Come Back Mubarak All Is Forgiven

It would be quite easy to make the motive behind the recent attacks by Salafist Muslims on the Coptic Christian Church the focal point of this article. It is deserving of such, it simply cannot be denied. When all said and done, riots that leave twelve dead and one hundred and eighty injured, understanding the cause has to be fundamental to the story.

For you or I, or anyone else with a degree of sanity, it soon becomes apparent that this is another classic case of, the batshit crazies are at it again. And so they are; us and them yet again. That's not, us and them, in a Christian - Muslim context, it's us and them, in the sane - insane kind of way. My highlight in the brief part of the interview that I feature first, and then it's on to the more troubling, underlying aspect of the story.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous Reports from Cairo on Rising Sectarian Tension in Egypt After Deadly Attack on Coptic Christian Church

In Egypt over the weekend, 12 people died and more than 180 were wounded during clashes between Muslims and Christians in Cairo. Egypt’s army has said that 190 people were detained after the fatal clashes and that they will face military trials. Saturday’s violence started after several hundred conservative Salafist Muslims gathered outside the Coptic Saint Mena Church in Cairo’s Imbaba district. They were reportedly protesting over a months-old allegation that a Christian woman was being held there against her will because she had married a Muslim man and wanted to convert to Islam. The woman had dismissed the allegations in an interview on a Christian TV channel. Coptic Christians account for about 10 percent of Egypt’s population. We’re joined on the phone from Cairo by Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Democracy Now! correspondent and longtime senior producer. "This was a major attack," says Kouddous. "What many people, and many Coptic people in particular, do not understand is why the military, who was present at the scene while the violence was happening, stood by while the worst of it took place and did not intervene."


AMY GOODMAN: That was Egypt’s justice minister speaking about the riots over the weekend.

Saturday’s violence started after several hundred conservative Salafist Muslims gathered outside the Coptic Saint Mena Church in Cairo’s Imbaba district. They were reportedly protesting over a months-old allegation that a Christian woman was being held there against her will because she had married a Muslim man and wanted to convert to Islam. The woman has dismissed the allegations in an interview on a Christian TV channel.........

From later in the interview, the Arab Spring has soon turned to winter.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Michael Meunier, a Coptic politician and activist. Sharif, you said you just came from a news conference. What was the—who was speaking, and what were your questions?

SHARIF ABDEL KOUDDOUS: Well, Amy, at this conference, they are talking about this rise in the number of military tribunals that have taken place since the revolution. One journalist here said that 10,000 civilians have been tried by military courts in the past three months—a shocking number. Military trials are supposed to be reserved for soldiers and cases of terrorism. But what has been happening and what has been very troubling is that a lot of protesters who have taken to the streets over the past three months since Mubarak stepped down, calling for further demands from the Supreme Council, have been rounded up, have been arrested, and have been tried in military tribunals. They did not get to choose their lawyer. They’re sentenced to between three and seven years. And so, this is a very worrying case.

And many point out that Mubarak, his sons, the corrupt politicians, senior members of the National Democratic Party, who are under arrest and are under indictment, are receiving a regular trial with their lawyers. And they ask, how can the revolutionaries, the young revolutionaries, who took to the streets to topple this regime, be treated to these military tribunals while the regime, the dictator himself, is receiving a regular trial? So, there’s families of those detained here who are speaking out, who are telling their stories. There’s journalists, as well. And they’re trying to call on the Supreme Council to stop this very troubling rise in the prosecution of people under this military tribunal system.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Mohamed Abdel Dayem, joining it, with Sharif Abdel Kouddous, in talking about what’s happening to journalists in Egypt, also in Tunisia.

MOHAMED ABDEL DAYEM: Well, among the many thousands that have been tried in military tribunals since the end of the revolution, is actually one journalist: a blogger by the name of Michael Nabil Sanad, who was sentenced to a multi-year prison term in a military tribunal, in a procedure that was deeply flawed and arguably unconstitutional, simply for writing an opinion piece on his blog about the performance of the Supreme Military Council. So, the military trials for civilians are deeply troubling for a number of reasons, many of which Sharif has already talked about. (Egypt: So Much For A New Beginning Blogger Jailed)

But I wanted to focus specifically on how it relates to journalists. We’ve also witnessed a number of attacks on journalists who were trying to report on the events that—and unfortunate events—that took place in Imbaba this last weekend. Up to a handful of journalists, both local and international, were physically assaulted, had their cameras taken away from them and smashed, frequently by plainclothes thugs. So, it’s not really even clear who these people were or why they were trying to destroy equipment and footage. Democracy Now, more and video.