Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

Cornelis Hulsman [Reviewer's Note: Director of CIDT and Editor in Chief of AWR] speaks to Watani about the Copts in Egypt, whose number, according to a former Egyptian official is…the number that brings on a headache.

Counselor 'Āsim al-Juharī, the head of the anti-graft agency, referred complaints accusing Coptic business magnate Najīb Sawirus accusing him of "an inflated wealth in a dubious manner in light of his relations with the former regime. [Yūsuf al-Ghazālī, al-Wafd, Jan. 14, p. 1] Read original text in Arabic

The wrath which raged, and is still raging, against Israel in the Egyptian street is both legitimate and justified. It is a show of public fury at the killing of five Egyptian security personnel last month during an Israeli operation against cross-border terrorist raiders who had assassinated eight Israelis and injured 30 before escaping inside Egyptian territory near Eilat. Angry demonstrations and sit-ins were held in front of the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, protesting Israeli transgression against Egyptian sovereignty.
The public hostility and anti-Israeli sentiments express bitterness which has been for decades building up against Israeli aggression, and is fully understandable. The burning of the Israeli flag was a condemnation of Israeli practices and came as an expression of protest used worldwide.

 No matter what successes Prime Minister Essam Sharaf achieves together with his cabinet, he will always be discredited for underestimating public memory—a memory by no means poor. With that memory alertly registering details big and small on the Egyptian arena, Dr Sharaf has miserably failed. The public well remembers that he promised last May to form a committee to draft a unified law for building places of worship, within a maximum one-month period. They remember he declared the same committee would be charged with drafting a law to criminalise discrimination. And they remember he promised to form a committee to investigate the long list of closed churches in preparation for their reopening. When, that same month, Salafis rioted against the reopening of a church in Ain Shams, the church was again closed until an official committee checks its legal documents and issues a decision on it within one month. To date, no decision.

The killing of Egyptians with Israeli fire has generated a state of wrath, conspicuously witnessed on Facebook.

Last Sunday, Pope Shenouda III inaugurated the first Coptic Orthodox Church in Hungary, in Budapest’s eighteenth district. The Pope presided over an evening service ceremony during which he anointed and consecrated the altar and the icons of the church which was named for the Holy Virgin and the Archangel Michael.

For their part, the Coptic youth movement Maspero Youth issued a statement in which it declared its deep concern at the dominion of the Islamist currents. They revealed their total discontent with the raising of the Saudi flag by the Islamists, and said they were fully prepared to defend the option of an Egyptian civil State that would secure equality, freedom, and social justice, just as they confronted—to the point of shedding their blood—the tyranny of the former regime. 

What had been planned as a “Friday of unifying the ranks” ended, as unanimously agreed by the Egyptian media, as a “Friday of splitting the ranks”. While the day began with various political groups, including Islamists, converging on Tahrir Square in numbers that came close to a million, it ended with some 36 political groups which do not endorse political Islam withdrawing from the scene. The Islamists had their heyday.

A former coach of Egypt’s National Football Team once said it was beyond him to understand the nature of the character of some of Egypt’s national team players. They carefully abided by training routines, they comprehended strategies and carried them out on the green field, and they knew very well their assigned roles. Yet when they played against foreign teams, he said, they started with remarkable commitment to plans, tactics and positions, until the other team scored an early goal. This would throw them into disarray; they would lose control and recklessly scramble for the ball to compensate for their loss. It would look, the coach said, as though they went back to the old ways of their childhood when they used to play kora sharaab, a haphazard football game played with a ball made of old socks, in the alleyways and lanes. Needles to say, he said, this method results in abject failure.

Security apparatuses in al-Minia's governorate controlled clashes between Muslim and Coptic youth that took place on August 6, 2011, in front of Saint George's Church in Nazlat Faraj Allah village, al-Minia governorate. Tight security measures were taken to avoid further clashes.