Muslim Crowd Rallies Outside Church... for Tolerance

The big news out of Alexandria, Egypt, two weeks ago was about protests by hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members outside the Coptic church of St. Girgis. The Copts, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, are today a minority (roughly 10% of the population) in Egypt, and their relationship with the Muslim majority is like a pendulum swinging between relative harmony and serious repression. The classic illustration of Coptic repression is that no new churches can be built without the express permission of President Hosni Mubarak... "for the Copts own protection."

Well, the Muslim Brotherhood got wind of a Coptic play that was deemed anti-Muslim, rumors flew, and soon the mobs oustide the church got violent. An eldery nun was stabbed. The whole scene was pretty nasty - all in a Mediterranean coastal city with a reputation for cosmopolitan tolerance.

Normally an occasional flare-up like this would subside unaddressed. But Karim Elsahy of the One Arab World blog decided to a new kind of response was necessary. Though working in Boston, he contacted his brother back in Cairo and began to organize a candlelight vigil on Sunday evening at the Basilica Church in Heliopolis, Cairo. He spread the word via the blogscene, and lo and behold a bunch of people showed up. (See Karim's photo gallery of the event here.)

Sandmonkey attended the rally and offers a bunch of interesting and moving comments:

Tamer (Karim's brother) went and asked the custodian if it was ok for us to have our vigil in front of the church. Before he even finished explaining, the man broke into the biggest smile and said " Yes, of course. No problem at all. Please do..."

People, seeing the candles we lit on the stairs of the church and us standing there, started asking us questions. "What is going on? Who are you?" and someone even asked where we got those candles from. The Answer Tamer gave was always the same: "We are a group of Muslim kids who feel awful about what happened in Alexandria. We feel that we are all egyptians here and that we shouldn't let religion divides us the way it does. So we figured we would start the vigil to express our sadness at what happend and our solidarity."

People would look at us at first as if we had 2 heads, and then they would always end up breaking into this really warm appreciative smile. You would especially see it in the older people crowd; the crowd that remembers a time where no such displays were necessary...

We ended up with a big enough crowd, attracting people our age off the street. It seemed that everybody thought it was a good idea and wished someone had done something like that. This time someone did! It may sound corny to you , but honestly, seeing us all coming together this way, it gave me something I thought was long gone: it gave me hope in our future as a country.

The candles weren't the only thing glowing at this vigil. Just look at the faces of the participants. This remarkable vigil was organized by new means, in part from halfway around the world. And now it's been shared with the entire world. We who gaze upon it have a little shine on our own faces.

Comments

[Karim Elsahy]

Thanks for the post.
Karim