One person has died in clashes at Cairo’s Coptic cathedral after funeral prayers for four Christians during which angry Copts chanted against Islamist President Mohamed Mursi. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Egypt
Egypt: One dead in clashes between Copts and Muslims
Egypt: Islamic idiot advocates destruction of Pyramids and Sphinx
Egypt is taking a jihadist’s calls to destroy the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx “seriously,” an Egyptian interior ministry source has said, according to reports.
The source, who was not named, spoke to the London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper late Monday in response to Sheikh Murgan Salem al-Gohary’s television interview earlier this week.
Gohary, a jihadist with self-professed links to the Taliban, called for the “destruction of the Sphinx and the Giza Pyramids in Egypt,” drawing ties between the Egyptian relics and Buddha statues.
The Islamist, previously twice-sentenced under former President Hosni Mubarak for advocating violence, called on Muslims to remove such “idols.”
“All Muslims are charged with applying the teachings of Islam to remove such idols, as we did in Afghanistan when we destroyed the Buddha statues,” he said on Saturday during a television interview on an Egyptian private channel, widely watched by Egyptian and Arab audiences.
“God ordered Prophet Mohammed to destroy idols,” he added. “When I was with the Taliban we destroyed the statue of Buddha, something the government failed to do.”
And where does the Quran stand on the tourist trade?
Egypt: Women oppressing women
The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in Egypt has brought with it a new group of female politicians who say they are determined to bring more women into leadership roles — and at the same time want to consecrate a deeply conservative Islamic vision for women in Egypt…
[I]n the new Egypt, if a woman does hold a high post, she’s most likely a member of an Islamist group. Morsi has appointed three women — two of them Islamists — to his 21-member team of advisers and aides. Of the six women on the 100-member assembly writing the constitution, three are Brotherhood members.
Their vision is a world apart from that of liberal women’s rights activists, who fear that Islamist women in power will only carry out the Brotherhood agenda of implementing its conservative interpretation of Islamic law.
Azza el-Garf, one of the Brotherhood women on the constitution-writing panel, said the “first” role of women in Egypt is “inside the family, as a wife and mother,” while politics or work comes second. “Women are responsible for raising the new generation … this means the future of Egypt is in our hands,” she told The Associated Press.
Doesn’t it all sound terribly familiar?
Egypt: How to pick a spiritual leader…
… out of a hat.
A blindfolded boy selected the new Pope for millions of Coptic Christians in Egypt on Sunday, becoming his mother’s pride and joy in the process.
Nearly 2500 eligible voters, made up of Coptic public officials, MPs, journalists and local councillors, preselected three candidates to succeed Pope Shenouda III, who died in March at the age of 88.
They were Bishop Rafael, 54, a doctor and the assistant bishop for central Cairo; Bishop Tawadros of the Nile Delta province of Beheira, 60; and Father Raphael Ava Mina, the oldest of the five original candidates at 70.
Their names were written on separate pieces of paper and placed in a box on the altar of St Mark’s Cathedral, for God to guide the boy’s hand towards the winner – according to the beliefs of the church and the faithful.
Bishop Tawadros, an aide to the acting pope, was selected to become Pope Tawadros II, replacing the charismatic Pope Shenouda III who spent 40 years at the helm of the church.
”A lot of families propose the names of children, that’s why we lay down precise criteria and ensure the faithfulness of the family and the child to the church,” said Bishop Pola from Tanta, in the Nile Delta.
The newer, more stringent rules were imposed in 1971 after the death of Pope Davy Crockett.
Egypt: Oh, God, destroy the Jews and infidels, and make me President!
Oh, wait — I already am!
Back in June I posted my worries about Mohamed Morsi (a member of the Muslim Brotherhood) having been elected President of Egypt. I was told by some of my readers to “calm down,” since Morsi was either a moderate or a meaningless figurehead. I don’t think that’s proved to be the case. Check out this video, which implies that he’s not a moderate. Here Morsi joins a cleric in a prayer for the destruction of the Jews and infidels.
My prediction: Egypt is moving slowly towards a state run on Islamic law, along the lines of Iran.
It may turn out that the most important lesson to come from the Arab Spring is that revolution is possible.
Egypt: THIS is why Islam can’t have nice things
A mob of about 30 men has turned “crazy” and groped and robbed a French television journalist near Tahrir Square in Cairo, in the latest case of violence against women at the epicentre of Egypt’s protests.
France 24 news station said in a statement that Sonia Dridi was attacked about 10:30pm on Friday after a live broadcast on a protest at the square and was later rescued by a colleague and other witnesses.
The station said its employees were safe and sound, though “extremely shocked”.
Egypt: Blogger arrested for atheism
On Wednesday, September 12th, a Muslim friend and neighbor using Saber’s computer reportedly discovered that he was the admin for the Egyptian Athiests [sic] Facebook page, which is the largest of several such groups online with over a thousand “likes”. On September 10 the notorious “Innocence of Muslims” had been posted on the site. Over the next two days crowds began to gather outside his house, threatening Saber and his mother.
On Thursday night Saber’s mother called the police, hoping for protection. When the police arrived however, rather than fending the threatening mob outside, they arrested her son.
So, tell me, when’s that Arab Spring thing going to happen?
Middle East: Misogyny, thy name is Islam
Why Do They Hate Us? – By Mona Eltahawy | Foreign Policy
But let’s put aside what the United States does or doesn’t do to women. Name me an Arab country, and I’ll recite a litany of abuses fueled by a toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend. When more than 90 percent of ever-married women in Egypt — including my mother and all but one of her six sisters — have had their genitals cut in the name of modesty, then surely we must all blaspheme. When Egyptian women are subjected to humiliating “virginity tests” merely for speaking out, it’s no time for silence. When an article in the Egyptian criminal code says that if a woman has been beaten by her husband “with good intentions” no punitive damages can be obtained, then to hell with political correctness. And what, pray tell, are “good intentions”? They are legally deemed to include any beating that is “not severe” or “directed at the face.” What all this means is that when it comes to the status of women in the Middle East, it’s not better than you think. It’s much, much worse. Even after these “revolutions,” all is more or less considered well with the world as long as women are covered up, anchored to the home, denied the simple mobility of getting into their own cars, forced to get permission from men to travel, and unable to marry without a male guardian’s blessing — or divorce either.
I’m guessing that Mona is not an accommodationist.
Egypt: Family tosses woman into river after divorce
According to news reports on Wednesday, an Egyptian man and his family tied up their daughter and threw her into the Nile river as a result of a divorce to her aging husband, who mistreat her and abused the young woman.
Luckily, a fisherman saw the girl and rescued her before she died, Emirates 24/7 reported.
According to their report, the girl had initially refused to marry the elderly man, but then acquiesced to her family pressure and wed…
After she and the man divorced over abuse, she returned to her family, who when the girl refused to remarry the man, .. tossed [her] into the river in an “honor crime.”
And now, I hope, they can have the ‘honour’ of going to jail.
Egypt: Plastic surgery a no-no(se) in Islam…
…self-destructive stupidity still OK.
An Egyptian Islamist MP has resigned from the radical Al-Nour party and from parliament after claiming he had been attacked by gunmen to cover up for plastic surgery to his nose, the party says.
With his faced wrapped in bandages, MP Anwar al-Balkimy recently told reporters he was attacked last month on the Cairo-Alexandria desert highway by masked armed men, who stole 100,000 Egyptian pounds (about $15,000) from him.
However, hospital officials quickly denied his claims and said he had undergone plastic surgery on his nose.
Barbra Streisand cosplay never ends well.
Egypt: Mutilate those genitals, people!
Astonishingly, in 21st Century Egypt, the latest figures suggest that more than 90% of the women have been subject to female genital mutilation (FGM). The figure comes from a Unicef approved survey carried out in 2008, the year that the practice was banned….
A new set of figures are due to be published later this year and doctors expect them to show a 10% decline. That still leaves the majority of women in Egypt exposed to unimaginable physical and psychological pain and denied what the rest of us would call a normal sex life.
The practice is not restricted to Muslims, as has often been claimed, but also carried out by Christians, who make up 10% of Egypt’s population.
Because we can’t have women enjoying themselves…
Egypt: Twenty-three dead in Coptic Christian protest
SMH.
Twenty-three people, mostly Coptic Christians, died in clashes on Sunday between Coptic Christians and Egyptian security forces, the health ministry said, sparking fears of renewed sectarian strife.
A total of 174 people were injured in violence during a Coptic Christian protest in central Cairo, which saw a curfew imposed on the centre of the capital, said official statements broadcast on public television.
A previous toll had put the number of dead at 16 protesters and three soldiers, and 156 injured.
“My Invisible Friend can beat your Invisible Friend!” What a shame they have to kill so many people to prove it…
Egypt: Hello, democracy, goodbye
CAIRO: It is just six months since 18 days of popular protests brought down Egypt’s ageing ruler, Hosni Mubarak, and today he is expected to stand trial for his role in the deaths of the hundreds of protesters who helped end his 30-year reign.
Yet preparations for the trial were overshadowed by a show of strength from Islamist groups demanding the country’s new constitution be based on sharia and a violent army crackdown in the capital’s iconic Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in January and February demanding the end of the Mubarak regime.
After the Arab Spring — the Islamic Winter?
Egypt: Loony Islamists vs. Looney Tunes
SMH.
An Egyptian Christian telecom mogul has angered Islamic hard-liners by posting an online cartoon of Mickey Mouse with a beard and Minnie in a face veil.
The ultraconservative Islamists, known as Salafis, called the cartoon posted by Naguib Sawiris on Twitter a mockery of Islam. They launched an online campaign calling on Muslims in Egypt to boycott Sawiris’ mobile phone company Mobinil.
In other news, fundamentalists also objected to the Warner Brothers character Daffy Duck. “Daffy is irascible, gullible and incoherent. He’s obviously meant to represent a typical theist,” said a spokesman. He added: “It’s dethpicable!”
Egypt: Female protestors given forced ‘virginity tests’ by Islamic troops
A senior Egyptian general told CNN that women detained on 9 March at Cairo’s Tahrir Square had been forced to undergo ‘virginity tests’, which the government has previously denied.
The general, speaking on condition of anonymity, justified the abuse by saying that the women “were not like your daughter or mine. These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters.”
Brave, independent women — a theist’s worst nightmare.
US: What would Jesus do in Egypt? Consume, be silent, die
Macarthur: I’m not saying that Mubarak is a great, benevolent and just leader, not when he’s got $70 billion in his own pockets at the expense of people. But what I am saying is that whatever the government would be, even if it was Caesar in the New Testament, that the believers are commanded to live orderly lives, peaceful, quiet lives, subjecting themselves to the powers that be because they’re ordained of God.
Hmm.. If Gadhafi is God’s ordained, what does that tell us about God?
Egypt: Advocate non-violence? How DARE he?
SMH.
CAIRO: Egypt’s top Muslim imam has criticised Pope Benedict’s call for world leaders to defend Christians as interference in his country’s affairs, the official MENA news agency reported.
The call, following a deadly car-bombing on New Year’s Day, which targeted a Coptic church in Alexandria killing 25, was ”unacceptable interference in Egypt’s affairs”, Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, the oldest Islamic seat of learning, told reporters.
…
Sectarian tensions mounted last year, which began with a massacre of six Copts and a Muslim security man outside a church in a village of southern Egypt. Three Muslim men are on trial for that attack.
Because Egypt is quite capable of handling its own massacres, thank you.
Egypt: Seven dead in Islamic attack on church
SMH.
At least seven people died and 24 were injured early Saturday in a New Year’s Day car bomb attack on a church in Alexandria, hitting Egypt’s Christian community, the biggest in the Middle East….
“The hospitals have taken in seven deceased and 24 injured persons, eight of them Muslims,” the interior ministry said in a statement, adding that the church and a nearby mosque had suffered damage.
“See how evil I am? I even kill my own men!”
– Casanova Frankenstein in Mystery Men
Egypt: Two-headed calf a ‘divine miracle’
World news – Africa – msnbc.com.
El-Ganzoury said the veterinarian informed him that the calf, which was born this week, is now in stable condition and is expected to survive. He said he intends to keep the animal as a reminder that “God is able to do anything.”
The calf still can’t stand up because of its heavy heads and weak legs, and is being fed her mother’s milk with a baby bottle.
‘Anything’ — except make a two-headed calf that can stand up.
Egypt: Islamic website hijacked by hardliners
SMH.
Oh no! Now where will the Faithful go to find out if they can have sex in a bathroom?
Egypt: Beyonce show an ‘insolent sex party’, say Islamic fundamentalists
in·so·lent // (
n
s
-lnt)
adj.
1. Presumptuous and insulting in manner or speech; arrogant.
2. Audaciously rude or disrespectful; impertinent.
What would a respectful sex party be like?
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