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Egypt: Christians fear Sharia state, rally around opponent of Muslim Brotherhood candidate

Jun 14, 2012 9:21 am By Robert Spencer

“Sidhom says there are concerns the Brotherhood will keep Christians out of some government positions, tax non-Muslims, base education around Islam and create a foreign policy that favors Muslim over non-Muslim nations.”

“Egypt Christians rally behind rival of Islamists,” by Aya Batrawy for the Associated Press, June 12 (thanks to Ima):

CAIRO (AP) “” In the small southern Egyptian town of Azaziya, where almost all the residents are Christians, few doubt that nearly everyone who can is going to vote for Ahmed Shafiq, ousted leader Hosni Mubarak’s last prime minister and his longtime friend, in this weekend’s presidential election.

Shafiq’s candidacy has dismayed many Egyptians who believe the Mubarak-era veteran will preserve the old regime’s authoritarianism. But even if some Christians share those reservations, they view his opponent in the race as far worse: Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Egypt’s Christian minority fears will turn the country into an Islamic state.

“Our goal is a civil state. We don’t see anyone else who can protect this except for him,” Montaser Qalbek, the son of Azaziya’s town leader, said of Shafiq.

In last month’s first round of the presidential election, which narrowed the field from 13 candidates to two, Shafiq received nearly all of the 4,500 votes cast in Azaziya, a town in the southern province of Assiut. Qalbek said he expects more than twice that number to turn out for the Saturday-Sunday run-off and that they will again overwhelmingly back Shafiq.

That determination is likely to be mirrored across the Christian community, which makes up 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 85 million. Many Christians see the vote as a clear-cut choice between a secular state and one in which an Islamist agenda slowly takes root. Leaders of the Orthodox Coptic Church, to which most Egyptian Christians belong, and Christian activists have been working hard to get the community to the polls, said Yousef Sidhom, editor of the weekly Watani newspaper and a Coptic Church official….

Those Christians who vote will back Shafiq because they are fearful of the Brotherhood’s “hidden agenda,” Sidhom said.

“There is a Brotherhood strategy to work toward building an Islamic country.”

Sidhom says there are concerns the Brotherhood will keep Christians out of some government positions, tax non-Muslims, base education around Islam and create a foreign policy that favors Muslim over non-Muslim nations.

The Brotherhood has long insisted it won’t discriminate against Christians. In his run-off campaign, Morsi has vowed Christians will have full rights equal to Muslims’ and said he might appoint a Christian as one of his vice presidents.

“We don’t believe this,” said Sidhom. “They just want to lure people to vote for Morsi.”…

Support for the divisive Shafiq has caused a backlash. Christians complain that after the first round, they have been harassed in the streets and at work. Witnesses in Assiut say a Muslim baker refused to sell bread to Christians….

Paul Sedra, an expert on Egypt and professor at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University, said Copts feel more vulnerable now than they have in decades.

“We have a church basically without a leader, a community that suffered through the Maspero massacre … and the Muslim Brotherhood ascendant in the political realm,” he said. “This gave them a far greater feeling of instability and that gave Shafiq far greater votes.”…

I tried to tell you.

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Filed Under: Coptic Christians, Egypt, Muslim Brotherhood, Sharia


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