What a shame we can’t have this kind of unity here:
Michael Mounir said after the prayers that the Egyptian regime has persecuted everyone, Muslim and Copt alike, which was proved by the fact that during the past 12 days, while the police and security forces had removed themselves from the scene, there had been no attacks on churches. Rather, Muslim youth had undertaken to guard them. In the past, he said, despite the presence of security forces, churches and Copts had suffered massacres, the most recent having been on New Year’s day.
A young engineer, Mina Nagi, who was injured on January 25, said during the ceremony (according to al-Arab, ” Speak the truth, and the truth shall set you free!” saying that tyranny possesses the numbers and the weapons, and intimidation and smoke bombs, and the ability to smear reputations. “But we have the truth, and we have our living bodies, which pulse with true love for living, freedom, and life with dignity and justice.” He reasoned that since the youth had done all that, they would be steadfast and courageous in the cold, the rain, in hunger and facing an unknown future from which attacks will be launched from every direction and of various sorts.He added, “I came because the suffering and poverty that we live through are not a transitional stage, rather these two are the decisive outcome of the conditions of the economic, social and political structure which gives birth to this destitution, along with absence of democracy and the dominance of private interests over public ones.” He said that what is needed is a profound transformation of the structures themselves, and of the conditions that generate poverty, tyranny and oppression. He said, “I came in accordance with my faith in the struggle on behalf of respect for human rights and the construction of a democracy, and deliverance from prejudice and partisanship, and building a transparent and trustworthy order…”
The Christian and Muslim intellectuals issued a joint statement, affirming that the revolution of Egyptian youth had instilled a new spirit in Egyptian souls, in which was apparent an excellent example of national unity… when believers guarded each others’ prayers after the police disappeared. They said that this decision to stand guard came from the youth themselves, not from any religious leadership, and that it demonstrated that places of worship did not need armed guards. “They are Egyptian places of worship, dear to the hearts of all Egyptians..” They recalled that [because of the New Year bombing] Egypt had been on the verge of sectarian war, and clergymen’s statements had brought the situation to an explosive point, when all that tension was stopped by the Youth Revolution.
They accused the government of exploiting religious symbols to abort the Youth Revolution, and complained that some clergymen had taken government silver to denounce the protest movement. They praised clergymen who stayed inside their houses of worship and did not interfere, and called on the media to stop putting reactionary clergymen on the television screen to speak on public affairs.
