peace" / "باحلم بيوم السلام"

2008-07-27T01:22:00.003+03:00

This is a very nice song, performed by an Egyptian Baha'i, about the wish for world peace, based on Baha'i principles. Nice words and music! :)

That Thursday Night

2007-12-03T23:33:00.001+02:00

Following is a story of true events as written by a reader of my blog, who has permitted me to post it here, without him being identified:

I think most of us have gone through the experience of having to lie about our sexuality when a direct question is put to us. Since coming-out and revealing one's sexuality in this society is not something to be taken likely or done without ample thought of its consequences.

In particular in the Egyptian or Arab context, coming-out to one person you know, might mean coming out to a dozen (at least) who you do not know. Hence the consequences have to be weighed carefully.

On a personal experience, after having been away from Egypt for a long time and returning as a gay man, my first experience of this situation was with my old school mates in my "home coming evening."

It was in 1999 when contemporary gay life was booming in Egypt. That evening my friends unknowingly chose the gayest place in Egypt to go arrange for our get together on a Thursday night.

Of course, the subject was bound to come out when, few minutes after midnight, the place became predominantly gay. I was lucky, then, that I wasn't personally acquainted with any of the gay crowd there except one tourist I had met the previous day for a coffee and found a bit too camp, hence coffee was the extent of our relationship.

The comedy started when my friends started noticing the unusually expressive hand gestures, the closeness of the bodies, and the obvious gay environment particularly as they all are well-traveled people. And there started the comments and the subject was wide open, like you know what!

I managed not to use my vocal chords to reply to any of the homophobic comments they started exchanging, and kept nodding and painting a smile on my face. However, the silence act did not last more than ninety seconds after which I found myself exploding in their faces.

Arguing their flawed logic whether it ranged from morality, decency, social or religious grounds, and, believe me, they didn't spare me any argument to throw in my face about how "unnatural," "indecent," "immoral," "anti-social," "sick," and of course the famous "sacrilegious" behavior this all was.

I found myself as if in an arena with six hounds attacking me with their collective age of social brainwashing, monolithic attitude and religious dogma (of all denominations, just to increase the open fronts.)

In my enthusiasm I got very immersed in responding, until the inevitable question came up which I should have seen coming: "Why are you so worked-up about the issue? Why are you so defensive of it?"

And there I felt like a ten-ton brick fell on my head. I should have seen it coming with how much I was so red and engrossed in the conversation. Twelve eyes stared in my face for seconds that felt like eternity.

I felt all the blood in my body rushing to my head, feeding those few poor grey cells left puzzled on how to act after my hot blood and big mouth put them in such an unenviable position!

Would they trigger that mouth to spit-out in those six dear faces the truth about my sexuality for the first time ever? Alternatively, what plausible lie could be put on those lips that would satisfy the curious questioning minds in front of me?

I was lucky, or maybe I was just being myself ("gay").

In 30 seconds, the compulsive liar in me burst into them claiming professional interest in human rights, of which gay rights are part. Although not entirely a lie, it certainly was not the main reason I was playing the defendant role.

That evening was the last with my childhood friends. I did not want to be put in that position again, and hence I found myself avoiding them for any other occasion to meet up over drinks or socially. Now that was the price for not coming out to them.

In fact, that night, I reached a conclusion that I could not comfortably socialize openly with so called friends unless they knew about one major aspect in my life: that I am gay. That is the price which some conservative societies and their taboos levy on us for staying discrete and unseen.

It is not a cheap price; it is years of intimate memories of childhood friendship that are lost.

Pity.

Questions

2007-11-21T15:13:00.000+02:00

I've been living a life of confusion for many years now about what's right and what's wrong; about the existence or non-existence of God; about many questions following the one of God's existence. Why was I born into this life in the first place? I didn't choose that. I didn't and don't think i would have chosen to live such a life full of confusion.

Is God there or is he not? Should i be Muslim or Christian or Jewish or Baha'i or what?

Why was i born in this specific time period when most of what goes on in my head seems to be forbidden? I'm even forbidden of just ending this whole misery. It is a misery to me when I am expected to be things i don't think i can be, or things that i just don't know if i should be or not.

Muslims, Christians, Jews, Baha'is, atheists, agnostics, gays, lesbians, straights, bisexuals, asexuals, transsexuals. These are just a few of the many religious and sexual groups in this world. How can you tell who's right and who's wrong? Who has this right? Why does God prefer specific groups and reject others?

Life is quite a confusing thing, life is full of confusion that it's hard to set specific rules for it.

It's even more confusing to die, because you never know what happens next, so it is also scary. When I think about this it just feels like I don't know what to do really. Life and death are both full of unanswered questions.

Will I live again after dying, or will I live a totally different type of life, or will I vanish? Will I meet God after death or will I not? Will I go to heaven or hell, or neither?

أول فيلم تسجيلي عن حال البهائيين في مصر

2007-11-20T23:13:00.000+02:00

شاهد هذا الفيلم الرائع الذي يتناول حال المصريين البهائيين ومعاناتهم في ظل استمرار الاضطهاد الذي يتعرضون إليه.

A Plastic Plate

2007-11-03T15:12:00.001+02:00

A video about a gay person with HIV/AIDS in Egypt.

Free Love

2007-10-30T21:35:00.001+02:00

Ahmad Sherif's "Free Love" video, also with English subtitles by me.

Free Women

2007-10-30T21:33:00.001+02:00

This is the "Free Women" video by Ahmad Sherif with English subtitles by me.

Researchers Knock Out HIV

2007-10-24T18:51:00.000+02:00

ScienceDaily (link) (Oct. 21, 2007) — With the latest advances in treatment, doctors have discovered that they can successfully neutralise the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The so-called ‘combination therapy’ prevents HIV from mutating and spreading, allowing patients to rebuild their immune system to the same levels as the rest of the population.

To date, it represents the most significant treatment for patients suffering from HIV.

Professor Jens Lundgren from the University of Copenhagen, together with other members of the research group EuroSIDA, have conducted a study, which demonstrates that the immune system of all HIV-infected patients can be restored and normalised. The only stipulation is that patients begin and continue to follow their course of treatment.

HIV attacks the body’s ability to counteract viruses

Viruses are small organisms that have no independent metabolism. Consequently, when they enter the body they attack living cells and adopt their metabolism. The influenza virus occupies cells in the nose, throat and lungs; the mumps attaches itself to the salivary glands of the ear; while the Polio virus plays on the intestinal tract, blood and salivary glands. In all these instances, our immune system attacks and eliminates the invading virus.

HIV is so deadly because the virus attaches itself to a crucial part of the immune system itself: to the so-called CD4+T lymphocytes, which are white blood corpuscles that help the immune system to fight infections. The Hi-virus forms and invades new CD4+T-lymphocytes. Slowly but surely, the number of healthy CD4+T lymphocytes in the blood fall, while HIV relentlessly weakens the body’s ability to defend itself from infection. Finally, the immune system erodes to such an extent that the infected patient is diagnosed with AIDS. The Hi-virus mutates constantly as it forms and this is why, scientists face a constant battle to find a cure or a vaccine.

Combination therapy knocks out HIV

Combination therapy prevents the virus from forming and mutating in human beings. When the virus is halted in its progress, the number of healthy CD4+T cells begins to rise and patients, who would otherwise die from HIV, can now survive. The immune system is rejuvenated and is apparently able to normalise itself, providing that the combination therapy is maintained. The moment the immune system begins to improve, the HIV-infected patient can no longer be said to be suffering from an HIV infection or disease, already declining in strength.

Findings from the study are published in the medical journal The Lancet - Vol. 370, Issue 9585, 4 August 2007, Pages 407-413

Adapted from materials provided by University Of Copenhagen.

من موقع EveryScreen.com:-على الآلهة: حوار مع صديقي المؤمن!

2007-10-12T02:08:00.000+02:00

س : من يوجد وراء كل هذا الكون ؟

جـ : لا نعرف !

س : كيف ، وكل شىء دقيق مضبوط ولا بد له من خالق دقيق ومبدع . يا سلام شايف الإعجاز ! خذ مثلا ، الأوكسچين نسبته فى الهواء 20% وهى النسبة المثالية بالظبط بالظبط لحياة الإنسان ، أو خذ مثلا طبقة الأوزون المصممة لحمايتنا من الإشعاعات الضارة وقد نهلك جميعا إذا ما استمر العبث بها ، أو خذ مثلا …

جـ : كفى ! كفى ! أنا أعرف كل تلك الجدليات جيدا ، وردى عليها بسيط : من وجد قبل من ؟ غلاف الأرض والأوزون أو أية ’ معجزة إلهية ‘ أخرى تخطر ببالك وجدت قبل ظهور العرق البشرى ، عندما ظهر البشر ظهروا متكيفون جدا لها ، وإلا ما ظهروا أصلا . بل هم ظهروا وازدهروا وتسيدوا لأنهم ببساطة بدوا من منظور البيئة المحيطة الأكثر تكيفا إطلاقا من كل من عداهم من كائنات . قل لو كانت نسبة الأوكسچين 5% على سبيل المثال ، لظهروا كديدان تحت التربة أو شىء كهذا ، ولما ظهرت الثدييات كما نعرفها قط . كواكب كثيرة ليس بها غلاف جوى وليس بها أوزون أو غاز يقوم بوظيفة مشابهة ، ومن ثم ليس بها نوع الحياة كما نعرفها ، وهكذا ، وهكذا .

صديقى ، كل المعجزات والحكم الإلهية الجليلة والخارقة تلك ما هى إلا أوهام ، وبقليل من الخيال ستكتشف أنها آليات طبيعية منطقية وبسيطة ، وتخضع كلية لما يسمى بالسببية . ومن ثم لا يجدر بالإنسان العاقل إلا الإيمان بما يثبته له العلم التجريبى ، ثم بما يصححه من نفسه لنفسه ، بحثا عن حقيقة أدق وأدق بلا نهاية . هو ليس مطلقا ولا رائعا كنظرياتكم الدينية التى حلت كل شىء بخبطة واحدة اسمها الإله ، لكنه كل ما نملك ، وكل ما لا نملك إلا الوثوق به كمنهج متواصل لفهم العالم والطبيعة وفهم كل شىء بأفضل فهم ممكن !

س : أنت تؤمن بداروين ؟

جـ : أنا أومن بالعلم . ولو أثبت خطأ داروين لرفضت داروين ، لكن هذا لم يحدث حتى اليوم ، بل بالعكس كل شىء يؤكد هذه النظرية ، بل أنها تتوسع لتشمل حتى أمورا غير مادية كالأفكار مثلا . التطور يا صديقى يكاد يكون قانونا .

س : ألا يمكن ولو على سبيل الصدفة المحضة ، أو باحتمال واحد فى البليون ، أن تكون نظرية الأديان عن الإله صحيحة ؟

جـ : مستحيل ! اسمح لى أن أرد على سؤالك بسؤال : لماذا كان الرومان يحرقون المسيحيين أو يلقونهم للأسود ؟

س : طبعا لأنهم كانوا يرفضون إله العقيدة الجديدة .

جـ : خطأ ! الحقيقة عكس هذا 180 درجة . اقرأ مثلا كتاب ميرى ليفكوويتز Greek Gods, Human Lives —What We Can Learn from Myths أو كتاب أليكساندر كراڤيتشوك عن آخر سنوات الدورات الأوليمپية ’ الوثنية والمسيحية ‘ وهو مترجم للعربية ، [ وغيرهما ] كثير جدا ، وأضمن لك أن يشيب شعر رأسك المنتصب هلعا كلما سمعت مستقبلا عبارة ’ من لطمك على خدك الأيمن حول له الأيسر ‘ ( طبعا أنت أذكى من أن تتصور أن عمرو بن العاص كان وحده السفاح الأثيم ، وعلى أية حال ’ سماحة ‘ الإسلام قصة أخرى ، وخلينا فى سماحة المسيحية ! ) . اليونان والرومان كانوا يرحبون بظهور أى آلهة جديدة ويتعبدون لها فى معابدهم . المسيحيون ’ هم ‘ الذين كانوا يرفضون الآلهة غير إلههم . وبالنسبة للرومان كانوا بذلك شيئا شاذا للغاية وبدعة مطلقة لم يعرف عالمهم مثلها من قبل ، ومن ثم كان حرق المسيحيين أو إطعامهم للأسود هو الموقف الحضارى الوحيد الممكن فى تلك اللحظة . يا صديقى ، فى تلك العصور لم يوجد قط فى سوق الآلهة والأديان من هو أكثر تسامحا أو رحابة أفق من الديانات الوثنية ، أما التوحيد فمعناه أنك ’ وحدك ‘ على صواب وكل من عداك تجديفى ومزور . التوحيد يعنى تلقائيا التعصب ، يعنى تلقائيا الانغلاق ، يعنى تلقائيا التكفير ، يعنى تلقائيا الجهاد ، ويعنى تلقائيا الاستشهاد . أديان ما يسمى بالتوحيد يطرح كل منها نفسه على أنه الوصول الفعلى والنهائى للحقيقة المطلقة . بما أننا نتحدث عن مطلقات ، فإحتمال أن يكون غيرك على صواب يعنى تلقائيا وقطعا أنك على خطأ . ربما تعترف أديان التوحيد بما جاء قبلها ، لكنه اعتراف منقوص بل ملغى أصلا . ربما تعترف بها كحقيقة تاريخية ، لكن ليس عقائديا . العقيدة الجديدة لا بد وأن تلغى كل العقائد القديمة . العقيدة عقيدة ، وكلمة عقيدة تعنى أن كل ما سواها خطأ . هى ليست علما يحتمل الصواب والخطأ والتطوير والتعديل . الأسوأ ، بل ربما الطبيعى جدا ، أن كل عقيدة دوما ما تقول إنها نهاية المطاف . على الإنسان أن يقبل بها كوصول غائى للمطلق المفقود ، أنجز بالفعل مرة واحدة وللأبد . باختصار المسعى قد أغلق . لقد تم الوصول للحقيقة الكاملة ، وعلى الإنسان أن يلغى عقله يلغى واقعه ويلغى مستجدات هذا الواقع ، ويتجمد عند تلك ’ الحقيقة ‘ المقدسة إلى الأبد . أديان الشرق بالمناسبة لا تأتى بحقائق مطلقة ، فقط تستحث الناس السعى إليها من استطاع إليها سبيلا ، وهؤلاء ليسوا كل البشر بل قلة خاصة جدا روحانية جدا ذات عزيمة خاصة جدا ، وقبل كل شىء يعنيها الأمر ولم يفرضه عليها أحد فرضا بالميكروفونات والهراوات . وهنا ردى على سؤالك عن الصدفة فى صواب الأديان ، وهو رد قديم جدا . من عصور قالوا إن تعارض العقائد يلغيها جميعا . خذ هذا المثال : تخيل أن كل إله يقول لشعبه أنتم شعبى المختار أو أنتم أبناء الملكوت أو أنتم خير أمة أخرجت للناس ، وهلم جرا ! أو خذ مثال أن كل دين يقول إنه آخر دين ، من بعدى الدجالون المزيفون ، وطبعا من قبلى المحرفون الضالون . ستكتشف إذن أن الهراء هو نفسه ، لا يتغير من دين إلى دين ، أو من إله لإله ، ذلك أن البشر اخترعوها جميعا لنفس الأهداف تقريبا . فقط تتغير الأسماء ، وفقط من أجل وضع الأسس لحروب دينية لا نهاية لها . يا صديقى ، الدين حصد من الأرواح أكثر ما حصدت أى حروب أو أمراض أو كوارث طبيعية أو أى شىء آخر فى الدنيا . صدقنى ، التوحيد الذى اخترعه إخناتون وتلميذه موسى وبقية الشلة التى تعرف أسماءها أحسن منى ، هو أكبر جريمة ضد الإنسانية ارتكبت إطلاقا فى تاريخها كله !

س : أوه ! هناك تناقض لم أفهمه . يبدو أنك تذهب فى الطريق الخطأ ، وتريد إثبات عكس ما قصدت . بدأت بالقول إن تعارض الأديان يلغيها والآن وكأنك تقول إن تشابهها هو الذى يلغيها !

جـ : فعلا ! أول مرة آخد بالى . هذا صحيح بالطبع . لكن ما أريد قوله إنه سواء اختلفت أو تشابهت فمن المستحيل أن يكون أى من تلك الأديان صحيحا ، ليس فقط لأن تلك النظريات تتناقض مع بعضها البعض ، وليس فقط لأنها جميعا تتناقض مع ما أثبته ويثبته كل يوم العلم التجريبى ، إنما لأن كل نظرية فى حد ذاتها تتناقض أجزائها بعضها البعض على نحو مخجل لا ينطلى على طفل عنده 99% إيمان و1% عقل !

س : ليكن ! دعنى أجاريك فى نظرية السببية تلك ، والتى تسمونها المنهج العلمى . لكنك لن تقنعنى أبدا أن كل ذلك جاء من فراغ . من البديهى و’ العلمى ‘ وبناء على نظرية السببية بتاعتكم فإن لكل شىء خالق ؟

جـ : حلو الكلام ! الإله خلق الإنسان . ماشى ! ممتاز جدا منطق أن لكل شىء خالق ، فقط قل لى إذن من فضلك من خلق ذلك الإله الذى تتحدث عنه . إنها دوامة لا نهاية لها ، صدقنى أنت الخاسر فيها ولست أنا .

س : الخلاصة أنت ترفض مفهوم المطلق برمته ؟

جـ : هناك شىء اسمه النسبية . هذه النظرية ألغت كل ما اعتقدنا أنه مطلقات الكون ، ولم تبق سوى على مطلق واحد هو سرعة الضوء ، ولن أدهش إن اتضح يوما من منظور فوق‑كونى ، إن لم يكن من منظور كوننا المعروف نفسه ، أنها هى الأخرى ليست مطلقة . ربما شديدة الثبات ، لكن ليست مطلقة . صديقى ، هناك فجوة بين مفهومنا للإشياء وبين حقيقتها . من يتخيل مثلا أن الأرض كلها لو خلصت من الفراغات بين جسيماتها لأصبحت فى حجم حبة قمح ؟ فى قول آخر لا يوجد شىء اسمه جسيمات أصلا . الجسيمات نفسها ما هى إلا موجات ، وإحساسنا نحن بالأجسام الصلبة حولنا ما هو إلا وهم تعودنا عليه . وبالمناسبة ربما لأن كل شىء ما هو إلا موجات ، ربما تأتينا يوما نظرية تفسر الظواهر الخارقة كالتخاطر مثلا أو تحريك الأشياء ، والتى تولعون بها جدا أنتم المتدينون ، بأنها ترجع لتوافقات موجية من نوع ما بالغ الندرة أو بالغ الضعف أو كلاهما معا ! أو حتى تفسر بعض ألغاز الحياة العادية المستعصية ، وأذكر أمور كان داروين نفسه من أوائل من تحيروا أمامها ، وحاول معرفة دورها فى البقاء ، ولم ينجح . مثل تجاوب البشر جميعا مع الموسيقى والإيقاع ، أو مثل اتفاقهم على معايير معينة للجمال ، وكما تعلم لا توجد قوة على الأرض تستطيع أن تقنع أحدا أن صوفيا لورين ليست أكثر فتنة بكثير من بنتى عصرها المغرورتين أمك وأمى .

س : ربما تلك القوة أقنعت أباك وأبى .

جـ : هل سألتهما ؟ وكمان جايز التفسير موجات برضه !

س : خلينا فى موضوعنا . وبعدين ؟

جـ : وبعدين لا نعرف ، وربما لن نعرف أبدا . ربما لو عرفت الحياة الذكية الموجودة فرضا بالصدفة على أحد إليكترونات جسمك أنك موجود ، لعرفنا نحن ماذا يوجد هناك بعد هذا الكون . على الأقل هى مسألة أحجام . نحن نحتاج لفوتون واحد على الأقل لنرصد وجود شىء ما . لكن ماذا لو كان هذا الشىء من الصغر بحيث يكون الفوتون بمثابة قنبلة نووية عملاقة للغاية ، من الحجم بما يكفى لمحو أكوان كاملة فى ذلك العالم فائق الصغر من الوجود . هذا ليس كلاما جديدا من عندى هو نفس كلام أينستاين فى مناظرته الممتدة الشهيرة مع بور ، الحقيقة المطلقة موجودة لكننا لن نعرفها أبدا ، وجهدنا لمعرفتها ( بفوتون ) سوف يدمرها . بالمثل نحن فى المقابل أصغر حجما من أن نمتلك أدوات رصد لرؤية ما وراء هذا الكون ، الذى ربما هو مجرد ذرة فى كون آخر أكبر ، أو ربما رذاز تنفس أو براز كائن ما ضخم ، أو ربما أى شىء . إنها ذات القوانين أيضا بالنسبة للماكروكوزموس . حين نتحدث عن مسافات شاسعة تحتاج أزمانا طائلة وسرعات هائلة لوصولها ، فإن الكون ، أو الزمان‑المكان ، الزمكان ، ينحنى حسب تعبيرات نظرية النسبية ، ولن تستطيع الإفلات من هذا الكون أبدا ولو انطلقت بسرعة الضوء ، أو كما قيل على نحو أكثر تحديدا لن ترى فى النهاية إلا قفاك !

س : بدأنا بمشكلة وانتهينا بمشكلتين . هل يعرف ذلك الكائن الضخم أننا موجودون ؟

جـ : إذا كنا لا نعرفه فلا نعرف بالأحرى أى شىء عن طبيعة أجهزة الرصد عنده ! الأرجح أنها أيضا مسألة أحجام ، وأنه مثلك حين لا تستطيع رصد الحياة الذكية على أحد إليكتروناتك . ثم أين المشكلة أصلا : فى كلا الحالتين نحن نعرف أننا لا نعرف ، أليس هذا علما كافيا يستحق الفخر بالنسبة لعشيرة حثالية كالعشيرة الإنسانية ، لا يختلف مصيرها الأبدى عن مصير أى صرصور يدهس ويموت ، مما يشاركها السكنى ذرة الغبار الكونى المسماة الأرض ؟ وبعدين ليه كل وجع دماغ ده . بعدين ده أصلا شخص مريض ، بيقول عن نفسه أنه ما خلق الجن والإنس إلا ليعبدوه . إيه السيكولوچية المنحرفة دى ؟ أنا أعرف مليون حاجة أفيد وأنفع وأعظم ممكن تعملها غير أنك تحط وشك فى الأرض سجودا للهو خفى لا حد شافه ولا حد كلمه ، إعمار الأرض مثلا ، تنمية التقنية مثلا ، مليون حاجة . حتى لو موش مريض ، أو حتى لو صديق للإنسان زى ما بتقول أديان تانى ، هو ليه واحد عظيم و’ ضخم ‘ زى ده إللى بتقولوا عليه يهتم بسلوكيات واحد فى قرية استوائية أو فى الصعيد الجوانى ، ويحاسبه ويعاقبه ، بعد ما يحفظها له فى سجلات حاسوب أو أرشيف فى الدور الأرضى مليون ولا بليون سنة . بذمتك ده موش عبط . إزاى تعبد واحد أهبل وهايف للدرجة دى ؟

س : يعنى موش عاوزه يحاسب الناس ؟

جـ : ويحاسبهم ليه ؟

س : علشان هو إللى خلقهم .

جـ : يا سلام ؟ معنى كده الإنسان مسير . وبما أنه مسير ، نفسى أعرف يتحاسب ليه وعلى إيه ؟

س : لأ هو مخير ، وعلشان كده بيتحاسب على قراراته وتصرفاته ؟

جـ : أنت متأكد من الإجابة دى وموش هتغيرها ؟ لما هو مخير يتحاسب ليه ؟ منين مخير ومنين يتحاسب ؟ مين إللى خير الإنسان يبقى مخير ؟ مين إللى خير الإنسان يتوجد أصلا ؟ يعنى هو برضه مسير فى إنه مخير ، وفى الحالتين من الظلم إنك تحاسبه ؟ افرض إنه موش عاوز يبقى مخير يا سيدى ، ولا هى كل الحكاية إن صاحبنا إللى فوق غاوى تجارب وسادية ؟ مريض يعنى !

يا صديقى ، العملية زى ما قلت لك عبط فى عبط . ولحسن الحظ نحن نعرف على وجه اليقين من أين أتت الأديان ، وليس فى هذا أى لغز أو أية أسطورة ، بل حقائق معاشة ، وأسباب ومسببات دونتها لنا بإسهاب كتب التاريخ ، وحتى كتب العقيدة نفسها . لحسن الحظ نعرف على وجه اليقين وبالاسم الأشخاص الذين اخترعوا فكرة الإله المشخص الخفى ساكن السماء . نعرف ظروف حياتهم ومجتمعاتهم وخلفياتهم الثقافية ومستوياتهم التعليمية ، ونعرف خريطتهم النفسية المشوهة تماما التى أودت بهم لمثل ذلك الاختراع الفاحش الذى أدى لتآكل وانهيار روح الإنسان تحت نير العبودية المطلقة لذلك اللهو الخفى ولوكلائه المزعومين على الأرض المنصبين ذاتيا للقوامة والوصاية على كل البشرية بالترغيب حينا بحرق الكتب وسفك الدماء والرجم وقطع الرءوس أحيانا أغلب . وكما أن بإمكان البعض تقديس هؤلاء ، من حقنا أيضا أن نطالب بتحويلهم لمحكمة التاريخ لمحاكمتهم عن إنحرافهم النفسى وعن جرائمهم المدنية والجنائية التى تشمل السرقة والقتل والكذب ، أو للدقة شملت كل شىء دون استثناء واحد بما فيه پورنو الأطفال . وعلى رأس كل ذلك طبعا محاكمتهم على أعظم جريمة على وجه الإطلاق ارتكبت فى حق البشر على امتداد كل التاريخ وهى تزييف وجود هؤلاء الآلهة الخفية الثلاثة ، ومن ثم ما سفك من دماء بسببهم سواء عنفا ضد أفراد اتهموا بالزندقة أو بأى شىء ، أو لم يتهموا لكن ملأ الرعب قلوبهم هلعا من عذاب النار مستقبلا ، وأكل الخوف أرواحهم تحسبا لبطش السماء بهم فى أية لحظة حاليا ، أو سفكت عنفا وحروب إبادة تجاه شعوب كاملة حيث أن باسم هؤلاء الآلهة شنت حروب أودت بحياة مئات الملايين من البشر ، ولا يوجد عبر كل التاريخ سبب آخر أدى لإزهاق مثل هذا العدد من الأرواح مثلما حدث باسم آلهة التوحيد هؤلاء ، بل أن كل الأسباب الأخرى للحروب مجتمعة لم تقتل مثل هذا العدد أبدا ! إنها ‑أقصد هذه الأديان‑ لحسن الحظ ذات خصائص معروفة ومميزة : كلها ظهرت فى منطقة محددة هى الشرق الأوسط ، فى كوكب محدد هو كوكب الأرض ، وبواسطة عشيرة بيولوچية محددة هى الإنسان ، وتحت ظروف محددة هى الجهل المطلق . نعم ، هى أتت ، والأهم أنها لم تكن لتأتى إبدا بطريق غير هذا ، أتت من عقلية بدائية محدودة المعرفة والتصورات لدرجة مفزعة . إنسان العصور القديمة والوسطى ، ذو الجلابيب والشباشب الذى لا يتجاوز من حيث المعرفة والقدرة العقلية طفلا معاصرا فى إحدى المدارس الحديثة فى السادسة من عمره . فى تلك الأيام كانوا يتخيلون الهواء وقد امتلأ بالعفاريت ( لو شئت تخيل الجو حقا فقد لا تجد أفضل من الصفحات الأولى جدا من ثلاثية القاهرة لنجيب محفوظ ، وستعرف ساعتها ماذا كانت تصارع الست أمينة بالضبط طوال الليل ) . كانوا يرون فى الكوارث الطبيعية أو حتى كسوف الشمس أو شح المطر ، هى نذر غضب مشئوم ونقمات من الآلهة على عصيانهم وخطاياهم . بالمثل كان المرض خللا أصاب الجسد بسبب تجربة إلهية أو عقاب . المطر كان أما نعمة إلهية خير مطلق ، وإما نقمة غضب لو صاحبته البروق والرعود والعواصف ، أو حتى أحيانا مجرد إله يبكى ناعيا ما آل إليه حال الدنيا . كانت السماء سقفا أزرق اللون يمكن الوصول له لو أمكن بناء برج بالارتفاع الكافى ( فقط اختلفوا هل هذا السقف المرصع بالثريات مسطح أم نصف كروى ، لكن كما تعلم لم يختلفوا قط على أن الأرض نفسها مسطحة ! ) . أو بالمثل كان كل المطلوب لمعرفة أين تغرب الشمس السفر بالقدر الكافى غربا ، وأحد أبطال قرآن الإسلام مثلا تطوع وقام عنا فعلا بتلك المهمة الشاقة واكتشف أنها تنام فى عين ماء ملتهبة ( أكيد ملتهبة ، وده طبعا من الإعجاز الثرمودينامى للقرآن ! ) . ذو القرنين فى الكهف 86 والمزيد هنا والإرشاد لها من القارئ خليل اسحق على أنه من غير الواضح إذا ما كان بطل القرآن الهمام ذو القرون الطويلة الذى ربما رأى الشمس تهبط فى الأطلنطى وتخيله عينا وتخيلها ’ تطش ‘ فيه ، قد ذهب شرقا لبحر الياپان ليرى من أين تولد شمس اليوم التالى ، أو لعله ذهب ولم يفهم كيف تخرج كتلة النار الملتهبة تلك من المياه الباردة جدا هناك ، فآثر الصمت ولم يخبر أحدا ، أو لعله قال ’ فى سره ‘ الكلمة الأثيرة جدا على ألسنة أهل ذاك الزمان إن فوق كل ذى علم عليم . فى كل الأحوال الواضح أن قرونا طويلة مرت حتى دون أن يقرأ هؤلاء شرق الأوسطيين الجهلة معارف اليونان العلمانية القديمة التى كانت لها نظريات ونظريات أفضل كثيرا ، أقلها ما يذهب لكروية الأرض .

س : الإنجيل والقرآن يقولان بكروية الأرض !

جـ : هراء ! إنها عينها الكلمات المبهمة شبه الشعرية التى تتكون منها كل مادة كل الأديان ، والتى قال عنها على بن أبى طالب يوما ’ القرآن حمال أوجه ‘ . أنا متأكد أن لو حدث وثبت أن الأرض مسطحة ، لما وجدتم فى هذه الحالة مجرد آية مفردة مبهمة شعرية مثل ’ الجالس على كرة الأرض ‘ أو آية مفردة مبهمة بلا معنى تقريبا مثل ’ دحاها ‘ التى ربما قصد كاتبها بها انبعاجات الجبال والهضاب ، بل المؤكد أنكم كنتم ستجدون ساعتها مليون آية وآية تقول إن الأرض مسطحة ، ثم تقولون انظروا ها هو الإعجاز العلمى للنص المقدس . أرجوك دعنى أولا أكمل كلامى عن العقلية الخطلة لإنسان القرون القديمة والوسطى . الجهل لم يقتصر على المطر وأجرام السماء وغيرها من ظواهر الطبيعة ، بل كان جهلا جامعا شاملا . طبعا وإذا كان الحال كذلك ، فإن الإنجاب والتكائر ناهيك عن الخلق والحياة نفسيهما ، كانت بالنسبة لهم معجزات مخيفة الجبروت لدرجة لا يمكن أن تتم بها دون نفخة مباشرة من روح الرب شخصيا . لم تكن هناك فيزياء نووية ولم تكن هناك بيولوچيا جزيئية ، ولم يكن هناك داروين ولا فرويد ، ولم يكن هناك أنثروپولوچيا طبيعية أو حتى علم أمراض جيد . فقط كذلك كانوا يفكرون ، وتلك ’ الأديان ‘ هى علومهم التى كانت تفسر لهم كل شىء ، وبدرجة مرضية جدا من وجهة نظر عقولهم المسكينة !

س : ليكن . لكن أتنكر أن الأنبياء أتوا بحكمة عظيمة تستحق التفكير والتأمل ؟

جـ : طبعا لا أنكر ! حكمة عظيمة ، تساوى عقلية طفل معاصر فى الثانية عشرة ! هنروح بعيد ليه ؟ أنا عندى موقع على الإنترنيت بأتنبأ فيه مليون مرة أحسن من أى نبى من بتوعك ؟ إللى بيقوله الموقع غالبا بيحصل . عارف ليه ؟ لأنه بيحاول يتمسك بالعلم والتفكير العلمى . مفيش حاجة بتجينا م السما !

س : ما هى المرجعية إذن ؟ لا بد أن ثمة مرجعية ما لهذا الكون .

جـ : بالطبع هناك مرجعية . إنها الكون نفسه . على الأقل بالنسبة لنا هذا هو ما نعرف ، أو بالأحرى أقصى ما نعرف بقدر ما يعطينا إياه العلم التجريبى . دورنا وخطوتنا التالية أن نستلهم من هذه المعارف والقوانين ، حقيقة ما تريد المادة ، أو كيف تفكر المادة . والواضح أنها تسير نحو مزيد من التطور والتقنية والاستعقاد ، وما إليها .

س : وكأنى أسمع أصولية تريد العودة بنا بلايين السنين للوراء !

جـ : سمها ما شئت ، لكنها ليست أصولية تتمحور حول تهاويم مريضة لنجار رث أو بدوى جاهل عاشوا فى أحد الأركان المنزوية لعصور الظلام الغابرة ، ولم يرتدوا قط الكراڤتة أو البنطلون مثلنا . أصولية أساسها العلم والمنطق وقوة التاريخ الطبيعى وجبروت التاريخ الكونى . أصولية تستلهم 4 بلايين من السنين من التاريخ البيولوچى للأرض ، بل قل 14 بليون سنة من تاريخ الكون وصراع القوة الرهيب فيه . لو لم نفعل هذا لن تكون لدينا البوصلة الصحيحة للمستقبل ، وسنتمحور حتى نموت حول ذواتنا الإنسانية ندلك فيها غريزة التميز والكبرياء ، بنظريات إنسانية سواء كانت دينية أو حتى ’ ملحدة ‘ بمصطلحاتكم ! دفع عجلة المادة ، أقصد التطور والتقنية والاستعقاد للأمام ، سوف يعطينا كائنات بعد‑إنسانية حاسوبية أو بيولوچية خارقة الذكاء والقدرات ، وهلم جرا ، بل ومما لا نعرفه الآن بالضرورة . هذه حتمية لا فكاك منها ، وإلا كانت عجلة التطور قد وقفت يوما عند الصرصار أو الحمار أو القرد .

س : الخلاصة أنت عاوزنا نسيب الدين .

جـ : إطلاقا ! مين قال كده ؟ تسيبوا الدين تروحوا فين يا عم ؟ ما عندكومش تعليم ، ما عندكومش اقتصاد . ما عندكومش أى ميزة تنافسية فى الصراع الرهيب إللى حوالينا . حتى ما عندكومش فكرة عن أن حكاية المنافسة دى موجودة أصلا . أنا لو متدين فعلا زيك وشايف كل يوم إسرائيل بتعمل فينا إيه ، لقلت من دون أى تردد ولو لثانية واحدة إن الله بتاع الإسلام ده إله مزيف والإله الصحيح هو يهوه القديم العبيط بتاع التوراة . لسوء حظى أنى موش متدين وموش معترف بده ولا ده . حبيبى ، أقولها لك بصراحة ، لو هتسيبوا الدين كنتوا سبتوه من زمان ، زى ما عملت بقية شعوب الدنيا . دى مسألة چيينات ، موش حاجة تانى . انتوا لاقيين تاكلوا ؟ تسيبوا الدين تروحوا فين يا عم ؟ كده كويس قوى ! بص ، وبصراحة أكتر ، العلمانية موش نادى مفتوح ، وموش عاوز أتوههك أكتر وأقول لك هى نادى لليهود والپروتستانت بس ، أو أقول لك لاحظ أن اليهود ( إللى ما عادوش دين طبعا إنما شعب علمانى بل أول شعب علمانى فى العالم منذ ظهور الأديان ) إنهم تاريخيا ‑وعكس كل الأديان‑ لم يبشروا بل لم يسمحوا لأحد بالانضمام لعقيدتهم . أو بالمثل لاحظ أن الاستعمار الإنجليزى ‑وعكس كل الاستعمارات‑ ما كانش بيحاول يخلى حد من الشعوب المستعمرة يبقى زيه . علشان كده الأنجلو‑يهود ، أو إللى بأحب أسميهم شايلوك وچيمس وات ، هم حضارة الثورة الصناعية وهم حضارة النهار ده وهم حضارة العالم مليون سنة لقدام . العلمانية حكاية موش سهلة زى ما أنت فاهم ، وموش أى چيينات تنفع ليها . أنتم ما لكوش مكان فى الدنيا . جايز لكم فى الآخرة ، لكن فى الدنيا لأ !

س : يعنى عاوز تقول أنتم صفوة وإحنا حثالة ؟

جـ : أنتم إيه ما أعرفش . إحنا صفوة أيوه . الغالبية الكاسحة من أعضاء الجمعيات العلمية الكبرى فى الغرب ، يعنى إللى أنتجوا العلم والتقنية بجد ، لا يؤمنون بالأديان . وبعدين يخترعوا إزاى أو يخلقوا إزاى إذا كانوا عبيد لحد ؟ حثالة وصفوة ؟ حلوة ! كل إللى أنا متأكد منه أن فيه فارق واضح جدا فى مستوى الذكاء بيننا وبينكم ، ونروح للمكن يحكم بيننا .

س : أنا فعلا تهت ، والحوار واضح رايح حته تانية . هذا كان رأيى على أية حال ، كما أن موعد الصلاة قد حان !

جـ : چيينات ! مسألة چيينات ! لا أعرف لماذا كلما أجريت حوارا مع أحد ، أتصرف وكأنى أسمع چييناته وأكلم چييناته ، وكأنه هو غير موجود ؟

س : ماذا قلت ؟

جـ : لا شىء ! وأنا أيضا ذاهب لكن للاستمتاع بزجاجة من النبيذ الأحمر ، مع وجبة شهية ، وبعض الأفكار ’ المنحرفة ‘ الجديدة . ألا تسموننا ملحدين أى منحرفين ؟

س : لماذا لا تستمع لنصيحتى يوما وتجرب أن تكون عف اللسان ، ولو على سبيل التغيير ؟

جـ : چيينات ! مسألة چيينات !

س : ماذا قلت ؟

جـ : لا شىء ! لم أقل أى شىء على الإطلاق . أنا أيضا لا أقول أى شىء على الإطلاق !

Normal relations with Israel

2007-10-06T02:30:00.000+02:00

It's been about 30 years now since Egypt and Israel signed their famous historic peace treaty, but, from a normal friendship aspect, did any kind of real change happen in the everyday relations between the two countries?

Egypt makes it very hard for Egyptians to visit their Israeli peaceful neighbor (come on, people, it's been damn peaceful for quarter a century and more), while Israelis are very much free to visit Egypt, because apparently it is okay with Israel that Israelis come to Egypt for vacation every now and then.

On the other hand, it seems to be a really big deal for Egypt if an Egyptian ever thinks of paying a little visit to an Israeli friend on the other side of the border (that is if there is a chance to make an Israeli friend, in the first place). Israel has always been a big red limit for the normal Egyptians to ever think of paying a visit to. Why is Egypt always scaring Egyptians from Israel and the Israelis? Why isn't any step of a normal relationship on Israel's part given the chance to occur?

Why does Egypt deal with Israel any worse than it would deal with India, or Canada, or Turkmenistan for instance? Why is Israel always seen as a threat, or at least shown to the public as a little red devil that no-one should ever approach or think of approaching?

Why do you need to get a special governmental permission to visit Israel? No, seriously, why the hell?

Natacha Atlas - Mon amie la rose

2007-10-04T15:48:00.001+02:00

This is the first song I ever heard for the GREAT NATACHA ATLAS, that was back in 2001. ENJOY!

Nicole Saba - Tab'ee Kidda ("This Is Just How I Am")

2007-10-03T00:16:00.000+02:00

Actually I'm not a big fan of Nicole Saba, but i just love the rebellious kinnda feminist spirit of this song...

نيكول سابا - أنا طبعي كدة

أنا طبعي كدة، وبحب كدة،
وبحب أعيش، وماعنديش إلا كدة.
دي حياتي أنا، دي ملكي أنا،
وأنا مهما يكون بردو هاكون زي ما أنا.

عايشة سني وباغني وبحب الحياة،
قلبي عايش سنينه وحياته بهواه،
باعمل اللي بحبه وباحسه أكيد،
ثانية ثانية يا دنيا هاعيشك أنا.

عايزة أفرح وأرقص وأدحك يا ناس،
هي دنيا وبنعيشها مرة وخلاص،
ياما قالو وعادو ولامو كتير،
بس بانسى وباكبر دماغي وخلاص.

في حياتي حاجات تتعبني ساعات،
مابقولش في يوم مهما يكون "عمر وفات."
دنيا هاتتعاش، ويا كدة يا بلاش،
الجاي والفات، دول حسابات ماحسبهاش.

Here I come!!!

2007-08-26T01:24:00.000+03:00

Okay, it's been a long while since I last posted anything here. The thing is since May 2006 I moved to a new house on the Suez Road (the road itself; somewhere between Rahab and Shorook). So I literally live with my family in a house built in the desert.

The more important part of why I'm posting this, is to also mention that I don't yet have a phone line here, as there are no phone centrals anywhere nearby. Hopefully when Madinati starts we'd be able to buy a phone line from there (we live right across from Madinati).

So, this being said, I won't be publishing as much posts as I used to, for the time being.

Rare reproductions

2007-04-23T17:20:00.001+02:00

© Bassatine News

An advertisement on October 4, 1913 in Al-Ahram newspaper announcing that Egyptian Delta Railways Ltd. is providing a special train service from Bab al-Louk to Bassatine Jewish Cemetery via Torah Station on the occasion of the High Holiday on Friday October 10. The schedule lists eight return trips. The advertisement says:

Egyptian Delta Railways Ltd.

Helwan Line

Visit to the Israelite Cemetery

We are honored to announce to the public that concerning the visit to the Israelite Cemetery in Bassatine on Friday, October 13, 1913, it has been decided that special trains will leave Bab El Louk heading directly to Bassatine. These trains will not stop at the Torah Station.

They are only to be used by passengers going from Bab el Louk directly to Bassatine, non-stop.

Why they love to hate us

2007-03-06T01:50:00.000+02:00

Some 1,500 years of anti-Semitism have taught us that there is something about us that annoys the world

Yair Lapid, YNetNews.com (Yedioth Ahronoth). Published: 07.23.06, 22:12 / Israel Culture

One hundred years of conflict, 6.5 years of war, billions of wasted dollars, tens of thousands of people killed, not including the boy lying next to me on a rocky beach at Lake Karon in ’82, with his guts spilling out of his body. Both of us staring the wound until he was evacuated by helicopter. Until this day I do not know if he is alive or dead. All this, and it is still impossible to understand.

It’s not only what has happened. It is also what did not occur – the hospitals that were never built, the universities that never opened, the roads that were never paved, three years stolen from the lives of millions of young people in uniform. Despite everything, we are still clueless as to the core of the riddle.

Why do they hate us so much?

I am not talking about the Palestinians this time. The conflict with them is intimate, focused, and has a direct impact on their day to day living. Without getting into who is right or wrong, it is clear their reasons for not wanting us here are very personal. We all know that in the end it will be resolved: Between us, in blood, sweat and tears that will soak the pages of the agreement that is signed. Until then, this is a war we can understand, even if no sane person can understand the way in which it is being waged.

But the others. They are impossible to understand. Why does Hassan Nasrallah - together with his tens of thousands of minions - dedicate his life and his considerable talent as well as the fate of his country in order to wage a war against a country that he has never seen, people he has never met and an army he has no reason to fight?

Why do children in Iran who cannot even point to Israel on a map (mostly because it is so small) burn its flag in the city square and volunteer to commit suicide in order to destroy it? Why do Egyptian and Jordanian intellectuals incite the naive and helpless against the peace treaties, knowing full well that revoking them will set their countries back 20 years.

'So many ways to love your brother'

Why are the Syrians willing to stay a pathetic and oppressive third world country in exchange for the questionable privilege of serving as patron to terror organizations that in the end will threaten them too? Why do they hate us in Saudi Arabia? In Iraq? In the Sudan? What have we done to them? How are we even relevant to their lives? What do they even know about us? And why do they hate us so much in Afghanistan where they are starving. Where do they even have the strength to hate?

So many answers to this question and yet it is an enigma. There’s the religious issue but religious people make their own choices. The Koran (together with the ‘Shariya’ – like the Halacha or Jewish code of laws) has thousands of laws. Why do we preoccupy them so much?

There are after all a number of other countries that have given them more of a reason to be angry. We didn’t start the Crusades, and we didn’t rule over them during the Colonial era, and we never forced them to convert. The Mongols, the Seliceans, the Greeks, the Romans, the Crusaders, the Ottomans and the English, all occupied them, destroying and pillaging the entire region. We did not even try so how is it that we are the enemy?

Is it about solidarity with their Palestinian brothers and sisters? If so then where are the tractors from Saudi Arabia for rebuilding Gush Katif? Where is the Indonesian team that is supposed to come and build a school in Gaza? Where are the doctors from Kuwait with the latest in surgical equipment? There are so many ways to love your brother, why do they prefer to help him to hate?

Is it something that we have done? 1,500 years of anti-Semitism have taught us an excruciatingly painful lesson – there is something about us that annoys the world. So we did the thing that everyone wanted – we left. We established our own tiny country where we could annoy each other without bothering anyone else. We did not ask for much to do this. Israel sits on an area comparable to maybe one percent of the total area of Saudi Arabia. We have no oil, no natural resources. We did not occupy the territory of another sovereign country.

'The Iranians are responsible'

Most of the towns and cities bombed this week were not stolen from anyone. Nahariya, Afula and Carmiel never existed until we founded them. Other Katyushas fell in places that no one ever doubted our rightful ownership on them. Haifa has history of Jewish presence since the third century before the Common Era. Tiberias played host to the last Sanhedria so no one can claim we stole these places from someone else.

Nevertheless the hatred continues as if we do not share a common fate. The hate is operative, toxic, and insatiable. Last week the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinijad called for the State of Israel ‘to be eliminated’ as if we were some kind of bacteria. We’ve become so accustomed to his declarations that we don’t even argue.

Israel never wanted to see Iran disappear. There were even diplomatic relations for as long as Iran wanted them. We don’t have a common border or even bad memories. But they are still ready and willing to confront the entire western work, to face international sanctions, put their standard of living at risk, destroy what is left of their economy all for the privilege of rabidly hating us.

I am trying but cannot remember: What did we do to them? When? How? Why is the Iranian president saying that ‘The Moslem world’s main problem is Israel.’?

There are more than a billion Moslems in the world. Most live in substandard conditions. They suffer from hunger, poverty, ignorance; blood soaked conflicts that extend from Kashmir to Kurdistan and from Darfur to Bangladesh. And we are their main problem? How exactly are we bothering them?

I refuse to accept the argument that ‘that is the way they are’. ‘They’ used to say that about us and we’ve grown to suspect the statement. There has to be another reason, a dark secret that convinced residents of southern Lebanon to escalate things along a quiet border, to kidnap soldiers of an army that had withdrawn from their territory, and to turn their country into islands of rubble precisely at a time that they had finally extricated themselves from 20 years of rack and ruin.

We have become accustomed to telling ourselves things like: ‘The Iranians are responsible,’ or ‘Syria is stirring things up behind the scenes.’ But that is really too simplistic.

What about the people? What do they think? What about their hopes, their loves, their aspirations and dreams? What about their children? Do they really believe that hating us is enough of a reason to send their children off to die?

HIV/AIDS in Egypt

2007-02-25T01:25:00.000+02:00

Things seem to be getting better for people living with HIV/AIDS in Egypt, unlike how it was few years ago. According to a slideshow published by the Egyptian Ministry of Health's National AIDS Program:

- HIV/AIDS prevalence in Egypt remains "low (<0.01%)".
- There are "835 cases" of people living with AIDS in Egypt, by the end of 2005.
- 83% of those infected with AIDS are men, 17% are women.
- A recently-established HIV/AIDS toll-free hotline service is available at 0-800-700-8000.
- Free HIV testing, counseling, and medication are now available.
- National AIDS Program now has support groups where people with AIDS meet and share experiences in different aspects. Support groups are made of 10-15 people each.

إن ماقدرتش تدحكIf You Can't Laugh

2007-02-23T02:39:00.000+02:00

English translation follows below...

كلمات: محمد الناصر
غناء: وجيه عزيز
حمـِّـل الأغنية (على هيئة WAV أو RA)*
*انقر بالزر الأيمن على الرابط، ثم اختر "...Save Target As"

إن ماقدرتش تدحك،
ماتدمعش ولا تبكيش
وإن مافضلش معاك غير قلبك،
إوعى تخاف، مش هاتموت، هاتعيش

وإن سألوك الناس عن ضي
جوة عينيك مابيلمعشي، ماتخبيش
قللهم العيب مش فيا، دا العيب في الضي

وأنا مش عاشق ضلمة، ولا زعلت الضي
مسير الضي لوحدو هايلمع،
ومسير الدحك لوحدو هايطلع...
مابيجرحش ولايئزيش

Original Arabic poem by: Mahammad el-Nasser
Performed by: Wagih Aziz
Translated into English by: Mamduh Schauki
Download Arabic-language song (WAV or RA format)*
*Right-click then choose "Save Target As..."

If you can't laugh,
Don't shed a tear, and don't cry.
And if all you have is your heart,
Don't worry; you'll live, not die.

And if people ask you
About a light in your eyes that's not glowing, don't hide.
Tell them: "it's not my fault, it's the light's;...

"...I'm not in love with the dark, nor did i upset the light.
A light is bound to glow someday,
And a laugh is bound to show someday,
Not hurting, and not harming."

The oppressed life of a gay guy in Cairo

2007-02-17T15:14:00.000+02:00

A homosexual friend has been living a difficult life, especially these days, he says. He told me that one day, as he was thinking about his miserable life, he just started writing about how he felt. And he asked me if I'd post it on my blog, in his name. I agreed.

This is what he'd written:

"I had too much problems with my family especially in the last couple of weeks because I'm gay. I guess being gay is starting to stress me because of the problems i had with my uncle, aunt, dad, stepdad and mother this last month. Now i have mixed thoughts about my homosexuality, i keep telling myself i did not choose this and i deserve to be accepted like anybody else, and most of the time i totally understand this fact and am convinced with it. But then i sometimes start having negative thoughts about it, to the extent that i actually looked a couple of times at a couple of those ex-gay propaganda websites. My stepdad encourages me that i'll pass thru thisand that im going on the "right path", even though to this moment i don't know which path is right. I'm not scared of my family, but they're expecting me to be going on the right path to curing my homosexuality or something, and i don't believe this is happening or will ever happen.

"I'm gay and i don't feel like changing, nor do i feel that this is ever possible, but then this is causing me too much problems with my family, which stresses me altogether. My life is so full of shit these days, i don't know what to do.

"Sometimes i think of leaving the country, but then how would this ever happen, and do i really have or want to live in a country other than mine? Why me? Why do i either live a fucked up life in my country or leave my country? Both options aren't the greatest. I have to choose between two options neither of which i feel i want.

"Sometimes i wish i was never born to live such a life, i never have the courage for suicide and whenever i think of it i know i wouldn't really have the courage to actually do it, but i simply wish i wasn't born, or maybe born anything but human."

Prisoners of Sex

2007-02-05T03:28:00.000+02:00

By NEGAR AZIMI
Published in New York Times Magazine, on: December 3, 2006

Mostafa Bakry has a knack for reinventing himself. He is an old-school Arab nationalist, newspaper editor and parliamentarian, and has managed to keep himself in the middle of the Egyptian political scene for almost two decades. He rails against decadence, against corruption — anything that can get the otherwise sleepy Egyptian public excited. This past July, he took on the issue of homosexuality, introducing a motion in Parliament calling for censorship of several scenes in a popular new film, “The Yacoubian Building,” and denouncing the racier parts of the movie as “spreading obscenity and debauchery.” One of the central characters in the story — a mosaic of downtown Cairo life complete with political intrigue, love triangles, the specter of extremism and more — is an affluent, dashing, Francophone newspaper editor who happens to be gay. He has an affair with a simple soldier from the countryside, and thus begins a tale of lust that ends in murder.

“It is a travesty,” Bakry told me not long ago when we met in the downtown Cairo office of his newspaper, Al Osboa (“The Week”). Shelves around his desk were stuffed with plaques, honorary degrees and dozens of gilt replicas of Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock. He fingered fancy prayer beads as he expounded in the way one would to an adoring crowd. “The American agenda is promoting the rights of homosexuals,” he said in Arabic. “I am not against freedom of expression, but this abnormal phenomenon should not be presented as natural. Even if it has roots here, it is rejected by society. And by Islam.”

In the end, 112 parliamentarians from across the political spectrum signed onto Bakry’s motion. The gesture, however, had little effect. By the beginning of September, the film was still doing well at the box office, and no censorship was in sight. But it didn’t matter. The parliamentarian had made his point; he had raised the flag of morality, religion and public virtue.

The politics of homosexuality is changing fast in the Arab world. For many years, corners of the region have been known for their rich gay subcultures — even serving as secure havens for Westerners who faced prejudice in their own countries. In some visions, this is a part of the world in which men could act out their homosexual fantasies. These countries hardly had gay-liberation moments, much less movements. Rather, homosexuality tended to be an unremarkable aspect of daily life, articulated in different ways in each country, city and village in the region.

But sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular are increasingly becoming concerns of the modern Arab state. Politicians, the police, government officials and much of the press are making homosexuality an “issue”: a way to display nationalist bona fides in the face of an encroaching Western sensibility; to reject a creeping globalization that brings with it what is perceived as the worst of the international market culture; to flash religious credentials and placate growing Islamist power. In recent years, there have been arrests, crackdowns and episodes of torture. In Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, as in Morocco, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates — even in famously open and cosmopolitan Lebanon — the policing of homosexuality has become part of what sometimes seems like a general moral panic.

Egypt’s most famous crackdown got under way at a neon floating disco, the Queen Boat, docked on the wealthy Nile-side island of Zamalek, just steps from the famously gay-friendly Marriott Hotel. In the early-morning hours of May 11, 2001, baton-wielding police officers descended upon the boat, where men were dancing and drinking. Security officials rounded up more than 50 of them — doctors, teachers, mechanics. Those who were kept in custody became known among Egyptians as the Queen Boat 52. The detained men were beaten, bound, tortured; some were even subjected to exams to determine whether they had engaged in anal sex. In the weeks that followed, official, opposition and independent newspapers printed the names, addresses and places of work of the detained. Front pages carried the men’s photographs, not always with black bars across their eyes. The press accused the men of sexual excesses, dressing as women, devil worship, even dubious links to Israel. Bakry’s newspaper, Al Osboa, helped lead the charge.

The Queen Boat was just the beginning. Agents of the Department for Protection of Morality, a sort of vice squad within the Ministry of Interior’s national police force, began monitoring suspected gay gathering spots, recruiting informants, luring people into arrest via chat sites on the Internet, tapping phones, raiding homes. Today, arrests and roundups occur throughout the country, from the Nile Delta towns of Damanhour and Tanta to Port Said along the Suez Canal and into Cairo.

The city’s central Tahrir Square is a vast plaza with awkward pedestrian islands separated by traffic, lined with a Kentucky Fried Chicken, the Arab League headquarters and the Egyptian government’s hulking bureaucratic headquarters, the Mugamma. On summer evenings, it is full of people. Men whistle at passing women, couples linger, tourists are accosted by the oddly seductive call of “You look like an Egyptian” and hawkers promote their wares — not the least of which is sex. In early July of this year, 11 men, said to be conspicuously homosexual, were picked up.

Many of the police reports on arrests of homosexuals have cited “the protection of the society’s values” as a motivating factor, adding that the arrested threatened to harm “the country’s reputation on the international level.” The country’s image is of the utmost importance for the officials responsible for these campaigns. Still, homosexual acts are not against the law in Egypt; most men caught in these roundups are charged with fujur, or the “habitual practice of debauchery.” Some countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates, expressly criminalize homosexual acts. But in Egypt, the charges have increasingly involved a creative interpretation of a law introduced in 1951 to combat prostitution — drafted as a response to what was viewed as a remnant of Egypt’s colonial past. (The British introduced the licensing of brothels.)

The Queen Boat affair roughly coincided with a number of circuslike controversies in Cairo surrounding public morality: the outrage following the publication of the Syrian author Haider Haider’s novel “Banquet for Seaweed” (which incited riots at Al Azhar University in Cairo, as the book, about two Iraqi exiles in the 1970s, was interpreted as offensive to Islam); the trial of Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian-American university professor and human rights activist accused of embezzlement, illegally accepting foreign funds and sullying Egypt’s image abroad; and the trial in 2002 of a prominent businessman who had taken 19 wives. Meanwhile the Muslim Brotherhood, which often positions itself in opposition to what it describes as a decadent, secular regime, won 17 seats in Parliament in 2000.

Public regulation of morality is an area in which the secular regime — often through its mouthpiece religious institution, Al Azhar — is in harmony with the Islamists. Al Azhar, Sunni Islam’s highest authority, was brought under direct state control by President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1961. Through Al Azhar, the secular regime throws the occasional bone to the religious opposition — most often on issues of women and the family. Sometimes, avowedly secular officials and politicians even try to outdo the Islamists in this tug of war over who can win the public’s favor as the guardian of morality.

Tanta is a drab industrial town on the Nile, halfway between Cairo and the Mediterranean city of Alexandria. With a population of about 350,000, Tanta has a university and a plethora of cotton-gin and oil factories. It is probably best known for its moulid, a gathering celebrating Al-Sayyed Ahmed Al-Badawi, a 13th-century holy man of Moroccan origin credited with being the founder of the Badawiyyah Sufi order. Al Badawi died in Tanta in 1276, and each year in October, just at the end of the cotton harvest, some two million Egyptians descend upon Tanta and Al Badawi’s shrine for a week of recitations, performances, dancing and devotion.

The rest of the year Tanta is remarkably quiet. One afternoon in August, I met a young man named Hassan at a baroque, upscale hotel steps away from the shrine. Though it is difficult to speak of a gay community in Tanta (not all men who sleep with men in Egypt use the term “gay,” much less identify themselves as such), Hassan is a ringleader of sorts, a thread between generations. A youthful 37, he comes from a working-class family — his father runs an auto-parts shop — and he told me, mischievously, that he got out of military service because he is the only son among girls. For Hassan and many gay men in Tanta, the last few years have been especially hard. “First, there was Shibl’s death, then the affair of Ahmed, then Adel’s death and the arrests,” he explained.

Shibl was a friend of Hassan’s, caught with another man in the baths of the shrine — a gathering ground for many gay men at the time. In 2002 he was beaten so badly in detention that he died of cardiac arrest. Ahmed, another friend, was arrested from his home later that year, accused of having sex with two other men in his flat and “forming a group of Satan worshipers.” In prison, he was forced to strip down to his underwear, then was humiliated and beaten to the point of hemorrhaging. After his release, he lost his job as a schoolteacher. One local paper wrote, “A male teacher puts aside all principles and follows his perverted instincts, putting on women’s clothes and makeup on his face to seduce men who seek forbidden pleasures.”

Adel, a third friend of Hassan’s, was killed by an occasional lover. The ensuing investigation, not far removed from a witch hunt, resulted in many suspected homosexuals in Tanta being arrested, including Hassan. He and others arrested told me that they were held in a police interrogation room called “the refrigerator,” marked by a carpet brought in by the police that was caked in Adel’s blood. Detainees were tortured nightly for more than two weeks, from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., according to the same sources. Hassan estimates that at least 100 men were detained and tortured. Some men were forced to stand on their tiptoes for those hours; others got electric shocks to the penis and tongue; still others were beaten on the soles of their feet with a rod called a felaqa, to the point of losing consciousness.

Most men were held until they broke, agreeing to work as informants, walking the street to pick up other homosexuals and reporting in each night. “They told us Adel deserved to die,” Hassan told me. “They said they wished all gays would die.” This went on for at least a month, Hassan and others say, in a pattern of detention, torture, informing, more torture.

On my second visit to Tanta, in August, I sat down for a lunch of kapsa, a sweet Saudi rice specialty, with Hassan and Mo, a slight student of English literature at Tanta University. The discussion turned to Islam and homosexuality. Both of them considered themselves practicing Muslims. Mo has combed the Internet for signs as to whether homosexuality is at odds with Islam. He said he had browsed the popular Egyptian lay preacher Ahmed Khaled’s Web site and found nothing. But he did see that Sheik Yussuf Al-Qaradawi had called homosexuals “perverts.” Al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric generally considered a liberal, is best known for his television program “Shariah and Life” on the satellite channel Al Jazeera, and for his Web site, Islamonline.

“There is nothing clear about homosexuality in the Koran,” Hassan said. “It reads that the man who does it should be hurt. What does it mean ‘to be hurt’? In the Arabian peninsula they used a stick the size of this pencil (he raises my pencil) to punish men. It’s not like thievery or adultery. And anyway the Prophet was promised boys in heaven. Not girls.”

“I read that one should have their head cut off or be thrown from a mountain,” Mo continued.

Hassan disagreed: “There is no explicit punishment for gays in the Koran.”

Mo countered, “The problem is not the punishment, it is the scandal.”

Hassan, looking triumphant, told us that Pope Shenouda III, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, had also spoken out against homosexuality. (Most famously, in 1990, he asked, “What rights are there for homosexuals?”) “It’s more complicated than you think,” Hassan said to Mo.

Countless interpretations of the story of the prophet Lot — the source of much of the commentary on homosexuality in Islam, as well as in Judaism and Christianity — have been offered. Ambiguities abound, and while there is no consensus on where Islam stands, popular and legalistic reinterpretations take liberties in selecting the bits that suit particular worldviews — whether they are liberal or intolerant. In October of last year, the Iraqi Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa against homosexuals on the Arabic-language version of his Web site. It was inexplicably removed last May (some say international outrage swayed the image-conscious cleric). And while Al-Qaradawi did call homosexuals sexual perverts, he also noted “there is disagreement” over punishment.

Perched on a hill at the end of a windy road in Helwan, an industrial town south of Cairo and once the summer romping ground for the city’s well-to-do, is the Behman Hospital. With its pruned bushes and tennis courts, Behman looks more like a country club than a psychiatric institute. Dr. Nasser Loza is the medical director there; he is also an adviser to the Ministry of Health and runs a clinic in the upscale neighborhood of Mohandiseen. I had heard through friends that Loza counsels homosexual couples, so I went looking for him.

“They come in with quite banal relationship problems,” Loza told me when we met one afternoon at the hospital. “They manage to have very normal, quiet lives despite society’s negative views about being gay.” He added that on average he sees about one new couple every two or three months. “I suppose most are high-level professionals, some are of mixed cultural backgrounds.” Loza’s patients are the people you hear less of in the din of discussion surrounding homosexuality in this part of the world. Take M., for example, a successful businessman who was among the 52 arrested on the Queen Boat. He has since moved to the States, and recently wrote me in an e-mail message: “Money gave me security. I met my partner at a dinner party. I could travel. And I didn’t have my family on my back because I had moved out. I had a normal life until this happened.”

Most often, Loza sees families. “Typically, a family comes in with their son or daughter who has just announced that they are homosexual,” Loza explained. “They want me to help. The first reaction on the part of the family is denial, and then incredible blame.” In 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders, but Loza told me that “whether it is treated as a disease or not really depends on the doctor.” While a combination of counseling and antidepressants seems the norm, you still sometimes hear of the application of electroshock therapy.

L., a lesbian originally from Alexandria, is seeing a Cairo psychiatrist. Women have not been subject to the same kind of attacks that men have been in Egypt, perhaps because of their relative invisibility — an invisibility that can itself be oppressive. It can be virtually impossible to meet other gay women. For L., the brunt of the problem is her family. “I’ve been to three psychiatrists, each time taken in by my parents,” she told me. “The first two prescribed antidepressants, they told me it was a phase, that I should ‘cheer up.’ The third prescribed electroshock therapy. I never went back.”

In Cairo, L. is studying communications. She has nothing to do with her family and, through the Internet, has found a supportive partner. The weight of the stigma remains. “When a Muslim dies, there is a required 30 minutes of prayer,” she wrote to me in a recent e-mail message. “When a gay person dies, they bury him and flee.”

There is a searing scene in the Moroccan writer Mohamed Choukri’s 1973 novel “For Bread Alone” in which a desperate young man, having recently moved from the country to the city in colonial Morocco, sells himself to an elderly Spaniard. The scene is explicit (they have oral sex in a car), and the novel, which has been banned or caused controversy in many Arab countries, serves as a stunning condemnation of the power disparities engendered by colonialism. Symbolism like Choukri’s is common in Arabic literature and cinema, providing for what the British writer Brian Whitaker has referred to as a “reverse Orientalism,” in which sex, and specifically homosexual sex, is presented as a foreign incursion, a tool of colonial domination.

Sometimes a stigma hangs over efforts to protect homosexuals from repression or attack. Negad Al Boraei, an Egyptian attorney and human rights activist, has irritated many in the local human rights community by a number of his stances, including his willingness to accept American financing for his work. (He readily dismisses his critics as “communists” and “revolutionaries.” He was one of the first recipients in Egypt of financing from the State Department’s Middle East Partnership Initiative.) I went to Al Boraei to talk about how sexual rights fit into the broader human rights agenda.

“I was telling a friend of mine who works for Amnesty International, we have a lot of problems here — torture, violations against street children, we are full of problems,” he told me. As he spoke he gesticulated wildly with his ring-covered hands. “To come in and talk about gays and lesbians, it is nice, but it’s not the major issue. It’s like I am starving and you ask me what kind of cola I want. Well, I want to eat first. Then we can talk about cola! It’s a luxury to talk about gay rights in Egypt.”

When the raid on the Queen Boat occurred, much of the human rights community declined to take the case on, Al Boraei included. (Some activists even attacked those who met with the defendants.) Hossam Bahgat, a young Alexandrian working at the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights, told me he was quietly dismissed after he wrote an article calling upon the human rights community to overcome its fears about working on the case. In the West, however, the Queen Boat became something of a cause célèbre. Amnesty International supported protests in front of the Egyptian Embassy in London. A Web site called GayEgypt.com called on Egypt’s homosexuals to wear red on the two-year anniversary of the Queen Boat raid (an invitation to be arrested, it seems), while 35 members of the U.S. Congress wrote to Egypt’s president, Hosni Mubarak, asking for a stop to the anti-homosexual crusade. It was no wonder that amid this, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram al-Arabi proclaimed, “Be a pervert and Uncle Sam will approve.”

“This was framed locally as an attack from the West,” says Bahgat, who eventually collaborated with Human Rights Watch on the case and later opened his own organization, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “It was important to show that working for the rights of the detained was not a gay agenda, or a Western agenda, that this was linked to Egypt’s overall human rights record. Raising the gay banner when most sexual and other human rights are systematically violated every day is never going to get you far in this country.”

In the end, Human Rights Watch avoided laying itself open to easy attack as the bearer of an outsider’s agenda, packaging Queen Boat advocacy in the larger context of torture. Many of the arrested men were tortured, and torture is something that, at least in theory, most people agree is a bad thing. In Human Rights Watch’s 150-page report on the crackdown, references to religion, homosexual rights or anything else that could be seen or used as code for licentiousness were played down. Torture was played up, and it may very well be the first and last human rights report to cite Michel Foucault’s “History of Sexuality.” Upon release of the report in March 2004, Kenneth Roth, Human Rights Watch’s executive director, and Scott Long, director of the organization’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights Project, met with Egypt’s public prosecutor, the assistant to the interior minister and members of the Foreign Ministry. Their effort seemed to have had some effect; although occasional arrests continue, the all-out campaign of arrest and entrapment of men that began with the Queen Boat incident came to an end. One well-connected lawyer noted that a high-ranking Ministry of Interior source told him, “It is the end of the gay cases in Egypt, because of the activities of some human rights organizations.”

When I spoke to Long about his work on the Queen Boat case and its aftermath, he reflected on his advocacy methods in a context in which human rights, and especially gay rights, are increasingly associated with Western empire-building. “Perhaps we had less publicity for the report in the United States because we avoided fetishizing beautiful brown men in Egypt being denied the right to love,” he said. “We wrote for an Egyptian audience and tried to make this intelligible in terms of the human rights issues that have been central in Egyptian campaigns. It may not have made headlines, but it seemed to make history.” Whether the effort made history or simply interrupted it remains to be seen. Long himself noted, “The fact that the crackdown came apparently out of nowhere is a reminder that the repression could revive anytime.”

The possibilities for official repression exist across the Arab world. Early one morning this past August in Saudi Arabia, the police raided a wedding party in the town of Jizan, arresting 20 men “impersonating women,” according to the newspaper Al Watan. Similarly, late last year, 26 men were arrested when a party in Ghantout, a desert region on the Dubai-Abu Dhabi highway in the United Arab Emirates, was raided. The press went into typical scandal mode, and images of some of the men in women’s clothing circulated on cellphones. A government spokesman was quoted in The Khaleej Times, “Because they’ve put society at risk they will be given the necessary treatment, from male hormone injections to psychological therapies.” Arrests have also taken place in Lebanon — despite its being perceived as having more liberal social mores — as well as Morocco.

In Egypt, religiosity — along with an associated emphasis on public involvement in the private sphere — continues to rise. For the 2005 campaign the Muslim Brotherhood listed beauty pageants, music videos and sexy photographs as issues needing public debate; banning female presenters (even in veils) from state-run television and expanding religious education in public schools were also on the agenda. The brotherhood won 88 seats. And in most cases, there has been complete impunity for perpetrators of attacks on gay men; individual officers responsible for attacks have been promoted or shuffled around. As recently as September, at least one entrapment case occurred in Cairo; a young man was lured via a chat site and tortured — badly beaten and subject to electroshock on his genitals — by the same office of the public morality squad that had conducted Internet-based entrapments.

In the meantime, routine scapegoating of the West, and of its real and perceived agendas in the region, seems to be reaching new highs. The Egyptian government, despite its intimate strategic relationship with the U.S., has been increasing its rhetorical assaults on what is blithely reduced to an imperial, meddling West — ostensibly to parade its nationalist credentials in the face of America’s disastrous exploits in the Middle East. (In September, Gamal Mubarak, the president’s smooth-talking, Western-educated son and heir apparent, went so far as to dismiss Western initiatives designed to foster democratization in the region at a policy conference of the ruling National Democratic Party). Blanket attacks on what is vaguely referred to as “human rights” continue; in late August, Mostafa Bakry’s newspaper, Al Osboa, assailed Hossam Bahgat’s organization, along with an NGO that works on AIDS, for defending “perverts.” The ingredients for another crackdown exist in abundance in Egypt and the region at large.

Today the Queen Boat continues to sit docked on the Nile, its name clumsily respelled “Queen Boot” in garish green neon. It is hardly the gay hangout it once was, instead catering to the very occasional budget tourist. Many dragged away by the police that evening five years ago have since left the country, and others keep a low profile, although there are signs that young people have begun cruising the Nile banks again and meeting on the Internet.

As I prepared to leave Cairo at the beginning of the fall, I received an e-mail message from M., the businessman from the Queen Boat, since relocated to the States. “I sit here, and the Americans talk about something called Islamic fascism, the Arabs go on about their values,” he wrote. “All of us, and I don’t mean gay men, I mean all of us who don’t fit the norm — democracy activists, queens, anything — it’s us who get branded as Western, fifth columnists. We pay the price.”

Published December 11 06:Egypt Internet video sharpens torture debate (Reuters)

2007-01-06T05:46:00.000+02:00

(Please note graphic content in paragraphs 1 and 5)

by Cynthia Johnston

CAIRO - The grainy video purports to show an Egyptian man, naked from the waist down, writhing in agony as he is sodomised with a stick by a police officer. A handful of other officers stand by watching.

The video, which circulated on Egyptian blogs last month, has sparked uproar on the Internet in a country where rights groups say torture is commonplace in police stations. Authorities say such cases are isolated and not police policy.

Rights activists say the tape -- the authenticity of which has not been confirmed -- highlights mistreatment that many detainees face in Egyptian jails, and the apparent impunity with which it can be carried out.

Elijah Zarwan, a Cairo-based consultant for Human Rights Watch, said: "Nobody would be surprised if it were authentic ... While there is nothing to positively identify the tape as authentic, torture is certainly pervasive."

In the video, the unidentified Egyptian man, his hands bound behind his back and his legs held in the air, screams as he lies on a white tile floor and is abused with what appears to be a wooden broomstick or baton.

Several other people, whose faces are never shown, stand by watching as the man screams: "Never mind Pasha, I'm sorry Pasha," addressing his abuser with a term commonly used in Egypt to refer to police officers or people of higher social status.

Based on some of the words in the recording, human rights activists think the victim might be a minibus driver.

An interior ministry spokesman declined to comment on the tape. Rights groups said it was consistent with documented reports of torture in Egypt, but several said they did not yet have enough information to confirm it was authentic.

The sodomy video is not the first tape of purported police violence to surface on the Internet in Egypt, but it may be the most jarring because of its explicit sexual nature, activists say. Egypt is a conservative Muslim society.

Lawyer Naser Amin of the Centre for the Independence of the Judiciary said he filed a complaint last month with Egyptian prosecutors over the sodomy video and two other tapes that purport to show Egyptian civilians being beaten by police.

He said he felt prosecutors took the complaint seriously, and at least two officers were being questioned.

CONSISTENT WITH TORTURE REPORTS

Local and international rights groups say they have no reason to believe the sodomy tape is not real, although some are hesitant to vouch for its authenticity because the source of the tape is unknown and the victim has not come forward.

"It looks very authentic," said Ragia Shawky, a medical doctor at Egypt's Nadim Centre, which assists torture victims. "It matches very much with what we have seen and what we know and what was reported and documented by many local and international human rights organisations."

"What is still to be revealed is who took these pictures. Was it from the police themselves, playing as in Abu Ghraib (prison in Iraq), or was it somebody standing by who wanted to help?"

The low-quality video appears to have been taken by an onlooker in the room, possibly using a mobile phone, activists said.

Shawky said police violence in Egypt often includes beatings and sexual abuse, and the subjects of such abuse are often undressed and threatened with rape or public humiliation.

An Egypt researcher for Amnesty International in London said he was still trying to verify the authenticity of the video, which was recorded in a room without distinguishing features. Of the abuser and onlookers, only the feet are visible.

Blogger Mohamed Khaled, who first posted the tape on his blog Demaghmak (Mak's brain) (http://demaghmak.blogspot.com), said he got the video from a neighbour who had received it on his mobile phone through bluetooth technology.

But he said he does not know the original source. Since the sodomy video surfaced, a flurry of fresh torture allegations have appeared on Egyptian blogs.

The Misr Hura (Free Egypt) (http://misrhura.blogspirit.com) blog posted pictures of a prison inmate with his back covered in red bruises, which it says were sustained during a beating.

Ikhwanweb (www.ikhwanweb.com), affiliated with the banned Muslim Brotherhood, also recently accused a state security officer of beating a 54-year-old man to get a confession that he had taken part in a pro-Palestinian vigil.

FERTILE ENVIRONMENT?

Zarwan, the Human Rights Watch consultant, said Egypt's emergency laws, which allow prisoners to be held incommunicado, provide little police accountability and create "a fertile environment for torture to flourish".

Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif has said Egypt would hold a referendum next summer on constitutional changes to pave the way for ending the emergency laws, in place since the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981.

Nazif said work was underway to replace emergency laws with anti-terrorism legislation. But analysts and rights activists expect little to change on the ground.

"There is totally no political will to face this (torture) phenomenon. In fact, it has the support and the consent of the authorities, totally. Systematic support also," said Shawky of the Nadim centre.

Rights activists said the sodomy video -- while it prompted an outcry on the Web and in leftist and human rights circles -- has met a muted public reaction. Most Egyptians are unaware the tape exists, they said.

The main government-owned newspapers, on which many Egyptians depend for daily news, have not written about the video. Just one opposition paper has done so. An anti-torture protest last week drew only a few dozen protesters.

"It hasn't created the uproar it should have because of a lack of focus and the government's indifference," publisher and rights activist Hisham Kassem said.

"There is very high apathy in the country. With things like this people just suck on their lips and say what a horrible thing it is and that's it."

Egyptian court rules against Bahá'ís, upholding government policy of discrimination

2006-12-17T13:26:00.000+02:00

CAIRO, 16 December 2006 (Bahá'í World News Service) -- In a closely watched case that has become the focus of a national debate on religious freedom, Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court today ruled against the right of Bahá'ís to be properly identified on government documents.

The decision upholds current government policy, a policy which forces the Bahá'ís either to lie about their religious beliefs or give up their state identification cards. The policy effectively deprives Egyptian Bahá'ís of access to most rights of citizenship, including education, financial services, and even medical care.

"We deplore the Court's ruling in this case, which violates an extensive body of international law on human rights and religious freedom to which Egypt has long been a party," said Bani Dugal, the principal representative of the Bahá'í International Community to the United Nations.

"Since this was the last avenue of appeal in this particular case, the Court's decision threatens to make non-citizens of an entire religious community, solely on the basis of religious belief," said Ms. Dugal.

"Our hope now is that the public debate over this issue will cause the Egyptian government to rectify its discriminatory policies," said Ms. Dugal. "This could be accomplished either by allowing Bahá'ís to be listed on government documents, by abolishing the religious affiliation listing entirely or, simply, by allowing the word 'other' to be legally included on state identification forms."

The case stems from a lawsuit filed against the government by a married couple, Husam Izzat Musa and Ranya Enayat Rushdy, who had their identification cards and passports confiscated after they applied to have their daughters added to their passports, which listed the Bahá'í Faith as their religion.

In Egypt, all citizens must list their religious affiliation on state ID cards and other documents, and current policy requires that they choose from one of the three officially recognized religions - Islam, Christianity or Judaism.

In April, a lower administrative court ruled in favor of the couple, saying the state must issue them ID cards that properly identified their religion. The ruling said that even if the government did not recognize the Bahá'í Faith, adherents should still have their religious status properly stated on official documents.

That ruling provoked an outcry among extremist elements in Egyptian society, who objected to any official mention of a religion other than the three mentioned in the Qur'an, opening a vigorous debate over issues of religious freedom and tolerance here.

Since April, more than 400 articles, stories, commentaries and programs have appeared in the Egyptian and Arabic news media about the case or its fallout. As well, independent human rights organizations here and abroad have closely followed the issue.

In May, the government appealed the lower court's ruling, which brought the case before the Supreme Administrative Court.

On 2 December, a final hearing was held on the case, at which Bahai lawyers argued for rejection of the government's appeal, on the basis that the lower court's ruling is fully supported by Egyptian law. The Court said at that time that it would release its final ruling today.

"Israel does not care about the lives of innocent people""إسرائيل لا تبالي بأرواح الأبرياء"

2006-11-04T02:59:00.000+02:00

الترجمة العربية بالأسفل

Well I'm sure this is not true, but I believe in any country the priority would be to the lives of innocent people living inside that country. If missiles (al qassam or whatever) are thrown at Israel from inside Gaza or other PA territories, those who send the missiles don't seem to care much about the lives of innocent Israelis either, or do they?

When Israel responds with measures not paying much attention to the lives of innocent Palestinians--I personally hate it when Israelis or Palestinians lose their lives--in the end it's just responding to the same kind of non-care from the other side of the conflict. So it's logical, you see.

It's true; terrorist groups send the missiles, not the innocent civilian Palestinians, but how do you expect Israel to pay much attention to this when the "civilian" Palestinian Authority itself does nothing to stop those groups? PA represents the "civilian" Palestinians, am I not right? Plus, Israel has no "terror groups" to respond to the Palestinian terror groups. So you see, it's also an unfair terror-group game.

At the end Israel really cares most about its citizens, no-one else. It's understandable how it would do anything it takes to secure the lives of its own "civilians".

حسنا، أنا متأكد من أن ذلك غير صحيحًا، ولكنني أعتقد بأنه في أي بلد تكون الأولوية هي لأرواح الأبرياء الذين يعيشون في هذا البلد. إن كانت صواريخ (القسام أو أيًا كانت) ترمى على إسرائيل من داخل غزة أو من الأراضي الأخرى التابعة للسلطة الفلسطينية، فإنه لا يبدو أن من يقذفون بالصواريخ يبالون كثيرًا بأرواح الأبرياء الإسرائيليين، أليس كذلك؟

عندما ترد إسرائيل بمعايير تبدو غير مبالية كثيرًا بأرواح الأبرياء الفلسطينيين (أنا شخصيًا أكره موت الإسرائيليين والفلسطينيين سواء)، في النهاية فإنها فقط ترد على نفس النوع من عدم المبالاة من الناحية الأخرى من الصراع. فهذا أمر يبدو منطقيًا.

صحيح أنه من يقذف الصواريخ هم الجماعات الإرهابية، لا الفلسطينيين المدنيين الأبرياء، ولكن كيف نتوقع من إسرائيل أن تبالي كثيرًا لهذا الأمر في حين لا تفعل السلطة الفلسطينية "المدنية" أي شيء لتوقف تلك الجماعات؟ السلطة الفلسطينية تمثل "المدنيين" الفلسطينيين، أليس كذلك؟ كما أنه لا توجد "جماعات إرهابية" داخل إسرائيل للرد على الجماعات الإرهابية الفلسطينية. إذًا إنها أيضًا لعبة "جماعات إرهابية" غير منصفة.

في النهاية فإن إسرائيل في الحقيقة تعطي أكثر اهتمام لمواطنيها، لا غيرهم. من المفهوم أنها ستفعل أي شيء لتأمين حياة مدنييها.

Israel in the Koran

2006-11-02T14:42:00.000+02:00

Translation by N. J. Dawood

Koran 2:47, 2:122: Children of Israel, remember the favor I* have bestowed upon you, and that I exalted you above the nations.

Koran 7:137: We* gave the persecuted people dominion over the eastern and the western lands wich We have blessed. Thus was your Lord's gracious word fulfilled for the Israelites, because they had endured with fortitude; and We destroyed the edifices and the towers of Pharaoh and his people.

Koran 17:104: Then We said to the Israelites: 'Dwell in the land. When the promise of the hereafter comes to be fulfilled, We shall assemble you all together.'

Koran 10:93: We settled the Israelites in a secure land and provided them with wholesome things.

Koran 20:80: Children of Israel! We delivered you from your enemies and made a covenant with you on the right flank of the Mountain (= Mount Sinai).

Koran 26:53-59: Pharaoh sent forth heralds to all the cities. 'These,' they said, 'are but a puny band, who have provoked us much. But we are a numerous army, well-prepared.' Thus did We make them leave their gardens and their fountains, their treasures and their sumptuous dwellings. Even thus; and to the Israelites We gave those.

Koran 32:23-24: We gave the Book to Moses and made it a guide for the Israelites. And when they grew steadfast and firmly believed in Our revelations, We appointed leaders from among them who gave guidance at Our bidding.

Koran 44:30-32: We saved the Israelites from the degrading scourge, from Pharaoh, who was a tyrant and a transgressor, and chose them knowningly above the nations.

Koran 45:16: We gave the Book to the Israelites and bestowed on them wisdom and prophethood. We provided them with wholesome things and exalted them above the nations.

* God

Gamal will probably not "inherit" power...

2006-11-02T13:26:00.000+02:00

There's now talk about Gamal Mubarak planning to leave Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party for a new party. He would then be nominated for presidency in the next elections in the new party's name. Then he would be "elected" as president.

This way when Mubarak the father says that there won't be any inheritence of power, he's actually not lying.

Ruling party may nominate Jamal for president

2006-09-23T00:58:00.000+02:00

Gulfnews

Cairo: A leading member of Egypt's ruling party has hinted it could nominate Jamal Mubarak for president despite his repeated statements that he does not want the post held by his father since 1981.

President Hosni Mubarak has dismissed the idea of an "inheritance" of power by Jamal, but the comments by Hossam Badrawi were a sign that an initiative to push him towards the post may come from allies in the party.

"It is our right as a party to nominate whoever has the qualifications for leadership and it is his right to accept or decline," Badrawi told the ruling party's newspaper.

"This is not inheritance [of power] because, at the end of the day, it must take place in a framework of transparency and democracy," he said, in reference to a scenario in which Jamal would be the party's candidate for president.

Analysts, opposition politicians and diplomats believe Jamal, 42, has been positioned to replace his 78-year-old father. His rising public profile this year has fuelled the speculation and there are no obvious alternatives.

Jamal has been at the heart of changes in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) in the last four years and his position as one of the most influential figures in the party was confirmed yesterday at its annual congress.

During his long address to the party, he said Egypt should consider developing nuclear power as an alternative source of energy a proposal met by loud applause.

نداء إلى كل المصريين

2006-08-24T23:22:00.000+03:00

هذه الپوست منقولة عن بلوج "صوت النيل" ("The Voice of the Nile").

غداً في الساعات الأولى من يوم 25 أغسطس/ مسـرا سيتم نقل تمثال الملك العظيم رمسيس من مكانه فى ميدان يحمل اسمه بوسط العاصمة المصرية إلى المتحف المصري الكبير المزمع إقامته في طريق الفيوم. أرى من الواجب علينا وهو أقل قدر يمكن أن نفعله هو التواجد لتحية وتوديع أحد أجدادنا العظام وحتى يرى العالم ارتباط وامتداد المصريين لهويتهم الأم، وليرى أي إسلامي حاقد وأي عروبي ناكر أو مسؤول متكسب أو مهزوم نفسياً يبحث عن المصلحة فقط دون أي إنتماء أو ولاء وكل من يريد مغازلة الإسلام السياسي وينافق العرب أو يحاول أستبعاد كل ما يذكّر المصريين بماضيهم، ليروا أننا لن نقبل بهذا وأننا مصريون رغما عنهم وعن هويتهم السرابية ولن نقبل أن يتم تجريد مصر من هويتها وتاريخها العظيم. ولنقف في وجه تعديل وتغيير ملامح مصر بدءاً من تغيير اسم الميدان الذي ارتبط اسمه بوجود ملكنا العظيم ليتم تسميته بأحد الملوك العرب أو الخلفاء الراشدين أو أحد شخصيات تاريخية لا تنتمي لنا بأي صلة.

وإننا ونحن الأولى بتقدير تراثنا مع العلم أن بنقل التمثال تصبح العاصمة المصرية بدون أي أثر يذكّر المصريين بأجدادهم، في نفس الوقت وجود آثارنا تملأ أهم ميادين العالم. يجب أن نكون في مواجهة هذا الطغيان من أجل هويتنا وحضارتنا التي يريدون تعريبها وتحويلها الى صحراء بدوية عقيمة.

وفي النهاية لا نملك أيها الملك العظيم رمسيس إلا أن نودعك بباقات الزهور والورود على أمل أن يبزغ فجر جديد يدرك فيه المصريين قيمة هذه الحضارة وهذه الروح وهذه الثقافة.

"Post title here."

2006-08-21T23:27:00.000+03:00

So, I've been attending the summer course at university for three weeks or something, but nothing's interesting whatsoever, I'm just leading a very boring life these days. I'm not blogging either, I've always liked blogging but these days i just have no thoughts to write about.. or, maybe i have the thoughts but i just can't seem to know what to write about... Maybe im just thinking about too many things that a single thought doesnt last for long in my mind..

Maybe it's also just too much effort trying to elaborate on one single thought, nowadays i'm just passing thru too much shit that im not ready to give serious thinking about anything. I need a psycologist or maybe by time i will be better..

اقتباسات من موقع EveryScreen.com

2006-07-21T16:01:00.000+03:00

1:
الإبادة هي قانون كوني، إن جاز القول. شيء تمارسه أمنا الطبيعة دونما توقف على مدى بلايين السنين. نرى العشائر البيولوچية تذهب يأتي غيرها، لا لشيء إلا لأنها الأكثر تكيفا مع معطيات الحياة وإرهاصات المستقبل. هذا القانون الذي يشتهر باسم العيش للأصلح يخطئ من يعتقد أن العرق البشري مستثنى منه، أو على الأقل تلك القطاعات الأكثر تخلفا وأقل حماسا لمعانقة الحداثة منه.

2:
لا أفهم كيف يمكن لإنسان واحد أن يعترض على التوظيف الواسع للسلاح النووي، إذا كانت المرة الوحيدة التي استخدم فيها أعطتنا قدرة اقتصادية فائقة اسمها الياپان!

3:
مشكلة العرب والمسلمين ليست أنهم لا يفهمون إلا لغة القوة، إنما أنهم لا يفهمون لغة القوة. إسرائيل هزمتهم بعدد لا نهائي من الحروب، ويعرفون أن لديها أسلحة نووية، ومع ذلك سيحاربون ويحاربون إلى أن يبادوا نهائيا!

4:
حزب الله ضرب اللبنانيين واللبنانيين فقط عمدا ومع سبق الإصرار. هو يعلم تماما أن إسرائيل لن تضار كثيرا. كذلك يخطط لأنه هو نفسه لن يضار كثيرا، حين تحدق الحادقة سيلقون بالأسلحة ويختفون بين المدنيين. أو بالأحرى أن ليس لديه أصلا ما يخسره. أو كما قلنا هي وقفة اليأس الأخيرة بالشعار الشمشوني ’علي وعلى أعدائي‘. إذن المستهدف حقا هو وهو تحديدا حكومة لبنان وأحزاب لبنان ورأسماليي لبنان وشعب لبنان أو على الأقل قطاعه التنموي البناء الكادح.

هذه ليست المرة الأولى التي لا تجد جبهة الرفض العربي الإيرانية سوى الاقتصاد ولقمة العيش حتى تستهدفه. هذا ما يفعلونه طوال الوقت، وفي الواقع لم يعودوا يفعلون سواه في الشهور الأخيرة بعد أن أفلست كل أسلحتهم الأخرى.

5:
هنا تكمن المشكلة: ستحقق إسرائيل أهدافها وستعيش في سلام وازدهار، وتتركنا نحن فريسة لفلول جبهة الرفض وسطنا، يختطفون مستقبلنا ويفرضون علينا تخلفهم من جديد وجديد إلى الأبد! لا حل لمشكلتنا نحن سوى حرب عربية مسلحة لا هوادة فيها ضد الريچيم السوري، وضد حزب الله، وضد حماس. تلك لو حدثت ستكون أول حرب حضارية يدخلها العرب في كل تاريخهم، وستكون ثمارها أكثر من مذهلة!

God can very much kiss my ass!

2006-07-08T18:36:00.000+03:00

Muslim acquaintances are so happy that I was saved from death in the accident i had. Many of them tell me that this is a "message from Allah" that means i should pay more attention to prayer and to Allah.

Well what a psychotic god who sends messages of such type. He's so full of himself that he will kill you if you don't give him all your attention!

OUT OF ALL THE POWERS THIS GOD HAS, CAN'T HE SEND ONLY ONE PERSON TO TELL ABOUT HIS ONE RELIGION? IT SHOWS HOW HE'S GOT NO CONTROL ON THIS ISSUE THAT HE CONFUSES HUMANS WITH SO MANY RELIGIONS!

I have difficulty grasping the idea of god's power...

My dad is a retarded wierdo.

2006-07-05T23:47:00.000+03:00

That's it for this post.

Yeah, I'M BACK TO LIFE

2006-06-04T19:05:00.000+03:00

Okay now I'm writing again… I've had an accident a month ago, and I'm still recovering, but people tell me I'm now way better than just after the accident. The thing is I do not at all remember that accident… it feels a bit weird to me how I suddenly one day woke up with some body aches and was told about the accident I had, and I really do not remember anything about it!

Well, actually to me it feels like I lived until a month ago and just suddenly woke up to find myself in a day a month later… I have some weird feelings about some things but I'm WAY better now than right after the accident…

My mom told me that I miraculously was saved; you know well I was actually literally DYING after that accident. But well, I didn’t die and I'm still living up till now…

I just want to say I'll be back to writing in my blog. Currently I'm still recovering so I'm not sure how much I will be writing in the near future… but I also want to say hi to those of my friends who probably think I just disappeared.

Il Log'a-l Masri-g Gidiida

2006-04-29T14:19:00.000+03:00

This is my proposed Latin-based Alphabet for the Modern Egyptian Language.

The Egyptian Language

2006-04-28T02:28:00.000+03:00

OH DID I SAY LANGUAGE? YES, I did! Well.... you see, actually all "languages" are "dialects" of other languages, which are also dialects of other languages, and so on... Because languages are affected by each other, all languages have borrowed words from other languages. BUT, choosing to refer to a language as an independent language or a dialect (to relate it to another language), all depends on your very own influences, rather those be religious, political, etc...

There are many dialects from Arabic in the region: Egyptian, Moroccan, Tunisian, Levantine, Gulf, etc, and they all share common words that have their roots in Standard Arabic. But let's not ignore many facts: there are many other words that are uncommon among the "dialects", and there are dialects which are very different from each other. And bearing in mind that a language is not only made of "words", then there will be found many "grammatical", phonetic, word-order differences, etc, among those dialects/languages.

Now, let's compare this to another group of languages: Germanic Languages.

German and Dutch are both "Germanic languages", they have their common roots in the ancient "Germanic" language. It is a known situation where one German and one Dutch would speak each in his own language making up an easily-understandable dialog between them. German and Dutch are VERY similar: similar words, similar word orders, similar grammar, but yet they are two independent languages. Using the "dialect" concept, those languages should be called "the German dialect of Germanic," and "the Dutch dialect of Germanic," respectively.

Also, when you think of a language that bears the name of a country as the language solely spoken by the dwellers of that specific country, then this makes a lot of sense calling Egyptian, the language of Egyptians, the "Egyptian" language; the language of Egypt; the Egyptian "speak", etc...

Maltese is a language with many Arabic-root words, and many other Italian-root words, which makes Maltese sound like a mix of Arabic and Italian. And because Malta lacks the religious and political influences available in the Middle East, it has recognized its language as a separate independent language, because it's the language of Malta. Not an Arabic dialect, and not an Italian dialect.

Finding out that your long-time friend is a fucked-up moron

2006-04-26T22:37:00.000+02:00

WARNING: BAD LANGUAGE FOLLOWS!

How would you feel if an old friend dumps you like you're a piece of crap? Well, this happened to me. But no! No-one does that to me... well go fuck yourself you fucking peace of crap, and you know who you are... You're such a big liar and actor...

How liberal of you to call your 4- or 5-year friend a perverted faggot, you fucking son of a slutty whore! The perverted faggot is better than your momma's fucker you son of a bitch!

Member of a secular, liberal party... well, secular and liberal MY ASS! You're no secular, no liberal... more than anything else: you're a low animal who admires his crotch.

In the general view, tho, this gives me no hope whatsoever that any positive change will occur in this country before 5000 years or so, as long as people like that "person" fill it like that.

I go to the party HQ for the weekly meeting, and all I see are a bunch of liars, really as much as I would love for Egypt to be a secular country where human rights and dignity are reserved, i see NO HOPE for such a dream to come true... If someone calls HIS LONG-TIME FRIEND a perverted faggot, then I can see the amount of respect gay people, for instance, will get if he holds power, so LIBERAL MY ASS!

It is indeed a big shock, and will make me think many times before i believe the presumed lies people tend to show about themselves when you meet them.

IT DOES!

2006-04-26T20:56:00.000+02:00

Well for god's sake (--"oh, did you just say GOD?"), this has gotten too fucking much! More and more terro-fucking-rist attacks in Sinai? The lovely Sinai, who dares touch the beautiful Sinai??!??? ERADICATE RELIGION! Islam sucks indeed... Not only Islam, Islam AND Christianity, and especially Egyptian Orthodox Christianity, suck big time! Oh i won't go saying all the crap about how Egypt is a victim of terrorism, and how it doesn't deserve all that. IT DOES! With the shit-minded bunch of religion-driven people that it houses, IT SO DOES!
HAIL DENMARK, HAIL ISRAEL, AND DOWN WITH RELIGION.

!كلاكيت عاشر مرة: "الفتنة الطائفية" زادت عن حدها

2006-04-14T14:07:00.000+02:00

شهدت الإسكندرية اليوم أحداث طائفية جديدة بالهجوم على 3 كنائس هي كنيسة "مار جرجس" بالحضرة، و"العدرا" بچناكليس و"القديسين" بسيدي بـِشر، وقد قـُتِل شخص واحد حتى الآن يدعَى نصحي عطا. تم إحباط هجوم رابع آخر، حسب قناة الجزيرة. لحد إمتى هاتستمر الحكاية دي؟ هل مصر داخلة على حرب أهلية طائفية في خلال سنتين تلاتة؟

محكمة مصرية تعترف بالبهائية رغم رفض الأزهر

2006-04-10T14:11:00.000+02:00

مـــحـــفـــل الـبــهـائـيـيـن فــي حـيــفــا

القاهرة- يو بي أي

أقرت محكمة مصرية للبهائيين بحرية العقيدة، واعترفت بديانتهم المحظورة ممارستها في مصر، بحسب منظمة حقوقية مصرية. جاء ذلك رغم فتوى مصرية صدرت في عام 2003 تحظر أي ديانة أخرى، غير الإسلام والمسيحية واليهودية.

وقالت منظمة "المبادرة المصرية للحقوق الشخصية" إن محكمة القضاء الإداري حكمت في جلسة عقدتها يوم الثلاثاء 4-4-2006 بحق البهائيين في تسجيل ديانتهم في أوراقهم الرسمية ومنع إجبارهم تسجيل أنفسهم كمسلمين.

وأثارت العربية.نت مؤخرا قضية البهائيين في مصر، ونقلت تصريحات لرئيس مركز الكلمة ممدوح نخلة بأن البهائيين المصريين يطالبون بالاعتراف الرسمي بهم بسبب ما يعانونه من إلغاء تسجيل أنفسهم كبهائيين في خانة الديانة بشهادات الميلاد والبطاقات الشخصية وقسائم الزواج وجوازات السفر.

وكانت عائلة بهائية مصرية قد أقامت قضية لدى المحكمة اشتكت من إجبار ضباط مصلحة الأحوال الشخصية أفرادها على تسجيل ديانتهم كمسلمين في هوية الأحوال المدنية ورفض تسجيلهم كبهائيين.

وحكم القاضي فاروق عبد القادر بحق العائلة بتسجيل ديانتها كما تشاء والطلب من وزارة الداخلية تثبيت ذلك في أوراقهم الرسمية. وأشادت المنظمة المصرية بالقرار ووصفته بـ"انتصار حقيقي لحرية الدين والمعتقد التي يكفلها الدستور واتفاقيات حقوق الإنسان".

الحق في اعتناق الديانة

وقالت المنظمة الحقوقية في بيان "إن الحكم رسالة واضحة بان لكل مصري ومصرية الحق في اعتناق الديانة التي يختارونها وليس التي يفرضها عليهم مسؤولو وزارة الداخلية".

وكانت لجنة حقوق الإنسان التابعة للأمم المتحدة ومنظمات حقوقية قد طالبت الحكومة المصرية مرات عديدة بالغاء التمييز ضد البهائيين، باعتباره انتهاكا للعهود الدولية لحقوق الإنسان المدنية والسياسية ودعت إلى الاعتراف بهم كطائفة دينية.

ولا يعرف عدد البهائيين في مصر على وجه الدقة إلا أنه يعتقد أنهم لا يزيدون عن العشرات. وفي ديسمبر عام 2003، أصدر مجمع البحوث الإسلامية بالأزهر، فتوى تعلن أن "الإسلام لا يقر أي ديانة أخرى غير ما أمرنا القرآن باحترامه، فلا ينبغي، بل يمتنع أن تكون في مصر ديانة غير الإسلام والمسيحية واليهودية لأن كل ديانة أخرى غير مشروعة ومخالفة للنظام العام".

وطلبت الفتوى من السلطات التشريعية والقضائية والتنفيذية أعمال شئونها في هذا الأمر. ورفض البهائيون هذه الفتوى وقالوا بأن ديانتهم "لا تستمد شرعيتها من قبول بعض رجال دين مغاير لها".

Rights activists welcome ruling recognising Bahá'í rights

2006-04-10T02:18:00.000+02:00

Reuters

06 Apr 2006 16:01:39 GMT
Source: IRIN

CAIRO, 6 April (IRIN) - Human rights activists have welcomed a landmark ruling by the Administrative Court recognising the right of Egyptian Bahá'ís to have their religion acknowledged on official documents.

The decision, announced on 4 April, "sent a strong message that it is the right of every Egyptian citizen to adopt the religion of their choice", said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Private Rights (EIPR).

The ruling is the result of a lawsuit filed by a married Bahá'í couple against Interior Minister Habib al-Adly in June 2004. According to an EIPR statement, officials from the Civil Status Department (CSD) confiscated the couple's official documentation because it cited their religious affiliation as Bahá'í, an obscure offshoot of orthodox Islam unrecognised in this majority Sunni Muslim country. "The CSD refused to issue new identification documents unless the family agreed to identify themselves as Muslim," the EIPR statement reads.

According to activists, the ruling in favour of the family was partly a result of intense lobbying efforts by rights groups. "This is a landmark case. We feel our efforts have paid off," said Gamal Eid, director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information. "The authorities felt so threatened with exposure that they backed down and ruled in favour of the Bahá'ís' inherent rights."

The ruling reaffirms a similar decision on the right of Bahá'ís to identify themselves as such on formal records and certificates, issued in 1983. "However, in 2004, the interior ministry's CSD reinstated the policy of forcing Bahá'ís to identify as Muslim or Christian," notes the EIPR statement. The plaintiff in the 1983 case eventually backed down after his daughters were threatened with expulsion from school if they did not have birth certificates issued identifying them as Muslims.

It is estimated that some 2,000 Bahá'ís currently live in Egypt. Followers of an independent religion that emerged in the nineteenth century, they have been subject to routine harassment by the authorities ever since the passage of a 1960 law officially dissolving Bahá'í institutions, according to the EIPR. Although the legislation did not criminalise followers of the faith, it enabled the authorities to promote official discrimination against them, say rights activists.

On a social level, too, the Bahá'í community has faced innumerable obstacles. "These stem from an intolerance of the Bahá'í faith by the Muslim religious establishment, which seeks to portray them as apostates," said Eid. While the Bahá'í community has been frequently slandered in the press, however, Eid noted that "some independent newspapers – such as Al-Dustour and Al-Karama – have recently worked to raise awareness of Bahá'í rights".

The ruling is of particular significance in that it corroborates Bahá'ís' right to freedom of belief in the eyes of the state. As for their place in society, however, the fact that the Bahá'í community constitutes such a tiny minority will continue to expose its members to endless challenges.

"It's unlikely that the ruling will, in itself, transform the situation of Bahá'ís," said Eid. "But it does constitute a step on the long road to the creation of a more religiously tolerant society."

© 2006 Reuters

When would Muslims Understand?

2006-04-04T17:16:00.000+02:00

From EveryScreen.com
Translated from Arabic by: Mamduh Schauki

When would Muslims understand that what they hold as holy and sacred are things that mean totally nothing to others? Bearing in mind that those others outnumber them many times; at least there are twice as many Christians, and twice as many who do not even believe in the monotheistic Invisible being.

You must understand that billions of people that outnumber you do not accept what you hymn everyday as holy words of God, but they would stop for a while at it, as to mock day and night, for instance, "To whom does God pray on the prophet?" and a million other such examples. And no word games are good enough to explain to them how the scary ego of Muhammad and his funny glorification of himself got you that easy.

You have to understand that to billions of people, and they all have hands, feet, and brains like you, or of course better than you, the prophet of mercy is nothing but a serial killer, womanizer, and someone who's fond of pedophilia. No-one can understand a justification to all these behaviors on his part. The faithful minority of them wonders how God couldn't find a better person in the world than such a man to make a prophet. As for the vast secular majority, they only see that these are attributes that would take a normal person to jail, if not to the gallows, and do not make of him a holy prophet. And, in general, the phrases of holification that you say about the Master of the people of the Earth mean not a thing to them whatsoever.

Take it easy. This doesn't mean that you leave Islam and believe in Christianity, and it doesn't mean that you leave Islam and believe in no religion. It simply means: take it easy. Just don't get too angry, and learn for once - as a matter of change - to listen and not to shout. It is all just an opinion, no more, no less. And from now on, you miserable Muslims need to coexist with what's being said about you in this global village, after centuries of knowing even nothing about what's going on in it. Now it's no-more an option to shut your ears to what's being said about you. Instead of demonstrating, go work like the Indians and the Chinese, or if we quote from Naguib Mahfouz: just "go die."

متى يفهم المسلمون؟

2006-04-04T17:14:00.000+02:00

مـــن EveryScreen.com

متى يفهم المسلمون أن ما يقدسونه أعتى التقديس ويصابون بالجنون والسعار من أجله في كل مرة يمس فيها، هو أشياء لا تثير أية قداسة بالمرة لدى غيرهم، وهم أضعاف أضعافهم عدديا، على الأقل هناك ضعفهم مرتين مسيحيون، وضعفهم مرتين أخريين لا يؤمنون أصلا باللهو الخفي بتاع كل أديان التوحيد.

يجب أن تفهموا، أن البلايين من البشر أضعافكم عددا، لا يقبلون ما ترتلونه أنتم كل يوم عن ظهر قلب كمحفوظات ومقدسات لا تفكير فيها، بل هم يتوقفون لبرهة على الأقل أمامه، كأن يسخرون ليلا نهارا مثلا مِن "إلى مَن يصلي الرب على الرسول،" ومليون مثال من هذا النوع، ولا تصلح أية ألاعيب كلامية في إقناعهم كيف انطلى ’الإيجو‘ المخيف لمحمد وتفخيمه المضحك لنفسه عليكم إلى هذه الدرجة. يجب أن تفهموا أنه بالنسبة لبلايين البشر، وكلهم بأيدي وأقدام وأدمغة وثروات مثلكم أو طبعا أفضل منكم، لا يمثل نبي الرحمة في نظرهم سوى مغتال سفاح قاطع طريق بلطجي دجال زئر نساء ومولع بجنس الأطفال. لا أحد يمكن أن يفهم تبريرا لمثل هذه السلوكيات منه أيا ما كان. القلة المؤمنة منهم تقول هل خلت كل الدنيا من البشر حتى يختار الإله شخصا كهذا رسولا. أما الغالبية العلمانية الساحقة، فترى فقط أن تلك صفات تذهب بالإنسان العادي من أمثالنا للسجن إن لم يكن للمشنقة، لا أن تصنع منه قديسا نبيا. وفي كل الأحوال فإن كل عبارات التقديس التي تقولونها عن سيد أهل الأرض لا تعني شيئا بالنسبة لهم بالمرة ولا حتى قلامة الظفر الأصغر للقدم اليسرى.

خذوا الأمر ببساطة ليس معناها أن تتركوا الإسلام وتؤمنوا بالمسيحية، وليس معناها أن تتركوا الإسلام ولا تؤمنون بأي دين، معناها ببساطة، أن تأخذوا الأمر ببساطة. فقط لا تغضبوا، تعلموا لمرة - ولو على سبيل التغيير - أن تسمعوا لا أن تصرخوا. فالأمر برمته مجرد رأي، لا أكثر ولا أقل. ومن الآن فصاعدا عليكم أيها المسلمون البؤساء التعايش مع ما يقال عنكم في هذه القرية الجلوبية، بعد قرون لم يكن يصلكم أصلا ما كان يدور فيها، والآن لم يعد ممكنا أبدا صم آذانكم عنه. بدل المظاهرات روحوا اشتغلوا زي بتوع الهند والصين، أو إذا أخذنا بكلام نجيب محفوظ روحوا موتوا.

إذا أردت مزج السياسة بالدين، فلترضى بالعواقب

2006-04-01T22:07:00.000+02:00

هناك العديد من اللآيات القرآنية المسكوت عنها المسيئة والمهينة للعديد من المجموعات الدينية، ولا ثيما المسيحيين واللاإلهيين... تلك الآيات مسكوت عنها لأن معظم الناس لا يحبون الخوض معًا في أمور شائكة مثل الدين والسياسة، يعني كل واحد واخد جنب وماشي في حاله المسلم مسلم والمسيحي مسيحي ومالناش دعوة ببعض...

مع ذلك فالمسيحي مثلا لما يركب الميكروباص ولا التاكسي يلاقي واحد بيجعر في الكاسيت وبيلعن سلسفين أم وأبو الميسحيين الكفرة المشركين.. عادي بيشتري دماغو وكلها ربع ولا نص ساعة ويوصل بيته اللي هو ماليه صُلبان وصور ليسوع حبيب القلب، يعني عامل الجو المسيحي اللي يرتاح فيه ويحس في شوية الساعات اللي قاعدها في بيته انه ليه شوية قيمة. المهم يعني في الآخر المسيحي دا مش كاره عيشتو أوي، كل واحد في حاله زي ما قلنا..

بس لو القرآن بقا دستور مصر، يا ويلنا ويا سواد ليلنا ع اللي ممكن يحصل، الآيات المسكوت عنها دي كلها هاتتطبق وهايبقا شيء مش لطيف أوي..

للاطلاع على فكرة عن حياة المسيحي المذكور فوق في ظل حكم إسلامي، يرجى الاطلاع على الكتب التالية:
- القرآن
- كتب التفسير والأحاديث

إللي عاوز يدخل الدين في السياسة لازم يعرف ان الأفكار السياسية خــُلقـَت للنقد، يعني الدين المقدس دا لو دخل في السياسة وحياة المصريين كلهم بقت مهددة پافكار سياسية متشددة (الفكر الديني القرآني) فسيــُنتـَـقد الدين وتنتقد آيات القرآن المنافية للحقوق الإنسانية (يعني حقوق المرأة وحرية الدين مثلا!)

هل انت يا إسلامي تريد نقد فكرك السياسي مثله في ذلك مثل أي فكر سياسي آخر كالعلمانية والليبرالية والاشتراكية والشيوعية؟ هل أنت مستعد لأن ينتقد الإسلام لأنك تريد تحويله من دين إلى فكر سياسي؟ إذا كانت الإجابة ب-لا، فابعدوا بالدين عن مجلس الشعب واحصروه في قلوبكم وفي دور العبادة يا عزيزي. فليبقى يسوع في الكنيسة وليبقى محمد في المسجد ولا تفرضونهما على أحد!

'US could wipe out Iran nuke program in two days'

2006-03-21T05:18:00.000+02:00

from The Jerusalem Post

Another voice has been added to those who believe that air strikes should halt Iran's quest to develop nuclear weapons.

Gary Berntsen, the former senior CIA operative who led the search for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan in late 2001, believes the United States has the ability to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. He said the US could use bunker-buster bombs and other weapons to carry out the operation.

"We can dig those things out. We can destroy them," he told The Jerusalem Post in an interview.

"We can take care of it in a couple of days with air strikes and they wouldn't be able to stop us," he added. "It wouldn't be difficult to plan. They'd be some dangers but I think the United States can do it." Berntsen, who left the CIA in June last year after more than 20 years of service, believes it will be difficult to persuade Iran to stop its nuclear program.

"I know the Iranians. I've worked against the Iranians for years. They are determined to get this no matter what, and they will lie and cheat and do whatever they have to do to get themselves a weapon," he said.

Berntsen ruled out covert action because of the scale of Iran's nuclear program.

"This is a huge system of facilities they have. This is not going to be a small sort of engagement. We are probably going to have to destroy 30 facilities in 30 locations. Or at least 15," he said.

Berntsen's comments came after former Pentagon adviser Richard Perle said earlier this month that Iran's prime nuclear facilities could be devastated in one night by a small fleet of US B-2 bombers.

In addition, Moshe Ya'alon, Israel's former chief of General Staff, said the IDF has the capabilities to attack Iran's nuclear facilities and could do it in conjunction with the US and some EU countries. However, Berntsen believes Israel should not carry out any operation.

"It's better for the United States to do it. If you (Israel) do it, we'll have all sorts of problems in the Middle East, all sorts of countries that will align themselves with the Iranians over this. Politically it makes more sense for the US to do it," he said.

Berntsen also ruled out a ground operation.

"This is huge country. There are 70 million people there. It's gigantic. We don't need to be getting into something like that," he said.

However, Berntsen believes that the US should first exhaust all the political options before carrying out a strike.

"We should do what we're doing right now. That means taking them to the United Nations and make this 'the world against Iran,' because the Iranians appear determined to create a weapon," he said.

"If by chance they disarm, then we can avoid this, but if they don't disarm we will need to take care of this ourselves," he said.

"The Iranians have to know that we mean business. They will either disarm or we will destroy their facilities. No ifs, ands, or buts. They present a threat to peace in the Middle East. They present a threat to Israel. We cannot accept that," he added.

Berntsen predicted that if Iran doesn't disarm, President George Bush would carry out an attack regardless of domestic opposition.

"I think that President Bush has demonstrated that he says what he means and he means what he says. A lot of people didn't think he would do Iraq. This is a guy who doesn't put his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. President Bush means business.

"The problem right now is that the Iranians are going to miscalculate. They are going to believe that because 2006 is an election year (in Congress), and due to all this political opposition to the president because of Iraq, they're going to think that he's weak in the knees, he can't do it and they're not going to negotiate.

"That would be a very serious mistake for them. They're going to miscalculate. They think he's politically weak and George Bush won't care. He's going to do it anyway when it comes down to it," Berntsen said.

"I believe that we'll get past the mid-term election in 2006 and then the Iranians ought to disarm themselves or suffer the consequences," he added.

Berntsen recently released a book called Jawbreaker, which is about the search for bin Laden after al-Qaida's attacks on the US in September 2001. The book has been on the best-seller lists in the US but has yet to be released in Israel.

Wafaa Sultan will not reply to you!

2006-02-25T17:26:00.001+02:00

I believe there's been a huge misunderstanding here. I'm not Ms. Wafaa Sultan, I'm Mamduh Schauki. I tend to agree with almost everything Wafaa Sultan says, and that is why I translated a couple of her speeches.. This is not the personal site of Dr. Wafaa Sultan, though I do not mind anybody sending her personal messages here, but do not expect a reply from her...

This blog is written and managed by me (Mamduh Schauki).

اشتري المنتجات الدنماركية: دافع عن حريتك

2006-02-14T16:43:00.000+02:00

هذه الشجرة الدنماركية تحمل رسالة إلى المسلمين!

من Faith Freedom International

ها هي قائمة جزئية من المنتجات الدنماركية (ليس بالضرورة أن تكون كل المنتجات المذكورة تباع داخل بلدك):

1. الزبدة

- زبدة يوركشاير
- آنكور
- لورپاك

2. حليب/قشدة

- كراڤندال پورفيلتر®
- لاكتوفري
- هينت أوڤ كراڤندال
- آنكور قشدة حليب حقيقية

3. الجبن

- ديسكاڤر
- روزنبورج
- جبنة آنكور

4. البيرة

- كارلزبرج

5. البسكوت

- رويال دانسك بَــتر كوكيز
- كــْيــِـلدسن بَــتر كوكيز
- ومعظم ماركات البسكوت بالزبدة.

والمزيد من المنتجات الدنماركية لتضيفوها إلى قائمة مشترياتكم:

جبنة هارڤاتي الدنماركية
بيرة كارلزبرج و- توبورج.
White Clover and Holland Farm
اشتروا الپورسلين الدنماركي الخلاب وألعاب ليجو LEGO للأطفال.

زوروا Danish.com لشراء المزيد من المنتجات الدنماركية، وأيضا Danelink.com.

ابحثوا في جوجل عن "منتجات دنماركية" أو "Danish products" للعثور على المزيد منها.

المزيد من المنتجات الدنماركية في: http://www.x-it-dk.com

Buy Danish Products: Save Your Freedom

2006-02-13T00:33:00.000+02:00

This Danish tree has a message for the Muslims!

from Faith Freedom International

The publication of cartoon caricatures by Denmark 's Jyllands-Posten of the Prophet Muhammad has created a shitstorm among Muslim countries and it is getting out of hand.

Background, if you are unfamiliar:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4664408.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4669210.stm

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=20622

http://www.westernresistance.com/blog/archives/000799.html

http://www.faithfreedom.org/oped/AllanPetersen60201.htm

While it is good to see other media outlets around Europe showing solidarity with Jyllands-Posten by publishing the images, Denmark is currently getting hit by a strong economic sanction through the means of a boycott on all Danish products by Muslim nations. This has already led to Danish companies having to lay off staff due to the economic impact since this furor started in late September 2005.

Punishing Danish businesses through a boycott of all Danish goods, thus hurting Danes unrelated to the newspaper, is very unfortunate.

They have a right to protest and to boycott, but they cannot expect to impose their religious beliefs/sensitivities upon free countries and free media outlets, ESPECIALLY THROUGH THREATS OF VIOLENCE. Masked gunmen raided the office of the European Union in Palestine in protest. Islamic groups in Pakistan and Chechnya have called for violence. While Chechen Islamists were non-specific, Pakistani groups have offered a reward of 5000 Kroners for the murder of each of the cartoonists. As if that were not enough, the Jyllands-Posten staffs have received death threats and their office building was recently evacuated due to a bomb threat.

Muslim leaders are falling over each other in making themselves look absolutely foolish by demanding an apology from the Danish government and asking the government to "punish" the newspaper. These folks are unable to grasp the concept that the media is independent of the government.

We need to stand with the Danes in their hour of need against this economic and ideological onslaught. This is about freedom of the press and the freedom of expression enshrined in democracies. It cannot, and should not, bow to religious pressure. Especially when no human rights were violated, no blood spilt and no innocent Muslims threatened or harmed.

Therefore I urge you to buy Danish products at every opportunity you get. Giving the Islamists the upper hand in this economic conflict will only embolden them to up the ante in the future where imposing their norms upon others is concerned.

Here is a partial list of Danish products (not all may be available in your place of residence...the really obvious ones are at the bottom of the list):

NOTE: Almost all food items are exported by ARLA FOODS or an ARLA FOODS local subsidiary...will be listed in the product description.

1. Butter

- YORKSHIRE BUTTER
-ANCHOR
-LURPAK

2. Milk/Cream

-CRAVENDALE PURFILTRE®
-LACTOFREE
-HINT OF CRAVENDALE
-ANCHOR Real Dairy Cream

3. Cheese

-DISCOVER..
-ROSENBORG
-ANCHOR cheese

4. Beer

-CARLSBERG

5. Cookies

-ROYAL DANSK BUTTER COOKIES
-KJELDSEN BUTTER COOKIES

-pretty much almost any brand of butter cookies, really.

6. A whole range of other consumer goods ( UK folks can buy it online):

http://www.danish-deli-food.com/English/Shop/shop.asp

7. Electronic Goods:

http://www.bang-olufsen.com

Thanks in advance for supporting a free society against those that seek to curtail freedom.

Please send this message to everyone in your address book and if you know of other Danish products please let me know to add to this page. Send your email to faithfreedom3 at yahoo.com

Here are more Danish products to add to your shopping list:

Danish Havarti cheese

Carlsberg and Tuborg Beers.

Arla owns White Clover Dairy, a Wisconsin company so buy that brand. It comes under White Clover and Holland Farm.

Danish Crown hams ( DAK (sold at Sam clubs)... baby back ribs, because they come from Denmark.

You shop online at The Danish Foodshop and Danish Deli Foods.

You can also buy gorgious Danish porcelain and LEGO for the kids.

In Danish.com you can find information about Danish Furniture, Danish Travel and more.

Order Danish woolen delight online.

Try also Danelink.com

Google "Danish products" and find a host of other products.

If you are an importer, try products made in Denmark. Here is were you get information Danishexporters.dk

other danish products at: http://www.x-it-dk.com/

Remember saving Denmark means saving your freedom. Buy Danish products as an act of patriotism and feel proud of having soldiered the cause of freedom. Do not let the Islamist goons have the last laughter. Defeat them by showing your solidarity with Danish people.

اخرجي يا نفسي

2006-01-29T02:30:00.000+02:00

قد حل الظلام... واُهلكت المدينة
اخرجي يا نفسي من فجوة الإلتزام
فلتنحرفي كما صنعك التراب... ارجعي لطبيعتك الاولى
قبل أن يشوهك العُرف.. وتُقودي للدين.. ويباع لحمك للعروبة
احرقي فراشك الحريري واستلقي على رماده الأسود ليتلون جسدك بالحقيقة
اقطعي الكهرباء والضوء الأصفر واخلقي شعلة تتوهج بماء البحر والحيرة
حطمي قيود حبيبك؛ جامعيه في الهيكل...
والعقي مأذنته في الحرمين...
ودعي اورشليم تراقب اضجاع الحرية المفقودة
فلا تبكي للحروب فغدًا ستـُـرجمي لاحتفالك بإنسانيتك الحيوانية
اعلني شذوذك للعرب فهو أرقى من طبيعتهم اليومية
البسي لتعري معبدك المصريّ واخلعي عنك ثيابك الغربية
العني الواقع والقرن اللامع وتلك العملات الورقية
فهي باعت روحك لتشتري نفايات الماضي
لترتشفي عبق التحلل قبل صفقتكم الابدية
فغدًا يوم آخر في أحضان مدينة الهاوية
فانحرفي لطبيعتك الاولى قبل أن يتحول النيل لصبار...
وقبل ان تغرق الرمال في فيضان الصحراء الغربية
تذوقي شفاه حبيبك بملح الدموع
قبل أن يجفف النضال خصوبة رحمك وشهوته السرية
تعبدو معًا للمسيح والإلحاد والحرية
فلتخلقي ثالوث مهلك بالانسانية

Wafaa Sultan's speech in the Coptic Conference in DC

2005-12-20T16:17:00.000+02:00

Translated from Arabic by: Mamduh Schauki.

I came to present the issue of women, but very unfortunately I didn't see many women in this conference. I'm not sure whom I should blame for that. Should I blame the conference's management that may have sent invitations "to men only"? Or, should I blame the men who said no to women? Or should I blame Woman herself that has said no to politics? I should blame every one of us.

In the future, when I attend any Middle-Eastern conference and see at least half of the number of attendants are women, I will then become optimistic that democracy in the Middle East is safe and sound.

Dear Coptic brothers, moderators of the conference and attendants: may God bless you with happy times.

Allow me in the beginning to express my thanks and appreciation to those who worked hard to bring into existence this conference which gives us much hope - and to those who honored me by inviting me and their insistence that I be with them today.

I specially thank Engineer Mr. Adli Abadeer, that man who's full of youth, vitality, and who possesses a strong, unafraid, brave voice.

Thanks Mr. Abadeer for the group of book volumes, that you sent to me as a gift, which tell about the history and achievements of the Copts. Thanks for your invitation to me to visit you, and I promise to repeat the visit in the near future.

And allow me also to present my thanks and appreciation to this great country that hosted us.

And allow me to deeply salute each American soldier, and each Iraqi citizen, that paid and pays from his blood in order to plant the first seed of freedom and democracy in our dear East.

I would like to point out that the following speech presents my own opinion and not necessarily that of the committee organizing this conference.

Dear attendants

I'm wondering, right now as I stand in front of you today in this conference, and on this holy land. Holy for it is a land of human rights, and not because it's a land of prophets.

I'm wondering why we are here today. We're here today to get our heads out of the sand, and to face the light of truth, after being blinded by the sword of ignorance and myths for a period of 14 centuries.

No freedom exists with ignorance, and no justice exists with myths.

When religion becomes the measurement for your humanity - specifies your rights and draws the features of your freedom - you will undoubtedly conflict with that religion whenever you try to fly in the skies of your humanity, whenever you demand your rights, or try to enjoy your freedom. This is the case in the Middle East.

And if we decline to face this truth in this conference, we will not come up with results better than those of many conferences in the past.

In our Middle East, the dictatorship of the Ruler is not the root of the problem. But, rather, the root of every problem was and still is the dictatorship of religion. A seed of freedom can never plant where religion still is the only Master.

When I discuss this idea with any American citizen, he rejects my idea saying that freedom of religion is one of the most basic human rights.

The American and I are not different as to the fact that freedom of religion should be respected. However, I know that the understanding of religion in his country differs from the understanding of religion in my country, whereas he does not know this difference.

He understands religion to be the group of beliefs that organize the relationship between a person and his god, that is if he accepts to have a god, and does not pass the boundaries of that relationship, whereas in our countries, very unfortunately, religion interferes in every thing.

Therefore, the problem today, between Islam on one side and the world on the other side, is the difference in their understanding of religion. Both sides, in an effort to try to destroy terrorism – being the biggest problem in our time – have to agree on a new definition of religion. When the Muslim and the non-Muslim agree on the definition of religion, the Muslim will then back up to reconsider his teachings and beliefs.

Islam is not just a religion; Islam is a religion and a State. At the same time that we require respecting Islam as a religion, we strongly reject it as a State. We can never establish a state based on teachings that insist on rejecting the other, and even murdering him. The state that we want in our Middle East is a state for everybody, which does not differentiate between one citizen and another except by the amount of loyalty they have to their country and their humanity.

When religion occupies the role of programming the relationship between Man and his fellow brother, within solid, unchangeable boundaries, Man will not possess any rights or enjoy any freedom. In a state that blesses a faith that says, "Fight those who do not believe in Allah or his messenger," human rights can never be respected, nor can human freedom ever be safe, because that faith already denies him the right to not believe in Allah, not to mention his right to not believe in his messenger.

When Mr. George Bush says Islam is a religion of tolerance, he speaks out of his own understanding of religion in general, and not his understanding and knowledge of Islamic teachings. I know that his situation as a politician requires some diplomacy on his part. However, the repetition of such expressions, and coming from a leader of the greatest country in the world, limits our credibility. We, who abandoned our teachings, after discovering their negative effects on our lives and the lives of the coming generations. When he does that, he destroys in one moment what we secularists build in years.

Dear attendants: Secularists and minorities in the Middle East, today, live in a state of great fear. The thing they fear, surprisingly, is democracy, thinking that democracy means the rule of the majority; and the majority believes in the credibility of Islamic teachings, or laws. Our responsibility, people who live in democratic countries, and based on our own experiences, is to correct this incomplete understanding, and to relief those who fear democracy. Democracy indeed is the rule of the majority, but, in a democracy, no majority can ever deny Man any of his rights.

In a democracy, when I am in an opposition with my whole nation, I own the right to change it just as much as it owns the right to change me, and the stronger dominates.

In a democracy, a wrongful nation can never defeat a rightful woman.

Which of you does not know Ms. Rosa Parks? Ms. Rosa Parks is an American woman who died about two weeks ago. She lived in a time when blacks were second-class citizens. She stood at the face of the white man, shouting, “I am the one who grabs her right, and I don’t wait for you to give me that right!” refusing to leave him her seat in a local transportation bus.

She underwent terrible circumstances for what she did, but, in the end, she redrew the features of America, and entered history, adding one more name to history’s heroes defending human rights and freedom.

Copts have a long history of being oppressed and discriminated against, and they, before anyone else, must understand this fact: the fact that rights are taken and not given.

The one who has power will not give up his power easily, and the one who suffers from the oppression of that power is that which has, before anyone else, to struggle to get rid of the oppression.

We who are gathered in this conference have to have the courage it takes to open a new record in our history, in which we write the names of those who defend human rights and freedom in our countries which, I think, never knew such rights before, and where humans never enjoyed such freedom. We're the ones responsible to change the features of these countries.

The coming generations are a responsibility we bear. We don’t want them to inherit of the hate and grudge that we've inherited, out of mercy to them and to the whole world.

Minorities, as I mentioned, including secularists, fear democracy, and we might justify their fear when we hear the Islamic fundamentalists themselves, today, demanding democracy. That is the game they started playing, today.

But, this means no harm. It doesn’t matter who starts the game; what matters is who ends it. They started demanding democracy, which they think would ease their way into taking power. We have to end this game, not by avoiding democracy, but by even more democracy, in order not to allow them to monopolize power.

Yes, democracy may bring us problems, but we cannot solve those problems but by insisting on more democracy. These are the rules of the game, and we must let that be known.

Dear attendants; as a Muslim-born woman who lived and was raised in a Muslim environment, and in the context of the state of human rights and freedom (in general), I cannot but mention women's rights and freedom (in particular), which are considered as the gateway to every other right.

When we liberate women, we liberate the whole nation.

Freedom has many types. The type that matters to me, as a woman, here, more than any other, is to liberate Woman from the stereotype that religion disgraced her with, calling her "lacking of sanity, religion, and luck."

She has fallen for that stereotype to the extent that she glorified it until it became to her a way of life.

The ugliest type of slavery is when the slave thinks he is free. Women in our countries breathe from their slavery the breeze of their freedom. Logic has been twisted for them, so their slavery became their dearest freedom.

Correcting this logic does not occur but by separating state and religion, and by blessing an education that is always examined and qualified by science and not religion.

You can never liberate an ignorant woman; science is the only way to liberate her.

When she learns that she's a complete human value, she will do her best to prove that value.

How would you liberate a woman who defends to death her husband's right to beat her if she rejects to go to bed with him, before teaching her the ways of the bed, and the limits of her and his rights?

When Woman learns that she's a human value, she'll struggle to defend that value. But, as long as she gives in to the fact that Allah put her in the same category with dirt, in the way she dirties the man after ablution for prayer, she won't be able to cross the boundaries of that classification.

When I looked at Ms. Sajida al-Rishawi, who was supposed to blow herself up with her husband, in the Radisson Amman Hotel… when I looked at her, my anger lightened and a feeling of pity evolved inside me.

A creature put down by her beliefs to the level of an animal or maybe less. She was told, "Obey your husband, the way you obey your god!" and all she's done did not cross the limits of that obedience.

Her husband wrapped an explosive belt around her waist and told her, "Follow me!" and I am quite sure: they didn’t get any further with her in the investigations, because she doesn’t know any further.

During primary investigations, she told them, "We drove a white car from Iraq to Jordan." That’s all that resulted from the primary investigation, and I don’t expect it to result in anything of more significance, later.

A sheep driven to the slaughterhouse by the shepherd, and she follows him loyally and submissively.

She came to practice, with her terrorist husband, his terror, after making sure she got her headscarf on, which is needed to grant her entrance to the Garden of Eternity.

The question here is how are we going to restore humanity to these creatures? How are we going to return to them their minds and thoughts?

Our responsibility is to liberate those women, not only from their slavery, but from their belief that they're free. Our responsibility is to rehabilitate their minds and thoughts and to re-educate them.

Rehabilitation only happens with education. We need an educational system with which men of religion do not interfere. We want to eradicate religion from all pre-university educational books.

We want to build free minds that are unscratched by ancient fallacies. We want to build clean selves where no room there is for hate and grudge.

Dear attendants, in my deadly defense of Woman, I haven’t suffered from men the way I've suffered from women; they were the first to insult me, infidelize me, and call for my death. Nonetheless, I cannot take an opposing stand against them. They're my cause, they're the cross I carry on my back. I won't oppose them, and I'll support them until they recognize their value.

Let it be known to every woman in my country that when Allah is against women, I'll be against that Allah.

We the secularists, and every supporter to the case we're struggling for, today, are not able to go through this war by ourselves. The civilized, free, world, represented in the United States of America, must stand by our side and support us, by all its power, in order that we can get our deserved rights, or else victory will not be ours.

The world, today, is a small village. The American can not be safe in his house in Florida, unless the Egyptian is safe in his village in Upper Egypt. There's no safety in a country that does not respect the rights of every human, regardless of his religion, race, or nation.

As the greatest country, America is responsible to help us, and I, as a Syrian-American, truly believe in America's ability and its good will toward this mission.

Once more, I thank the moderators of this conference; I thank America, our host; and I thank the attendants. Victory be to our causes.

:رسالة لـ الله

2005-11-14T22:45:00.000+02:00

This is an Egyptian translation of the "Dear Allah" article posted here previously in English.

عزيزي الله،

ليه بتأمر الرجالة بضرب مراتاتهم لو ما كانوش مطيعين؟ ليه مافيش أي تقبل للي مش مسلمين؟ ليه لازم اليهود والمسيحيين يدفعو الجزية؟ ليه لازم المسلمين يحاربو اللي مش منهم؟ ليه اللي مش مسلمين تغطيهم بالعار؟ ليه المسلمين ماينفعش يثقو في غيرهم "عشان هما مش هايفشلو إنهم يعملو كل اللي يقدرو عليه عشان يفسدوكو" (قرآن 118:3)؟ ليه بتأمر بقتل اللي بيسيبو الإسلام؟

أنا باحسّ بقلة ارتياح شديدة لما بقرا شوية آيات في قرآنك وأحاديس نبيّك (صلعم):

الرجالة ليهم سلطة علا الستات عشان الله خلاهم أفضل منهم، وعشان بيصرفو من مالهم عليهم. الستات الكويسة بتكون مطيعة. بيحمو عوراتهم عشان الله حماهم. أما الستات اللي تخافو يعصوكو، اوعظوهم وسيبوهم في السرير لوحدهم واضربوهم. وبعدين لو أطاعوكو، ماتعملولهمش حاجة تانية. حقيقي الله عالي وكبير. (قرآن 34:4)

حاربوهم، والله هايعاقبهم علا إيديكو ويغطيهم بالعار ويساعدكو (للإنتصار) عليهم ويشفي صدور المؤمنين (قرآن 14:9)

علي حرق شوية ناس والخبر دا وصل لإبن عباس، فقال: "لو انا كنت مكانو ماكنتش حرقتهم، عشان النبي قال، ’ماتعاقبوش (أي حد) بعقاب الله.‘ بس مافيش شك اني كنت قتلتهم، عشان النبي قال، ’لو حد (مسلم) ساب دينو، يتقتل.‘" (صحيح بخاري الجزء 4، كتاب 52، عدد 260)

يا مؤمنين! ماتاخدوش بطانة (أصحاب إلخ.) من اللي برا دينكو (الوثنينيين، اليهود، المسيحيين، والمنافقين) عشان هما مش هايفشلو إنهم يعملو كل اللي يقدرو عليه عشان يفسدوكو. هما عايزين يضروكو أوي. الكره ظاهر من بقهم، لاكن اللي مخبيينو في صدورهم أوحش بكتير. فعلن إحنا وضحنالكو الآيات (الأدلة، البراهين) لو تفهمو. آه! إنتو اللي بتحبوهم بس هما مش بيحبوكو، وانتو بتؤمنو بكل الكتاب [بمعنى تاني، إنتو بتؤمنو بالتوراة والإنجيل، أما هما فا بيكفرو بكتابكو (القرآن)]. ولما بيقابلوكو، بيقولو، ’إحنا بنؤمن.‘ بس لما يكونو لوحدهم، بيعضو ضوافرهم من الغيظ منكو. قولو (ليهم): ’موتو بغيظكو. طبعن الله يعرف اللي في الصدور (كل الأسرار).‘ لو حصللكو خير بيحزنهم، بس لما شوية شر يجيلكو بيفرحو... (قرآن 118:3-120)

يا مؤمنين! ماتاخدوش اليهود والمسيحيين أولياء (أصحاب) ليكو، هما أولياء لبعض بس... (قرآن 51:5)

حاربو اللي مابيؤمنوش ب الله ولا باليوم الأخير (الآخرة)، ولا بيحرمو اللي حرمه الله ورسولو، ولا بيعترفو بدين الحقيقة (الإسلام)، (حتى لو كانو) من أهل الكتاب (= اليهود والمسيحيين)، لغاية ما يدفعو الجزية وهما مستسلمين وحاسين بالوطوّ. (قرآن 29:9)

ANTI-CHRISTIAN RIOT IN ALEXANDRIA REFLECTS UNDERLYING TENSION

2005-11-04T00:36:00.000+02:00

CAIRO, 30 Oct 2005 (IRINnews.org) - Recent anti-Christian riots in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria show that tension between Egypt’s Muslim majority and Coptic Christian minority remains high as the country heads towards parliamentary elections in November.

The riots erupted on 21 October following rumours that Saint George’s Coptic church in Alexandria had distributed a DVD containing material that was offensive to Muslims.

The Interior Ministry said 5,000 angry Muslims staged a protest demonstration outside the church, but the situation got out of hand after some of them began throwing stones at the building and at police who were present at the scene.

The police responded with tear gas and rubber bullets and three people were killed and dozens were injured in the ensuing melee.

According to independent Arabic-language daily Al-Masry al-Youm, three nearby shops selling alcohol – which is banned in Islam – were destroyed by angry demonstrators.

By the time the dust settled, 150 people had been arrested.

“There’s rising sensitivity over religious issues these days,” said Mohammed Sayyed Saïd, deputy director of the state-run Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies.

“I don’t think there were any political, or parliamentary, reasons for the disturbances. The immediate cause for the riots was a number of rumours circulating on the Internet,” the political analyst said.

These refered to the distribution of a DVD of a play performed by Saint George’s church two years ago. The play entitled “I Was Blind, But Now I Can See” supposedly tells the story of a young Christian convert to Islam who eventually becomes disillusioned with the Muslim faith.

“What’s interesting about this whole affair is that hardly anybody has seen the DVD in question,” Saïd said.

Worst incident for five years

It was Egypt’s worst outbreak of sectarian violence for five years, but the latest of several clashes between Muslims and Christians over the past year.

The Grand Sheikh of Cairo’s Al-Azhar mosque, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, and Coptic Pope Shenouda III, issued a joint statement expressing their regret at the violence in Alexandria, Egypt’s second city.

They both urged calm and called for inter-faith dialogue in order to resolve outstanding differences.

The government also expressed concern and the Pubic Prosecutor’s office announced that it would launch an investigation into the incident.

About 8 to 10 percent of Egypt’s 77 million people are Christian. Most belong to the Coptic, or Egyptian Orthodox church.

However, Islam is Egypt’s official state religion, and, according to the constitution, legislation is loosely based on Islamic Sharia law.

Christian-Muslim relations have generally been peaceful, although there have been periodic outbreaks of violence, especially in southern Egypt, where the issue is particularly sensitive.

Looking to the United States for protection

One Christian history expert at the American University in Cairo, who asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the subject, said the problem had been exacerbated by the rise of US power and influence in the Middle East.

“Neo-conservative opposition to Wahabi Islam in Washington,” he said, had served to bolster the leverage of Christian minorities in Islamic countries around the world and many of these minorities had looked to the United States as a potential source of protection.

The historian noted, however, that Egypt’s Coptic community was well aware that such “empowerment” from abroad could prove detrimental if it led to a fitna, or religious war.

Large-scale sectarian violence last erupted in Egypt in 2000, when 20 people were killed during armed clashes between Christians and Muslims in the village of al-Kusheh in the Nile valley south of Cairo.

The village was subsequently renamed Dar Al-Salaam, or “Haven of Peace,” as part of official efforts to smooth over the politically sensitive outburst of blood-letting.

Four years of relative calm ensued.

However smouldering resentment between Christians and Muslims burst into the open again in December 2004, when hundreds of Christians staged angry protests in Cairo and other towns in the Nile Delta to protest at the alleged forced conversion of the wife of a Coptic priest to Islam.

It subsequently emerged that the woman in question had converted voluntarily to Islam, but all the same, the government handed her back to church authorities, who whisked her off to a monastery.

Christians allege discrimination

Shortly afterwards, clashes between Muslims and Christians broke out in Minya province, 250 km south of Cairo, leaving one Muslim dead and 80 people wounded.

They appear to have been sparked off by a Coptic Christian attempt to build a church without official permission.

Many Copts complain of official discrimination against Christians, particularly at the local level.

Copts also point to the under-representation of Christians in the government, army and police at the national level.

Saïd, the political analyst at the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said that from a Muslim point of view, the importance attached to religious differences within Egypt was often exagerated.

“It sounds like a big conspiracy to cause divisions in the country,” he said.

Saïd discounted suggestions by some commentators that the Alexandria riots were instigated by politicians seeking to whip up anti-Christian feeling ahead of the November elections.

One Christian candidate in the city has subsequently stood down.

The coming parliamentary elections are supposed to be freer than previous polls, following reforms enacted by President Hosni Mubarak earlier this year.

The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist organisation which is widely seen as the most influential opposition movement, is still banned from taking part.

However, several independent candidates who are closely aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood are being allowed to stand.

Egyptian Blogger Detained

2005-11-03T14:18:00.000+02:00

Egyptian State Security arrested Egyptian blogger Abdel-Kareem Nabil Seliman from his home on October 26, 2005. Abdel-Kareem writes a blog with the pseudonym Kareem Amer, and he was most probably detained for his thoughts that are mainly anti-Islam. Abdel Kareem is also a reporter for the Copts United website. This is very bad news for all of us Egyptian bloggers, especially those who choose to penetrate all taboos for the sake of their conscience.

What is wrong with the Egyptian government? They arrest a liberal like Abdel and, on the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood are free to do what they want. This is a slap on the face to however much freedom there is in this country.

Please support Abdel Kareem by putting the “Free Abdel Kareem” banner on your blogs and websites.

Coptic nun stabbed, see pictures below

2005-10-23T00:09:00.000+02:00

This is old news by now: for the last week: Muslim demonstrations in front of Saint George's Church in Alexandria (more about this here), and as we're in the midst of all that week of religious hate and sectarian tensions, a Muslim young man two days ago stabbed a Coptic nun in the outdoors of the Church, in addition to a Christian man (said to be a lawyer) who tried to rescue her.

Both the nun and the lawyer are not in a dangerous state and are being treated.

Pictures:

Two pictures of the terrorist being arrested.

Nun Sarah in her blood

The truth is indeed offensive!

2005-10-22T14:26:00.000+02:00

A Christian young man is made to convert to Islam by manipulation or otherwise (which is not the issue). Later on, he decides that Islam is no more his piece of cake and reverts to Christianity. Islamists threaten to take his life so he runs for his life to a church.

This is the circulating scenario of a play that's been showing inside Mar Girgis (Saint George) Church in Alexandria, Egypt. Some 3,000 Muslims gathered in front of the church for the last week and committed terrible acts of violence and insults and slurs, throwing stones, giving no respect whatsoever to what Christians take as a sacred place of worship. Why? The protesters say the play is offensive to Islam.

It is indeed offensive. Yeah, pretty much disturbing and offensive! But that's not the play's fault, though. If anything is offensive, it's the fact that the apostates of Islam should be put to the sword according to Hadith and Koran. The play doesn't offend Islam; it's Islam that's offending itself and offending Muslims.

Muslims wake up! Don't blame the church for your problems. Whatever happened to freedom of speech? I'll tell you what happened: there's no such thing as freedom of speech here.

Christians have always been offended in Egypt. They've always been expected to turn the other cheek, and they have done that for a long time. Christians have been called "infidels" and "worshippers of gods besides God" in mosques and on TV. Why do Muslims think they can offend anybody but no-one should dare talk about Islam?

Prosecuting minorities in Mubarak's Egypt

2005-10-22T13:43:00.001+02:00

This is a translation of general parts of the article "Discriminating against Shiites in the era of Mubarak" by Dr. Saadeddine Ibraheem.

Translated by: Mamduh Schauki

During the three years I spent in the prisons of President Hosni Mubarak (2000-2003) I noticed a persistent and repetitive phenomenon: a "State security" case accompanied with a huge media propaganda, where a group of people (most of which are youth) are arrested, brought into one of the Tora Prisons - three of which I have personally experienced - and charged with big offenses. If proven guilty, the "offenders" are sentenced to 3 ~ 25 years in jail. The funny part is that most of those offenses, if not all of them, turn out in the end to be fake, lacking of good evidence, or the laws that criminalize them are unconstitutional. And during my stay at the Tora Prisons, I witnessed of this type of cases the following: the case of the devil-worshippers, case of the supporters of Sheika (Priestess) Manal, the gay men case, the Koranists case, case of the Sunna-deniers, and the case of the Shiite organization.

...

But why have cases of this type doubled in the era of Hosni Mubarak? The answer lies in the military-natured rule that Mubarak inherited after the assassination of President Sadat only to make it into a Police-natured one.

...

Dear Sirs in Lazoghli; Nasr City; and the Presidential Palace: stop chasing human beings by reasons of feelings and beliefs. These are matters of personal being and conscience that only God is entitled to judge.

Dear Allah:

2005-10-05T12:31:00.000+02:00

Why do you order men to beat their wives if they're not obedient? Why isn't there any tolerance for non-Muslims? Why do Christians and Jews have to pay the Jizya? Why should non-Muslims be faught and covered with shame? Why are Muslims ordered to not trust any non-Muslims "since they will not fail to do their best to corrupt you" (Koran 3:118)? Why do you demand the death of those who leave Islam?

I find great unease reading some of the verses found in your Koran, and the Hadiths of Your prophet (pbuh):

Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them. Then if they obey you, take no further action against them. Surely God is high, supreme. (Koran 4:34)

Fight them, and Allah will punish them by your hands, cover them with shame, help you (to victory) over them, heal the breasts of Believers (Koran 9:14)

Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn 'Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, 'Don't punish (anybody) with Allah's Punishment.' No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.'" (Sahih Bukhari Volume 4, Book 52, Number 260)

O you who believe! Take not as (your) bitaanah (advisors, consultants, protectors, helpers, friends, etc.) those outside your religion (pagans, Jews, Christians, and hypocrites) since they will not fail to do their best to corrupt you. They desire to harm you severely. Hatred has already appeared from their mouths, but what their breasts conceal is far worse. Indeed We have made clear to you the aayaat (proofs, evidence, verses), if you understand. Lo! You are the ones who love them but they love you not, and you believe in all the Scriptures [i.e., you believe in the Torah and the Gospel, while they disbelieve in your Book (the Qur’an)]. And when they meet you, they say, ‘We believe.’ But when they are alone, they bite the tips of their fingers at you in rage. Say: ‘Perish in your rage. Certainly Allah knows what is in the breasts (all the secrets).’ If a good befalls you, it grieves them, but some evil overtakes you, they rejoice at it… (Koran 3:118-120)

O you who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians as awliya’ (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), they are but awliya’ to one another… (Koran 5:51)

Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book (= Jews and Christians), until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued. (Koran 9:29)

Hmmm... just another blog post

2005-09-27T20:00:00.001+03:00

It's been a long time since I last posted anything here, I've just been all busy with many things those last 15 days, and also my university just started today...

Anyway, I've been looking at my old emails and I found an e-mail that was sent to me by "an intern at the press department of the French Embassy in Cairo," he said, and showed interest in me and my blog... My answers to his questions sum up a lot of my opinions on different issues, and i thought i'd post that email here, so here it is:

On 7/3/05, Scpo.LE-CAIRE-AMBA [e-mail address hidden] wrote:

Who are you ? [What kind of family are you from ? Did you travel or live abroad ? What did your studied ? What is your job ? How old are you ?]

What do you think ? [about Egyptian political life / Hosni Moubarak / opposition personnalities / islamists / the Kefaya movement and its various elements / US foreign policy / EU foreign policy, especially France foreign policy / the desirable political and economical system / religion]

Are you involved in any political or socially aware movement ?

About the blogs ; Why did you choose the blog to express yourself ?
What kind of relations do you have with other Egyptian bloggers ?
Who reads your blog ?

Do you have the feeling to be representative or useful ?

All these kinds of stuff. If you prefer not to write it on an unsecure medium like the Web, we can meet in real life and discuss.

Regards,
Jean-Baptiste.

On 7/13/05, Mamduh Schauki [mschauki@gmail.com] replied:

Hello, I'm really sorry i didn't reply that fast because your questions needed some time of focus so i'm now ready to answer them :-)

I'm Mamduh Shawqi. My father is very religious, unlike my mother who is much more liberal. I don't live with my father anyway, rather with my mother and stepfather, so it's easier for me because, unlike my father, to me nothing is sacred enough to not criticise. I did travel to Germany once for a week in August 2000, and stayed in Illinois USA for 4 months in 2001 as an exchange student. I also went to the Seeds of Peace camp in Maine, USA, in 2002 and 2003, where young people from countries of conflict stay together for 23 days.

I'm a Mass Communication student, 19 years old.

Egyptian political life nowadays is really complicated: you see new movements coming up every now and then, all claiming to want democracy, and this is like a wake-up for political life here that used to be almost dead. Hosni Mubarak is a dictator, Egypt has become much worse in many aspects ever since the dictators came to power. I don't really care if he's got a charismatic personality, because this is not making Egypt any better.

As for opposition personalities, i can't really make one opinion on all of them. But if you ask me about Aiman Nour, for instance, then I believe he's got no specific "message" to send. His party is supposed to be liberal, but as i used to be a member in that party (El Ghad), i believe that party has no specific goals (well, democracy is one, but how does that make it any different from other political parties and movements?), and i don't support it.

I am totally against Islamists, especially the fact that they want Islamic rule in Egypt. In a country with Muslims, Christians, a few Jews, Baha'is, and other religious groups that are in the closet, it is unfair to rule according to any religious law. And I also believe that this goes against the unity of Egyptians and Egyptian Identity.

Kifaya is not logical. Islamists, communists, secularists, Nasserists, and many other conflicting political groups can't really unite. This is an illusion. They claim they're united for democracy, but as i've been to one of their demonstrations: the mottos that are said are not neutral ones, and this is unfair.

The US has done good going into Iraq and getting rid of Saddam, and into Afghanistan getting rid of the Taliban. I wish the US and the EU, though, would start recognizing that in Egypt they're dealing with a dictator, and should help in getting rid of him, too... The same goes to France individually, and as part of the EU: make Mubarak feel that you're not happy dealing with a dictator.

Egypt should have a secular system that separates religion and state. This is based on what I said about Islamists earlier. As for the economic system: a more-capitalist mixed economy I think would be best.

I believe religion should be respected, but should not be forced on people through politics. The State should not relate to one religion and not another, the State should not be worried about people's afterlives, but rather their current lives.

I'm now a member in the new establishing Mother Egypt party; a secular, Egyptianist party that demands a secular state, and the return of the Egyptian Identity. We believe Egypt is not and was never an Arab country, because Egyptians are Egyptians, not Arabs.

As for why I chose a blog to express myself: well, in August and September last year i came across some blogs and i was not really familiar with them. The idea of a space for you to write your thoughts and have people read them interested me, and i started my own blog. I really didn't think anyone would read it, but it was great writing my thoughts somewhere and even just reading them over for myself.

I don't have special relations with any Egyptian bloggers, but i read some of the Egyptian blogs, some of which are really interesting with quite unique thoughts.

Whether I'm representative of anything is not up to me to decide. I just have my thoughts and hope for a better future for Egypt, really, according to my secular, Egyptianist beliefs.

Thanks a lot again for your interest in me and my blog, and again i apologize for not replying earlier.

The Egyptian Presidential Erection 2005

2005-09-03T22:52:00.000+03:00

This presidential election in Egypt is a very funny "masra7eya" (play)! A dictatorship cannot just switch into a democracy, the same way a cat can't become a mouse.

Here's what i think:

- THE CANDIDATES are hilarious people, stupid and pathetic (e.g. Ahmad el-Sabbahi), very rude and dictators themselves (e.g. Noaman Goma), which makes you think they were probably all chosen by the current system to play the roles of the candidates.

- MUBARAK wants even more power, it's never enough for him, even if he has to abuse the minds and hearts of Egyptians, and their traditions, to propagate for himself.

- RELIGIOUS LEADERS have never been uglier, lower people than they are now. They are using their religious authority in favor of Mubarak, and also abusing the fact that people trust them as leaders of the religious communities.

- NO INTERNATIONAL SUPERVISION. They say it with much pride: "no foreign interference in Egypt's business!" Well who the fuck are they fooling?! This is not "just another" presidential election somewhere in the world; it is an election that everybody knows by heart will be screwed. So without "foreign interference" this election is just hoax.

Assassination of Sadat: The uninvestigated and forgotten crime

2005-09-01T17:23:00.000+03:00

Click here to sign a petition to the United Nations urging it to start investigating Sadat's assassination as it investigates El-Hariri's.

From The Free Egyptians - The Egyptian people who hail Sadat as the "hero of war and peace" have the conviction that Mubarak has purposely omitted to order 'real' investigations into the assassination of Sadat simply because he stood behind it.

Saad El-Deen Ibraheem, Egypt's leading human rights activist, was about to form 5 years ago an independent investigative team to look into the assassination of Sadat when Mubarak framed him of a fictitious crime and put him behind bars for 3 years, instead of 7 after the US intervention.

Also, 2 years ago, Mubarak was very furious that the image of Sadat's body as riddled with bullets was leaked and published for the first time ever after the assassination of Sadat in a local independent weekly newspaper. Mubarak had the chief editor fired. Republishing of the image by any newspaper has been banned.

Mubarak does have every good reason for suppressing information about Sadat's murder and for refusing to order full scale independent, transparent investigation into the matter.

According to witness accounts published in the Egyptian weekly Al-Araby Al-Nasery on June 19, 2005, Sadat had sacked Mubarak but told him to remain in office until Sadat found a replacement. Early on the morning of October 6, assassination day, Sadat had appointed the former deputy prime minister, Dr. Abdel Kader Hatem, as vice president in Mubarak's place. Sadat was supposed to have signed a presidential decree to this effect after the parade. Al-Araby Al-Nasery published a photo of Sadat shaking hands with Dr. Hatem on the morning of October 6. This would be the first time that such a photo comes to light. According to the said newspaper, Sadat was angry with Mubarak because the later had been making secret contacts with the military behind Sadat's back. Other reports say that Sadat also had been made aware of the fact that Mubarak was secretly contacting the Saudi government. The Saudi government had severed all relations with the Egyptian government following the signing of peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in March 1979. The fanatic Saudi religious establishment which is closely connected to the royal family had condemned Sadat to death for making peace with "the Jews, the enemies of Allah." Sadat was defiant and said "the Saudis were but a bunch trash nomads before we cleaned and educated them." The Saudi royal family responded by saying that Saudi Arabia would never have anything to do with Egypt so long as Sadat remained in power.

Sadat had in a surprise and unexplainable move appointed in 1975 general Hosni Mubarak, the hitherto commander of the Egyptian air force, as vice president. It was reported then that Sadat's influential wife, Jehan, had recommended Mubarak for the post. Sadat's half-British wife and Mubarak's half-British wife are cousins. Mubarak, however, has spread the rumor that the US government imposed him on Sadat. Mubarak still uses this rumor to promote the other rumor that the US government was behind the assassination of Sadat.

To consolidate his position which was thought to be too big for him by almost every Egyptian, newly appointed vice president Mubarak had begun almost immediately to appoint his confidants in sensitive positions in the military, the police, secret service and in the administration.

One such confidant was Mubarak's old friend colonel Abu Ghazala. Abu Ghazala was only the commander of the artillery unit of the 2nd army when Mubarak became vice president. Only 2 years later Mubarak appointed Abu Ghazala military attaché to Washington as a first step in a spectacular advancement plan Mubarak devised for Abu Ghazala. It is noteworthy that Mubarak also appointed his half-British brother-in-law, wing commander Mounir Sabet, the head of the arms procurement office in Washington. However, 3 years later, in 1980, General Ahmed Badawi, the then Minister of defense, recalled Abu Ghazala from Washington to assume the post of director of military intelligence. As this interfered with Mubarak's advancement plan for Abu Ghazala, Mubarak told Abu Ghazala to disobey the transfer order and remain in Washington. In January 1981, Mubarak appointed Abu Ghazala chairman of chiefs of staff, a post only second to the minister of defense. On March 6, 1981, the minister of defense and archenemy of Mubarak along with 13 high ranking military personnel died in a highly controversial and questionable helicopter crash. Abu Ghazala was supposed to be on the the plan with the minister of defense but his trip was cancelled at the last minutes on orders by vice president Mubarak. Abu Ghazala succeeded general Badawi as minister of defense. So, Mubarak advanced Abu Ghazala from a colonel to minister of defense in only 4 years passing over and bypassing hundreds in the chain of command.

As minister of defense and general commander of the armed forces, Abu Ghazala busied himself immediately he took office with the preparation for annual military parade commemorating the Yom-Kippur War which was due only 6 months thence.

The internal political situation in Egypt was boiling and heading to a disaster at the time. The fanatic anti-Jewish, anti-peace Wahabi royal family and religious establishment of Saudi Arabia which had officially declared Jihad following the signing of peace treaty between Egypt and Israel in March 1979 had thrown all its economic and political weight behind a plan aimed at damaging peace and punishing Sadat to make an example of him in order to deter any Arab or Muslim ruler from making peace with Israel in the future. The Saudi government which had already gained strong foothold on the political, economic, religious and cultural life in Egypt since Nasser's death used its connections and influence with the Islamic groups, mass media and officials and politicians that had been on the generous payroll of the Saudi government with the idea of mobilizing the Egyptian public opinion against Sadat and peace in order to destabilize and overthrow Sadat's regime. Meanwhile, the Saudi, Iraqi and other Arab governments formed the so-called rejections front whose main objective was to frustrate peace. Egypt's membership in the Arab league was suspended. Sadat had become completely isolated in the Arab and Muslim world. In July 1981, crown prince Fahd declared his peace initiative as an alternative to peace between Egypt and Israel. The initiative was rejected by both Egypt and Israel. The Saudis felt the need to do something fast for the fear that other Arab countries might be tempted to follow Sadat's example. They also feared that Sadat might try to destabilize their own regime using his strong ties with the US and Israel. To promptly rid the Arabs and Muslims of 'traitor and kafer (idolater) Sadat,' the Saudi-controlled Islamic groups of Egypt( the Brotherhood, Jihad and Jamaa Islamya- popularly dubbed in Egypt the Saudi 5th column) which were mobilizing for action against Sadat openly condemned Sadat to death as a "kafir who makes peace with the enemies of Allah". It is noteworthy that the Saudi government had tried numerous times to get Nasser killed in late 1950s early 1960s using elements of the Brotherhood and religious army officers. In one instance, the Saudi government paid Egyptian lieutenant Essam Khalil US$ 1 million to kill Nasser. Khalil, however, surrendered the money and himself to Nasser. To spite the Saudis, Nasser put Khalil in charge of the super secret rocket project. Therefore, Sadat panicked and on Mubarak's advice ordered on September 4, 1981, the roundup of all the religious leaders along with his major political opponents, including journalists, writers, politicians and party leaders. That did not eliminate the threat on Sadat's life. According to the then minister of interior, El-Nabawi Ismail, the state security agency (Mabaheth) reported that it was in a possession of a video film showing shooting training in the desert by elements of Jamaa Islamya. He also said that there were credible and confirmed reports that various Islamic groups would shoot Sadat during the annual parade of October 6th. Almost everyone in the country knew that Islamic extremists would try to assassinate Sadat during the parade. Why were not those practicing to kill the president rounded up too?

In those hectic and paranoid days how could anyone come close enough to Sadat to shoot him. During the parade, Sadat had four layers of security: personal bodyguards, who were within 15 meters of Sadat; the Republican (Presidential) Guard, a military unit of commandos selected to guard the president, which was stationed outside the 15 meters; the Ministry of Interior and Central Security Services (Amn al-Markazy), which provided rooftop surveillance and roadside security for Sadat's motorcade; and other civilian police and military guards.

Despite this redundantly tough security, the assassins were able to get within 15 meters of Sadat and kill him.

By August 6, 1981, Mubarak had replaced all Sadat's men in key and sensitive positions by his own. The minister of defense, the minister of interior, the director of general intelligence, the chairman of chiefs of staff, the director of military intelligence and the director of the state security directorate , to name a few, were now Mubarak's men.

The assassins participated in the parade, though they were not in the military, save for their leader, lieutenant Islamboly, who had been banned in the previous 3 years from participating in the parade for security reasons( his elder brother was serving time in prison for his affiliation with Jamaa Islamya.)

The assassins could not have avoided all the extraordinarily tough security hurdles on their own. Even if they manage to participate in the parade, they could not have been cleared through 10 checking points with live ammunition, grenades and firing pins. How can the 5 of them overpower Sadat's 150 guards who seal off completely a circle around the president whose radius exceeds 15m? As the assassins were able to overcome all these impenetrable defenses with so much ease, then they must have been aided and abetted by accomplices that are very highly placed in the government. One guess who they were by examining the nature of logistical and intelligence assistance given to the assassins to ensure that they succeed in killing Sadat:

1. The ban on lieutenant Islamboly which was in force for 3 years because he was considered a serious security risk was suddenly lifted without explanation. In fact, he received in mid-August strict orders from the director of the military intelligence to participate in the parade. As an officer in artillery regiment 333, Islamboly's role was to be seated in the cabin of a lorry that tows a large cannon as he used to 3 years before. On the open deck of the lorry, 4 soldiers were to be seated.

2. After having been cleared to participate in the parade, Islamboly was approached by elements of Jamaa Islamya who informed him that he was chosen to carry our a Jihadi ( martyrdom) mission. They introduced him to 4 Jihadis who had just completed military service. One of them, Hussein Ali, who used to be a sniper in the army was in fact the shooting champion of the armed forces. The plan was for Islamboly to replace the original 4 participating soldiers from his unit by the 4 assassins.

3. The 4 assassins and others had been practicing in the desert the shooting of Sadat at the parade. These shooting exercises were made under the supervision and protection of the police. The then minister of interior, Ismaiel, admitted that Mabaheth was in possession of video films of these exercises.

4. Three days before the parade Islamboly was able to dismiss the 4 soldiers from his unit who were assigned to ride the lorry with him at the parade. He gave each of them a 4-day sick leave. Islamboly sneaked the 4 assassins in the barracks impersonating the dismissed 4 soldiers where they stayed for 3 days and participated in the final rehearsals for the parade.

5. Live ammunition and firing pins were removed from weaponry issued to all personnel participating in the parade. As an added security measure, 10 check points were set up by the military police and intelligence along the road leading to the parade area to check papers and search for live ammunition and firing pins. Notwithstanding, the 5 assassins whose lorry was laden with grenades, machine guns with firing pins and live bullets were cleared through all the 10 check points.

6. In view of the shaky security situation in those days, president Sadat, vice president Mubarak and defense minister Abu Ghazala were to wear bullet proof vests under their Nazi-style uniform. In addition, the 150 security guards that surrounded Sadat made it impossible for any potential assassin to get within 15 meters of the president without getting killed or arrested. The wall of the reviewing stand behind which Sadat was seated afforded the president a perfect cover against shooting. If Sadat dived behind the wall, no one can shoot him from the other side of the wall as the wall is too high (180 cm) and too thick (80 cm). Most importantly, how to guarantee that Mubarak, sitting on Sadat's right, and Abu Ghazala, sitting on Sadat's left, would not get hurt in the shooting.

To overcome these obstacles, the following happened:

- Sadat's 150 US-trained security guards were dismissed a few minutes before the lorry carrying the assassins pulled over right in front of the podium. they were ordered to deploy behind the podium. They were told the assassins were to attack the back of the podium.

- Though the ground parade was still in progress, the show in the air began. This attracted everyone's gaze upward just at the time 5 assassins jumped from their army lorry only meters from the podium. The air force acrobatics was timed to begin with the arrival of artillery units in front of the main reviewing stand.

- Sadat was told by his vice president and defense minister to stand up to salute back the officer who was approaching the podium after dismounting from the canon-towing lorry. As Sadat stood up, three, or four, things happened simultaneously. The approaching officer doubled back to fetch grenades and machine gun from the lorry. The former shooting champion of the armed forces who was sitting on the open deck of the lorry stood up and shot Sadat in the neck because he knew beforehand that Sadat would wear bullet proof vest. Both Mubarak and Abu Ghazala dived quickly for cover and crawled as far away from Sadat's falling body as possible. As can be seen from the image of Sadat's body which was classified for over 22 years until leaked by some disgruntled intelligence elements to a local opposition newspaper, Sadat fell on his back after he was shot in the neck and this is evidenced by wounds which are concentrated in his lower abdomen and upper chest. But what about the wounds on his sides which were obviously caused by smaller caliber bullets. The assassins were using 7.62mm caliber submachine guns. Such discrepancies explain why Mubarak suppressed picture of Sadat's body along with other information for a long time So, Mubarak and/or Abu Ghazala must have shot Sadat with small pistols in the commotion to make sure he died.

- someone left a chair on the other side of the podium wall from Sadat on which Islamboly stood and was able to spray Sadat's body with his machine gun. Without the chair, Islamboly could not aim at Sadat.

- Though the assassins appeared to be shooting indiscriminately shooting at everyone in the podium, they shouted to both Mubarak and Abu Ghazala to stay out of harm's way. The assassin Atta Tayel shouted to Abu Ghazala: " get away!." Co-assassin Abdel Hameed Abdel Aal shouted to Mubarak when their eyes met: "it is not you we are after. It is the Pharaoh whom we want." This is highly uncharacteristic because fanatic Islamists consider "those who belong to idolater regime" to be idolaters themselves and deserve to be killed. If they wanted Sadat only, why did they kill 7 more?

Other deceptive tactics employed at the parade included the breakdown of three vehicles right in front of the main reviewing stand 10, 15 and 20 minutes into the parade respectively. When the assassins' lorry pulled over in front of the podium those who weren't gazing at the sky to watch the air show assumed that the lorry had broken down.

If Mubarak was not behind all that, he would have:

1. Sacked Abu Ghazala for being responsible for what happened to the president at the parade.

2. Formed an independent commission to conduct a full scale investigation into the assassination of the president.

Mubarak did the opposite. He promoted Abu Ghazala to field marshal and deputy prime minister as if to reward him for the killing of Sadat. Mubarak released from prison shortly after the assassination of Sadat Omar El-Telmisani, Brotherhood leader, along with other Islamic group leaders and Muslim extremists who were all imprisoned only weeks earlier by Sadat. Did Mubarak reward them for killing Sadat? Also, Mubarak has prevented independent investigations into the killing of Sadat and suppressed vital information pertaining to the crime and concealed or destroyed vital evidence in the case. The most notable evidence which Mubarak has concealed or destroyed is the footage of the parade shot by the Egyptian state-owned television station. It shows Sadat being gestured by both Mubarak and Abu Ghazala to stand up to salute the young officer who was approaching the podium. It shows both Mubarak and Abu Ghazala going down as Sadat rose. There is another equally important piece of evidence that is missing and feared destroyed. It is the video film taken of 4 of Sadat's killers along with others while training in the desert for the killing of Sadat one month before the parade. The former minister of interior, El-Nabawi Ismaiel, said on several occasions that the state security directorate ( Mabaheth) was in possession of this video tape. He also said that Sadat's 4 killers had been under close surveillance by Mabaheth for 2 weeks before the parade.

The plan for the assassination of Sadat must have been the work of an able military planner. He prepared and executed it as a full-fledged war game or maneuver involving ground, air and special forces. He left nothing to chance and took care of every minute detail. He made sure that each and every participant understood and practiced his part well. They must have used a mock up podium while practicing in the desert. Even the aftermath was not neglected. The first thing the police and other security forces did immediately after the shooting stopped was to confiscate and destroy films and videos taken of the parade by photographers and news agencies.

Evidence destruction has begun almost immediately. What contributed to the absence of films showing the actual killing of Sadat was timing the air show to take place at the time the assassins' lorry pulled over in front of the podium. The deafening thunderous sound of a big formation of Mirages flying at a very low altitude and appearing suddenly from behind the podium must have overwhelmed and startled everyone present, including photographers and journalists, and forced him to gaze upward. One Egyptian television camera, however, which is allocated by order for the president alone in any national event was focused on him all the time. It captured everything, including the rise of Sadat and the fall of both Mubarak and Abu Ghazala.

Though this film is missing, a lot of people saw it. In fact there is enough evidence in this case to bring charges against Mubarak, Abu Ghazala and tens of coconspirators. Mubarak once admitted implicitly killing Sadat. In 1984, in answering a question at a local press conference as to why he had not appointed a vice president, Mubarak said: "I did not inherit it.." In English, this amounts to:" I took it by force."

Sadat was a world great leader and his assassination cannot go uninvestigated and unpunished. We therefore urge the United Nations to delegate an investigative commission to Egypt to investigate the killing of Sadat. Sadat is no less a leader than late Hariri of Lebanon and as such Sadat's assassination must be accorded the same international sympathy, attention and investigation.

Blog updates were not sent...

2005-08-25T22:11:00.000+03:00

There was a problem with my blog's settings on Bloglet (the site that manages TEB update acknowledgement), which means that those who subscribed to TEB updates did not receive updates for the last two posts.

Bloglet should now be working well (if you get an email about this post then it's working).

Wafaa Sultan confronts Islam on Aljazeera

2005-08-12T04:50:00.000+03:00

This is one of those rare things you find on Aljazeera. We all know how Aljazeera always sounds like it speaks for the Muslim Brotherhood and the terrorists, but there is one single show on that channel that keeps impressing me every now and then, that is "Al Ittijah Al Mo'akiss". The episode of Tuesday July 26 2005 was about Islam and Terrorism.

In that episode they hosted two guests: Ahmad bin Mahammad (Islamist), and Wafaa Sultan (a writer/researcher very critical of Islam, and very straightforward to the point, too :->).

YOU CAN'T MISS THIS:
For non-Arabic speakers, check out excerpts of that episode here, with English translation (thanks to MEMRI).

And for Arabic speakers, you can listen to an audio version of the full episode here. You need to click on the button next on the top left.

External links:
Annaqed
MEMRI

The Next Secular Revolution?

2005-08-11T02:22:00.000+03:00

Austin Dacey, Free Inquiry Magazine:

March 15, 2005. Tehran. Somewhere, a Qur'an is burning. It is Tchahr Shanbe Souri, the traditional Persian fire festival, and in major cities throughout the country Iranians are turning the celebration-denounced as pagan by the ruling clerics-into a protest. There are reports of revelers chanting "Down with the Islamic Republic" and casting Islamist literature and even scripture into bonfires.¹ Government militia respond brutally, and violent clashes with demonstrators continue into the night.

The episode is not isolated but appears to be part of a trend in which large numbers of Iranians are taking to the streets, as they did in July 1999, October 2001, November 2002, and July 2003. During the fire festival of 2000, so many bushes were set ablaze that the pilot of an Air France plane attempting to land in Tehran changed course, thinking that a revolution had begun in Iran. The pilot may have been right.

Twenty-six years ago, 98 percent of Iranians voted in favor of Ayatollah Khomeini's referendum calling for an Islamic republic. Today, half the population is between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. They were not even born at the time of the revolution. An August 2002 telephone public-opinion poll found that only 19 percent of Iranians supported a politically active clergy, while 68 percent said their family's financial situation had gotten worse since the Islamic Revolution of 1979.² An overwhelming majority favor a new referendum, which asks simply: theocracy or democracy?

As in 1979, university students are at the forefront of the fundamental shifts now underway in Iranian society. The election of President Mohammad Khatami in 1997 on a platform of reform gave them fresh hope. Throughout the 1990s, they organized under the auspices of a national umbrella group, the Office of Consolidation Unity, or OCU. But by 2004, Khatami's initiatives were stalled, and most student activists had come to regard the reformist program as a sham.

"The theocratic regime is nonreformable," says Aryo B. Pirouznia, coordinator of the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran or SMCCDI, a Texas-based network of activists inside and outside Iran. According to Pirouznia, SMCCDI represents the orientation of the current generation of activists: pro-Western, media-savvy, anti-"reformist," and explicitly secularist.

Today's activists are secularist in two senses. First, they are convinced that "religion is to go back to the mosques and the hearts of those who want it," says Pirouznia. "Even the Ayatollahs are saying that a majority of Iranians is no longer attending regular services. A lot of young Iranians are changing their Islamic names, like Mohammad, to Persian names. That can give you a very clear indication that they are turning their backs to Islam, rejecting a privilege of having the name of the prophet." The goal is absolute separation of mosque and state: "Islamic democracy is in itself a pure contradiction. What's going to happen to Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, and atheists?"

Today's activists are also increasingly operating independently of any religious organizations, including the OCU, which descends from a state-backed body of religious students involved in the Cultural Revolution of the 1980s that Islamicized Iranian universities. Today's street demonstrations are spontaneous outpourings rather than centrally planned actions. The ultimate goal of these demonstrations? The overthrow of the Islamic Republic. By what means? That depends on whom you ask. SMCCDI favors a nonviolent popular uprising to oust the mullahs, the creation of a transitional government that would administer a UN-monitored referendum on the theocracy, and the formation of a National Commission for Reconciliation to begin a process of national healing.

Mass media are crucial to this secular movement. Again, SMCCDI is representative. Their Web site averages sixty thousand hits a day. They disseminate their calls for secular democracy through the many Los Angeles-based radio and satellite-TV programs that broadcast in Iran, as well as Voice of Israel, Voice of America, and the BBC. In the words of SMCCDI's charter, which has been read in Farsi repeatedly over the airwaves:

The most effective way the outside world can help the democratic movement in Iran is by publicizing the Iranian people's grievances and their yearning and struggles for freedom. The world's media need to focus on our peaceful resistance to establish basic human rights. TV coverage, not bullets and tanks, will end Iran's theocracy and bring democracy and tolerance to the Middle East.³

Many anticipate a general boycott of the June 2005 Iranian elections. Few will venture predictions, but with increased pressure by an emboldened Bush administration, the country might look radically different by the time of Tchahr Shanbe Souri next year.

This special section of Free Inquiry aims to introduce readers to the secular student movement, which may play a pivotal role in the future of Iran. Effort has been made to present various perspectives, including the neocon foreign policy expert Michael Ledeen (interviewed by author Ibn Warraq), a former OCU member, and a young woman who was among the crowd of students whose exasperation with "reform" boiled over at President Khatami at Tehran University in December 2004. The editors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Pooyan Aslani, Azam Kamguian, Majid Mohammadi, Ibn Warraq, and three translators who wish to remain anonymous.

Footnotes:
1. "Traditional 'Pagan' Celebration Turns into Street Fights against Regime Forces," SMCCDI Information Service, March 15, 2005.
2. Public Opinion Survey in Iran, August 23-28, 2002, Tarrance Group.
3. Available at www.daneshjoo.org.

Austin Dacey, the editor of this special section, is an associate editor of Free Inquiry and director of Educational Programs for the Center for Inquiry - Transnational.

Egypt Police, Pro-Reform Activists Clash

2005-07-31T05:37:00.000+03:00

Egyptian riot policemen clash with pro-reform activists Saturday July 30, 2005, during a protest in central Cairo against President Hosni Mubarak. Arabic slogan read as 'No for Mubarak, 24 years of Oppression'. (AP Photo)

By Nadia ABULMAGD
Associated Press Writer

CAIRO, Egypt — Police and government supporters beat pro-reform activists with batons, sometimes kicking them as they lay on the ground, during a protest Saturday against President Hosni Mubarak's announcement that he would run for re-election for a fifth time.

The vote is the first in which Mubarak — in power for 24 years — will face an opponent, and his government has said it will serve as a launching pad for greater democracy. The United States also praised the elections, though Mubarak opponents are more skeptical.

On Saturday, several hundred men and women were gathering to begin their march toward Cairo's main square when men in plainclothes descended on them, swinging billy clubs and assaulting the demonstrators.

Burly government supporters surrounded activists sprawled on the pavement, kicking them in the head and ribs and tearing at their clothes. Others lifted protesters in the air by the arms and legs, hauling them off to police trucks. One elderly man wandered in a daze, his head bleeding.

"Down with the rule of the dog Mubarak," one young man yelled as he was being clubbed.

The Interior Ministry said the demonstrators had gathered illegally and, after refusing warnings to leave, threw stones at police. Security forces dispersed the gathering, arresting 20 people, who were still being held, the ministry said in a statement. Others were detained and released.

Protesters denied any stones were thrown.

Most major opposition groups are boycotting the Sept. 7 election, calling Mubarak's move to open the vote to multiple candidates a sham. The 77-year-old Mubarak is expected to win easily.

There was similar violence in May during a constitutional referendum, when government supporters attacked and sexually assaulted several women during a reform protest.

That violence brought criticism from the United States, which has been pressing its ally to ensure the September election is fair and democratic.

During a June 20 visit to Egypt to press for reform, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice condemned the referendum assaults, saying the Egyptian government must "make certain that people can associate and can peacefully petition."

Leaders in Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party have been promising to reporters — as recently as Thursday — that such violence would not be repeated.

But the assault Saturday was swift and heavy. The opposition had called for the demonstration to take place in Cairo's Tahrir — or Liberation — Square, the most prominent square in the capital, near the NDP's headquarters.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw up to 20 people being beaten. Two reporters from Associated Press Television News were also beaten. Activists ran, some weeping. Others staggered away from being assaulted, their pants and shirts torn open.

One activist, Karim al-Shair, was seen being dragged by his hair.

"I was running fast, but I was surrounded by about 15 people who started beating me hard and they tried to take off my clothes," al-Shair, 24, told AP afterward.

Samar Mohammed, 27, said the attackers tore off her headscarf and knocked her and a number of her friends to the ground. Under the pile of people, "I wasn't able to breath and when they saw I was almost fainting, they took me away and told me to leave," said Mohammed.

It was not known whether the attackers in plainclothes were members of the security forces or civilians, although they worked with riot police, who were lined up blocking the square and sometimes joined in the beatings.

"It's very clear that the orders today are slaughter," said another activist, Wail Khalil. As he spoke, a large man in a white T-shirt and a gun came up with several men, surrounded Khalil and took him away.

Among those arrested were Ayman Barakat — the lawyer for Ayman Nour, Mubarak's most prominent opponent in the upcoming election — and George Ishaq, a 66-year-old leader of the Kifaya movement, one of the most vocal anti-Mubarak organizations. Both were later released, as were several other Kifaya leaders.

"What happened today erases all the reform promises Mubarak made" in his speech Thursday, Ishaq told AP at the Journalists Syndicate, where many of the protesters fled. "This despotic regime is so intolerant, it has gone over the edge, but we're going on with our movement."

© Copyright 2005, The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP Online news report may not be published, broadcast or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.

IRAN STOOPS TO A NEW LEVEL OF BARBARITY

2005-07-25T22:51:00.000+03:00

Boys crying on the way to the gallows

Getting the death ropes ready to suffocate the kids...

Goodbye, young kids...

(GayEgypt.com - July 20, 2005) Iranian authorities hanged two boys for homosexual acts with another boy (allegedly 13) in the city of Masshad. At the time of the crime the two boys were both in the early to mid teens, one sixteen and the other believed to have been a juvenile. However they had been in prison awaiting execution for between fourteen months and two years (depending on which media account you read).

Before the execution they were brutally beaten 228 times each for allegedly having had been involved in theft and having had possession of alcahol at the time of the crime.

The prosecution claimed that the 13 year old had been raped at knifepoint but in Iran rape is often used as a smokescreen to justify gay executions. It is likely that the charges of alcahol use and theft were thrown in order to deter any sympathy for such young "offenders".

The executions went ahead despite the fact that Iran is a signatory to the 1994 convention banning the death penalty for minors. Roholla Raz-zadeh, the defending attorney, explained, “We did protest, but the Supreme Court accepted the death penalty imposed by the lower court.”

According to the National Council of Resistance of Iran the city of Masshad had witnessed widescale popular unrest against the new government just a few days earlier. It is not known yet whether there is any link between this and the timings of the executions.

A Government official expressed anger that the age of the victims had been leaked but insisted that they deserved to be hung. However he gave directions to the Iranian media not to reapeat this mistake.

“Even if certain websites made a reference to their age, journalists should not pursue this. These individuals were corrupt. Their sentence was carried out with the approval of the judiciary and it served them right.”

Bomb blast near Pyramids; no wounded

2005-07-25T20:00:00.000+03:00

(Jerusalem Post) Only a day after multiple bomb attacks in the Egyptian Sharm e-Sheikh resort killed over 90 people, a man detonated a bomb several kilometers from the Pyramids of Giza on Sunday, police said.

The man was critically wounded, but the blast caused no other casualties.

Investigators were trying to determine whether the man was heading for the nearby tourist area of Kerdassa, a bazaar of souvenir shops near the Pyramids, a senior security official involved in the investigation said.

The device, which the man was carrying in a sack, apparently went off accidentally in the neighborhood of Kufr Tuhurmus, several kilometers (miles) from Kerdassa, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the probe.

Security has been hiked up in many parts of Cairo after a string of simultaneous bombings in the Red Sea resort of Sharm e-Sheikh killed 90 people early Saturday.

Two car bombs, apparently driven by suicide attackers, detonated at the hotel in Sharm's main strip of Naama Bay and three kilometers away at a minibus lot in the Old Market, an area frequented by Egyptians who work at Sharm's resorts.

A third blast, from a bomb hidden in a sack, went off about the same time near a boardwalk along the beach where tourists often stroll at night.

The force of the explosion was so strong it blew out windows a kilometer away, and sent hundreds of hysterical tourists and Egyptians running into the streets.

Egypt has arrested over 70 people for questioning over the bombings.

Egypt's interior minister said investigators were looking into whether there were links between the Sharm blasts and the bombings last October in Taba, which killed 34 people, including 13 Israeli. Both attacks were perpetrated despite the massive presence of Egyptian security forces in Sinai, a strategically important area bordering Israel and the Gaza Strip.

Local investigators were also examining the possibility that foreigners carried out the blasts that leveled the reception area of the luxury Ghazala Garden Hotel in Sharm e-Sheikh's popular Naama Bay district and ripped apart a coffee house crowded with Egyptians in the nearby Old Market.

Most of the victims were Egyptian, but a number of tourists were also counted among the dead, including two Britons, two Germans, an Italian and a Czech.

Sana Hussein Agbariya, from the Israeli-Arab village of Musmus, who was lightly wounded in the attack, was the only Israeli casualty reported; some 10,000 Israelis were in Sinai when the attack occurred, but most were vacationing further north.

An Israeli Embassy representative visited Agbariya in the Egyptian hospital where she was taken for treatment. She was taken back to Israel soon after by ambulance, and by Saturday evening she arrived at the Taba border crossing, where Magen David Adom ambulances took her to Yoseftal Hospital in Eilat, MDA reported. She was later released.

Both an al-Qaida-linked group and a previously unknown, apparently local group, claimed responsibility for the well-coordinated attacks.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak vowed to hunt down the culprits. Mubarak flew into Sharm e-Sheikh and went directly to inspect the scene at the hotel. Heavily armed security forces guarded Mubarak as he walked past the bomb-ravaged complex and spoke with officials.

"This cowardly, criminal act is aimed at undermining Egypt's security and stability and harming its people and its guests," Mubarak said during a live, nationally televised broadcast.

"This will only increase our determination in chasing terrorism, cornering it and uprooting it."

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Mubarak Saturday evening and expressed the country's condolences over the deaths in the blasts.

Sharon told Mubarak that compromises must not be made with extreme Islamic terrorists and that they must be fought with all means possible.

According to the Prime Minister's Office, Mubarak thanked Sharon for his call and said that Egypt and Israel would continue to cooperate in fighting extremists.

Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres issued a statement saying that "the entire world must fight together against terrorism. Our heart is with the Egyptian people and President Mubarak during their time of pain over the loss of so many innocents."

President Moshe Katsav also expressed condolences.

US President George W. Bush also phoned Mubarak to offer his support. "Standing together with the rest of the civilized world, we will win the conflict against this global scourge," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

PROTEST NOW! SAY "NO!" TO UGLY ACTS OF TERRORISM!

2005-07-24T10:49:00.000+03:00

Okay, I know it's somewhat too late now but i'll do that anyway. I got two emails today about an anti-terrorism protest on the sidewalks on October 6 Bridge planned for starting at 5:30 pm TODAY (check date above)! Please read Karim el Sahi's related blog entry for more details...

Toll continues to rise in Egypt blasts

2005-07-23T16:12:00.000+03:00

(Aljazeera.net) An Egyptian security source has put the toll from a series of bombs in Sharm al-Shaikh at 83.

The toll continued to rise throughout Saturday after a cafe and two luxury hotels in the Red Sea resort were attacked in the early hours.

The deaths occurred in two car bomb blasts and another explosion, possibly a third car bomb. A rescue official said at least 136 people were wounded, but that figure could reach 200.

Medical sources have confirmed to Aljazeera the toll may continue to rise as many of the injured are in critical conditions, Samir Omar Aljazeera's correspondent reported.

Foreigners among dead

British people, Dutch, French, Spaniards, Kuwaitis and Egyptians were among the casualties, police sources said, but the vast majority of dead and wounded are Egyptian. Earlier reports had Qataris among the dead, a statement later refuted by the Qatari embassy in Cairo.

Shaken tourists spoke of mass panic and hysteria as people fled bomb after bomb, with bodies strewn across the roads.

A rescue official said many of the wounded were Egyptian workers who had gathered at a cafe in the old market where the first blast struck. The blasts occurred on what is a national holiday in Egypt, Revolution Day.

He said 17 of the dead were burnt beyond recognition by the explosions.

A team from the Dutch embassy in Cairo was heading to the resort after rumours that Dutch tourists were among the casualties, the Dutch Foreign Ministry said.

Britain announced that some of its nationals were among the dead, and a similar ambassadorial team was being sent to the scene.

After his visit to Sharm al-Shaikh hospital, the British ambassador to Egypt told Aljazeera two British people were transferred to Cairo by helicopter for medical treatment.

Rescue operation

Rescue teams continued searching for survivors and bodies under the debris, Aljazeera correspondent Husayn Abd al-Ghani reported.

The Red Crescent fears some victims are still stuck under the debris, he said.

The Egyptian security authorities have stepped up security measures inside and outside Cairo International airport following the explosions.

Israel has offered to send army rescue teams to assist in the clear-up operation, but is not planning to order the repatriation of the 10,000 nationals estimated to be holidaying in the Sinai resorts.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has ended his holiday and arrived at the resort to examine the situation.

Serious injuries

The blasts came within minutes of each other shortly after 1am (2200 GMT), at a time when many tourists were still out in bars and markets in the popular and hitherto safe resort. The blasts appeared to be co-ordinated.

A police source said one bomb appeared to have exploded near the bazaar in Sharm al-Shaikh itself, with at least three more in the luxury hotel strip of Naama Bay about 6km away, popular with divers and holidaymakers from Europe.

A tourist bazaar, the Ghazala Gardens Hotel and the Moevenpick Hotel were the targets there, he said. One witness said a taxi rank was also hit. Earlier reports put the number of explosions at seven.

The Ghazala Gardens hotel was destroyed, as were four cars parked in front of it, by the explosion, Abd al-Ghani reported.

Glass shrapnel was scattered at the explosion site, while the cafe in front of the hotel was also destroyed.

Car bomb

According to South Sinai Governor Mustafa Afifi a car broke into the Ghazala Gardens Hotel's compound and exploded in front of the building, collapsing the reception lobby into a pile of concrete. Egyptian tourist hotels always have police guards at the gates.

"Many of the injuries are very serious and they are in critical condition," said a doctor at Sharm al-Shaikh International Hospital.

Fire and smoke billowed over Sharm al-Shaikh after the first explosion there, one resident said.

Residents said the blasts shook homes 10km away and blew out windows closer to the blasts.

The Muslim Brotherhood Movement issued a statement denouncing the explosions, Aljazeera's correspondent in Egypt reported.

Witness report

Alaa Hasanayn, a member of the Egyptian People's Council and a witness, told Aljazeera: "I saw people flying in the air, others burning, and a car entering the reception hall of the hotel as if it was parking there."

"This can be referred to disagreement of Arab countries' on combating terrorism," he added.

Hasanayn said he believed the explosion was a "terrorist and suicide" operation.

"I'm one of the first people who saw the incident as I was at the hotel at the explosion time," he said.

Israel blamed

"This explosion is not related to Islam or Christianity at all. It is related to Judaism," Hasanayn said.

He believes that Israel stands behind the explosions.

"I frankly believe that Israel stands behind the operation, as those killed and injured are mostly Arabs, particularly Egyptians," he said.

"The hotel and the market place are frequented by simple Egyptians, not foreigners," he added.

Bomb after bomb

Charlie Ives, a London policeman on holiday after dealing with the aftermath of bombings in the British capital, said he and his wife tried to get away from the scene of a first bomb only to witness a second one four minutes later.

"The whole area was quickly covered in debris. There was a huge ball of smoke that mushroomed up, it was mass hysteria," he told BBC World television.

Tourist Fabio Basone told the BBC the front of one hotel had been completely blown away, with car and shop windows blown out. "People were trying to run in any direction to get away, but were not clear where to go," he said.

A different type of terrorism...

2005-07-22T09:09:00.000+03:00

I'm not really sure what I'm feeling now toward Sayed el-Qimni. Is it disappointment at his submission to a low, dirty threat? Or is it sympathy with him?

Sayed el-Qimni is (was?) very critical of Islam. He was an enlighted freethinker. He thought he could speak his mind on paper and publicize his thoughts. It all seemed okay to him.

Last week, though, something happened that drastically changed that; He received an email from the Islamic Gihad (Jihad) Group of Egypt ordering him to consider all his previous work trash, and threatening to murder him if he didn't.

Sayed el-Qimni submitted to their threat. He wrote a publicity declaring all his previous work trash, as if it never existed, and declared that he would no-more continue writing. All his sharply-critical books and articles in the Egyptian magazine of Rozal Youssef are now nothing but a sum of crap, to him (or, more understandingly-speaking: the terrified him).

Afterall, no-one can blame him for not wanting his life taken away for him and his children being fatherless.

What happened is a terrible, sad shock to freethinkers everywhere.

First it was Theo van Gogh, and now it's Sayed el-Qimni. But, for now, this question remains unanswered: Until when will freethinkers face the threat of death by the hands of low, dirty closed-brained people?

The Arab Lie vs. Real Identities

2005-07-09T13:40:00.000+03:00

I think that its time for that Arab illusion to vanish really. If we are to have an affiliation with other countries this should not be built on illusion (i.e. the Arab illusion). By the way, Lebanese and Syrians are not really Arabs either.

Some people long ago created that Arab lie and believed it: WE WANT TO DESTRTOY that lie, and restore each country's original, real identity. Actually Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Lebanon, Lybia, Sudan, Syria, Palestinian Authority, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan and many other "arab" countries are really not arab whatsoever!

Egypt is mostly Eastern Hamitic, according to statistics (Hamitic races in Egypt include Egyptian , Berber, and other). Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia are also mostly other Hamitic. Lebanon, Syria, and PA are Phoenician. Djibouti, Somalia, and Sudan are African countries. All those countries are illogically forced to identify as Arab, the identity of the people of the Arab Peninsula. Isn't that terrible?! Why don't we even join an Pan-North-African Union or something? Or maybe a Big Middle East, as Bush calls it?

London 2012! Tel Aviv 2016?

2005-07-08T05:04:00.000+03:00

Alan D. Abbey, Ynetnews.com

A regional Games: Palestine, Israel, Egypt, Jordan make 'Pie-J'

Good morning, everyone. This is Katie Cantevrstop of the Today, Tomorrow and Forever Show. In just a few seconds we will be going to CNNBCBS correspondent Ran Dather in London, where everyone is eagerly awaiting the imminent announcement by the IOC on where the 2016 Summer Olympic Games will be held.

As everyone knows by now, there are three finalists - New York, Paris, and the joint Palestine-Israel-Egypt-Jordan bid people are calling, "Pie J." You've all heard and seen the clever Web and cellphone ad campaign with the catchy slogan, "Pie J is not Pie in the Sky." It's quite hard to believe, but Pie J is definitely the favorite. Ran?

That's right, Katie, bookmakers right here in London have Pie-J as a 5-2 favorite, over New York at 6-1, and Paris the longshot at 9-1.

Insurgents in 'Bigger Apple'

For those of you who have been living under a rock in the last year, here's a quick rundown of the three bids: New York, having failed to secure a stadium in 2005, which led to the demise of its bid for the 2012 Games, acquired the neighboring state of New Jersey last year in a hostile takeover to make sure it, in fact, would have adequate stadiums for the Games. The IOC never officially commented on the move, but sources in the IOC say the ongoing guerilla warfare between New York officials and insurgents on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River crossings make it less than likely the Bigger Apple, as it is now calling itself, will be selected.

Paris, having come in a disappointing second in 2005 in its bid for the 2012 Games, has continued to press the IOC, claiming that it has been rejected so many times it would do anything to get the Games, including offering French couture items to all IOC members and their significant others.

But problems have crept in since Mohammad Dhargabeja of the new Parti Islamique de France was elected prime minister last year. The International Association of Women Athletes has said new French laws prohibiting women from being seen on the streets after dark, and requiring all women to wear burkas covering them from head to toe would make it impossible for them to compete.

And longtime sponsors, from IBMSoft to Coca-Pepsi Cola, have complained they would be unable to entertain corporate executives and clients because of the new French law requiring that men and women sit separately in all public locations, including restaurants and corporate skyboxes.

The mayor of Paris, Jean-Jacques-Jules et Jim LeBeral, has failed so far, it seems, in his bid to secede from France and be declared a ward of the European Union, which would have negated some - but not all - of the new Shaaria-type laws. In fact, EU president Ahmed le Pepin (Abu Muesli) of the Federal Islamic Republic of Belgium has so far successfully resisted Paris's overtures, going so far as to return still wrapped the present of three women named Monique that LeBeral sent from the City of Lights.

'Petradome'

So, perhaps it isn't surprising that Pie J is the front-runner, especially since the new high-speed mag lev train connecting Amman, Ramallah, Jerusalem and Cairo has significantly reduced travel time among the four capital cities.

Pie J has also been remarkably successful in getting approvals for building new stadiums and repurposing ancient sites for modern uses. Who wouldn't be thrilled at seeing Olympic Table Tennis on the top of Masada, or attending the bicycle races at the new Petra Velodrome, which locals call the Petradome.

Pie J has also lined up promises of significant corporate sponsorship, especially since the creation of the Middle East Economic Union has reduced costs for software development and online product distribution nearly to zero. Yahoogle has promised to broadcast the Games on all of its distribution platforms, including its new 5G 3-D cell phones.

Well, I think the big moment has finally come, Katie. Here's IOC president Peter Ubermensch.

"Ladies, gentlemen and artificial persons, welcome. Thank you for coming today to hear our decision. The IOC is very proud to announce that Pie J is truly no pie in the sky dream. The 2016 Summer Olympics Games will be held for the first time in four countries at once: Palestine, Israel, Egypt and Jordan. To quote the ancient philospoher, 'If you will it, it is no dream.'"

Alan D. Abbey is Editor and Managing Director of Ynetnews

Excerpts from...

2005-07-02T15:05:00.000+03:00

KNOWISLAM.INFO
(alternative views on Islam)

Muhammad said: "Lying is wrong, *except in three things: the lie of a man to his wife to make her content with him; a lie to an enemy, for **war is deception; or a lie to settle trouble between people" (Ahmad, 6.459. H).

*Islam is the only religion that implies in it's scriptures that it's ever permissible to lie.

**any non Muslim land is considered Dar ul Harb a land of war

The name of this concept is taqiyya.

(Quoted from KnowIslam.info, "Does Islam permit lying?")

"Mother Egypt" Party

2005-06-25T22:34:00.000+03:00

"Mother Egypt" is Egypt's first secular, Egyptianist party. We are currently holding meetings every Friday and Monday where we discuss a different topic each time. Party members are people with very interesting and unique thoughts.

Israel
During the discussion about Israel, everybody said that they don't believe Israel poses a direct threat on Egypt anymore, and that Egypt should totally and completely normalize relations with Israel. The current ruling party, some said, used the "Palestinian cause" to remain in power for as long as possible. The "Palestinian cause" is often portrayed as more important than our own aching Egyptian "causes"! It's already time to stop fooling everybody and start having real, serious peace with our Israeli neighbors.

Arab League
Party members all agree (and this is in our official "program" booklet) that the so-called Arab League is useless... We think of it as just another way the "Arab" dictators steal their peoples' money and effort, for no obvious return over more than 50 years. On the other hand, Egypt should really leave that league for good, because Egyptians are not and have never been "Arab"!

Mother Egypt Youth
Soon I'll be starting the new "Mother Egypt Youth" website, where young people in the party will write articles on different issues that concern Egypt. All articles will be written in the MEL (= Modern Egyptian Language, or, in a more politically-correct way: Egyptian Arabic [!])

If you think you'd like to know more about the party, join it, or just support its causes, you can join our Yahoo! group.

Life of danger after daring to criticise Islam

2005-06-13T09:47:00.000+03:00

NZH
Originally uploaded by mshawqi.

By Stephen Castle - NZHerald.co.nz

Two burly bodyguards are watching from the wings as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Dutch MP, critic of Islam and the Netherlands' best-protected woman, takes the stage at a lecture theatre in The Hague. About 90 people have come to hear her speak about the European Union constitution, but the bodyguards are paying most attention to four Asian youths sitting in the front row, staring hard at the woman who famously described Islam as "backward".

Something about the youths' body language suggests that they are less interested in Hirsi Ali's views on European integration than her status as the country's leading critic of Islam, a woman living under a host of death threats. Some minutes later, while she is in full flow, the youths stand up in unison and walk out.

Hirsi Ali is unfazed. Aged 35, the Somali-born former asylum-seeker has found herself at the heart of Holland's recent traumatic political history.

She published her first critical article about Islam after the events of September 11 and was rewarded for her pains with her first death threat. Her calls for a brake on immigration and an end to Islamic schools provoked ructions and, even after the murder of the maverick Dutch anti-immigration campaigner Pim Fortuyn (assassinated by an animal rights activist in 2002), she did not pull her punches.

She wrote the film Submission, which depicted the abuse of women under Islam and was produced by outspoken film-maker Theo van Gogh. He was shot and nearly decapitated in broad daylight in Amsterdam and a five-page letter pinned to his chest with a knife threatened Ali with a similar fate.

Van Gogh's killing in November last year forced her into hiding and a life in perpetual motion, transported between secure locations surrounded by tight security.

She answers questions about her predicament by gesturing to the two bodyguards. "You can observe how it is," she says. "I am limited in my freedom of movement."

Things have improved from the immediate aftermath of the killing, when she had to sleep in a naval base. She has travelled to the United States and has met Salman Rushdie (the fatwa against whom she supported in her youth). Now she has a flat, although one of its two bedrooms is reserved for the security team, and each time she opens her door a bodyguard will appear to check on her.

She travels in an armour-plated car, and knows that were she to have a relationship she would put a partner's life at risk.

"I travel, I have an apartment since March so I have a little more privacy than when I was being moved from place to place," she says. She smiles slightly as she adds: "There are some bad things and some moments when I think, 'Well, what is all this about?' - some form of panic, you know - you are threatened and stuff like that.

"But there is also the positive side, because within three years I have been able to convey my message to the public. So everyone in Europe knows the situation of Muslim women is not comparable to the situation of the native women. That there are also atrocities performed in the name of culture and religion taking place within Europe, within the Netherlands, and governments must deal with this."

Born in 1969, the young Ayaan was a pious girl, devoted to her religion, one of three children. Because her father was an opponent of the Somali regime, her childhood was spent in exile in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia, before she arrived in Nairobi, where she was educated. Her schoolfriends would regularly disappear as their parents, without warning, arranged marriages.

It was when her own wedding was planned in 1992, to a cousin in Canada she had never met, that her life changed. Sent to Germany while immigration papers were arranged, she decided to flee, the original idea being to go to England.

She recalls: "I wanted to go to the United Kingdom because I spoke English. I grew up in Nairobi, and did my education there. And I didn't feel like learning a new language at the age of 22."

That was not how it turned out because, as she puts it, "there was a sea between Germany and the UK". Instead she took a train to the Netherlands, though she "knew nothing about the Netherlands except that there was a footballer called [Marco] van Basten, that they had dykes, that they walked on wooden shoes - normal stereotypes".

What she found, she says, was "liberalism itself with traditional tolerance". From menial work she moved to become a translator for the social services, specialising in cases where women had been physically abused. She studied political science and joined the Dutch Labour party.

After September 11, her criticism of Islam as a backward religion offended the party's multicultural sensitivities. Eventually she quit Labour to join the centre-right VVD Liberal party.

The terror attacks in the US set in chain the events that catapulted her to prominence, though she sees herself as a pawn in a wider game, her comments used by both sides in a polarised debate.

Now, she regrets the language she used. She says: "I was in a debate with some men and they had provoked me to trade insults with them. They had accused me of calling Islam backward. I was brought up within Islam, so why don't I have the right to call my own religion backward?

"When I blurted that out I did not know it was going to cause so much commotion. I should have used another word, 'lagged behind' - more politically correct - I don't think it would have helped though."

Why is Hirsi Ali a supporter of the now-foundering European constitution? She believes that fundamentalism, terrorism and illegal immigration can be tackled only at a European level, and that the EU is one of the answers to population movements and fanaticism, and a bastion of freedoms and basic standards for women.

"When it comes to co-operating in matters of migration, trading women, and drugs, this constitution gives us the opportunity to co-operate on all of those issues, especially in fighting against terrorism," she says.

"We don't have [frontier checks at] borders with Belgium and Germany anymore so we can't control our borders anymore, our [external] borders lie very far away and I think this constitution helps develop a unified aim on matters like migration, asylum, terrorism."

A supporter of the French separation of religion and state, Hirsi Ali is pleased that the constitution document does not refer to Christianity. She argues: "I think that religion and politics should be kept apart and the constitution is a political instrument, it's public life, and I consider religion a private affair.

"Because there are so many gods and so many holy books and so much belief and superstition, it's hard to elevate one of them into the constitution while leaving the others behind." To do so, she adds, "would be excluding all the Muslims and all the Buddhists and all the Sikhs and all the atheists like me. I think it is not wise to have religion in the constitution".

But the Dutch 'no' does not surprise her. She says that Dutch have in their mind a vision of Madurodam, a neat and pleasant children's attraction in The Hague based on a scaled-down model of a city.

"It's this perfect little place. About 50 years ago the Netherlands looked like that, there was no real crime, and people got police tickets because they were sitting on the wrong side of their bicycle. Now they have to deal with issues of migration and Islamic fundamentalism and the whole aftermath of the globalisation process."

No honor for you

2005-06-02T14:36:00.000+03:00

Egyptian author, peace activist prevented from leaving country to accept honorary doctorate from Ben-Gurion University. Read text of speech below
By Smadar Perry and Tzvi Aloush, Yedioth Ahronoth

TEL AVIV - Egyptian officials have prevented author Ali Salem from traveling to Israel to receive an honorary doctorate from Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva.

After being prevented by Egyptian security officials from boarding the plane for Israel, Salem asked that Israeli author Amos Oz read the speech in his name at the awards ceremony. In the end, Oz did not read the speech.

Salem told "Yedioth Ahronoth" in a phone interview he was not angry about the incident, but "mainly very sad."

"There is nothing good that can come out of this, not for Egypt and not for Israel, and I am very worried about the impact it will have on public opinion in both countries," he said.

'Drive to Israel' best seller

The story began more than a month ago, when the university notified Salem, a well-known peace activist in Egypt, of its intention to bestow an honorary doctorate on him in recognition of his work to promote peace in the region.

Salem has visited Israel several times, and his book "A Drive to Israel " was a best seller in throughout the Arab world, and has been translated into Hebrew and English. He was at BGU last winter for a one-day conference on Arab media.

Salem was also scheduled to lecture in the university's Middle East Studies department during his visit.

Last Wednesday, as Salem approached the border crossing at Taba, he was notified by security officials he was forbidden to cross the border, despite having acquired a permit to do so.

He returned to Cairo, and attempted to fly to Israel, but he was again prevented from leaving the country. At that point, he contacted Oz and asked him to read the speech in his absence.

'Screwed' twice

"Egyptian authorities have screwed themselves twice over," Oz said.

"First, by their claim to be moving in the direction of democracy. Only in North Korea or Iran would an author be dragged off a plane on the way to accept an invitation by a university in a neighboring country. Second, by their claim that they are an agent for peace in the region. To prevent a veteran peace activist from leaving the country is a serious blow to others who support peace."

Text of Ali Salem speech (supplied by Ben-Gurion University):

Ladies and Gentlemen:

My name is Ali Salem. A dramatist, a satirist, a columnist. Some day, an actor, a director and many things else which I forgot. But I will never forget the only thing I’m sure about myself , that I’m a person who loves to live in peace with himself, with his people and with his neighbors. I’m one of your neighbors.

I feel that this doctorate is not bestowed on me as a person but as a private in a battalion. I mean those liberal intellectuals in the Arab world who are battling for freedom democracy and peace in very gloomy circumstances.

11 years ago, I came to Israel driving my car for the fist time in my life. I spent 23 nights driving in the streets wandering among cities surrounded by friends looking for an answer for two questions; who are those people and what are they doing?

I told my people what I thought was the answer in a book.

In the last pages of the book, in a chapter titled The Sun on my Right…

"I have no illusions as to what awaits me in Cairo; I know what I will confront. There is no limit to the pain felt by most people when you suddenly raise their curtain of illusions and lies. However, after the storm subsides, younger generations may think of my trip calmly and discover what I want them to discover ــ that the condition of mental war is defective and it obscures from us the sun of freedom and development. Between us and Israel there are no minefields, only the paved roads that I traveled."

On my way south to the Egyptian border, I didn’t rely on maps; I just made sure to keep the sun on my right.

Ladies and Gentlemen: For eleven years it has been as Coleridge said, a weary time, a weary, weary time. Only five months ago I came here to tell people that the Israeli Egyptian peace relation will not be cold any more.

As a peace activist, it seems to me that I have succeeded in proving the most difficult equation on earth, which was and will be forever 1+1=2.

Peace between us the Arabs and the Israelis, is not only a necessity or a must, it is a destiny. No one can escape his destiny so, let us yield to it, and let us make it beautiful and productive.

Nowadays, some of my fellows greet me as a winner, so I started being afraid, because I know that people may forgive you when they believe or like to believe or pretend to believe, that you are wrong, but they will never forgive you when they discover that you have been right all the time.

Ladies and Gentlemen: On my way south in that ancient day of May 11 years ago, the sun was on my right. And when I came this week from Elat driving towards the north, the sun was at my left. That was good; it is good to be accompanied by the light of the sun while going on towards your destination.