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U.S. Religious Freedom Group Meets Egypt's Coptic Pope
CAIRO, March 22 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - A U.S. delegation tasked with monitoring religious freedom overseas held talks here Thursday with Pope Shenuda III, the head of Egypt's minority Coptic Christian Orthodox community.
The delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), led by Elliot Abrams, made no comment to the press after meeting the pope at his cathedral in Cairo.
The delegation arrived here Tuesday to gather information about the Coptic minority as the Muslim Brotherhood and the opposition Nasserite party denounced the visit as interfering in Egypt's internal affairs.
The delegation is at the start of a tour of the Middle East, which will take it to Israel, the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia, the BBC reports.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, due to travel to Washington in early April for talks with new U.S. President, George W. Bush, will also receive USCIRF delegates during their four-day visit here, sources close to Mubarak said.
The Copts, who the government says account for six percent of Egypt's 65 million people, complain of discrimination against them in the state bureaucracy, police, army, and the education system.
The Coptic community in Egypt also complains of discrimination in many other areas, including employment and the freedom to build churches, the BBC adds.
Last month Christian clerics reacted angrily to a court verdict that acquitted most of those accused of massacring 21 Christians in the southern town of Kosheh in January last year.
Created in 1998 to monitor religious freedom around the world, the independent bi-partisan commission makes recommendations to the U.S. president, the secretary of state and Congress, its web site says.
Michael Meunier, the president of the Washington-based U.S. Copts Association who answered questions AFP sent to him by e-mail, said he had met with the commission twice in the last month to discuss Coptic concerns.
He said he did not think it necessary for the commission to travel to Egypt to learn about what he calls the "deteriorating" situation of the Copts in Egypt, saying the facts are already well known.
But if the commission's visit is "fair, it should provide a strong recommendation for President Bush regarding how he should reorganize the administration's priorities with Egypt," he said.
Meunier charged that that at least one member of the commission was biased in favor of the Egyptian government.
"The hope is that, if the Egyptian government is not willing to give the Copts their human rights, maybe when the international community tells them to do so, it will."
The visit has prompted angry reactions across the political spectrum in Egypt, with some politicians describing it as interference in Egyptian affairs and accusing Washington of double standards, the BBC concluded.
Local press reports say the delegation was snubbed by the major Muslim clerics who feared the delegation may further weaken Muslims in face of increasing Coptic demands.
The London-based al-Hayat newspaper reported Sunday that the Sheikh of al-Azhar, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, and the Grand Mufti of the Republic (the main religious edict authorities) have been hesitant to meet the delegation as it may be interpreted as an intervention in domestic affairs.
Radical Coptic groups have used the U.S. to launch attacks against Egypt for what they say is ill treatment by the government, and reportedly lobbied the previous U.S. administration into threatening sanctions against Egypt.
Muslims charge that Copts use allegations of mistreatment to make political and economic gains. They argue that the Copts actually control the country's trade and business sectors, and have served in senior positions in the government.
Muslims state that Copts are in a much stronger position than Muslims in Egypt, and certainly a lot better than Islamic groups being fought by the government.
Providing an example of Coptic success, Muslims point to Onsi Sawiris, the first Egyptian billionaire.
Sawiris is a member of Egypt's Coptic community, and according to Forbes magazine's 2000 survey of the world's richest men, has a net worth of $2.1 billion of self-made money.
Sawiris owns the giant Orsacom group, which started as a construction company but diversified into technology, tourism and telecom, each run by one of his three sons.
The Coptic Orthodox Church has become very vibrant and has over the past few years, scored successes never imagined before. Its religious services are packed, and once-forlorn desert monasteries bustle with activity.
The government, keen to project a conciliatory image, returned to the Church lands seized during land reform measures 40 years ago, while al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's most prestigious seat of learning, is still fighting for the same right.
The government has also eased a 150-year-old law that required presidential permission for building churches. The Church of St. Simeon, a vast amphitheatre for 20,000 people recently quarried out of the limestone cliffs that loom over Cairo, is one of the most striking new churches in the world. And at Aswan, a grandiose cathedral is rising behind the venerable Old Cataract Hotel.
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