The Copts and Kareem: Persecuting Believers of Truth and Speakers of Truth in Egypt

on March 6, 2007

Imagine that unknown assailants have thrown burning, kerosene-soaked cotton rags onto your house.  You manage to put out the fire, and then you go to the police station to report the arson.  Not only do the police refuse to investigate the crime, but they also order you to sign a statement confessing that you yourself have set the fire.  When you refuse, you are detained by the police for 36 hours, until in fear and exhaustion you finally agree to sign the statement.

Or, imagine that you are a 22-year-old law student at a prestigious university.  You dream of becoming a human right lawyer. You have a blog about injustice, human rights, and freedom.  You are expelled from your university, and then imprisoned, for “spreading information disruptive of public order” and for “insulting the President.”  You are sentenced to four years in prison—for blogging.

Are these scenes from a future fascist Western government, as in the leftist film V for Vendetta?

No, in the real world the repressive dictatorships are not Great Britain or the United States.  This is the reality in Egypt, where Christians suffer discrimination and persecution, and where anyone can be severely punished for speaking the truth and trying to create a better society.

The Copts
A Compass Direct News Service report of February 22, 2007, says that unidentified attackers burned the homes of two Coptic Orthodox families during a week of anti-Christian violence in mid-February 2007.  When the families, from the Upper Egypt town of Armant, reported the crime, the police refused to investigate.  They told the families that there was no evidence of wrongdoing.  The families were urged to sign a statement declaring that they had set fire to their own homes in order to “blame it on Muslims” and demand police protection.

With police protection like this, who needs Islamists?  Hold on—some Egyptian police are Islamists!  Or at least they are frequently in sympathy with the Islamists.

According to Compass Direct, the Armant hostilities leading to these fires began on February 9, 2007.  A Muslim mob set fire to four Christian-owned shops in the town, which is some 400 miles from Cairo.  International media reported that rumors of a love affair between a Christian man and Muslim woman started the hostilities.  And along with eight Muslim young men, police detained a Copt, Ramy Ishaq, who was reportedly in a romantic relationship with a young Muslim woman.  But others believe that the Christians’ shops were attacked because of even more injurious rumors.  Stories had circulated that the powerless Christian minority was forcing Muslim women to convert to Christianity.

Compass Direct revealed that the Cairo weekly newspaper Sawt al-Umma in its February 19 issue printed rumors that a Coptic Christian photography studio owner, Ashraf Narouz, had been taking pictures of naked Muslim women to blackmail them to convert.  Sawt al-Umma did not report why a rational Christian man who wishes to survive in an Islamic country, where proselytizing Muslims is against the law in any case, would photograph naked Muslim women for any reason.  It comes as no surprise that Narouz’ studio was severely damaged in the arson attack.

Sawt al-Umma laid the blame for religious tensions on other sources—Christian, of course.  The newspaper accused the Christian governor of Qena, Magdy Iskandar, of favoring Christians.  The paper also alleged that expatriate Copts were “raising sectarian strife by writing that Christians are persecuted,” said Compass Direct.

But the Coptic-owned weekly newspaper, Watani, had a very different story to tell.  Watani noted that Armant is a well integrated community, where, unlike many areas of Upper Egypt, Christians and Muslims live side by side.  Many of the parents of the youths who were involved in the attack were disgusted by their behavior. One father, Mohamed Abdel-Qader, told Watani that he was so angry with his son that he would not visit him in jail.  He and the other parents blame their children’s behavior on radical Muslim groups who have been indoctrinating the city’s young people in “extremist, fanatical thought” since the late 1990s, according to Compass Direct.

Another Muslim citizen who wished to remain anonymous told Watani that Ramy Ishaq was “probably hated by other young men because he had a successful business, whereas many young Muslims suffered unemployment and poverty,” Compass Direct reported.

Upper Egypt has been the scene of many violent attacks against Christians.  A little over a year ago, arson aimed at Christians took the life of Coptic Christian Kamaal Shaker and injured eleven others.  Shaker died when Islamic extremists burned a Christian community center in el-Udaysaat, Upper Egypt, near Luxor.

In October 2005, angry Muslims rioted and destroyed churches to protest the production of a play that had been staged at Alexandria’s St. George Coptic Orthodox Church.  The play, which had been staged two years before, was said to be insulting to Islam.  The Free Copts blog reported that the violence began on October 14, after Friday prayers at a nearby mosque where the imam had inflamed the people.  About 3,000 Muslims surrounded the church, throwing rocks and chanting anti-Christian and anti-Jewish slogans.

The next week as many as 15,000 Muslims rioted against the Christians at St. George’s and also at Virgin Mary Coptic Orthodox church in the same area. They attacked a nun, stabbing her in the back and the chest as well as severing one of her fingers.  In all, five people were killed and dozens injured in the riots.  And as in the recent arson attacks in Armant, the Egyptian authorities did little to intervene and help the Christians.

Kareem Amer
Abdel Kareem Nabeel Suleiman, a 23 year-old blogger who used the name “Kareem Amer,” was as disgusted about the violence as the Muslim parents in Armant.  He was also one non-Christian Egyptian who did try to help the Christians, by speaking the truth.  The young Muslim law student at Al-Azhar University wrote about the October 2005 riots on his blog, saying, “Muslims revealed their true ugly faces and appeared to all the world that they are full of brutality, barbarism and inhumanity.”

On his blog, karam903, Amer said of himself: “I am down to earth Law student; I look forward to help humanity against all form of discriminations… I am looking forward to open up my own human rights activists Law firm, which will include other lawyers who share the same views. Our main goal is to defend the rights of Muslim and Arabic women against all form of discrimination and to stop violent crimes committed on a daily basis in these countries.”  The banner heading on the blog reads, “IN MEMORIAM.  CHRISTOPH PROBST. HANS SCHOLL. SOPHIE SCHOLL.  BEHEADED FEBRUARY 22, 1943.  FOR DARING TO SAY NO TO HITLER.  AND YES TO FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.”   The three young people were members of the White Rose, the German resistance movement.

A website of advocacy for the blogger, freekareem.org, reveals that Amer, a native of Alexandria, grew up in a very religious Muslim family.  While at Al-Azhar University, the most prominent religious center in Sunni Islam, he began to rebel against the religious extremism he saw there.  According to BosNewsLife news service, Amer called Al-Azhar “the university of terrorism” and accused it of encouraging extremism.  Other reports provided by BosNewsLife say that he called the educational facility the “other face of the coin of al-Qaida” and called for the university to be dissolved or turned into a secular institution.

Not surprisingly, Amer was expelled from Al-Azhar University when his blog was discovered by the administration in late 2005.  The university turned over his case to the State prosecutors for further investigation and disciplinary action.  In November 2006, Amer was called into the prosecutor’s office and was interrogated about his own religious beliefs and his postings on the blog site.

According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights, Amer was then detained when he refused to recant his blog writings.  He was held without charges and denied bail, remaining in prison until his court trial in February 2007.  In contrast to the Armant father who would not visit his arsonist son in jail, Amer’s father came to see the young blogger in court—in order publicly to disown him, accusing the son of “contempt of religion.”  The retired mathematics teacher demanded that the state apply the shari’a (Islamic law) to his son.  This means that Amer would be given three days in which to repent, and if he refused, he would be killed.

Fortunately, the Egyptian government does not seem as eager to execute Amer as his own father does.  Perhaps this is because of the international outcry that has gone up for the brave blogger.  Amer’s supporters have held demonstrations and sent petitions from all over the world, including London, Washington, New York, Bucharest, Ottawa, Chicago, Rome, Stockholm, Paris, and elsewhere.  Numerous Middle Eastern Arab and Muslim organizations, even some who are quite offended by Amer’s writings, have demanded his release.  They see the greater offense in criminalizing his free speech.

The freekareem.org site also praised the efforts of U.S. Representatives Trent Franks and Barney Frank, who sent a letter to the Egyptian Embassy demanding the release of Amer.  Franks and Frank, described by the site as a very conservative Republican and a very liberal Democrat, say in their letter that “the ability to dialogue about one’s religious beliefs is an important aspect of the freedom of religion and expression, both of which are essential in any democratic society.”  They caution that the “Egyptian government’s arrest of Mr. Amer simply for displeasure over writings on his personal weblog raises serious concern about the level of respect for these freedoms in Egypt.”

In spite of the outcry, Abdel Kareem Nabeel Suleiman was sentenced to four years in prison on February 22, 2007.  His attorney is appealing the sentence, but Congressmen Franks and Frank are correct to be concerned about the level of respect for religious freedom and expression in Egypt.  There was certainly no level of respect for Kareem.

As the young blogger was escorted out of the courtroom, the prosecuting attorney led onlookers in shouts of “Allahu akbar” (Allah is the greatest).  According to freekareem.org , the Islamic extremist lawyer Mohamed Dawoud told the Associated Press that he was “on a jihad” against Amer and his likes.  Dawould said that if Amer was left without punishment, “it will be like a fire that consumes everything.”  He has “hurt every Muslim across the world,” Dawoud insisted.

A disturbing video was taken by a blogger who attended the trial.  The video, on freekareem.org, shows Amer entering the prison vehicle after leaving the court.  A slap is heard, followed by a scream of pain.  Sadly, this is probably just the beginning of such brutalities against the young man.  Egyptian Christians who have spent time in prison have been severely mistreated.

The Free Copts blog explains that the persecution of Christians in Egypt “is a form of intellectual terrorism … that radical Muslims are imposing on everyone that dares to criticize their agenda of having Islam dominate the world.”  Now, not only Egyptian Christians but also Egyptian Muslims, like Kareem Amer, who speak the truth about radical Islam, feel its sting.

 

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