U.S. Copts Association

By Tarek Heggy

 found it emotionally and intellectually disturbing to see the King of Saudi Arabia present the Pope with a sword on his visit to the Vatican recently. It came at a time when there has never been a greater need to distance the name of Islam and the image of Muslims from the violent connotations and symbolism of the sword. The Saudi monarch’s unfortunate choice of a gift prompted me to sit down and write the address I thought he should have delivered if his advisors had been familiar with Western culture and mind-set. 

“Your Holiness … Your Eminences … in the name of Saudi Arabia that I am honoured to represent and in the name of Islam to which I am honoured to belong I bring you greetings of peace. In fact, the word “Islam” in Arabic is an anagram of the word “peace”. On my behalf and on behalf of the people I represent I say let us embark on a new era based on mutual respect, an era in which neither party hurts the feelings of the other and both refrain from aggression, moral or material, direct or indirect, against one another. I call on you and on the side I represent to pledge that the followers of any religion, while entitled to invite others into their faith, may not resort to violence, coercion or the use of the swords but to resort instead to persuasion and reasoning to convince them of the merits of the faith to which they belong. I hereby declare that from this day forth “Jihad” means only self-defense and resistance of aggression but never the initiation of conflict or the attempt to convert others to our religion by means of violence or the sword. There is nothing more pathetic than a religion that cannot win the hearts and minds of people except through the use of the sword. I also urge all parties to be more concerned with the quality of the followers of each religion than with their quantity. In this connection, there is much to be done to improve the quality of the believers of our great religion.

Read the rest…

By Joan Smith

There are moments when public debate in Britain appears to take place in a vacuum. As the Archbishop of Canterbury gave a convincing impression yesterday of a man suffering the torments of the Inquisition, the debate was moving away from his actual observations about Islamic law, sharia, to the question of his fitness (or otherwise) to hold his office. Rowan Williams claimed that his remarks about the unavoidability of adopting some aspects of sharia in this country had been misunderstood, prompting an interesting response from his critics: the cleric was a brilliant man, they said, but his utterances were simply too opaque for hoi polloi (especially the media) to comprehend. This prompts an obvious question - if no one understands what the Archbishop is saying, how do they know how intelligent he is? - but it also diverted attention from something much more important. Williams’s clarification of his remarks seemed to suggest that he wasn’t calling for a parallel legal system for Muslims, more a recognition of something that is already happening. Yet there has been a strange reluctance to ask a real expert who has seen the way sharia operates in this country: someone like Rahni Binjie, project manager of Roshni Asian Women’s Aid in Nottingham.
Read the rest…

Supporter of church’s construction say Islam guarantees right to build places of worship for other religions.
By Faisal Baatout - DOHA

A bitter debate has broken out in the tiny, oil-rich Gulf state of Qatar over construction of the Muslim country’s first Christian church, set to open next month in time for Easter.
Read the rest…

By Ed Rizkalla

Most of us usually do not get to express the love, affection, and thanks we all have for our Coptic women and other women who have joined our global Coptic community. I would like to offer greetings, respect, and best wishes to all our grandmothers, mothers, sisters, wives, fiancés, girlfriends, daughters and granddaughters all over the world on Valentine’s Day. Of course Valentine’s Day is not originally a Coptic Feast. On the western calendar February 14^th is originally a Feast day for Saint Valentine, a priest and a martyr dating circa 270 A.D. Over the years it became a tradition in Europe, and later on other countries, for men to express their affection, friendship and love for their female family members, loved ones and friends.
Read the rest…

Office of Rowan Williams releases clarification of Archbishop’s remarks which were misapprehended by media outlets.
LONDON - The office of the leader of the world’s Anglicans, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, has released a statement late Friday on his website that aims to clarify to the media the remarks he made in a BBC radio interview and a lecture Thursday.

The statement was as follows:

There has been a strong reaction in the media and elsewhere to the Archbishop of Canterbury’s remarks of yesterday on civil and religious law.
Read the rest…

By Emma Jane Kirby
BBC News, Lourdes

Lourdes is a massive Roman Catholic pilgrimage site with more hotels than any other French city, except Paris.

It reminded me of my father’s attic - small, overcrowded, fusty, and so stuffed full of junk that the minute I entered I used to panic, desperate to get out again.
Read the rest…

MADRID (Reuters) - Islamist extremists were planning attacks across Europe, especially against public transport, before their arrests in Barcelona last weekend, a Spanish paper reported on Saturday, citing a would-be attacker’s testimony.

The Al Qaeda-inspired cell planned to attack the Barcelona metro and other targets in Spain, Germany, France, Portugal and the United Kingdom, said the bomber turned police informant.

In testimony that led to the arrest of 14 South Asians last Saturday, the informant told police the group had a preference for attacks on public transport, especially metro systems, El Pais newspaper reported.
Read the rest…

Christian Persecution in the Middle East
BY Nina Shea

In the two millennia since the child’s birth in a humble manger in Bethlehem, the good news of Christianity has spread to every continent, inspiring more followers than any other religion today. But the lands that once were the cradle of Christianity have turned distinctively inhospitable to the faith. Fiercely intolerant variants of Islam are taking hold in the region, many of them fueled with ideology and funds from Saudi and Iranian extremists.
From Morocco to the Persian Gulf, we are seeing the rapid erosion of Christian populations, thought to now number no more than 15 million. These are the communities that have disproportionately been the region’s modernizers, the mediators bridging east and west, its educators and academics, as the Lebanese Catholic scholar Habib Malik observes. For empirical evidence he has to look no further than his own father, a principal drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The loss of Middle Eastern Christianity has profound meaning for the Church. But it should not be a matter of concern to Christians only. These Christian communities, along with a handful of other non-Muslim minority groups, such as the Bahais, Mandeans, Yizidis, Jews, together with the anti-Islamist Muslims, are the front-line in the terrible worldwide struggle taking place today between Islamist totalitarianism and individual rights and freedoms. The extinction of these ancient church communities will lead to ever more extremism within the region and polarization from the non-Muslim world. This will hurt us all.
Read the rest…

Washington DC, Jan 19, 2008 / 06:13 pm (CNA).- Bishops from North America and Europe gathered in the Holy Land this past week to demonstrate their solidarity with the local Church and provide support and encouragement to Israeli and Palestinian leaders in seeking peace. 

The meetings, held from January 11 - 16, were a part of the annual Coordination of Episcopal Conferences in Support of the Church in the Holy Land, begun at the urging of the Holy See in 1998.  Its purpose is to advocate on behalf of the Christian community in the Holy Land, press for a peaceful resolution to violence in the Middle East and to communicate to the conditions of the Church in the region to the wider Catholic Church.

Read the rest…

Vatican City, Jan 18, 2008 / 10:55 am (CNA).- This morning at the Vatican, the Pope met with the Catholic bishops from Arab regions of the world and called upon all Catholics to help Arab Christians to remain in their countries.

The prelates who spoke with Benedict XVI are from the Conference of Latin Bishops in the Arab Regions (CELRA), whose president is His Beatitude Michel Sabbah, patriarch of Jerusalem of the Latins.

In his talk to them, the Pope recalled how their episcopal conference “comprises many different situations in which the faithful, natives of many different countries, often live in small communities within societies chiefly composed of believers from other religions”.

Read the rest…