WATANI International
27 April 2008
On this blessed Easter Day I present my heartfelt wishes to His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, and to all the heads of the Christian Churches in Egypt and their congregations, praying that God would bestow upon our beloved Egypt His love, peace and blessings.
Feast days are auspicious occasions for the exchange of good wishes. People seize such opportunities to rise above differences and every-day problems. Easter reminds us of the suffering, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ as the embodiment of love, mercy and triumph over evil, concepts which ought to spill over into our daily lives and not be limited to Easter.
I write this as I recall the typical courtesy visits so full of overflowing sentiments and honeyed rhetoric paid by officials to Copts on feast days. I never cease to wonder why these courtesies fail to materialise into any active deed to help solve the countless problems we incessantly suffer from. Sadly, our courtesy culture does not include such a concept.
Thereupon I do not expect that, during the visits to wish Copts a happy Easter, Speaker of the People’s Assembly Fathi Sorour would broach the topic of the bill for a unified law for building places of worship, neither that Speaker of Shura Council Safwat al-Sharif would talk of the recent municipalities elections, nor would Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif tackle the rising prices. Along the same line, the justice minister is not expected to go into the long-shelved personal status bill for Christians, neither will the education minister discuss the Arabic language and history curricula which promote discrimination against non-Muslims, nor will the labour minister tackle the problem of Christians being forced to work on their feast days. And it goes without saying that the interior minister will say nothing of the recent attacks on Copts.
In all cases, Happy Easter.
