Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

After some inside the cathedral have chanted slogans against the military council right when Coptic Orthodox Pope Shenouda III welcomed the SCAF delegation, I later read some comments of varied viewpoints on social networking websites Twitter and Facebook.

These comments mostly rejected that SCAF's Christmas congratulations should be accepted and even criticized the pope's reception of the delegation.

This has been preceded by some groups of young people like the Maspero Youth Union, which on January 4, 2012, refused any congratulations by the "killers of protesters and Copts".

I don't think this position is sound. I even differ with that. The visit by the delegation of SCAF, which now represents the exceptional ruling authority in the country, to the cathedral is meant to show appreciation for the Egyptian church on one hand and Egyptian Christians on the other.

The congratulations represent the Egyptian state's relationship with a national institution, a thing that is desirable and sought.

The delegation, which comprised 10 leading members of SCAF, including Major General Hamdī Badīn, Commander of the Military Police, acted like an ice-breaking initiative to have a thaw in ties between SCAF and Egyptian Christians after the October 9, 2011 Maspero incidents that left dozens killed or wounded.

I, however, can understand the position of those young people toward SCAF. But, what I can't find an explanation for is their criticism of the pope for receiving SCAF members. Some of those youths considered the reception as expressive of the pope's, and consequently the church's, political stance.

I don't believe in the soundness of calls that demanded refusal of congratulations although I would stick to the importance of resuming investigations into killing and mowing under vehicles in Maspero and punishing the persons responsible under the law without any exceptions.

I would go for the calls refusing that the church should politically represent Egyptian Christians, but on the other hand I am not in favor of getting the church involved in politics by trying to impose certain visions and positions on it to adopt.

Should the church accept the congratulations of some – not all – Islamist groups and sneer those by the state represented by SCAF, now that these groups show hard-line opinions against Egyptian Christians?

The church has the right to have stances binding for all its clergymen, but these stances should never be binding for persons outside the clerical circle.

The changes that began after the January 25, 2011 revolution in the reformulation of Egyptian politics entailed the emergence of new entities, parties and relations that had not existed beforehand. Political reality imposes that these entities should correlate with one another otherwise they will be gradually extinct as the Egyptian state gets more and more stable after the People's Assembly, Shūrá Council and presidential elections and finalizing the drafting of a constitution.

** I would like to express great appreciation for the role played by the Azhar ever since Grand Shaykh Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyīb took over.

I wish the Azhar's recent paper on protection of basic freedoms would have extensive discussions in the mass media.

The paper, which is like a leap in ijtihād for this respectable Egyptian institution, is, along with the previous paper on the future of Egypt, worthy of being a framework for the writing of a new Egyptian constitution.