What Next for Christians in Egypt?

By Aidan Clay, International Christian Concern (www.persecution.org)  
Special to ASSIST News Service

CAIRO, EGYPT (ANS) -- A few weeks ago, Christians believed a Muslim Brotherhood victory in Egypt’s presidential election would mark the end of religious freedoms and abolish any hope they still had of living a peaceful existence in post-revolution Egypt. However, all that changed just days before the mid-June election when Egypt’s military council dissolved the Islamist-dominated Parliament and stripped the president of most of his powers. Now, despite the presidential victory of Brotherhood candidate Mohammed Morsi on Sunday, the remaining hope of many Christians is in the military, which they view as their final source of protection against Islamists.

Mohammed Morsi declares victory

For Christians, post-revolution Egypt was defined not by democratic progress and greater freedoms, but by the political rise of Islamists and large-scale attacks on their community and places of worship. Many Christians determined to flee the country, but they were holding out for the results of the presidential election to see if secularist Ahmed Shafiq could, by chance, defeat the Islamist Mohammed Morsi.

Shafiq, considered by many to be loyal to the regime, was not the ideal presidential choice of most Christians, but at least, they thought, he was not an Islamist. Islamists already held 75 percent of Egypt’s two houses of parliament. A Brotherhood presidential victory would give Islamists complete control of the government which, Christians feared, would transform Egypt into an Islamic state.

The Islamic agenda of the Brotherhood was made clear during the presidential campaign. In May, Morsi was allegedly quoted by the popular Egyptian website, El Bashayer, as saying: “We will not allow Ahmed Shafiq or anyone else to impede our second Islamic conquest of Egypt.

They [Christians] need to know that conquest is coming, and Egypt will be Islamic, and that they must pay 'jizya' or emigrate.” Furthermore, the Brotherhood demanded that Islamists should draft the new constitution and center it on Sharia law. It appeared to Christians that there would no longer be room for them in Egyptian society if Morsi was elected president.

All that changed, however, only days before Morsi was officially recognized as Egypt’s president. On June 14, the Egyptian Supreme Constitutional Court ruled that the Islamist-dominated Parliament should be dissolved. And, after election booths closed on June 17, the military further announced a constitutional declaration that expands their power over civilian politicians, including the president, and grants them authority to draft a new constitution. The military was effectively retaking control from the Islamists and many Christians, viewing the military as their last hope of protection, were relieved by the decree.

“Christians are happy, because they were afraid the Muslim Brotherhood was taking over the Parliament,” Athanasious Williams, a Coptic Christian human rights lawyer in Cairo, told Compass Direct News. “But now they feel that there might be a better chance for a secular government.”

Despite the support of Christians, however, is a potential military takeover worth the risk of safeguarding Egypt’s Christian community? A similar situation occurred in Algeria when the army staged a coup just before elections to stop the Islamic Salvation Front from gaining victory in 1991. The result: 150,000-200,000 people were killed in a decade-long civil war. Similarly, Egypt’s Islamists will not back down quietly. The Brotherhood has vowed to “fight in the courts and the streets to reinstate the Parliament,” according to The New York Times. Also, Islamists have the support of more than half of the country’s population, taking into account that 75 percent of registered voters voted for Islamists in the parliamentary elections and 52 percent voted for them in the presidential elections. Although civil war is unlikely, the country remains divided and all calculations on Egypt’s future have been thrown to the wind. Anything can happen.

The question all Egyptians are now asking is: What role will the president and Islamists have in Egypt’s future? Will Morsi be stripped of his presidential powers by the military, making him nothing more than a figurehead? Or, will the Brotherhood and other Islamists continue to demonstrate in Cairo’s Tahrir Square or, less likely, embark on a campaign of armed resistance until the military steps down? It is the answer to these questions that will inevitably determine the fate of Egypt’s ancient Christian community.

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Aidan Clay is the Middle East Regional Manager for International Christian Concern (ICC), a Washington, DC-based human rights organization that exists to support persecuted Christians worldwide by providing awareness, advocacy, and assistance (www.persecution.org). Aidan is a graduate from Biola University in Southern California. Prior to joining ICC, Aidan worked with Samaritan’s Purse in South Sudan and has traveled extensively throughout the Middle East, Africa and Europe. He and his wife currently live in Nairobi, Kenya. For more information, contact Aidan Clay at clay@persecution.org 

EGYPT: The military versus the Islamists

As protests in Egypt continue, the military
 and the Muslim Brotherhood go head to head
 over parliamentary elections.
 Image by Ty McCormick. Egypt, 2011.

By Elizabeth Kendal

Updating Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) 163 
EGYPT: PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 16-17 JUNE 

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In April 2012, the Islamist-dominated parliament passed the Political Isolation Law which disqualified senior officials of Mubarak's regime from holding political posts. The law would have prevented Ahmed Shafiq (former air-force chief and Mubarak's last Prime Minister) from contesting the presidency had he not won an appeal against the law. At that point the Political Isolation Law was deferred to Egypt's Mubarak-appointed Supreme Constitutional Court.

On Wednesday 13 June, the day before the Constitutional Court was due to hand down its decision, Egypt's Justice Ministry issued a decree giving military police and intelligence officers permission to arrest civilians suspected of "crimes" such as activities deemed "harmful to the government", destruction of property, "obstructing traffic" and "resisting orders". The decree restores some of the powers of the decades-old emergency law which expired just two weeks ago. Al Jazeera's Rawya Rageh, reporting from Cairo, "said Egyptian activists see the current order as 'much worse than the [previous] emergency law', in that it is seen as expanding the military's power".

Then, on Thursday 14 June, the Constitutional Court -- an institution in which the military maintains significant leverage -- unsurprisingly deemed the Political Isolation Law unconstitutional, thereby freeing Ahmed Shafiq to contest the presidential run-off this weekend. 

In what activists and academics have described as a "soft military coup", the Constitutional Court also ruled the country's parliament illegitimate, paving the way for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) -- the military body that ruled after the first military coup ousted Mubarak -- to resume legislative powers. 

According to Bloomberg Businessweek, the court found "that part of the law under which the parliament was elected was illegal, as it allowed parties to field nominees for [the one third of] seats earmarked for independent candidates. That ruling is irreversible and means the entire legislature is illegitimate, court spokesman Maher Sami said. . . . The court said parliament has no 'standing under law'."

Former presidential candidate Abdel Moneim Abol Fotouh, an independent Islamist, decried the two court rulings, saying they amount to "a complete coup". Writing on his Facebook page, Fotouh raged, "Keeping the military candidate [in the race] and overturning the elected parliament after granting the military police the right to arrest is a complete coup and whoever thinks that millions of youth will let it pass is deluding themselves," 

See: Egypt Court Dissolves Parliament in 'Soft Coup'
By Tarek El-Tablawy, Abdel Latif Wahba and Mariam Fam
Bloomberg News, 14 June 2012 

Egypt supreme court calls for parliament to be dissolved
BBC, 14 June 2012 

At this point in time, the Islamists are refusing to dissolve the parliament and have vowed to win the presidency. And despite the threat posed by the Justice Ministry's repressive decree, protests have begun and are expected to intensify after Friday prayers and across the weekend.

See: Egyptians protest as court dissolves parliament, confirms Shafiq candidacy
Mohammed Morsi: Millions over the weekend will say 'no' to tyrants
14 June 2012 

Stratfor sees strategy

In a report entitled "Egypt's Military Delivers Ultimatum to Muslim Brotherhood" (14 June 2012), Stratfor Global Intelligence surmises that the legal manoeuvres are part of a military strategy to intimidate and contain the Muslim Brotherhood.

"Egypt's military has the least amount of control when the country goes to the polls. Through parliamentary elections the MB, together with Egypt's Salafist faction, the al-Nour Party, came to dominate parliament. And MB candidate Mohammed Morsi had a strong chance of beating Shafiq at the presidential election polls.

"The military's authority instead comes from its institutional leverage. The MB may have had nominal control over the parliament, but the military's influence over the judiciary effectively has nullified any parliamentary move the MB attempted. Similarly, the military is using its institutional strength to keep the drafting of the country's constitution out of the MB's control.

"The SCAF [Supreme Council of the Armed Forces] could not be confident that its preferred candidate, Shafiq, would beat Morsi in the presidential runoff. The SCAF may be contemplating that the best way to protect its authority in the system is to back the MB [Muslim brotherhood] against a wall, first by pushing ahead Shafiq as a legitimate candidate, then by threatening to dissolve the MB-controlled parliament and finally by establishing itself as the final arbiter in the constitution-drafting process.

"The main question moving forward is whether the MB is ready for the grand bargain that the SCAF is trying to impose on the Islamist party. The SCAF appears willing to risk an MB presidency, so long as the MB cedes primary authority to the military in drafting the constitution, which will ultimately decide the balance of power among the military, parliament and presidency. The dissolution of parliament is a threat directed at the MB: If the MB accepts the military's demands on the constitution, then the SCAF could allow the parliament to remain as is; if not, it could dissolve parliament and schedule another round of parliamentary elections. In another round of elections, the MB would likely come out with another strong win. Only this time, the elections would theoretically take place within a constitutional framework shaped by the SCAF."


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The first military coup -- in which military power was leveraged to oust Mubarak -- rode on the back of youth-driven pro-democracy protests in Tahrir Square. In this second military coup, military-controlled legal instruments are being leveraged against the parliament while military power will be leveraged against the street with the aim of asserting military control over the Islamists as they stand on the threshold of controlling both the parliament and the presidency.

The battle between the military and the Islamists has begun in earnest, leaving Egyptians who had dreamed of progress and liberty lamenting what might have been and questioning why it was not achieved.

Court Rulings Mirror Fears, Hopes in Egyptian Vote

Court Rulings Mirror Fears, Hopes in Egyptian Vote: "Death sentence upheld for Muslim, but in another trial, shocking bias persists."

Counting votes in Egyptian election.

CAIRO, Egypt, May 30 (Compass Direct News) – In the lead-up to the country’s first democratic presidential election, a court ruling confirmed fears that justice will continue to elude the Christian minority in post-revolutionary Egypt, while another verdict offered some hope. On May 21 a judge sentenced 12 Coptic Christians to life in prison for their alleged part in a riot in Abu-Qurgas village, in Minya Province, that left two Muslims and one Christian dead. Eight Muslims charged with the same crimes in the same riot were all acquitted. The ruling shocked even Copts accustomed to biased and brutal legal judgments. A rare verdict in the case of a Muslim who killed a Christian, however, held out some hope for Copts. On May 14 an Egyptian court led by Chancellor Mahmoud Salama upheld a death sentence against Amir Ashour Abd al Zaher, a police officer who in 2011 boarded a train, attacked a group of Christians and shot one dead. The verdicts came against the backdrop of the first round of what is being touted as Egypt’s first truly democratic presidential election. After the first round of elections held May 23-24, unofficial results show the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Mursi leads with ex-prime minister Ahmed Shafiq following close behind. Mursi and Shafiq will face each other again in a run-off scheduled for June 16-17.

Read more...

Election results end in arson

Mission Network News: "Egypt (MNN) ― The announcement of the official presidential candidates, following the first round of voting in Egypt’s first-ever democratic election, climaxed in an arson attack.

A mob attacked and set fire to the campaign headquarters of one of the presidential candidates, Ahmed Shafiq, on Monday night after the announcement."

Read more...