Libya’s endgame appears to be at hand, bringing to a climax an uprising against Muammar Qaddafi that just weeks ago appeared to be stalled by inexperience, disunity, and a lack of resources.
For months, Libya has been stalemated as rebels have surged forward, only to be pushed back by Qaddafi loyalists. But aided by NATO airstrikes and better organization, rebels have been steadily building momentum….
The Bishop of Bristol has questioned the government’s hands off policy towards human rights abuses in Syria, and has urged the Foreign Secretary to take a tougher line on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
Writing on his blog on the diocesan website on Aug 1, the Rt. Rev. Mike Hill stated “I can’t be the only person wondering why the West, having rapidly decided that intervention in Libya was a righteous and necessary cause, seem less interested in the wholesale slaughter taking place in Syria.”
This has left the military to decide, more or less, how to run the transition and what its destination will be. Do they pursue former officials or not? Do they prosecute Mubarak? Or do they simply move on in the hope that the past can be left to itself? Presently the answer seems to be that they pursue those they don’t like (such as associates of Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal), and only go after others when failure to do so generates popular anger. The military will always ensure its own interests in the regime are preserved, which may well limit the kind of structural reform that is possible in Egypt. And without a clear, revolutionary leadership, who has the authority to intervene?
This matters. To the extent that Egypt has inspired the Arab Spring, failure at the last hurdle will be a major symbolic blow to the region. Colonel Gaddafi’s horrific stubbornness in Libya is already deflating. So too the lack of progress in Bahrain and the absence of western interest or a clear avenue to success in Syria.
It’s a pivotal moment….
You have concerns that most pastors can’t begin to fathom. How does working under such extraordinary conditions affect ordinary ministry?
So many of our brothers and sisters here in Baghdad have been killed, kidnapped, or tortured even in the last few months. Members of my staff have also been killed. Just this morning, I was trying to sort out post-hospital care for our former chief of security, who recently had a leg blown off.
We cope because the Lord is always with us. When you are where the Lord wants you to be, he always enables you to cope. Look at Daniel. He had not planned to come into exile in Babylon under Nebuchadnezzar. God still provided him with all that he required. He had not intended to be an interpreter of dreams, but God gave him the knowledge to do all that he needed and enabled him to serve with joy.
In the same way, I had no intention of coming to Iraq. But God brought me here 13 years ago, and now there is nowhere in the world I would rather be. Even in the midst of terror and persecution, we have the joy of the Lord.
Tens of thousands of people descended Friday on downtown Cairo in one of the largest Islamist demonstrations in Egypt’s history, an effort to show political unity among Muslim groups and challenge efforts to limit their power.
In the march, a broad range of Islamist groups called for the establishment of Islamic law in Egypt and protested moves by secularist politicians to prevent them from influencing the drafting of a new constitution.
Friday’s rally showed the extent to which Egypt’s constitution has become a the core point of conflict between secular and Islamist political forces in the democracy emerging from the fall of President Hosni Mubarak.
PROFESSOR BERNARD SABELLA (Al-Quds University): The places are important, but you need to make these places to come alive, and you cannot do that without indigenous Palestinian Christians in the Holy Land.
[KIM] LAWTON: The overwhelming majority of Christians here are Arabs. They were among the hundreds of thousands displaced in 1948, when the State of Israel was established and in the wars that followed. For decades now, Palestinian Christians have continued to emigrate at disproportionately high rates, and their birth rates are much lower than those of Muslims. Roughly 150,000 Christians live in Israel proper””about two percent of the population. In the Palestinian Territories, it’s estimated that Christians make up just over one percent of the population. There are also small Christian minorities in disputed East Jerusalem. The circumstances for Christians vary in each of those places and, like most things here, a lot of it is shaped by the ongoing conflict.
SABELLA: The challenge, I think, to Palestinian Christians, in my view, and to Christian communities in Israel and the Middle East, is really to stay put.
Read or watch it all and you can watch more extended excerpts there if you so desire.
Scores of Coptic Christians on Monday staged their third demonstration before St. Mark’s cathedral in Abbasseya, demanding permission for divorce and civil marriages.
ARCHBISHOP VINCENT NICHOLS, Catholic Bishops’ Conf. of England and Wales: The Holy Land and the holy sites could become something like the Coliseum, you know, the remnants of something that is of great historical interest and maybe of cultural interest, but not lived in, not living and breathing centers of life and prayer.
[KIM] LAWTON: The leaders discussed concrete ways to help the predominantly Palestinian Christian community, such as financial support, building more relationships between congregations and increasing public policy advocacy. As part of that, the group specifically called for an end to security restrictions that prevent local people of faith from visiting their holy sites. Conference organizers denied criticism from some quarters that supporting Palestinian Christians makes one “anti-Israel.”
…the youth revolution has excellently succeeded in Cairo’s Liberation Square. It overthrew the military regime that ruled Egypt since the July 23, 1952, revolution, liberated all Egyptians, destroyed the wall of fear and eliminated it from all Egyptians’ hearts. It encouraged them to abandon their negative attitudes and seek the participation in the political action.
But, the success of this youth revolution, thanks to their sacrifices and martyrs, offered the golden opportunity for some political forces and religious communities that were forbidden and persecuted under the former regime’s rule, to break their silence and work hard in taking this opportunity in order to achieve their goals, and their political and religious agenda.
In terms of the Christian Egyptian presence, I noticed lately the end of silence and negativity that characterized most Christian Egyptians, especially after the July 23, 1952, revolution. The Christian Egyptian presence in the Liberation Square was really honorable, active and constructive, especially among the Christian youth. Until now, the Christian Egyptians’ participation in the current events is still alive and effective, and their presence in the national conferences and popular committees reflects their concern for the nation’s affairs, and their readiness to cooperate to develop it.
The forty-year-old Virgin Mary Church on Cairo’s al-Wahda Street””the name means unity, or oneness””looks striking these days. Its cream and white façade is unscathed by the dust and smog that otherwise blanket neighboring buildings and the rest of the city, and inside, its walls and floors glisten with newly laid cappuccino-colored marble. The church, its guardians say, has never looked better. “Ever, in its entire history.”
On May 8, this church, in the impoverished Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba, a ten-minute drive from Tahrir Square, was a scene of devastation. It had been ravaged by flames and its insides gutted, smashed, looted, and charred after clashes broke out between Muslims and Christians over the case of a Coptic woman named Abeer Fakhri, an alleged convert to Islam whom ultraconservative Salafis had claimed was being held against her will at the nearby Church of St. Mina, which was also attacked. Fifteen people were killed in the violence and almost two hundred injured.
The attack was one of a series against Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority in the weeks since President Hosni Mubarak stepped down on February 11. Since then, widespread and escalating crime has gripped the country….
Watch it all (a little over eight minutes).
The segment description is as follows:
A joint conference of Catholic and Anglican experts on the Middle East, taking place at Lambeth Palace in London, has been hearing first hand accounts of the struggles of the Christian community in the Holy Land today. The two day meeting, organised by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster Vincent Nichols aims to raise greater awareness of the difficulties facing the minority Christians in Israel and the Palestinian territories and find practical ways of supporting the Churches there. At the opening of the meeting on Monday, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Fouad Twal and his Anglican counterpart Bishop Suheil Dawani joined some young Palestinian Christians in speaking of the human face of the continuing conflict and occupation. Philippa Hitchen spoke to Patriarch Twal to find out what he hopes this conference can achieve
The following speeches are a selection of those made on the second day of the Conference on Christians in the Holy Land, and include an audio recording of the Archbishops’ comments at the concluding press conference.
The following speeches are a selection of those made on the first day of the Conference on Christians in the Holy Land, hosted by Archbishop Rowan Williams and Archbishop Vincent Nichols.
In view of the tragically difficult times that the whole Middle East, and especially Syria, is going through, H. B. Patriarch Gregorios III wrote a letter on 20 April 2011 to Western leaders, asking them to help boost social and political evolution in the region. He stressed that the current revolutions are unlikely to benefit Christians, and may even result in more Christians being obliged to flee the unrest. He believes that Western support for peace is very important for Muslim-Christian living together in the Arab region, for the Christian presence there, for the communion and witness of its Churches to be maintained and for the aims of the recent Special Assembly for the Middle East of the Synod of Bishops to be fulfilled.
This is the video mentioned in the prior audio piece from Vatican Radio. Watch it all–KSH.
Herewith the accompanying blurb:
The Anglican archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols are to host an international conference on the Holy Land next week, aimed at raising awareness of the plight of Christians there.
The conference, to be held on Monday and Tuesday at Lambeth Palce in London, includes Anglican and Catholic bishops from many different countries, together with Jewish and Muslim delegates who will stress the vital role that Christians continue to play in the land where Christ was born.
The head of Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, Cardinal Jean Louis Tauran will be representing the Holy See at the conference, while the delegation of Christian leaders from Jerusalem will be headed by Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal and Anglican bishop Suheil Dawani.
The government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is privately telling American officials that it wants their army to stay here after this year.
The Americans are privately telling their Iraqi counterparts that they want to stay.
But under what conditions, and at what price to the Americans who stay behind?
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, today launched an Appeal at General Synod’s July 2011 Group of Sessions, for funds to help sustain Christian communities in the Holy Land.
“I returned from a visit to the Holy Land last year with a very, very strong sense that we had to do more to express our solidarity with the Christian communities there…We know our brothers and sisters there are suffering; and we don’t always ask ourselves often enough what our response needs to be.”
The U.S. will not “walk away” from the challenge of Iran’s stepped-up arming of Iraqi insurgents who are targeting and killing American troops, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday.
“We’re very concerned about Iran and the weapons they’re providing to extremists in Iraq,” he told soldiers on his first visit to Iraq as Pentagon chief.
“We cannot sit back and simply allow this to continue to happen” he said. “This is not something we’re going to walk away from. It’s something we’re going to take on head-on.”
Iran said on Saturday it test-fired two long-range missiles into the Indian Ocean earlier this year, the first time it has fired missiles into that sea, according to state television.
“In the month of Bahman (Jan 21-Feb 19) two missiles with a range of 1,900 km (1,180 miles) were fired from Semnan province(in northern Iran) into the mouth of the Indian Ocean,” Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards’ aerospace division, told a news conference some of which was shown on television.
The Archbishop of Canterbury has come under sharp criticism from Palestinian activists, who have accused Dr. Rowan Williams of being an ill-informed right-winger bent on “demonizing Islam” and supporting the Israeli government.
However, a spokesman for Dr. Williams tells The Church of England Newspaper that Kairos Palestine had improperly construed the archbishop’s remarks about the plight of Christians across the Middle East to be an endorsement of Israeli government policies.
Having arrived at what they described as a “broad consensus”, representatives of 90 per cent of the world’s Christians have published guidelines on how to conduct relations with each other and with members of other faiths. It is an important step forward in relations between different Christian denominations, but its real significance may lie elsewhere. In many parts of the world Christians live cheek by jowl with other religions. Often they are a minority group. Violence is sometimes stirred up by troublemakers when Christians are accused of evangelising and seeking to convert others to Christianity. This has happened time and again in the Middle East and the Asian subcontinent.
In most cases the troublemakers are militant Islamists, but in India it has also occurred with militant Hindus. Such charges will be much easier to refute now these guidelines are in existence. They also provide ammunition for church authorities seeking to restrain the more zealous of their own members.
Among the bravest people in the world right now must rank the protesters in Syria, who are coming out every week, in city after city, in their hundreds of thousands, despite the Assad regime’s continued brutality.
–Bill Emmott in today’s (London) Times, somehow oh so appropriate on this day
The United States will resume limited contacts with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton confirmed on Thursday, saying it was in Washington’s interests to deal with parties committed to non-violent politics. While Clinton portrayed the administration’s decision as a continuation of an earlier policy, it reflects a subtle shift in that U.S. officials will be able to deal directly with officials of the Islamist movement who are not members of parliament.
The move, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, is likely to upset Israel and its U.S. supporters who have deep misgivings about the Brotherhood, a group founded in 1928 that seeks to promote its conservative vision of Islam in society.
The former Mossad spy chief’s name is on everyone’s lips in Israel ”” with good reason.
Meir Dagan was the head of Israel’s spy agency for eight years and has been credited with raising the international prestige of the agency. So it came as a shock to many that upon leaving office he would talk about one of the most sensitive issues here: Iran.
Dagan has said that a military strike on that nation targeting its suspect nuclear program would be disastrous, and he lambasted the current Israeli leadership for being reckless in pursuing that aim. This past week, Dagan was stripped of his diplomatic passport, in apparent retaliation.
Mouna gets annoyed at the next question. “We’ve grown up to believe there’s nothing to do about this society, and you already ask me who we want as a new leader. No candidate has materialized between March and April. What I want is to participate in society,” she says firmly.
She disconnects her cell phone from its charger when it starts chiming. It’s a dying phone and needs charging three times a day. Mouna’s slight body begins to shake. She holds her phone in one hand and clasps her hair with the other.
“When? Where?”
She stares into the air. “I have to go,” she says. “My friend has been arrested. The secret police came to his home.”
Syria’s military has moved into a village near the border with Turkey and a town near the boundary with Lebanon, activists say.
Hundreds of Syrians, some with gunshot wounds, have fled into Lebanon, according to reports.
At least four civilians were reportedly killed by security forces during house-to-house raids and at funerals held for those killed in Friday’s rallies.
Recent developments in the Middle East and North Africa have produced an unprecedented opening for change that will not last. The international community has both the opportunity and the responsibility to facilitate transformation in the countries that seek democratization. This historic moment ”” the Arab Spring ”” is no time for inaction.
If history is any guide, the use of Islam in the political arena might not be a sign that countries such as Egypt or Tunisia are adopting more extremist agendas, but that their governments are incapable of fulfilling the promises they made to their people.
The Obama administration, the U.S. Congress, and indeed, the international community should remain focused on each country in transition, recalibrate old policies toward the region, and take concrete, meaningful actions to support democratization now.