Few realize that after the Islamic Revolution, from the late 1970s through the 1980s, Iran’s Anglicans were the most severely persecuted Christians. Iranian Anglicans worshiped in Farsi, which angered Islamists wanting to portray Christianity as a Western, imperialist religion. More important, many Anglicans were converts from Islam.

The first post-revolution martyr was an Anglican priest, the Rev. Arastoo Sayyah. Islamists cut the throat of this Muslim convert in his office in Shiraz, southwest Iran, on Feb. 19, 1979, and confiscated the property of the church he led.

In October of the same year, the Rt. Rev. Hassan Dehqani-Tafti, also a Muslim convert, and his wife, Margaret, survived an assassination attempt in their bedroom. Dehqani-Tafti was the first Persian Anglican bishop.

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Dear Ones: I can’t adequately describe the struggle Anne and I have been involved in over the past week. We have been torn between a feeling of helplessness that urges us to leave, and a sense that our weakness opens the door to God’s power, and that promise calls us to stay. We have come to the conclusion that the Lord has not released us from a ministry in Egypt yet….

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More African than Arab, Southern Sudan might not provide much assistance to minorities in the Middle East. But its existence teaches the lesson that commitment from the United States actually works. In the 1980s and 1990s, a broad political coalition forced the Bush and Clinton administrations to treat Sudan as a rogue state for its oppression of minorities. The 2011 independence of Southern Sudan is a fruit of that effort ”” proof that, though it might take decades, international pressure can succeed.

Unfortunately, in the years since, America foreign policy has been little concerned with religious persecution. George W. Bush, for example, refused to insist on a non-Islamic constitution for Iraq. And Barack Obama has systematically watered down U.S. diplomacy: Where we once demanded “freedom of religion,” a public liberty, we now speak only of “freedom of worship,” a lesser and private right.

This American abdication has produced only more oppression ”” and it’s accelerating at a horrifying rate. Nearly every day since Christmas, Christians have been murderously attacked for the simple fact of being Christians….

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You can find the audio link here. The interview starts about one minute into the programme and focuses in particular on the Muslim Brotherhood (it last about five minutes).

Anyone who’s long followed the Middle East knows that the six most dangerous words after any cataclysmic event in this region are: “Things will never be the same.” After all, this region absorbed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of Google without a ripple.

But traveling through Israel, the West Bank and Jordan to measure the shock waves from Egypt, I’m convinced that the forces that were upholding the status quo here for so long ”” oil, autocracy, the distraction of Israel, and a fear of the chaos that could come with change ”” have finally met an engine of change that is even more powerful: China, Twitter and 20-year-olds.

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[PAUL} ABERNETHY: In the demonstrations in the streets there wasn’t much evidence of a religious influence. It seemed pretty secular, but lots of people expect that in a new government there will be strong religious representation. Is that fair to say?

[QAMAR-UL] HUDA: That’s a fair assessment. We know that the mass protest in Egypt is a mass public crossing all ideologies. This is a national issue for Egypt, and it’s not contained to any one group. The new government or the transitional government that will be formed in the near future””I think the religious voices or the religious parties will be at the table but will not dominate the party.

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[STEVE] INSKEEP: OK. Is that a fair comparison, Tarek Masoud? Are they just a conservative party or are they something more now?

Dr. [TAREK] MASOUD: Well, there’s two kinds of extremism. OK, there’s an extremism of ends and an extremism of means. OK. Extremism of means is if they’re willing if they want to use violence to get what they want. I certainly think they are not that. Extremism of ends, do they want things that we think are really, you know, out of the norm? I think a lot of them do, but again, you know, you let them participate in the political process and you hopefully beat them. I think and there’s evidence that the brothers, as Dr. ElBaradei said, would not necessarily capture a majority of votes in Egypt, although they are a very strong and organized party. But, you know, there’s other ideological trends and we’re seeing them being played out right now on the Egyptian street.

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It is all too easy to be the bearer of bad news about Christianity in the Middle East. The last 100 years of their history has witnessed a profound series of crises from displacement by war, genocide and inter-religious conflict, to loss, emigration and exile.

Against this background, Christians have tried to resettle and build anew. They have been able to make a significant cultural, political and economic contribution to Middle Eastern society.

Some observers have suggested that there is a “Christian barometer” which provides the world with an accurate measurement of the political atmosphere in the Middle East. Progress towards freedom, particularly religious freedom, in the Middle East can be gauged by focusing on the status of the large Christian minorities.

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Representatives of the Egyptian democracy movement vowed Sunday to escalate their pressure for the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak, even as his government sought to portray itself as well on the way to successfully negotiating an end to the uprising now in its 13th day.

In a historic first, Vice President Omar Suleiman met with representatives of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood as part of a group of about 50 opposition members that included prominent politicians and youth organizers.

The encounter itself was remarkable for bringing together members of the brotherhood ”” Egypt’s biggest opposition movement ”” and the autocratic government that has for decades repressed it as an Islamist threat.

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Israeli archaeologists presented a newly uncovered 1,500-year-old church in the Judean hills on Wednesday, including an unusually well-preserved mosaic floor with images of lions, foxes, fish and peacocks.

The Byzantine church located southwest of Jerusalem, excavated over the last two months, will be visible only for another week before archaeologists cover it again with soil for its own protection.

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After maintaining a low profile in protests led largely by secular young Egyptians, the Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s largest opposition force, appeared to be taking a more assertive role Thursday, issuing a statement asking for President Hosni Mubarak to step aside for a transitional government.

“We demand that this regime is overthrown, and we demand the formation of a national unity government for all the factions,” the Brotherhood said in a statement broadcast by Al Jazeera.

The Obama administration has spoken cautiously about the future role of the Brotherhood, which has long been banned by Mr. Mubarak’s government, saying only that all parties must renounce violence and accept democracy. But one of the few near-certainties of a post-Mubarak Egypt is that the Muslim Brotherhood will emerge as a powerful political force.

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Tahrir Square filled again with vast crowds of anti-government demonstrators Friday morning, ahead of a massive protest planned to demand the immediate ouster of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

A day after authorities launched an aggressive clampdown on foreign journalists and human rights activists observing the demonstrations, Friday’s gathering was calm and orderly, without the beatings and bloodshed that had horrified the world the day before.

After standing in long lines to pass through security checkpoints, thousands upon thousands of Egyptians entered the vast, open square and performed the weekly Friday prayers, kneeling and prostrating themselves in accordance with the muezzin’s call. Nearby, soldiers on duty kept watch.

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Egypt’s old guard has long presented the world with a potent choice: Accept our police state or extremists will take over. Rooted in the old politics of colonialism, this dichotomy effectively deterred democracy in the Arab world. What the ongoing uprising shows is that this dichotomy is no longer valid. Real change is now possible, and the old analysis that it can come only through empowering Islamists has been shattered.

The new Egypt””led by but not restricted to the youth””has little time for the octogenarians of old, who include not only Hosni Mubarak but also Mohamed Badie, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and my former cellmate. Within the Brotherhood, Mr. Badie has recently been challenged by a reformist faction now led by the younger Abdul Monim Aboul Fatouh (another former cellmate of mine).

The leaderless nature of Egypt’s street uprising raises the question of who will fill the vacuum after victory. Concerns about an Islamist takeover are valid. But that scenario is unlikely.

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Update: “New Service Lets Voices From Egypt Be Heard”:

There is still some cellphone service, so a new social-media link that marries Google, Twitter and SayNow, a voice-based social media platform, gives Egyptians three phone numbers to call and leave a message, which is then posted on the Internet as a recorded Twitter message. The messages are at twitter.com/speak2tweet and can also be heard by telephone.

The result is a story of a revolution unfolding in short bursts. Sometimes speaking for just several seconds, other times for more than a minute, the disembodied voices convey highly charged moments of excitement or calm declarations of what life is like in Egypt, the Arab world’s most populous country, as it seeks to remove its leader.

The messages rolled out as Egyptians seemed to be approaching a crucial point, with hundreds of thousands of people crammed into central Cairo on Tuesday, as protests continued to demand the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.

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Israelis are watching anxiously as anti-government protests continue in Egypt – one of the country’s only friends in the Arab world.

“Judgement Day” for President Hosni Mubarak was the full-page headline jumping from the Hebrew-language newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in Israel on Tuesday.

The implications of regime change in Egypt would be enormous here.

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President Hosni Mubarak announced that he would not run for another term in elections scheduled for the fall, appearing on state television to promise an orderly transition but saying he would serve out his term. In comments translated by CNN, he swore that he would never leave Egypt but would “die on its soil.”

Television cameras showed the vast crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in central Cairo roaring, but not necessarily in approval. The protesters have made the president’s immediate and unconditional resignation a bedrock demand of their movement, and it did not appear that the concession mollified them. Reports said that thousands of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square chanted “Leave! Leave!” after the speech.

Mr. Mubarak’s announcement came after President Obama urged him not to run, effectively withdrawing America’s support for its closest Arab ally, according to American diplomats in Cairo and Washington.

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Any government in which the Brotherhood has a greater role would be less supportive of U.S. interests, says David Schenker, a Middle East adviser in the Defense Department under President George W. Bush. Senior leaders of the Brotherhood have pledged to end Egypt’s peace treaty with Israel, he says.

The organization has been a revolutionary opposition group in Egypt since its founding in the 1920s, opposing corruption and advocating a conservative form of Islam in government. It inspired al-Qaeda and the Iran-backed Palestinian group Hamas, which the State Department considers a terrorist group.

Over the years, radical elements of the Brotherhood have tried to initiate armed rebellion in Egypt. President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by a Brotherhood cell, leading to Mubarak’s rise and a crackdown on the group

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It is now time for Mr. Mubarak, 82, to go, and President Barack Obama should say so clearly. In order to preserve an American reputation for not being just a fair-weather friend and to maintain relations with other such leaders, the United States should offer Mr. Mubarak refuge, making it clear that it is a means of helping Egyptians find a felicitous, non-violent solution.

The Egyptian army can then preserve order, as it has traditionally, until early, free and democratic elections can be held to choose Mr. Mubarak’s successor.

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Check out the slideshow here.

The last six decades of Middle Eastern history can be neatly divided into three phases: The first began with Gamal Abdel Nasser’s 1952 revolution in Egypt, the second with the Arab world’s humiliating loss in the 1967 war with Israel and the third with the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.

A fourth phase likely started over the weekend in Egypt. But whether the political “reform” movement in Cairo’s streets turns out to be a positive or negative turn for the region””and for the U.S.””depends much on Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed ElBaradei and, to a lesser extent, Barack Obama. If history is any guide, it may take months, if not years, to know precisely the outcome.

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Tens of thousands of people have gathered in central Cairo for a seventh day of protest, calling for a general strike.

Police have been ordered back to the streets, to positions they abandoned on Friday, but it is not clear whether they are returning to central Cairo.

The demonstrators are also planning a huge march to take place on Tuesday.

Protesters want President Hosni Mubarak to step down after 30 years in power. He has promised political reform.

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While I recognize that support for “democracy and freedom” is substantial, within each Arab national society — that the middle class is not a nothing; that each economy depends on it — I doubt this “faction” can prevail. Worse, I think we are watching its final, hopeless bid for power.

The key fact, in Egypt (paralleled in Yemen and elsewhere), is that the Muslim Brotherhood has not declared itself. The Islamists could put vastly more people on the street. They could subvert the loyalties of policemen and soldiers, who already resent the moneyed middle class. They could generate just enough heat to make large districts of Cairo and Alexandria, now simmering, boil over.

But instead, they are playing neutral, watching those policemen and soldiers put the demonstrators down, while most of Egypt remains quiescent.

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Egyptians awoke to a tense but relatively calm Sunday, the beginning of the workweek in Egypt, as crowds began to gather for a possible sixth day of protests and the military announced full control over the capital Cairo and the city of Alexandria.

Still, Al Jazeera television reported that small protests against the 30-year-rule of President Hosni Mubarak had already begun in both Cairo and Alexandria.

Residents stood guard against potential looting in their neighborhoods. Al Arabiya television reported that shops have been targeted in a rash of looting incidents and that the army had arrested an unspecified number of outlaws in the act of stealing.

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Fear is the dictator’s traditional tool for keeping the people in check. But by cutting off Egypt’s Internet and wireless service late last week in the face of huge street protests, President Hosni Mubarak betrayed his own fear ”” that Facebook, Twitter, laptops and smartphones could empower his opponents, expose his weakness to the world and topple his regime.

There was reason for Mr. Mubarak to be shaken. By many accounts, the new arsenal of social networking helped accelerate Tunisia’s revolution, driving the country’s ruler of 23 years, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, into ignominious exile and igniting a conflagration that has spread across the Arab world at breathtaking speed. It was an apt symbol that a dissident blogger with thousands of followers on Twitter, Slim Amamou, was catapulted in a matter of days from the interrogation chambers of Mr. Ben Ali’s regime to a new government post as minister for youth and sports. It was a marker of the uncertainty in Tunis that he had stepped down from the government by Thursday.

Tunisia’s uprising offers the latest encouragement for a comforting notion: that the same Web tools that so many Americans use to keep up with college pals and post passing thoughts have a more noble role as well, as a scourge of despotism. It was just 18 months ago, after all, that the same technologies were hailed as a factor in Iran’s Green Revolution, the stirring street protests that followed the disputed presidential election.

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The Egyptian government’s unprecedented shutdown of Internet and mobile phone access Friday stunned the world’s technology community, which questioned whether the country can quickly recover from cutting such a vital link for commerce and communication.

The government’s surprising move came in the face of widespread civil unrest, but essentially wiped the country off the world’s online maps, said Jim Cowie, chief technology officer and co-founder of Renesys, a New Hampshire firm that monitors how the Internet is operating.

“It is astonishing because Egypt has so much potentially to lose in terms of credibility with the Internet community and the economic world,” Cowie said. “It will set Egypt back for years in terms of its hopes of becoming a regional Internet power.”

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Egyptians say their growing protest against the 30-year-rule of President Hosni Mubarak was sparked by the Tunisia uprising that toppled another veteran authoritarian leader two weeks ago.

But while ordinary Egyptians have been inspired by the ouster of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, the forceful response of Mr. Mubarak’s regime more resembles how Iran successfully ”“ if mercilessly ”“ dealt with widespread protests in 2009 after the disputed reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Anyone who followed Iran’s violent crackdown then may feel a twinge of déjà vu as they watched rows of Egyptian riot police and plainclothes security agents battle Egyptians with batons, tear gas, and water cannons in their bid to halt five days of unprecedented protest.

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President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt appeared on television late Friday night and ordered his government to resign, but backed his security forces’ attempts to contain the surging unrest around the country that has shaken his 28-year authoritarian rule.

He did not offer to step down himself and spent much of the short speech explaining the need for stability, saying that while he was “on the side of freedom,” his job was to protect the nation from chaos.

Several hours earlier, he had ordered the military into the streets to reinforce police struggling to contain riots by tens of thousands of Egyptians.

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The Obama administration is ramping up pressure on President Hosni Mubarak to address the grievances of the Egyptian people and said the government’s response to protests may affect U.S. aid.

“The people of Egypt are watching the government’s actions, they have for quite some time, and their grievances have reached a boiling point and they have to be addressed,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters in Washington. The U.S. will be looking at its “assistance posture” toward Egypt, Gibbs said.

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If Egyptian unrest turns into an Egyptian revolution, the implications for the Arab world – and for Western policy in the Middle East – will be immense.

Egypt matters, in a way that tiny Tunisia – key catalyst that it has been in the current wave of protest – does not.

It matters because its destiny affects, in a range of ways, not only Arab interests but Israeli, Iranian and Western interests, too.

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