Heliopolis (Miṣr al-Jadīdah) / Cairo

Watani publish a notice faxed to them from Mr. Albair Aazer Bareh, ex-member of the People’s Council of Alexandria Governorate addressed to the Egyptian State Attorney in which he attacks the Statement of the Hundred as being seditious. Watani then gives their response to this attack.

In mosques in Heliopolis and Nasr City, a number of female preachers have starting giving speeches. It is doubtful that these preachers have enough knowledge to give fataawi on religious matters. In spite of that, they give fatwas on everything, some of which, as Dr. Abdel-Mo’ti Bayoumi [the dean of the Faculty of Islamic Theology at Al-Azhar University] says are completely wrong.

The Evangelical Church is holding a number of public celebrations [in regard to the beginning] of the third millennium. From December 24 and until New Year’s Eve. In addition, preparations are being made for a big concert to be held in the first half of March at the covered hall of Cairo Stadium.

A nearly forgotten people of the book, the Sabaean sect in Iraq adheres to its traditions while stressing what it has in common with Islam. They prefer to call themselves mindaa’ii "those who know", or Mandaeans, from manda, their word for temple.

Over the past decade, the lives of hundreds of Egyptians families were turned into nightmares when they lost all their savings in pyramid schemes. Disguising under the slogan of "Islam-oriented business", those companies swindled Egyptians at home or expatriates working in the wealthy Gulf Arab states out of billions of Egyptian pounds or dollars. They lured their victims with very high annual interest rates, sometimes twice the average rates offered by the banks.

Reasons are given why some women wear the headscarf and sometimes even cover their face with the nigab and why others don’t do this.

It is not easy to defy the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III - and get away with it - as the family of one dead clergyman has learned. No one - including some of the pope’s most reliable allies - had anticipated the kind of revenge Pope Shenouda had arranged for Father Ibrahim Abdel Said, the former parish priest of the Mar Girgis Church in Maadi, until his tragic death on August 30.

In the continuing absence of Pope Shenouda outside Egypt on a trip to America, the Orthodox Cathedral in Abbassia refused to give permission for prayers to be made over the dead body of the priest Ibrahim Abdel Sayyed pastor of the church of Mari Girgis [St. George] in El-Maadi, in any church of the Orthodox denomination.

Hulsman asked three Evangelical pastors in Egypt to comment on the two Rose el-Yousef articles. These pastors are certainly not happy with the publications in Rose el-Yousef. Their criticism, however, focuses on the tensions between churches in Egypt and para-Christian organizations, the consequences of Western missionary work in Egypt which lashes back at local Christians as a boomerang and efforts to discredit missionaries by accusing them of links with the CIA and Zionist (friendly) organizations.

Human Rights Organizations have the lion’s share in spreading rumors and lies abroad and, in this way, support extremism. The game is to cry about the lost democracy and freedom and put terrorism in the shape of human rights. They have found their target in trying to abolish the emergency law which is seen as the main tool to combat extremism.