Egypt

From Tahrir Square to Alexandria Murder – Egypt Is Radical

July 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

The current events are flowing non stop from Egypt, that it is easy to forget what happened just a couple of days ago. Before the army overtaking the country from its elected officials the news talked about a festive-like protest in Tahrir square, the same place that was the anti Mubarack protest in the end of 2011.

Tahrir is also synonymous with the abuse of woman, especially foreign reporters. The fist case was of Lara Logan who has been not only sexually assaulted in the square during the joy that overtook the country when Mubarack was removed, but she was also beating and physically attacked.

Natasha Smith was yet another journalist that was sexually attacked in the square as well as the (now famous) Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda el Mahdi. Add to this the constant stream of reports by locals of the continues harassment by the army and the police (toward females) and you get one place you should not visit in Cairo – if you are a Western female.

Now the current story is of a Dutch young woman who was brutally assaulted in the square a couple of days ago, rushed to the hospital and later sent back to her country. The fact that there rapes do not stop is an indication that there is something deep within the current Egyptian society that is wrong, but the current trend makes it even worst – the “easy trigger” when it comes to foreigners, and while females are abused and attacked males are simply stabbed and killed.

As was the unfortunate case of Andrew Pochter from Maryland, who spent time in Egypt teaching children English, he was stabbed in Alexandria while watching a demonstration, he was not part of it, and he probably took a place of a spectator – mainly because he was an outsider. Someone grabbed the chance to stab and kill him, for the obvious reason of him not being Egyptian.

There are many signs that show the turning of the Egyptian society into a radical and non tolerant one, the extreme cases of the rapes and murders should be noted by those who thing of paying the country a visit.

Can You Get More Confused About Egypt?

July 4, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Oh, sure you can.

For lack of time, this post is presented in a form of “bunch of questions” that very naturally rise from the events of the past 48 hours, all are probably good titles for further posts on the subject of democracy, free speech, the unbelievable defeat the current American administration in its Mid-East foreign policy, and on top of everything is the Muslim brotherhood’s future.

Here are the questions – or simply things to consider about talking on the subject of Egypt –

When an army removes an elected prime minister/president can it ever be called a service to democracy? (lets answer this one with a clear “no!”, it has nothing to do with democracy or any kind of liberal thinking, it is a pure violent action that is contrary to any democratic idea).

Free speech – did the protest in the last couple of days bring about the removal of the Egyptian officials, was that a pure form of free speech that overtook the whole country?. Of course it was free speech and it was exercised to perfection, however one must wonder how this lighting fast mini revolution came to be, how could it be that it took under 100 hours to remove a party that won an election just a year ago by an overwhelming majority of the population.

The American failure – President Obama has another fantastic disaster under his belt now, his lack of intervention on Syria, his paralyzation in dealing with the “Arab spring” when it happened are now ballooning into a huge problem. The never ending mistakes with almost all the middle east countries has led to a rapid decline in the how the U.S. is perceived today. Even the loudest warnings from Washington are ignored by the people of the Middle East.

The people of Egypt did not revolt against the Muslim brotherhood because it was bad at politics, but because it failed the most basic elements of any administration – it did not get the population enough food, enough work, enough safety.

The Muslim brotherhood – after decades of waiting, not always quietly, for power, the brotherhood now lost it in a few hours, publicly humiliated and stripped of power it is indeed a surprise that this thing happened without much blood filling the streets of Egypt, however the backlash might still arrive, what is worst is that the followers of the party have a genuine claim, they were removed by force by the army.

When Inner Self Leads to Prison – New Egypt

January 28, 2013 by Leave a Comment

How lucky do you, the reader, consider yourself, using the internet and reading this blog post off a computer screen, hopefully reading in peace. The truth is that we in the West are pretty lucky, when compared to some parts of the world, there are a lot of places in state of war, chaos and trouble, but not many seem to be in the poor shape Egypt is turning out to be.

A mother and her seven children found themselves in the Egyptian prison for 15 years for (wait for it) converting back to Christianity, it seems that the mother was a Christian to begin with and converted to support her marriage to a Muslim man, when the husband passed away she wanted to go back to Christianity (just a thought… if it was so easy for her to drop Islam how did she not just drop out of religion altogether… one can not stop being atheist in this place) but when the authorities found out about it they simply did not accept that – converting to Christianity is not so simple in 2013 Egypt.

In fact converting to anything but Islam is not so simple in Egypt, it is just Islam, that is what this country is turning out to be in a worrying rate, a fundamentalist state with totalitarian aspirations, taking hostage the population of the country, their minds and hearts as they go – raping the entire population into a forced religious system. Orwell was never as close as now to a ministry of thoughts, where one needs to confess his or hers deepest beliefs and suffer for it.

Bahai Children Out of Egypt’s Schools

January 9, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Egypt’s treatment of its minorities seems to be going from bad to worst, or even to the brink of a humanitarian crisis. After that much discussed constitution the country now moves to implement many of the Islamic principles some of its Islamic population passionately want to see as the country’s rule and law.

It is already clear that Christians and Jews in Egypt are seen as something of a nuisance, now the education minister turns to the Bahai population of the country with a new idea, the children of those who believe in the Bahai faith will be excluded from schools.

As the new rules state that the country will respect only the “Abrahamic” religions (apparently those are Judaism, Christianity and Islam) and since Bahai is not on this exclusive list the children of this faith will find themselves out of the gates of elementary eduction establishments.

This is clearly another move towards that never ending goal of the Brotherhood, to enforce Sharia on the country and establish the beginning of the Caliphate, judging by the relative silence following the persecution of Christian Copts and Jews in the last 2 years in Egypt it looks like this step is going to pass without much trouble from the countries of the world.

This Is How Religious Mob Lynching Looks Like

September 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Imagine being pulled out of your house by the police to face a festivity like mob (with music, drums beating and chanting) to be dragged to a car, all the while suffering blows and fists to your body by the crowds, and all of that because you are suspected of thinking/believing that there is no god.

Watch this video, for the most part of it you can easily think that this was taken at some middle eastern wedding or party, until the last few seconds when a person is pushed out in the frame and the crowd just goes wild on his person. This is how it looks like in the Arab world, if you have the miserable luck of being a non Muslim in a Muslim land you face a very real chance of having this – or worst – happen to you.

This is the face of the new Egypt, the “liberated” Egypt, the country who pulled itself out of the tyranny of the former government. In the past few days we all witnessed the explosion of Islamic zero tolerance to anything non Muslim, this was at the boiling point for many years and when the signal was given all believers followed the known pattern, there can be only one religion, there can be only one version.

We in the West did not go through hundreds of years of struggle to form this civilization to see it kneel down before a stone age animalistic and barbaric culture, and we should wake up and make sure this is understood.