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Monday, November 22, 2010     FOLLOW UPDATES ON TWITTER

U.S. presses Egypt to respect non-Muslims

WASHINGTON — The United States is urging Egypt to improve its deteriorating record on religious rights.

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The State Department said senior officials as well as the U.S. ambassador in Cairo were monitoring Egyptian violations of religious rights, Middle East Newsline reported. Officials said the U.S. focus was to stop Muslim attacks on Egypt's Christian minority.

"Specifically, embassy officers and other U.S. Department of State officials raised concerns with the government about ongoing discrimination that Christians face in building and maintaining church properties, sectarian violence, the government's use of informal reconciliation instead of criminal prosecutions, and the state's treatment of Muslim citizens who hold heterodox beliefs or convert to other religions," a State Department report.


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The department's International Religious Freedom Report 2010 portrayed an Egyptian regime that distinguishes between recognized and unrecognized religions. The unrecognized religions, which have undergone official harassment, included Shi'ites, Bahais as well as Christian converts.

"The government also sometimes arrested, detained, and harassed Muslims such as Shi'a, Ahmadiyas, Quranists, converts from Islam to Christianity, and members of other religious groups whose beliefs and/or practices it deemed to deviate from mainstream Islamic beliefs and whose activities it alleged to jeopardize communal harmony," the report, released on Nov. 17, said. "Government authorities often refused to provide converts with new identity documents indicating their chosen faith."

The report said Egypt, which receives $1.7 billion in annual U.S. military and civilian aid, has failed to respond to anti-Christian violence. The State Department highlighted Muslim attacks on Egypt's Coptic minority, said to comprise 10 percent of the overall population.

"The government failed to prosecute perpetrators of violence against Coptic Christians in a number of cases, including in Baghoura, Farshout and Marsa Matruh," the report said.

The report said violations of religious rights in Egypt have increased over the last year. Authorities were said to have promoted reconciliation sessions while Muslim assailants escaped prosecution. The State Department cited sectarian violence in Naga Hamadi in January 2010, in which six Copts and one Muslim were killed.

"There continued to be religious discrimination and sectarian tension in society during the period covered by this report, and some religious groups and activists reported an increase in sectarian tensions," the report said.




Comments


Mabey the U.S. should do the same to Muslims.

saif      2:30 p.m. / Tuesday, November 23, 2010


Comments


The Egyptian government is not respecting any religious groups and in particular the Muslim majority. I find accusing the Egyptian government of discrimination against minority groups as funny and naive. The Egyptian government is an oppressive regime that does not discriminate in discrimination.

Ahmed Eldemellawy      5:53 p.m. / Monday, November 22, 2010

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