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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood dismisses Obama speech

CAIRO, (Reuters) - Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood dismissed on Saturday U.S. President Barack Obama’s plan to deliver a speech to the Muslim world from Egypt as part of a plan to keep Arab and Muslim states divided.Deputy leader Mohamed Habib said overtures by the United States to countries like Syria and Iran, and recent visits by U.S. officials to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, indicated the speech would be used to further the superpower’s pro-Israeli agenda.
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Bomb explodes in Cairo, no one hurt - sources

CAIRO, May 10 (Reuters) - A small homemade bomb exploded near a church in the Egyptian capital on Sunday but no one was hurt, security sources said.

The device damaged a car and a second one was found and detonated by police in the same area near a Coptic church in the northeast of Cairo, the sources added.
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Pope hails courage of Mideast Christians

  

The pope will head to Israel tomorrowBenedict XVI urges Christians in Holy Land to be faithful to their roots in troubled Middle East.
 

AMMAN - Pope Benedict XVI hailed the courage of Christians in the Holy Land and urged them to be faithful to their roots in the troubled Middle East where decades of conflict have forced many to emigrate.

“I have long awaited this opportunity to stand before you as a witness to the Risen Saviour, and to encourage you to persevere in faith, hope and love,” the pontiff said at an open-air mass in Jordan.
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Mismanagement, or inherent fanaticism?

By Adel Mounir

The issue of culling and executing the pigs dominated the discussions of the Shura (Consultative) Council-the upper house of the Egyptian parliament-last week. Rational voices called for allocating areas for the garbage collectors away from the urban districts, while helping the pig breeders to establish proper, healthy pens for the pigs. Rifaat al-Saïd called for a resolution of the current pig culling issue within the context of national unity, considering that the pig breeders were Copts.
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Problems on hold

By Youssef Sidhom

The need for corrective action

Over the course of Egyptian modern history, the Coptic question has been strongly present on Egypt’s political stage.  It left its imprint on Parliament and political parties as well as society in its entirety. One can detect a consensus among scholars that during the period extending from the early 19th century to the July 1952 Revolution integration between Muslims and Copts reached its best and the latter were part and parcel of the national movement.
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Just one in 10 British Muslims feel integrated into society, study claims

London Daily Mail

Only one in ten Muslims in Britain see themselves as integrated into the rest of society,  a large-scale international survey said today.

And it found that more than a third are dissatisfied with their standard of living.

The levels of integration - or ‘cohesion’ as Labour ministers prefer to call it - compare badly with the way Muslims have mixed into the rest of the population in France and Germany.
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Pope warns of misuse of religion

Pope Benedict XVI has warned against the misuse of religion for political ends, in a speech to Muslim leaders on the second day of his visit to Jordan.

Speaking in the King Hussein Mosque in Amman, he argued that religion was a force for good, but its “manipulation” caused divisions and even violence.
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Obama picks Egypt for new Muslim address

US president bids to mend America’s image during visit to most populous nation in Arab world.
WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama will make his long-awaited address to Muslims in Egypt on June 4, accelerating his bid to mend the US image in the Islamic world from an epicenter of Arab civilization.

The speech, fulfilling an Obama campaign promise, will focus on how Americans and Muslims abroad can secure the “safety and security” of their children in a more hopeful future, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
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Pope, in Jordan, offers Church help for peace process

By Philip Pullella and Tom Heneghan

AMMAN (Reuters) - Pope Benedict began a delicate trip to the Middle East on Friday by expressing “deep respect” for Islam and saying the Catholic Church would do everything it could to help the region’s stalled peace process.

Starting the first leg of a trip that will include Israel and the Palestinian territories, he also called for a three-way dialogue of Christians, Muslims and Jews to help peace.
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Kuwaiti Women Aim for Third Time Luck in Elections

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) - Women in the conservative Gulf state of Kuwait aim to make it third time lucky as they contest seats in parliament after two failed attempts in legislative elections.

US-educated candidate Maasuma al-Mubarak already made history by becoming the first female minister in Kuwait in 2005, right after women were granted full political rights following a 40-year struggle.
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SOMALIA: KENYAN PASTOR BEATEN AT SOMALILAND BORDER

Immigration officials threaten to kill convert from Islam unless he renounces faith.

NAIROBI, Kenya, May 8 (Compass Direct News) - A pastor trying to visit Somalia’s autonomous, self-declared state of Somaliland earlier this year discovered just how hostile the separatist region can be to Christians.

A convert from Islam, Abdi Welli Ahmed is an East Africa Pentecostal Church pastor from Kenya who in February tried to visit and encourage Christians, an invisibly tiny minority, in the religiously intolerant region of Somaliland.
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Egypt Reiterates 2010 Aid Program Agreement with Washington

By   Mohamed Abdel Khaliq Mosahel, Gomaa Hamadallah

Hossam Zaki, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, said the Egyptian government and the US administration have successfully ended their consultations on the size of the military and economic aid to Egypt for 2010. The US administration is expected to submit this program to Congress this week.

In a press release yesterday, Zaki did not reveal the value of the US aid to Egypt, while The Washington Post has criticized the Obama administration for allocating unconditional aid for Egypt.
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Muslim dentist ‘refused to treat female patients unless they wore Islamic dress’

London Daily Mail

‘He required that women cover their hair with a head scarf, or hijab, and that male patients remove any gold jewellery.
 Muslim dentist refused to treat patients unless they wore traditional Islamic dress, it was alleged today.Omer Butt, 32, ordered women to put on head scarves or he would not register them or their families at his NHS-funded clinic, it was claimed.

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Egyptian Man Imprisoned on Charges of Proselytizing Christianity in Libya

In an embarrassing situation, the Libyan authorities arrested Egyptian Coptic Christian Massoud Hanna, 41 years old, accusing him of proselytizing and detained him in prison.According to Dr. Naguib Gibraeel, President of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization “EUHRO”, an attorney and a Copt himself, Mr. Hanna was publishing purely Christian spiritual contents on his electronic website, which the Libyan authorities considered to be “Proselytizing Christianity in Libya”.
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Egypt’s pigs What a waste

Is it wise to kill the capital’s rubbish-ridding pigs?

IN A city not much noted for efficiency, Cairo’s traditional rubbish collectors, or Zabbaleen, have long been something of a paragon. While failing to keep Egypt’s teeming capital very clean, the Zabbaleen, nearly all of them members of Egypt’s 6m-plus Coptic Christian minority, do an excellent job of processing waste. Trucking refuse to the half-dozen rag-picking settlements that ring the city, they carefully sift out recyclable glass, paper and plastic. The rest is fed to pigs.
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Pope Arriving At Time When Christians Are Leaving

JERUSALEM (AP) — When Pope Benedict XVI comes to the Holy Land next week, he will greet a community of believers whose numbers are gradually eroding.Dwarfed by Jewish and Muslim populations, young Christians are increasingly leaving to seek their futures elsewhere, especially those in the Palestinian territories and east Jerusalem. Christians say they are treated with suspicion by both Jews and Muslims and feel caught in an increasingly polarized conflict between them.
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Egypt brushes off reports on nuclear traces

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt said on Thursday media reports that U.N. nuclear inspectors found traces of highly enriched uranium at an Egyptian reactor complex addressed an old issue that had already been resolved.

A restricted International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, obtained by Reuters on Wednesday, said the inspectors found the traces but did not specify if they were weapons-grade — enriched to a high-enough level to make a bomb.
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Revolution in Egypt’s mental health care

Lawmakers in Egypt have passed the country’s first new mental health legislation in more than 60 years. The BBC’s Yolande Knell in Cairo reports on the radical reforms to a system in which mentally ill patients are shut away in 19th Century asylums for decades.

When I tell my taxi driver where I want to go he looks surprised and then grins broadly. “Abbasiya? The crazy hospital?” he asks. “Are you crazy?”
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Coptic Culture

Christian Teachings and Thought, Part VI

by Ed Rizkalla

“I am the way and the truth and the life” John 14.6

“je `Anok pe pimwit nem ]me;myi nem piwnq“

               “انا هو الطريق والحق والحياة “

On a business trip to Austria a few years ago, the writer took some time to visit the Imperial Apartments museum in Vienna, which houses some of the treasures of the Hapsburg emperors. Vienna is a charming city, which offers a rich cultural heritage that satisfies most tastes. Among the displays of museum were some of the imperial kitchen’s utensils, including a common metallic washing tub.
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EGYPT: SWINE DESTRUCTION THREATENS COPTIC-RUN INDUSTRY

Government vows to continue slaughter in spite of international criticism.

CAIRO, Egypt, May 5 (Compass Direct News) - Authorities yesterday pressed ahead with the slaughter of Egypt’s pigs - crippling the livelihood of thousands of swine breeders, nearly all Coptic Christians - in spite of World Health Organization (WHO) criticism that the measure was unnecessary for fighting the A(H1-N1) flu strain.
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