U.S. Copts Association

By Heba Saleh
BBC News, Cairo

One of Egypt’s most controversial newspaper editors is going on trial for publishing rumours about the state of President Hosni Mubarak’s health.

Al-Dustour editor Ibrahim Issa faces up to three years in jail if convicted of undermining national security.

His trial, along with prison sentences passed this month against 11 other journalists, has provoked the anger of the independent and opposition press.

The Egyptian media accuses the authorities of trying to muzzle it.
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Discrimination Against Copts:
By Adel Guindy- Watani Newspaper

A recent report entitled “Discrimination at Work in the Middle East and North Africa” by the International Labor Organization (ILO), said that “One of the most resilient forms of discrimination is the targeting of Copts in Egypt, who are denied equal access to education and equal opportunities in recruitment and promotion. Very few are appointed to key positions in the Government or are candidates for parliament. Enrolment of Copts in police academies and military schools is restricted, and very few are teachers and professors.”(1)

Quite unfortunately, rather than taking action to correct the situation, Egypt’s government has reacted defensively, categorically denying the existence of a problem that is otherwise apparent to all. Egypt’s minister of labour took upon herself to refute all the charges while attending personally the 96th session of ILO, held in Geneva as of May 30, 2007. She did not refrain from reverting to preposterous and irrelevant arguments such as that the Sawiris family figures on Forbes’ list of billionaires, etc.

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Law or sharia

By Nader Shukry- Watani Newspaper

Last Wednesday the Alexandria Appeals Court adjourned judgement in the case of the 13-year-old twins Andrew and Mario Medhat Ramsis pending a ruling from the office of investigating forgeries and fakes on whether a certificate he had signed in 2002 admitting his reversion to Christianity following a previous conversion to Islam in 2000 is authentic or not. Ramsis was born a Christian, reportedly converted to Islam in 2000, reverted to Christianity in 2002, then back to Islam in 2005.

The Christian-born twins are now in the custody of their Christian mother Kamilia Lutfi and have repeatedly said they wished to remain so. Their Muslim convert father however, went to court demanding custody over the twins, claiming he feared for them of their mother since she would “make them love the ‘apostate religion’ [Christianity], go to church, eat pork and drink wine.” A primary court ruling granted Ramsis custody of the children but the mother appealed the case. Egyptian law automatically grants a mother custody over her children until they are 15, but in this case the mother is Christian and the father Muslim so the law is not automatically applied.
The problem, according to Naguib Gabrail, the mother’s lawyer, is whether the judges apply the country’s civil law or resort to Islamic legal code sharia. In the primary court, Mr Gabrail told Watani, when he asked that the custody be granted to the mother since the boys were not yet 15, the judge said: “But their Muslim father wishes his children to grow up as Muslims.” “One question,” Gabrail said, “Are you basing your judgement on civil law or sharia?” “Sharia, of course,” the judge said. “Well then, Mr Gabrail said, you should know that Mr Ramsis reverted to Christianity in 2002.” The judge thus called Mr Ramsis and asked him whether he was Muslim or Christian, upon which Mr Ramsis said he was Muslim and pronounced the Islamic testimony before the court. The judge accordingly granted him custody over the children.
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Nadia Abdel-Qudoos says militias warned her to stay away from her Sunni, Christian friends.
BAGHDAD - Nadia Abdel-Qudoos (not her real name), a 23-year-old dentistry student at Baghdad University, says she has been forced to keep away from her old friends because they belong to a different sect or religion.

“Shia militias from Kadhimiyah, the Baghdad neighbourhood in which I live, came to my house a couple of months ago and told my family that if I didn’t keep away from my Sunni and Christian colleagues in college, we were going to pay the price of what they called `betrayal’.
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A Syrian cleric suspected of recruiting foreign militants to fight in Iraq has been shot dead in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, his aides have said.Sheikh Mahmoud Abu al-Qaqaa was shot several times by a gunman as he left the Imam Mosque after Friday prayers.

The gunman tried to flee the scene of the shooting, but was chased by a crowd and later arrested, the aides said.

Correspondents say Abu al-Qaqaa was a charismatic Sunni cleric with thousands of radical Islamist followers in Syria.
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Konigstein, Sep 28, 2007 / 11:08 am (CNA).- During a recent visit to the headquarters of Aid to the Church in Need (ACN), His Beatitude Antonios Naguib, the Patriarch of the Coptic Catholic Church in Egypt, said that while that country’s constitution guarantees freedom of religion and of conscience the contradictory legal situation in Egypt is making life difficult for the Church.

During his visit, Patriarch Naguib said most Muslims in Egypt follow Islamic law, according to which a Muslim cannot convert to another religion without being punished or even put to death.
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Christians called to fast, pray ahead of trial; European parliamentarians demand justice.

ISTANBUL, September 28 (Compass Direct News) - An e-mail message to several Turkish Protestant leaders in June surfaced in the Turkish press last week, revealing the names of Malatya officials alleged to have plotted the murder of three Christians there last April.

The Firat (Mediterranean) News Agency (ANF) reported on September 18 that an anonymous e-mail message signed simply, “A.A.” had named a colonel in the Malatya gendarmerie, along with an Islamic faculty member, as instigators of the plot to kill the three Christians.

The ANF article identified the petty officer as Mehmet Ulger but gave only the initials of several others.

A subsequent release from Birgun newspaper on September 19, however, listed the name of the faculty member as Ruhi Babat. It also identified a member of parliament from Malatya, one military commander and another suspect, all allegedly involved in the plot.
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A senior leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed in a US air strike near Baghdad on Tuesday, the US military reports.Gen Joseph Anderson said the death of Abu Osama al-Tunisi, who had led a group of foreign militants in Iraq, was a major blow to the organisation.

The US general accused him of leading a cell responsible for kidnapping and killing three US soldiers in June 2006.

The group is linked to some of the bloodiest insurgent attacks in Iraq since the 2003 US-led invasion.

It was led by the Jordanian militant, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, until he was killed by a US air strike in June 2006.

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The editors of 15 opposition and private newspapers in Egypt have agreed not to publish on 7 October. The action is in protest at what they see as government harassment of the printed press.

Seven journalists have recently been jailed for a range of offences, including insulting the ruling party, and misquoting a minister.

Journalist, Ibrahim Issa, is to appear before a state security court, which does not allow the right of appeal.
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Extremists violently enforce Islamization in unruly northern district.

ISTANBUL, September 27 (Compass Direct News) - A Pakistani official in a northern district warned female teachers and students to don Islamic garb this week, citing threats from Taliban extremists active in the area.

The Pakistani Executive District Officer (EDO) issued a notice requiring female students in Swat district to wear burqas, an outer garment cloaking nearly the entire body, according to an article on Tuesday (September 25) in regional newspaper Daily Mashriq.

Christians in the Afghan-border region 120 miles north of Peshawar say that extremists from the Taliban movement, which ruled most of Afghanistan from 1995 to 2001, have targeted them in recent months.

Extremists in Swat have conducted a campaign of Islamization in the district against all things deemed un-Islamic since early July, when a government crackdown on militants at the Lal Masjid mosque in Islamabad triggered violent reactions nationwide.
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