Britain has summoned the Egyptian ambassador for a meeting as the death toll from Wednesday’s attack on pro-Morsi supporters rose to 525.
a href=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/10244413/Egypt-death-toll-rises-to-525-as-Britain-summons-Egyptian-ambassador.html”>Read it all.
Dear Friends,
Greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ!
As I write these words, our St. Saviour’s Anglican Church in Suez is under heavy attack from those who support former President Mursi. They are throwing stones and Molotov cocktails at the church and have destroyed the car of Rev. Ehab Ayoub, the priest-in-charge of St. Saviour’s Church. I am also aware that there are attacks on other Orthodox churches in Menyia and Suhag in Upper Egypt (photo above), as well as a Catholic church in Suez. Some police stations are also under attack in different parts of Egypt. Please pray and ask others to pray for this inflammable situation in Egypt.
arly this morning, the police supported by the army, encouraged protestors in two different locations in Cairo, to leave safely and go home. It is worth mentioning that these protestors have been protesting for 6 weeks, blocking the roads. The people in these neighborhoods have been suffering a great deal””not only these people, but those commuting through, especially those who are going to the airport. The police created very safe passages for everyone to leave. Many protestors left and went home, however, others resisted to leave and started to attack the police. The police and army were very professional in responding to the attacks, and they used tear gas only when it was necessary. The police then discovered caches of weapons and ammunition in these sites. One area near Giza is now calm, but there is still some resistance at other sites. There are even some snipers trying to attack the police and the army. There are even some rumors that Muslim Brotherhood leaders asked the protestors in different cities to attack police stations, take weapons, and attack shops and churches.
A few hours later, violent demonstrations from Mursi supporters broke out in different cities and towns throughout Egypt. The police and army are trying to maintain safety for all people and to disperse the protestors peacefully. However, the supporters of former President Mursi have threatened that if they are dispersed from the current sites, they will move to other sites and continue to protest. They also threatened to use violence. There have been a number of fatalities and casualties from among the police as well as the protestors, but it seems that the numbers are not as high as expected for such violence. However, the supporters of former President Mursi claim that there are very high numbers of casualties. The real numbers will be known later on.
Please pray that the situation will calm down, for wisdom and tact for the police and the army, for the safety of all churches and congregations, and that all in Egypt would be safe.
May the Lord bless you!
–(The Most Rev.) Dr. Mouneer Hanna Anis”¨ is Bishop of the Episcopal / Anglican Diocese of Egypt”¨ with North Africa and the Horn of Africa”¨ and President Bishop of the Episcopal / Anglican”¨
Province of Jerusalem and the Middle EastӬӬ
Every night at dusk, the streets of this desert town near the Israeli border empty out, and the chatter and thump of gunfire and explosives begin. Morning reveals the results: another dead soldier, another police checkpoint riddled with bullets, another kidnapping. In mid-July, the body of a local Christian shop owner was found near the town cemetery, his head severed, his torso in chains.
The northern Sinai Peninsula, long a relatively lawless zone, has become a dark harbinger of what could follow elsewhere in Egypt if the interim government cannot peacefully resolve its standoff with the Islamist protesters camped out in Cairo.
In the five weeks since Egypt’s military ousted the Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi, the endemic violence here has spiraled into something like an insurgency, with mysterious gunmen attacking military and police facilities every night.
It was nighttime and 10,000 Islamists were marching down the most heavily Christian street in this ancient Egyptian city, chanting “Islamic, Islamic, despite the Christians.” A half-dozen kids were spray-painting “Boycott the Christians” on walls, supervised by an adult.
While Islamists are on the defensive in Cairo following the military coup that ousted President Mohammed Morsi, in Assiut and elsewhere in Egypt’s deep south they are waging a stepped-up hate campaign, claiming the country’s Christian minority somehow engineered Morsi’s downfall.
“Tawadros is a dog,” says a spray-painted insult, referring to Pope Tawadros II, patriarch of the Copts, as Egypt’s Christians are called. Christian homes, stores and places of worship have been marked with large painted crosses.
When Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, promoted Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi to defense minister nearly a year ago, sweeping away an aging cadre of generals, many saw it as a triumph for the Islamist president, and for a fledgling democracy.
Mr. Morsi had seized back broad powers from the old guard, and General Sisi, known to be pious, seemed to have a close relationship with the new president, even sending Mr. Morsi a laudatory telegram. “The men of the armed forces assert to your excellency their absolute loyalty to Egypt and its people, standing behind its leadership as guardians of the patriotic responsibility,” it read.
Mr. Morsi is now a prisoner of the military, deposed by General Sisi on July 3 after mass protests against the president’s rule. And the telegenic general, who has cast himself as protector of Egypt’s security and its very identity, is riding a wave of muscular nationalism and pro-military sentiment that has led his adoring fans to liken him to former President Gamal Abdel Nasser.
Christians in these circumstances are facing a dangerous backlash, Church leaders having supported the ousting of Mr Morsi. Pope Tawadros II of the Coptic Orthodox Church ”“ at whose enthronement last November in Cairo the Archbishop of Dublin acted as a representative of the former Archbishop of Canterbury ”“ was critical of Mr Morsi’s pro-Islamist approach and attended the ceremony at which the army’s commander, General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, announced the suspension of the country’s constitution. The killing of a Coptic priest and attacks on Christians’ homes have shown very clearly how vulnerable the approximately 10 per cent minority is in the situation.
The Church must heed the call of Bishop Anis and pray at this time for healing in a very troubled nation, and for all Christians in Egypt who are suffering real personal dangers.
[ Lindsey] Graham told reporters today that President Obama asked the two senators to travel to the region to assess the situation and to urge the Egyptian military to proceed with new elections.
“The president asked Sen. McCain and myself to go to Egypt next week, so we’re trying to find a way to get there,” Graham said, according to The Associated Press. “So we can go over and reinforce in a bipartisan fashion the message that we have to move to civilian control, that the military is going to have to, you know, allow the country to have new elections and move toward an inclusive, democratic approach.”
The Diocese of Egypt with North Africa and the Horn of Africa invited Muslim leaders and politicians, along with Christian leaders from different denominations, for an Iftar or a break of the fast of Ramadan, at All Saints Cathedral Hall.
The stunning fall from power of President Mohamed Mursi, and the Muslim Brotherhood which backed him, has upended politics in the volatile Middle East for a second time after the Arab Spring uprisings toppled veteran autocrats.
Some of the principal causes were highlighted a month before the army intervened to remove Mursi, when two of Egypt’s most senior power brokers met for a private dinner at the home of liberal politician Ayman Nour on the island of Zamalek, a lush bourgeois oasis in the midst of Cairo’s seething megalopolis. It was seen by some as a last attempt to avert a showdown.
The two power brokers were Amr Moussa, 76, a long-time foreign minister under Mubarak and now a secular nationalist politician, and Khairat El-Shater, 63, the Brotherhood’s deputy leader and most influential strategist and financier. Moussa suggested that to avoid confrontation, Mursi should heed opposition demands, including a change of government.
he Obama administration increasingly fears that Egypt’s military, ignoring American appeals, is deepening a crackdown that could spark a sustained period of instability and lead members of the country’s Muslim Brotherhood to take up arms.
In a series of private messages in recent days, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and other American officials warned Egyptian military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi that his clampdown on the Brotherhood risked driving the Islamist group back underground, say U.S. officials involved in the discussions.
Despite those exhortations, Gen. Sisi called for massive demonstrations on Friday, which precipitated the deadliest single incident in the more than two years since Egypt’s revolution. The U.S. also had sent messages urging calm to Brotherhood leaders, but officials said the group, like the military, showed little sign of backing down.
Just as they have done for 17 centuries, the Greek Orthodox monks of St. Catherine’s Monastery in Egypt’s Sinai desert and the local Jabaliya Bedouins worked together to protect the monastery when the 2011 revolution thrust Egypt into a period of uncertainty. “There was a period in the early days of the Arab Spring when we had no idea what was going to happen,” says Father Justin, a monk who has lived at St. Catherine’s since 1996. Afraid they could be attacked by Islamic extremists or bandits in the relatively lawless expanse of desert, the 25 monks put the monastery’s most valuable manuscripts in the building’s storage room. Their Bedouin friends, who live at the base of St. Catherine’s in a town of the same name, allegedly took up their weapons and guarded the perimeter.
The community’s fears of an attack were not realized, but the monks decided they needed a new way to protect their treasured library from any future threats.
At least 37 people have been killed in bloody clashes overnight in and around Cairo after protests escalated into violence, with supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi saying police shot at demonstrators.
NPR’s Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson confirmed the number of dead at one field hospital alone, and said that the toll is likely much higher. Doctors at the field hospital are telling reporters that many of the injuries were caused by live ammunitio
Nine people have died in Cairo in overnight clashes between supporters and opponents of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, officials say.
Most of the victims were killed at a sit-in held by pro-Morsi demonstrators near Cairo University.
Mr Morsi’s family earlier accused the military of abducting him.
It was less than two weeks ago that General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, chief of the Egyptian armed forces, announced the removal of Egypt’s first democratically elected president, in the wake of the largest mass protests the country had ever seen. On July 3, an alliance of liberals, leftists, Nasserists, revolutionary youth, Coptic Christians and Salafists appeared together on television for a harmonious group picture.
But the rare pact was fragile. When soldiers opened fire on protesting Morsi supporters last Monday and at least 51 people died, the Salafists of the Al-Nour Party, or Party of the Light, demonstratively revoked their cooperation with the transitional government — albeit only temporarily.
In fact, the Salafists need to maintain cooperation with the military and the transitional government in order to remain influential. Under Morsi’s presidency, they had the same problems as the secular opposition. They were marginalized, and important positions went to members of the Muslim Brotherhood. Now Bassam Sarka, the deputy party leader, has renewed his support for the state, saying that Al-Nour will “demonstrate responsibility” and “cooperate with the military to prevent worse things from happening.” The reward came quickly, when the military leaders decided to keep a controversial article in the constitution, whereby the principles of Sharia law are the “primary source of legislation” — despite the fact that the liberals had just rejected the very same article.
By dispatching a senior State Department official to Cairo, the United States is signaling that it wants to see a return to a democratic government ”“ and an end to continuing violence ”“ as soon as possible.
In his two-day visit, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is holding talks with Egypt’s military-backed interim government. With him also making time to meet with Egyptian business leaders, the US is likewise looking to emphasize that putting Egypt’s economy back on the rails and addressing Egyptians’ concerns about daily living will be key in the country’s transition period.
Mr. Burns, who began his visit Sunday, is expected to “underscore US support for the Egyptian people, an end to all violence, and a transition leading to an inclusive, democratically elected civilian government,” the State Department said in a statement.
ABERNETHY: You’ve been to Egypt many times. As you look at it from here, what do you see? How do you characterize the mess it’s in?
[KATE] SEELYE: Well Egypt is facing a very challenging situation as it transitions from an authoritarian regime to a democracy in the future. It’s still very much along a transitional path.
ABERNETHY: But, how do you describe what’s going on?
SEELYE: Well, you know, there are two different views of what just happened. There are those who say that a coup just took place, that a legitimately elected government was just overthrown. You now have the military in office that is rounding up the very Islamists that were ruling Egypt just, you know, a few weeks ago, putting them in prison and closing down the media. You have liberals on the other hand, who supported the recent popular uprising, who say this is the very best thing that could have ever happened to Egypt. They say Morsi, the president, was incompetent, that he was authoritarian, as authoritarian as Mubarak. And they note that the economy was collapsing. There were two months left of wheat supplies. Now, in response to what’s just happened, Gulf countries have committed twelve billion dollars to Egypt. The new prime minister is a renowned economist and the liberals say there’s hope that Egypt will become prosperous and stable once again.
Following fresh turmoil in Egypt, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have sent a message of ‘committed solidarity’ to Pope Tawadros II and Bishop Mouneer in Cairo.
The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have joined the call for prayers for unity, reconciliation and an end to violence in Egypt.
Archbishop Justin Welby and Archbishop Dr John Sentamu wrote to the Coptic and Anglican leaders in Cairo today, pledging their ‘committed solidarity’ amid the recent turmoil in the country.
This time, the military’s actions could be disastrous. Egypt’s armed forces have not only brought the 2011 uprising to an ignominious end but invited a vengeful extremist backlash in the process.
Those who celebrate Morsi’s ouster seem to think the Muslim Brotherhood ”” and the millions of Egyptians who are sympathetic to its cause ”” will suddenly and magically disappear.
This is indeed a fantasy. Even if Egypt’s fractious liberals had anything approaching a coherent plan for governing Egypt, they would not be able to defuse the ticking time bomb that is Egypt’s sizable minority of now-disenfranchised radical-leaning Islamists.
Morsi, meanwhile, saw more and more signs of conspiracy. Liberal members of the constitutional committee did not want to reach consensus, he thought, but rather to prevent Egypt from stabilizing on an agreed-upon document. Accustomed to decades in the political wilderness, he and the Brotherhood believed the non-Islamist opposition and the entrenched state bureaucracy were doing everything in their power to oppose not only them but the success of the revolution.
Morsi was ousted within this polarized setting. The Rebel movement began in April to collect signatures demanding early presidential elections, with a goal of 15 million by June 30, the anniversary of Morsi’s presidency. Islamist leaders were dismissive, but the campaign gained steam. Days before the deadline, organizers announced their goal was reached””prompting Islamists to hold a massive demonstration in support of the president. But their hundreds of thousands near the presidential palace were soon dwarfed: Rebel supporters not only filled Tahrir Square but surrounded the palace in numbers exceeding the revolution itself.
Yet the situation was different. Morsi was legitimately elected. And unlike Mubarak, he had a substantial social base. The original Tahrir was a united revolution; now one side rallied against another.
The violence that flared in Cairo Monday morning, leaving dozens of supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi dead, exposes a deepening and destabilizing power vacuum in Egypt that is likely to make the Obama administration’s “neutral” stance toward Egypt’s political factions increasingly difficult to maintain.
President Obama says the US is “not aligned with” anyone in Egypt’s political upheaval in the aftermath of Mr. Morsi’s removal from power by the military last Wednesday, and only supports the Egyptian people’s aspirations for democracy and prosperity.
The US is reportedly urging all of Egypt’s principle political movements, including Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood, to participate in political negotiations and in new presidential and parliamentary elections ”“ which as of yet have no date.
A party of ultraconservative Islamists that emerged as an unexpected political kingmaker in Egypt after the military’s ouster of President Mohamed Morsi said on Monday that it was suspending its participation in efforts to form an interim government.
A spokesman for the Al Nour party said its decision was a reaction to a “massacre” hours earlier at an officers’ club here in which security officials said more than 30 people had been killed. The decision brought new complexities and unanswered questions to the effort to create a transitional political order.
The external reasons for the sectarian catastrophe that threatens the Middle East are equally obvious. French colonialism in Syria after World War I explicitly reinforced sectarian divisions and encouraged an Alawite entrance into the military that eventually saw Hafez al-Assad rise to power. It also provoked an anti-Western nationalist reaction, of which the Baath Party was one example.
Similarly, Shiite Hezbollah, now involved openly on the side of the Assad regime, emerged as a direct response to Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, an invasion condoned by the United States. And U.S. support for the shah’s dictatorship helped precipitate the Iranian revolution and the anti-Western discourse that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini espoused.
The United States has also consistently supported the Wahhabi Saudis over secular nationalists in the Middle East. Finally and most obviously, the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 played a pivotal role in destabilizing the region, inadvertently bolstering Tehran’s influence, and provoking Saudi and Qatari fear of Iran.
President Mubarak used to say that if he were removed from power, then the Islamists from the Muslim Brotherhood would succeed him. He was right. Today, the Brotherhood is warning us that if their man falls from power, then the Salafists would be the replacement. This is not a theory I would want to test.
Egypt’s political class needs to grow up, and offer us more than the just the largest-ever crowds at the latest protests for and against Morsi.
Meanwhile, the United States has been right not to call for Morsi to resign. At stake is nothing less than bringing Islamism into the modern world ”” and ridding it of its anti-Americanism. When I met with Brotherhood leaders earlier this year, they repeatedly asked for greater U.S. strategic assistance to help govern Egypt and saw America as an ally. It is important that the United States seize this historic chance to tame the tiger of Islamist anti-Americanism.
The head of Egypt’s army has given a TV address, announcing that President Mohammed Morsi is no longer in office.
Gen Abdul Fattah al-Sisi said the constitution had been suspended and the chief justice of the constitutional court would take on Mr Morsi’s powers.
Flanked by religious and opposition leaders, Gen Sisi said Mr Morsi had “failed to meet the demands of the Egyptian people”.
Read it all and the Live: Crisis in Egypt website from the BBC has a lot of good information.
On the whole, though, critiques of the Tamarod movement””as well as of the police and the army””are muted. People are careful not to portray the Brotherhood in a negative or violent light. Everyone I speak to stresses that it’s natural for members of a society to hold differing opinions and says that the media is overstating the divisions in Egyptian society. Others differentiate between the army and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, saying the former are of the people while the latter is a part of the old regime. Even the police, the same police who looked on while the Muslim Brotherhood Headquarters burned yesterday, are called “an Egyptian institution” by Abdel Aziz of Alexandria. “They don’t belong to any [political] trend,” he says.
Despite these gentle words, I can’t help but be unsettled by all of the military-looking exercises going on around me, though I am assured several times that the weapons and hardhats are merely a precaution against “thugs” who might want to harm the protesters. The presence of hundreds of men with sticks does give one pause, even when those men insist they are “peaceful” and “against violence.”
“We don’t want military rule. We want a civil government,” says Ahmed el Bahrawi, a 37-year-old engineer from Sharqeya in the Delta. “We don’t say religious, because people think [we mean] like Iran,” his friend, a French teacher, adds. The choice of the words “civil state” is a bit ironic. In this case, people are using it in the sense of civil as opposed to military rule, but the phrase “civil state” is usually used by liberals here to contrast with an Islamic state””which, of course, these people seek in some form. Changing times, changing lexicons, I suppose. Ahmed then shows me his dirty clothes and says he has been camped out since last Friday; today he took his first shower in six days.
The Muslim Brotherhood, among the most powerful forces in Egypt, is facing perhaps the worst crisis in its 80-year history. Its members have been gunned down in the streets. Its new headquarters have been ransacked and burned, its political leader, President Mohamed Morsi, abandoned, threatened and isolated by old foes and recent allies.
It is a steep fall for the pre-eminent Islamist movement in the region, and especially surprising for a group that was elected just one year ago. Its critics say the Brotherhood remains stuck in old divisions, pitting Islamists against the military, and has failed to heed the demands of ordinary citizens.
“I think this is an existential crisis, and it’s much more serious than what they were subjected to by Nasser or Mubarak,” said Khaled Fahmy, a historian at the American University in Cairo, referring to the governments of Gamal Abdel Nasser and Hosni Mubarak, the autocrat deposed in 2011. “The Egyptian people are increasingly saying it is not about Islam versus secularism,” Mr. Fahmy said. “It is about Egypt versus a clique.”
Mohamed Morsi woke up today as President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. By nightfall, if the opposition have their way, he may have been toppled in a coup d’état.
At about 3pm tomorrow afternoon, a 48-hour ultimatum announced by the military will come to a head. It called on the President to solve the deepening national crisis or face an army intervention. Reports said the military intends to establish an interim council to rule while the constitution is redrafted. It would then call presidential elections within months.
The President’s office responded to the army’s statement obliquely by saying Mr Morsi was “going forward” with his own plans “regardless of any statements that deepen divisions between citizens”.
The Egyptian military has leaked details of its draft “roadmap” for the country’s future, which includes new presidential elections.
According to details given to the BBC, the plan would see the suspension of the new constitution and the dissolution of parliament.
Clashes in Cairo between opponents and supporters of President Morsi killed seven people on Tuesday, officials say.
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi says he was not consulted by the army before it set a 48-hour ultimatum to resolve the country’s deadly crisis.
Mr Morsi said a part of the statement “may cause confusion in the complex national scene”. He vowed to stick to his “national reconciliation” plan.
The army has warned it will intervene if the government and its opponents fail to heed “the will of the people”.
However, it denies that the ultimatum amounts to a coup.
The 48-hour ultimatum issued today by Egypt’s unelected military brass comes amid a wave of protests that appear to dwarf the popular uprising that drove Egypt’s military-backed dictator Hosni Mubarak from power 27 months ago.
While what happens next is anyone’s guess, Egypt is undoubtedly in its most dangerous moment since former President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in 2011. The military is front and center in Egypt’s politics once more; the Muslim Brotherhood feels cornered and threatened by what it deems to be counter-revolutionaries; and the crowds in Tahrir Square and elsewhere are demanding something different ”“ but what they want, exactly, is far from clear.
Today Egypt’s so-called democratic transition is a failure, with the strongest evidence of that the rapturous crowds chanting their love for the Army and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF). In January and February 2011, a massive show of street power led SCAF to dump Mubarak overboard. Then came a period of ham-handed military rule, with show trials of activists, organized sexual assault on female protesters (what else to call the so-called “virginity tests” forced on them within weeks of the military takeover?) and the torture of democracy activists like Ramy Essam.