Previous demonstrations have led to violence, and these are intended to be the biggest since the January 25 revolution which overthrew President Hosni Mubarak. Three people, including an American student who stopped to take photographs of protests in Alexandria, were killed on Friday alone.

The American, Andrew Pochter, 21, was working in the city over the summer as part of a volunteer scheme.

“As we understand it, he was witnessing the protest as a bystander and was stabbed by a protester,” his family said in a statement on Saturday from their home in Ohio.

Read it all and please join us in praying for Egypt.

Update: There is more from Reuters there.

What is going to happen on the 30th of June? We do not know! All what we know is that when emotions run high, anything can happen. However, we trustthat God is in control and we are in His hands.Two days ago during his visit to Egypt, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby encouraged us by using St. Paul s words, while in the middle of a storm, “But now I urge you to keep up your courage, because not one of you will be lost (Acts 27:22).

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Egypt needs a revolution.

Wait, isn’t that what happened two years ago? Not really. It is now clear that what happened two years ago was more musical chairs than revolution. First the army, using the energy of the youth-led protesters in Tahrir Square, ousted Mubarak, and then the Muslim Brotherhood ousted the army, and now the opposition is trying to oust the Brotherhood. Each, though, is operating on the old majoritarian politics ”” winners take all, losers get nothing….

“The other day,” [Ahmed el-]Droubi said, “I was standing on a main intersection in downtown Cairo, where two one-way roads meet. As I stood there, I saw cars going both ways down both one-way streets ”” cars were coming and going in four different directions ”” and other cars were double-parked. I was standing next to a shop owner watching this. ”˜This is a complete mess,’ he said. ”˜No one has any civic responsibility. They each only care about themselves getting to where they are going.’ ”

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Egyptian author Karam Saber said that a misdemeanor court in Beni Suef sentenced him to five years on Wednesday on charges of insulting religion in a collection of short stories he wrote two years ago titled “Where is God?”

The politically active author told Aswat Masriya in a phone call on Wednesday that he plans to appeal the verdict through a legal challenge he will present to the court tomorrow.

Charges of “insulting religion” against authors, artists, television hosts and Coptic Christians have increased in recent months.

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An Egyptian court has convicted a Coptic Christian teacher of blasphemy but didn’t hand down a prison sentence and only imposed a fine on her.

The court on Tuesday ruled that elementary schoolteacher Dimyana Abdel-Nour had insulted Islam. It ordered that she pay a fine of 100,000 Egyptian pounds ($14,000). Abdel-Nour was not in the courtroom for the verdict.

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Since the ouster of Mr. Mubarak in February 2011, a growing number of Copts, including some of the most successful businessmen, have left Egypt or are preparing to do so, fearing persecution by an Islamist-controlled government as much as the stagnant economy that is smothering their industries.

Among the most prominent are the heads of the Sawiris family, who for several months have been running their enormous business empire from abroad.

“Every week I learn of 10 people who are leaving or who have already left,” Mr. [Wasfi Amin] Wassef said. “They know that what happened to the Sawiris’ can happen to them tomorrow.”

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An alleged romance between an Egyptian Muslim college student and a Coptic Christian man heightened sectarian tension on Friday in a small rural Egyptian town where police fired tear gas to disperse stone-throwing Muslims who surrounded a Coptic church in anger over the inter-faith relationship, a security official and priest said.

The Muslim protesters accuse Saint Girgis Church of helping 21-year-old Rana el-Shazli, who is believed to have converted to Christianity, flee to Turkey with a Coptic Christian man.

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Just how many Copts have fled to the United States no one can say with certainty, since immigration statistics do not include religious affiliation. But the number of Egyptians seeking asylum has jumped since the revolution; in 2011, 1,028 Egyptians were given asylum ”” 4.1 percent of all of those granted asylum ”” up from 531 in 2010, according to the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Immigration Statistics. With that increase, Egypt ranked fourth on the list of countries whose citizens were given asylum in the United States….

For Copts in Egypt, church is more than just a place to go on Sunday mornings; it is the center of their social life outside the family. For Copts newly outside Egypt, the church is a familiar oasis in a strange country.

“It is our church everywhere,” said Gameel Girgis, a 36-year-old pharmacist who came to the United States in October to seek asylum with his wife and two children after his father-in-law, a priest in the central Egyptian city of Asyut, was stabbed to death. When he searched for a place to live, “my first consideration was distance from the church,” Mr. Girgis said, adding, “I want to raise my kids in the church.”

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The Mass was celebrated as if from centuries past: A bearded priest veiled in incense chanted for grace in a church along the Nile, near the spot where Christians believe Jesus and his mother sought refuge in an earlier age of bloodshed and uncertainty.

Marianne Samir knelt and prayed for the Coptic Christians killed in a spasm of sectarian violence that has further shaken a nation engulfed in economic and political anxieties.

“I feel unsafe,” said Samir, a high school philosophy teacher with a cross tattooed on her wrist. “The Islamists want war. They want strife. But this is our land too. It is a country blessed by God, and there’s no way we’ll leave it to them.”

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The leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church accused President Mohamed Morsi’s government on Tuesday of “delinquency” and “misjudgments” for failing to prevent sectarian street-fighting that escalated into an attack on the church’s main cathedral after a funeral mass over the weekend, leaving at least six Christians dead.

“This is the first time the main Coptic Orthodox Cathedral has been attacked in Egypt’s history,” the church leader, Pope Tawadros II, said in a television interview, faulting Mr. Morsi’s government for failing to act fast enough to control the violence.

Direct criticism of the government by an Egyptian church leader was all but unheard-of under former President Hosni Mubarak, whose ouster two years ago ended the fear of reprisals from the authorities that had helped silence church officials and others. But the pope’s comments also highlighted the growing anxieties among Christian leaders about the subsequent rise to power of Mr. Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and his Islamist allies.

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(Via email–KSH) 11 April 2013

My dear Friends,

Greetings in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ!

The situation in Cairo is very sad for us as a Christian community. On Friday 6 April 2013, sectarian clashes erupted once again, this time in El Khosus, in the outskirts of Cairo. The story, according to the director of the police, started by a 12-year old Muslim boy drawing graffiti on the wall of an Islamic school. Two Muslim men rebuked him for doing so, and a Christian man also came and rebuked him. This developed into a big argument and fighting between Christians and Muslims in the area. After the Friday prayers in the mosque, a group of Muslims came out and attacked the Coptic Orthodox church in the area. The result of this was the killing of four Christians and one Muslim, and many injured. Many stores were also vandalized and looted. The Grand Imam sent his assistant, together with a Coptic Orthodox bishop, in order to do a reconciliation. However, one hour after things calmed down, the fighting erupted again.
The next day there was a funeral at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Abassayia the center of Cairo for the Christians who died. Thousands of Christians attended the funeral. Amidst their mourning and grief they were shouting words against the government and against the Muslim Brotherhood. Because of this, as they exited the Cathedral and the church grounds, they were attacked by other Muslims. The police then interfered throwing tear gas. At least one person was killed with over 80 injured. This was the first time in history that the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral was attacked, especially during a time of mourning.

It is worth mentioning that in the last two years, since the beginning of the Revolution of 2011, the number of incidents of sectarian clashes has increased. No one who committed violence or killing has been brought to justice because the government is content to solve the sectarian clashes by reconciliatory meetings. In a statement I made, I urged the government to apply the rule of law as the only way to stop these sectarian clashes. I emphasized the importance of the reconciliatory meetings which we as an Anglican Church are facilitating at several levels. I also emphasized that they are not a substitute to the application of the law. Unfortunately the current government is inexperienced and is not doing enough to include the different political parties in building up Egypt after the Revolution.This contributed to the instability of the Egyptian society, the decrease of tourism, and the bad economic situation.

The Christian community in Egypt right now is mourning and feels challenged in their own country, as some of them have said, “we have been here since the time of the Pharaohs, this is our country! We will not leave whatever happens. ” On the other hand, there are many educated young people who are immigrating out of the country and this is the saddest thing for me as one of the leaders of the church in Egypt, because I believe that the Christian presences is very much liked with the Christian witness.

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 / AnglicanProvince of Jerusalem and the Middle East

The death toll in clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo has risen to two, health and security officials said Monday. Another 89 were injured in the clashes outside Cairo’s main Coptic cathedral, which brought Egypt’s growing religious tension to the seat of the church’s pope.

The clashes broke out following the funeral of four Christians killed in sectarian violence the day before…

Read it all and there is an eyewitness report in the Independent

At least five people were killed Saturday in clashes between Muslims and Christians, raising new questions over whether President Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist-led government can calm sectarian tensions amid Egypt’s broader political unrest.

Violence between Muslims and Coptic Christians over the last year has been a troubling subplot, especially in the provinces, to the nation’s post-revolutionary political division and faltering economy. There were conflicting accounts over what ignited the latest fighting in Khousous, an impoverished town north of Cairo.

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It’s been more than a year since a military-induced massacre in Cairo, Egypt, killed 28 people””mostly Coptic Christians. But the only people convicted thus far have been the Christians themselves.

Last week, a Cairo court sentenced Michael Farag and Michael Shaker to three years in jail, charging them with inciting violence, destroying military vehicles, and deliberately attacking soldiers. Farag and Shaker were among the more than 30 Coptic civilians arrested following the massacre, 12 of whom were given life sentences last May.

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Budget constraints are prompting the U.S. Navy to cut back the number of aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf region from two to one, the latest example of how contentious fiscal battles in Washington are impacting the U.S. military.

According to Defense Department officials, the USS Harry S. Truman, which was set to leave for the Persian Gulf region on Friday, will now remain stateside, based in Norfolk, Virginia.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta ordered the change to the department’s “two-carrier policy” in the Persian Gulf region early Wednesday.

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Egypt’s top Muslim cleric told visiting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday that his Shi’ite-led government must refrain from interfering in the affairs of Gulf Arab states and must give full rights to Sunnis living in Iran.

Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayeb, the grand imam of the al-Azhar mosque, also urged Mr. Ahmadinejad to “respect Bahrain as a sisterly Arab state” and rejected “the spread of Shi’ism” in Sunni countries.

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Egypt’s Foreign Ministry says an explosion at an Egyptian Coptic church in Libya’s third largest city, Misrata, has killed two people and wounded two others.

The statement by the Foreign Ministry says Sunday’s explosion killed two Egyptian citizens working at the church in preparation for traditional New Year’s Eve mass.

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On Tuesday, Egyptians officially began life under a mostly democratic constitution, nearly two years after the Tahrir Square revolution. But this remarkable feat for the Middle East was hardly a model in how opposing sides in a democracy should listen to each other. In fact, the US State Department issued a stern warning to President Mohamed Morsi about “the urgent need to bridge divisions, build trust, and broaden support for the political process.”

Many of the steps on the way to the Constitution ”“ whose bright spot includes regular elections ”“ ignored the interests of Egypt’s various minorities, from liberal secularists to Coptic Christians. The dominant Muslim Brotherhood, whose party has won three national votes, fell for the notion that the majority should always get what it wants ”“ a mistake that has been the undoing of many democracies.

“Democracy requires much more than simple majority rule,” said a US State Department spokesman, Patrick Ventrell.

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Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood claimed Sunday that the Islamist-backed constitution has passed with a 64 percent “yes” vote, the day after the final voting in a two-round referendum that deeply divided the country.

The constitution’s critics however may contest the outcome. A spokesman for the main opposition group which has been campaigning for a “no” vote said there were “a lot” of irregularities in the voting.

The Brotherhood’s unofficial results come a day before the election commission is expected to announce the final official tally for voting organized over two weeks. The group has accurately tallied the outcome of past elections.

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In a spooky, dare I say, godly coincidence, two of the world’s important religions obtained new leaders in the past fortnight. What makes the coincidence seem so like divine providence is that both leaders started their vocational life not fired by the sacred but as industrialists.

The Coptic Church is now led by Pope Tawadros (Theodore) II, who ran a pharmaceutical factory until he saw the light. Former oil industry executive Justin Welby, meanwhile, was selected to be enthroned in March as the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Anglican Communion.

Both had late onset religious conversions….

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/blogs/godless-gross/a-tale-of-two-leaders-20121203-2apyg.html#ixzz2EbKcRdl9

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After a night of violent protests across Egypt that left at least five dead and hundreds injured, Egyptian tanks deployed this morning to protect the presidential palace, marking the first time since Mohamed Morsi’s power grab that the military has gotten involved….

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Rival protesters have clashed outside the presidential palace in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, as unrest grows over a controversial draft constitution.

More than 200 people were injured as protesters threw petrol bombs and rocks – shots were reportedly fired.

Violence broke out when supporters of President Mohamed Morsi marched on his palace, confronting members of the opposition who were holding a sit in.

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If a cabal of Egyptian generals had been planning a coup, their moment to strike should be imminent. Tuesday saw new clashes between police and tens of thousands of antigovernment demonstrators outside Cairo’s presidential palace as a constitutional deadlock hardened into a not-yet-violent civil war between Islamists and their rivals ”” and as political camps brought their supporters onto the streets ahead of a Dec. 15 referendum on a controversial draft constitution. The turmoil plays out against the backdrop of an Egyptian “fiscal cliff” that urgently demands political stability. Still, even if the current scenario includes conditions similar to those that have preceded coups in unstable societies with powerful militaries, a putsch by Egypt’s generals remains unlikely.

“Remember,” says Century Foundation analyst Michael Wahid Hanna, “Egypt’s military didn’t enjoy their time at the head of the government after [President Hosni] Mubarak was ousted.” And while President Mohamed Morsi has antagonized his political opponents with a power grab that has put his decrees beyond judicial restraint, and with an unseemly rush to ram through a constitution critics say opens the way to authoritarian Islamist rule, he has been careful to keep the military onside.

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The people must be alert, analytically and democratically. Populist movements are gaining strength, forcing emotional, hasty, binary and often blind reactions. Political and religious leaders, intellectuals and students, women (in the heart of their legitimate struggles) as well as ordinary citizens bear a heavy responsibility. They must become the masters of their fate. If democratisation is to mean anything at all, it must be in terms of freedom and responsibility. Time has come to stop blaming the West, the neighbouring countries and the “powers” for the crises they continue to suffer.

The Great Powers undoubtedly played a role in the uprisings – they continue to wield great influence and have not stopped promoting their interests, dictatorships or not, democracy or not. Engaged as they are in a painful transition, the MENA countries must now face their destiny. However, beyond the strategic planning of the Great Powers – both the western countries and the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) – these countries have a historic opportunity to take their destinies in their hands; to create a new regional balance of power, new ways of handling the religious reference. They can profit from the emerging multi-polar economic order to celebrate cultural and artistic creativity, and take seriously the welfare and the superior interests of their peoples.

Where to begin? With a true process of liberation, an intellectual and psychological revolution that must first overcome the obsession with western approval, as if, once liberated, these countries must still seek legitimacy and tolerance.

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Tens of thousands of supporters of Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi were pouring into the streets Saturday evening in a bid to outmuscle his opponents, who held their own demonstration Friday.

For both sides, the issue was a decree Morsi issued last week, temporarily giving himself near-absolute powers in order to usher in the new national constitution that his Islamist supporters approved Friday.

But depending on where one stood in Cairo the past two days, Morsi’s moves were either a sign that Egypt’s revolution is degenerating or that it is blossoming into its democratic fruition.

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Hundreds of protesters were in Cairo’s Tahrir Square for a sixth day on Wednesday, demanding that Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi rescind a decree they say gives him dictatorial powers.

Five months into the Islamist leader’s term, and in scenes reminiscent of the popular uprising that unseated predecessor Hosni Mubarak last year, police fired teargas at stone-throwers following protests by tens of thousands on Tuesday against the declaration that expanded Mursi’s powers and put his decisions beyond legal challenge.

Protesters say they will stay in Tahrir until the decree is withdrawn, bringing fresh turmoil to a nation at the heart of the Arab Spring and delivering a new blow to an economy already on the ropes….

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Critics have labeled it a Reichstag fire moment, a reference to when Hitler consolidated power in Germany. Admirers describe it as a brave and necessary, albeit temporary, move to prevent a drift towards chaos. In either case Muhammad Morsi, Egypt’s recently elected president, has pitched his country into a crisis as dire as any since the uprising in January 2011 that ended six decades of military-backed dictatorship. Seeking to break a deadlock with secular opponents, he issued a shock decree on November 22nd granting himself sweeping new powers. The move has left Egypt starkly and dangerously polarised. Whether Mr Morsi succeeds, and whether this turns out well or disastrously for Egypt, remains to be seen.

Mr Morsi has had a rough ride since his wafer-thin election victory last June. The president’s Freedom and Justice Party, a snazzier-clothed clone of the dowdy Muslim Brotherhood to which he owes his real allegiance, had pumped his candidacy with promises of sweeping improvements to government services during his first hundred days. This was to be followed by the launch of a so-called Renaissance Project, touted as a grand design formulated by Brotherhood experts to yank Egypt into prosperity.

Yet it took the gruff, folksy Mr Morsi six weeks just to name a cabinet, which has since been widely dismissed as lame, bland and ineffective. Not only has there been no discernible uplift to living standards. Mr Morsi’s brief administration has been plagued by reminders of creaking government such as power cuts, worse-than-ever traffic jams, accumulating piles of rubbish, and public sector strikes including one by doctors protesting appalling hospital conditions.

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Egyptian judges and prosecutors struck back on Saturday against an attempt by President Mohamed Morsi to place his decrees above judicial review, vowing to challenge his edict in court and reportedly going on strike in Alexandria.

Abdel Meguid Mahmoud, a prosecutor whom Mr. Morsi is seeking to fire, declared to a crowd of cheering judges at Egypt’s high court that the presidential decree was “null and void.” Mr. Mahmoud, who was appointed by Mr. Morsi’s predecessor, Hosni Mubarak, denounced “the systematic campaign against the country’s institutions in general and the judiciary in particular.”

Outside the court, the police fired tear gas at protesters who were denouncing Mr. Morsi and trying to force their way into the building.

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A stark new divide appeared to be emerging in Egypt on Friday after the nation’s first democratically elected president asserted nearly unlimited powers, as rival crowds of demonstrators poured into the streets of the capital to express disgust and admiration for the move.

With Islamists lining up behind President Mohamed Morsi and secular leaders rallying against him, the development threatened to wipe away once and for all the unlikely joining of the two forces that brought down Egypt’s longtime leader Hosni Mubarak in 2011.

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