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Strangely, however, it is only the Muslims who have boycotted the film, charging one of the Muslim actors of apostasy for playing the role of a Coptic infidel priest."Egyptian movie confronts sectarian rift," by Nadia Abou el Magd, for the National, July 20:
CAIRO // A new big-budget comedy starring two of Egypt’s most famous actors is attempting to defuse escalating tensions between the country’s Muslim and Christian populations.Simple: Copts "mistrust" Muslims due to the latter's stated and daily demonstrated "antipathy" for non-Muslims, in this case, Copts.In Hassan and Marcos Omar Sharif and Adel Imam play a Muslim preacher and Coptic Christian priest who are forced to change their religious identities and go into hiding after both come under fire from fanatics within their respective communities for being too moderate.
The film lightheartedly explores the causes behind the antipathy and mistrust the communities feel toward one another.
“Why are Copts barred from holding important posts in the government? Why is the government always putting obstacles in front of building new churches or even repairing them?” ask Coptic clerics in one scene, at a national unity conference.Because sharia, which is the basis of the Egyptian constitution, bars non-Muslims from holding important posts, and from building or fixing churches.
“Where did the Copts get their wealth from? Why is the state allowing them to control the country’s economy? Why do they build their churches near the mosques?” their Muslim counterparts reply.Such ludicrous questions, indeed. Copts are far from wealthy--indeed, this video depicts them as the "rubbish people," who have been reduced to living off refuse. And on those very, very rare occasions that Copts are allowed to build churches, it is well known that new mosques instantaneously sprout out all around it, their minarets blasting day and night that "infidels are they who say Allah is one of three" (Koran 5:17).
Egyptian society has been on a knife edge in recent years as the gulf between the country’s religious communities widens at a time of growing conservative Islam and dire poverty.Back to reality. Note: the "gulf" is due to "conservative" Islam and poverty--not to anything the Copts have done.
But many major political and religious figures still insist there is no discrimination in Egypt.Guess which group, Muslims or Copts, have given negative reactions? Read on.“All the problems related to Christians in Egypt are made up,” said Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest Islamic group, in a recent interview with the leftist daily Al Badil.
And some reactions to Hassan and Marcos give little cause for hope.
Activists on the website Facebook launched a group accusing Adel Imam, a Muslim, of apostasy for playing a Coptic priest in the film. Under the slogan “A call to all Muslims, boycott Christian Adel Imam”, the group accuses him of promoting Christianity and discourages Muslims from attending the movie.Ya think?!Still, thousands of Egyptians have already gone to see Hassan and Marcos, and most were impressed with the movie’s timely message of national unity. “A film with such a name is a frank call for national unity,” said May el Telmesany, an Egyptian novelist. “But the movie wrongly tried to equate Christian fanaticism with Muslim fanaticism, which is stronger and oppresses moderate Muslims too.
Posted by Raymond at July 20, 2008 6:17 PM
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"Where did the Copts get their wealth from?"
Christians tend to be wealthier than Muslims because of theological differences. Jews and Christians believe that God calls his people to participate as servants in history. The Muslims god is so transcendent and everything is so willed by Allah, that Muslims tend not to do long range planning. This is commonly mentioned in books about doing business in the Middle East.
Islam is rule based, whereas Christians are called to go beyond the rules as a reflection of Christ's love for the stranger. This generates businesses with more loyal workers than in Islam where the rules based system combined with a history of slavery creates a Master/Slave system of seeing business relationships. In Christianity the boss must run the company but in a Christ like way. Of course this anaysis is too general since people tend to behave more badly than their religious ideals. The point is that Christian ideals in business and worker relations is much more human thereby generating more successful businesses.
In the skinny, Islamic theology were practiced well leads to poor economic fruit, whereas were Christians and Jews do their best, they flourish. Since the Imams and the devote Muslims can not comprehend that their religion is a lie and leads to frustration they must attribute the success of Jews and Christians to evil ends.
Just look around the world where there is not oil, you'll see lots of Christian minorities in Muslim lands doing well in business, even with the oppression of the ruling Muslim classes. The Indonesian Chinese Christians are but one example.
Christianity is more successful than Islam in bearing the fruit of wealth and justice. This is one of the reasons Islam hates the West. Our success points to the reality that Mohammad and the Koran are not from God.
Posted by: James Martel![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at July 20, 2008 7:29 PM
"The film lightheartedly explores the causes behind the antipathy and mistrust the communities feel toward one another."
-- from the article above
"Lightheartedly."
Posted by: Hugh at July 20, 2008 7:35 PM
If you are new to this site today, just visiting, I recommend that you look in the left-hand sidebar of the main page, where it says, 'links', and click on the link entitled 'Sons of Apes and Pigs', which is run by a group of Coptic Christians who have simply had it with Muslim oppression, aggression, nonsense and lies. Open up their site and scroll down through the different articles and news items.
You will be disgusted by what the Egyptian government allows Muslim mobs and Muslim bullies and thugs to get away with, so long as their victims are Copts. You should bear in mind that Christians and Hindus in Pakistan are suffering very similar abuses at Muslim hands; as are Christians, Hindus and the Buddhist Chakma tribespeople in Bangladesh, and the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians in Iraq.
You should also get the anthology, "The Myth of Islamic Tolerance", edited by Mr Robert Spencer, and read article number 12, "The Oppression of Middle East Christians: A Forgotten Tragedy", by Walid Phares, and article number 13, by Bat Yeor, "A Christian Minority: The Copts in Egypt".
Bat Yeor gives a brief and searing overview of the 1200 years of ruthless exploitation, oppression and contempt, punctuated by episodes of forced 'conversion' and near-genocidal mass murder, that Muslims in Egypt have inflicted upon the Christian Copts, who are the indigenous aboriginal people of Egypt.
She summarises it thus: "the history of the Copts [after the Muslim invasion' is a lengthy tale of persecution, massacre, forced conversion, and devastated and burned churches".
Article no. 21, 'the dhimmitude of the West', by Mark Durie, will also be useful.
Mark Durie's conclusion is this: "Appeasement and the 'softly softly' approach only buys time. Sooner or later the will to dominance inherent in the jihad stream of the Qur'an and Sunna will rear its head when a faithful believer reads the Qur'an and finds that it says to struggle against unbelievers and subjugate them. Frank exposure and critique offers the best way to contain this outcome".
In other words: right now, if our governments and media had any sense, the Muslims in Iraq, Egypt and Pakistan, and elsewhere, who are grossly abusing non-Muslims, or officially winking at (or even deliberately inciting) such abuses, should be incurring a firestorm of criticism and scorn, coupled with the imposition of suitable punishments, such as the withdrawal of economic and military 'aid' and - for their ruling class - denial of 'privileges' such as access to western education or medicine.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at July 20, 2008 8:07 PM
If you do read Bat Yeor's essay on the Copts, in 'Myth of Islamic Tolerance', you will come across something else...something that nearly made me burst into tears when I read it.
She is describing a particularly bad pogrom against the Christians that broke out in 1343:
"In 1343 Christians were accused of starting fires in Cairo; in spite of the sultan's efforts to protect them {but I wonder how sincere, and how serious, those efforts were? - dda}, they were seized in the street, burned, or slaughtered by the mob as it left the mosques. Anti-Christian violence raged in the main towns."
Now - here's what made me cry.
"To enable Christians to go out in the streets {which they would have had to do, to buy food, and suchlike - dda}, Jews would sometimes lend them their distinctive yellow turbans".
In other words: at a time when Egyptian Muslims were focusing their murderous attention on the Christians rather than on the Jews (the Jews suffered also, dreadfully, at other times), there were Jews who helped Coptic Christians to 'hide' in Jewish clothing and thus avoid Muslim notice.
Just as there were, under the Nazis, Christians who forged 'Catholic papers' for Jews to enable them to elude capture, so in 14th century Egypt you find Jews enabling Christians to 'hide' under cover of a Jewish identity, to protect them from murderous Muslim mobs.
And had they been caught doing so, I have no doubt they would have been dealt with by the Muslims, for their 'crime' of concealing Christians, as the Nazis dealt with those who hid Jews.
Let us Christians remember those brave Jews of Egypt, who helped our Coptic Christian brethren, and find the courage to challenge and defeat the Muslim attacks upon Jews, and upon Israel, today; let us also be inspired to try to find ways to give moral support and practical help to ALL others who, like us, are being targeted across the world by Muslim violence and lies.
Posted by: dumbledoresarmy at July 20, 2008 8:26 PM
You know given that Egyptians make bestsellers out of Mein Kampf and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other conspiratorial garbage, its no surprise this steaming pile makes it to the big screen.
And once it proves that Islam has no place in the west.
at July 20, 2008 8:59 PM
Raymond,
I watched all three parts of the video "Rubbish People." I was truly shocked from what I saw and learned.
I once thought that I had some inkling of how the Copts are being persecuted in Egypt. The whole 30 minutes blasted all those preconceptions to smithereens.
Thank you for making that mention, that reference, to these poor people, the Copts, in your article above.
Please everyone, take the time to watch the series. The strength of the Copt's faith is truly unbelievable!
And to to believe the Egyptian government calls itself "civilized". What a f***ing joke!
INRE
at July 20, 2008 9:43 PM
it is only the Muslims who have boycotted the film, charging one of the Muslim actors of apostasy for playing the role of a Coptic infidel priestIn the 90's, I read about an incident in Pakistan where an acting couple (he was an actor, she was an actress) were playing the role of a married couple on TV. In course of the acting, the script had his screen role divorce her screen role using the triple talaq rule.
What happened next - you probably guessed it - Islamist (is that the word, Dr Pipes?) groups demanded that the real life marriage of the actor and actress in question get annulled, due to his pronouncements, even though they were made in their reel life, and he had no intention of divorcing her off screen. Aside from the question of what these groups would have done had the couple not been married to each other in real life but only on screen, that incident, as well as the one above of Egyptian Mohammedans attacking actors because of roles they played in movies/serials, emphatically demonstrates, if any demonstration was ever needed, that Mohammedans are incapable of discriminating between screen life and real life.
It would be a real hoot if the Mohammedans doing the boycotting got violent against those doing this defamatory movie. ;-)
Posted by: Infidel Pride at July 21, 2008 12:15 AM
“All the problems related to Christians in Egypt are made up,” said Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of the Muslim BrotherhoodWell if the leader of the muslim Brotherhood said so I guess it must be true. I know a Turk mohammedan who is convinced 'only a few hundred Armenians died in the Relocation'.
at July 21, 2008 2:00 AM
"Lightheartedly."
Posted by: Hugh July 20, 2008 7:35 PM
Yes, after the Copts cut out the still beating hearts of the righteous, but helpless Muslim children they always seem to be kidnapping and forceably converting, which then they make into Communion wafers and sacramental wine. Or was it the Jews what done that sorta thing....always confusing the two.
Posted by: Jewel Atkins at July 21, 2008 4:09 AM
Does Gary Busey and Billy Zane make a cameoflaged appearance in this flick?
Posted by: Jewel Atkins at July 21, 2008 4:10 AM
....While this anti-Christian movie comes out, this past weekend seen records broken by the release of the new "Batman" movie.
Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at July 21, 2008 6:10 AM
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