Evening Line - Can't Tell the Players Without A Scorecard (Egypt edition)

8/10/2013 5:07 PM

The Evening Line for Saturday

I’ve got a stack of newspapers behind my chair, a variety of subjects to write on, but one article this morning really jumped out at me, and I’d like you to read it. It’s about the situation in Egypt

The thing I want to draw attention to is your/my lack of knowledge of all the religions and their factions at play in Egypt, and for how long. Among Muslims, there are the Shiites (the tiny minority) and the Sunnis (vast majority, including recent President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood,) but within those, there are the extremist Sunni Salafists, (not to be confused with the Alawite Shiites over in Syria, Assad’s minority ruling sect) and their Nour Party.

Christians of various sects, but mostly Coptic, make up 10% of the population, eight times the number of Shiites.

How’s this all going?

“Since the coup, Christians, who make up an estimated 10% of Egypt's 83 million people, have been targets of deadly attacks by Islamists who accuse them of supporting Morsi's overthrow. Shiites, believed to number less than 1 million, fear reprisals from Salafists, a long-repressed radical Sunni sect that rose to prominence under the Brotherhood and views Shiite Islam as heresy.”

See? The problem with Morsi’s election, and the Brotherhood’s take-over of the Egyptian legislature, was what so many fundamentalists cry out for, in their home countries.  

 “Lawmakers pushed through a new constitution that made Sunni religious doctrine the basis for most laws.” 

Like so many here want to replace our Constitution with the Ten Commandments, or the Bible (which Bible, I have no idea.)

And what was the result of this new, Sunni-exclusive constitution?

“In June, Morsi attended a rally at a Cairo stadium where a succession of Salafi clerics called for holy war in Syria. One described Shiites [President Assad’s ruling sect] as "filthy"; another called them "nonbelievers who must be killed."

When Morsi took the stage, he drew cheers by announcing he would break diplomatic relations with Assad's government. And he said nothing about the anti-Shiite rhetoric.”

The article goes on, about lynchings of Shiites in Egypt, sometimes overseen by Salafist Sunni clerics. Of police in full gear coming to the lynchings and not intervening until the victims were dead.Of fear by the minority of the majority.

When I hear the fear fanatics here in the US screaming about the Muslims, first I ask, “Which Muslims?” Because the same sect that is the oppressed minority in one country is the oppressor in others. The Sunnis run Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but the Shiites run Iran, and the Shiite minority are the oppressors of the Sunni majority in Syria, which is one of the reasons there’s a civil war there. Exactly the opposite of the Sunni minority lording over the Shiite majority for years under Saddam in Iraq.

“Well, what do you expect? They’re Muslims.” To which, I like to remind folks of Northern Ireland, full of fine Christians, killing each other for centuries over which version of Christianity is correct, as imposed by which political state.  

I remind Americans of our “papist” president who was assassinated not so long ago.  Of the Catholics run out of various states throughout the 1800s, of the Mormons, both killing and being killed over their version of Christianity. And what of the Quakers?

From LearnNC.org:  

"Puritan Massachusetts was a difficult place for Quakers to live. The Puritans did not believe in religious tolerance. They believed that there was only one true way to be Christian, and that was by being a Puritan. They passed several laws that made Quakerism illegal in Massachusetts. They imprisoned Quakers who would not leave the colony. In one case, four Quakers were executed for refusing to stop preaching Quaker beliefs or to leave the colony."

One of the reasons why open religious warfare doesn’t occur in the US anymore is that the US finally adheres to its Constitution, and “make[s] no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting  the free exercise thereof”.

As so many conservatives desire, the US is a free market when it comes to religion.

What I read, between the lines, is this:  to scream to ban any religion, whether a sect of Christianity or a sect of Islam, is to fail to set the example of tolerance our Constitution’s authors knew was necessary to a United country, and which seems, even in the face of the Far Right Fundamentalists in America, seems to be succeeding.  

8/10/2013 5:53 PM

8/10/2013 6:03 PM