|
Egypt To Slam Door On Religious Freedom Investigators
CAIRO, March 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - The Egyptian government vowed Wednesday to slam the door on future visits by foreign investigators of religious freedom, just days after receiving such a group from the United States.
"The Egyptian government will no longer receive foreign commissions which investigate religious freedom in Egypt," Osama al-Baz, top advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, told the government newspaper Al-Ahram.
"The situation of Egyptian citizens in their country is an internal affair which concerns only Egypt," Baz said, without mentioning the group that visited Egypt last week.
A delegation from the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) left Egypt on Saturday following a four-day visit in which it met with Mubarak as well as a few Muslim and Christian leaders.
The visit was strongly criticized at the time by the opposition press, by a Coptic Christian Member of Parliament and by the Muslim Brotherhood, an illegal but partly tolerated political party.
Baz's remarks were the first official, though oblique, criticism of the delegation, which left here to pursue its tour of the Middle East, with stops in Israel, the Palestinian territories and Saudi Arabia.
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.
Coptic Christians, who the government says account for six percent of Egypt's 65 million people, complain of discrimination against them in the state bureaucracy, police and army, education system and other areas.
Last month, Christian clerics reacted angrily to a court verdict that acquitted most of those accused of massacring 20 Christians in the southern town of Kosheh in January last year. One Muslim was also killed.
Local press reports said the delegation was snubbed by major Muslim clerics during meetings who feared the delegation may further weaken Muslims in face of increasing Coptic demands.
The London-based al-Hayat newspaper reported last week that the Sheikh of al-Azhar, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, and the Grand Mufti of the Republic (the main religious edict authorities) were initially hesitant to meet the delegation as it could have been interpreted as intervention in domestic affairs.
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 Copts actually control the country's trade and business sectors and have served in senior positions in the government citing the example of Youssef Boutrous Ghali, the country's economy minister.
Muslims state that Copts are in a much stronger position than Muslims in Egypt, and certainly way 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 amphitheater 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.
|
