Under Grim Duress in Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood claims that opposition parties are responsible for Egypt's growing instability. They have ignited sectarian violence, and it is they and they alone who have spread chaos. The government of President Mohammed Morsi has done nothing whatever to engender outrage among Egyptians, but it is the deliberately malign efforts of the opposition to unsettle the country and add to its financial, unemployment, food and energy shortage woes.

All the burning of Muslim Brotherhood offices has resulted from Egyptians being spurred on by the opposition, and certainly not by the government monopolized by the Muslim Brotherhood causing the public to reject its Islamist-centred governance. And mobs of rock-throwing, firebomb-lobbing Muslims surrounding Cairo's main Coptic cathedral is also the devilish work of Morsi's opponents.

Strange, that, since during the long-reigning autocracy of former President Hosni Mubarak, as straitened as circumstances were between Muslim and Christian, they weren't of these incendiary proportions.

Workers have shut down the country's trains, striking over wages. Two years of ongoing strife and rejection, and somehow the Muslim Brotherhood isn't getting the message. It didn't take two years for Hosni Mubarak to be convinced to step aside.


The St.Mark Coptic Orthodox Cathedral was effectively under violent siege. Hundreds of Christians had left their complex to venture out for an anti-government march in the wake of a funeral for four Christians killed in Saturday's clashes.

Residents of the area where the cathedral sits pelted the Coptic Christians with rocks and firebombs, firing birdshot at them, forcing the Christians from their plan and back into the sanctuary of the church.

The melee of rock-throwing from both sides was in full sway by the time police arrived in numbers. Those locked within the church and the mob raging outside threw firebombs and rocks at one another. Tear gas fired by police and the launching of gas canisters inside the church grounds was a cause for further panic among women and children.

Excellent strategy on the part of police.

"There was no security outside the church for such a large funeral", lamented Emad Thabet, a Coptic Christian, among those locked in the church for hours. "There is no such thing as Egyptians in Egypt. There are only Muslims and Christians".