BBC report: Egypt will open the world's first Arabic language internet domain, its communications minister has said. Tarek Kamel said the new domain name would be ".masr" written in the Arabic alphabet. It translates as ".Egypt".
"It is a great moment for us... The internet now speaks Arabic," Mr Kamel said.
Last month, internet regulator Icann voted to allow non-Latin web addresses. Domain names can now be written in Arabic, Chinese and other scripts. Mr Kamel, who was speaking at the start of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) being held in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, said a formal announcement would be made on Monday.
Registration for addresses with the .masr ending would begin at midnight (2200 GMT), he said.
"This kind of attack on Baha'is, while all too frequent in Iran, is truly exceptional in Egypt." The Egyptian government should arrest the Egyptian "journalist" Gamal Abdel Rahim, who incited the attack when he appeared on a TV talk show on March 28th and said that Baha'is are apostates and urged their killing.
The mob attacked the Baha'is on 31st March, as a result of the TV programme, a claim made by the mob's leader, Mohammad Youssry Mohammad, in a comment on Gamal Abdel Rahim's blog, ("which has been dedicated to attacks on Baha'is").
Another blog goes into more detail on Mohammed, the village and the victims.
He identifies himself as the secretary of the youth committee of the village's National Party (al- Hezb al-Watany) and a teacher in the religious institute of the village. He describes the village to have a population of 16,751 with a surface area of approximately 1,567 feddans [acres]. It has 17 mosques, 3 churches, 16 elementary schools, 2 preparatory schools and 1 secondary "commerce" school. He also reports that the Baha'is, who were expelled from the village following the burning of their homes, consist of 15 individuals from three families, among them children and nursing babies.
If you understand Arabic, you can watch the show that incited the violence here.
A Kuwaiti Islamist MP called on Wednesday for moving Arab League headquarters from Cairo to Caracas after Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves expelled Israel's ambassador because of its onslaught on the Gaza Strip.
"I call for moving the Arab League from Cairo to Caracas," MP Waleed al-Tabtabai said during a special debate in parliament over the Israeli offensive.
Tabtabai said that Chavez "has proved that he was more Arab than some Arabs," after he expelled the Israeli ambassador in protest against the Israeli offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza.
Chavez expelled Israel's ambassador to Caracas on Jan. 6 and Israel retaliated a day later, saying it was expelling Venezuela's charge d'affaires.
Egypt, Jordan and Mauritania, the only Arab countries to have diplomatic ties with the Jewish state, have ignored public calls to expel Israeli diplomats. An Israeli trade office in Qatar also remains open.
Tabtabai also criticized Egypt, which hosts the headquarters of the 22-member Arab League, for "refusing to open the Rafah" border crossing to allow the passage of food and medical supplies to the battered Palestinian territory.
Protesters clashing with plainclothes police officers in Cairo on Friday as they demanded more action by Egypt for the Gazans under siege by Israel. (Nasser Nuri/Reuters )
Salaam writes: I'm curious: If you participate in a protest in Egypt, does the government automatically label you a member of the Muslim Brotherhood?
'Egypt failed to ward off the perception that it is conspiring with Israel in declaring a war on the Palestinians.'
In the wake of Israel's ongoing air strikes against Gaza, the Arab World is not only protesting Israel's actions, but also Egypt's.
Bloomberg tells of the massive demonstrations against Egypt throughout the Arab world, as many are accusing the country of collusion with Israel in the attacks. The accusations, Bloomberg reports, are fueled by Hamas because of Egypt's reluctance to open the border between it and Gaza.
President Hosni Mubarak said today that Egypt won't reopen its Rafah crossing into Gaza until the rule of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is restored there. Hamas took control of Gaza in a battle with Abbas's Fatah faction in 2007.
Egypt "failed to ward off the perception that it is conspiring with Israel in declaring a war on the Palestinians," said Diaa Rashwan, an analyst with the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. "Israel set up a trap for Egypt and Egypt walked pretty well into it."
But Egypt is claiming that Hamas is to blame for the inability of Palestinians to cross the border for medical treatment, BBC News reports.
'We in Egypt are not going to contribute to perpetuating the rift (between Abbas and Gaza's Hamas rulers) by opening the Rafah crossing in the absence of the Palestinian Authority and EU observers in violation of the 2005 deal.'
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday slammed what he called Israel's "savage aggression" on the Gaza Strip, and said its "bloodstained hands" were stirring feelings of rage among Arabs.
Mubarak however said that Egypt will keep its border crossings with Gaza closed until his Palestinian counterpart Mahmoud Abbas regains authority over the territory and a 2005 deal governing their operation is respected.
"We in Egypt are not going to contribute to perpetuating the rift (between Abbas and Gaza's Hamas rulers) by opening the Rafah crossing in the absence of the Palestinian Authority and EU observers in violation of the 2005 deal" between Abbas and Israel, Mubarak said in a televised speech.
The 2005 accord, which coincided with Israel's withdrawal of troops and settlers from Gaza, provided for EU observers to monitor the border and operate surveillance cameras to allow Israel to keep an eye on comings and goings.
The deal fell into abeyance when Hamas seized control of Gaza from forces loyal to Abbas in June last year.
Strong criticism Egypt has come in for strong criticism from the Islamists and their sympathizers around the Muslim world for not fully opening its border with Gaza to the passage of both people and goods.
It has allowed some Gazans wounded in Israel's devastating four-day-old offensive against the territory to leave for treatment and allowed some medical supplies in.
But Egyptian police also fired warning shots in the air to prevent large numbers of civilians fleeing Gaza.
Mubarak held talks with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni just two days before the start of the offensive, but Mubarak insisted that he totally opposed the Israeli operation.
"We say to Israel that we reject and condemn its assaults which must cease immediately," he said.
"We say to our Palestinian brothers: restore your unity. We warned you several times that any refusal to renew the truce would push Israel to attack Gaza."
Nasrallah, whose guerrilla forces withstood the Israeli invasion of south Lebanon in 2006, angered the Egyptian government with a speech on Sunday calling on Egyptians to take to the streets in protest at Egyptian policy.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit mocked the military records of Iran and the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim movement Hezbollah in an escalating war of words over Egypt's cooperation with Israel in the blockade of Gaza.
Aboul Gheit, in an interview with Egyptian television broadcast on Monday night, said Hezbollah destroyed Lebanon in 2006 and that its Katyusha rockets and rocket-propelled grenades were nothing compared to the Egyptian army.
Addressing Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, he said: "You are a man who used to enjoy respect, but you have insulted the Egyptian people."
The Egyptian minister also attacked Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who criticised Arab governments on Monday for their lack of response to Israeli raids which have killed some 348 Palestinians in Gaza.
"It's as if hundreds of thousands of Iranians shed their blood over the last 30 years," he said, referring to the Egyptian view that its army bore the brunt of the suffering in wars with Israel for the sake of the Palestinians.
Egypt fought four wars with Israel between 1948 and 1973, losing tens of thousands of soldiers. In 1979, it became the first Arab country to make peace with the Jewish state.
"There are Iranian motives driving Arab parties to play in the interests of Iran," the minister added.
Nasrallah, whose guerrilla forces withstood the Israeli invasion of south Lebanon in 2006, angered the Egyptian government with a speech on Sunday calling on Egyptians to take to the streets in protest at Egyptian policy.
Aboul Gheit replied: "Egypt is big and strong and no one outside it can move anything inside it. Egypt moves when the Egyptian people and the Egyptian leadership ask it to."
The minister also lashed out at accusations that Egypt has obstructed the delivery of emergency aid from Arab governments to the people of Gaza through the Gaza-Egypt border.
"The allegations are many, the injustice is obvious and the plotting is clear," he said.
But he later called for calm between Arabs.
"There is much pulling and pushing in the Arab arena which requires much wisdom and calm for us to protect the (Arab) nation, which is going through extremely difficult circumstances," he said.
He said plans for an Arab summit should wait until Arab foreign ministers have met in Cairo on Wednesday.
Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves.
Shyima Hall.
IRVINE, Calif. - Late at night, the neighbors saw a little girl at the kitchen sink of the house next door.
They watched through their window as the child rinsed plates under the open faucet. She wasn't much taller than the counter and the soapy water swallowed her slender arms. To put the dishes away, she climbed on a chair.
But she was not the daughter of the couple next door doing chores. She was their maid.
Shyima was 10 when a wealthy Egyptian couple brought her from a poor village in northern Egypt to work in their California home. She awoke before dawn and often worked past midnight to iron their clothes, mop the marble floors and dust the family's crystal. She earned $45 a month working up to 20 hours a day. She had no breaks during the day and no days off.
The trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. is an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they will at least be better fed in the home of their employer.
The custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate to the U.S. Around one-third of the estimated 10,000 forced laborers in the United States are servants trapped behind the curtains of suburban homes, according to a study by the National Human Rights Center at the University of California at Berkeley and Free the Slaves, a nonprofit group. No one can say how many are children, especially since their work can so easily be masked as chores.
Once behind the walls of gated communities like this one, these children never go to school. Unbeknownst to their neighbors, they live as modern-day slaves, just like Shyima, whose story is pieced together through court records, police transcripts and interviews.
"I'd look down and see her at 10, 11 _ even 12 _ at night," said Shyima's neighbor at the time, Tina Font. "She'd be doing the dishes. We didn't put two and two together."
Shyima cried when she found out she was going to America in 2000. Her father, a bricklayer, had fallen ill a few years earlier, so her mother found a maid recruiter, signed a contract effectively leasing her daughter to the couple for 10 years and told Shyima to be strong.
For a year, Shyima, 9, worked in the Cairo apartment owned by Amal Motelib and Nasser Ibrahim. Every month, Shyima's mother came to pick up her salary.
Tens of thousands of children in Africa, some as young as 3, are recruited every year to work as domestic servants. They are on call 24 hours a day and are often beaten if they make a mistake. Children are in demand because they earn less than adults and are less likely to complain. In just one city _ Casablanca _ a 2001 survey by the Moroccan government found more than 15,000 girls under 15 working as maids.
The U.S. State Department found that over the past year, children have been trafficked to work as servants in at least 33 of Africa's 53 countries. Children from at least 10 African countries were sent as maids to the U.S. and Europe. But the problem is so well hidden that authorities _ including the U.N., Interpol and the State Department _ have no idea how many child maids now work in the West.
Gazans seeking to escape the chaos of the airstrikes have breached the border with Egypt, prompting Egyptian forces to open fire:
Gaza residents on Sunday breached the border fence with Egypt in several places and hundreds have crossed the frontier prompting Egyptian border guards to open fire, said officials and witnesses on both sides of the border...
...An Egyptian security official said there were at least five breaches along the 9 mile (14 kilometer) border and hundreds of Palestinian residents were pouring in.
At least 300 Egyptian border guards have been rushed to the area to reseal the border, the official added on condition on anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Rob at Arabic Media Shack writes: Shaban Abdel Raheem, the "voice of the Arab street," is on life-support after an OD on Hashih:
CAIRO: Shaabi singer Shaaban Abdel Rehim has been admitted to the intensive care unit of Al-Haram hospital and is currently hooked up to a life support system.
Abdel Rehim was brought in after midnight on Sunday. Local press reported that he had overdosed on hashish, according to hospital sources. He was diagnosed as having difficulties breathing. A toxicology report indicated that he had consumed large quantities of the drug, and that his condition demanded hospitalization.
Abdel Rehim is one of Egypt's most iconic singers, and by far its most popular folk singer. Lyrically divisive, he was interview by CNN for his song, "I hate Israel and I love Amr Moussa". He is, however, often mocked and ridiculed by his peers. His popularity stems from the fact that he tackles numerous social and political issues with a populist slant.
If true, then this would be a big story as Rehim was taking part in Amr_Khalid's_anti-drug_campaign. But beyond the hypocrisy aspect this is a very serious issue in Egyptian society. Last month, two Egyptian doctors were arrested in Saudi Arabia for dealing drugs and sentenced to severe penalties:
According to Egyptian newspapers, one of the doctors, Raouf Amin el-Arabi, was accused of driving a Saudi princess "to addiction." He initially was sentenced to seven years in prison and 700 lashes, but when he appealed two months ago, the judge not only upheld the conviction, but more than doubled the penalty - to 15 years in prison and 1,500 lashes.
The statement from the Saudi health department did not mention the princess but said el-Arabi gave drug injections to a woman over a period of five years. It identified the woman as the wife of the doctor's sponsor. Expatriates need Saudi sponsors - government agencies, influential businessmen or members of the royal family - to work in the kingdom.
The other doctor, Shawki Ibrahim, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and an unspecified number of lashes, according to Sunday's statement. The statement said the pharmaceuticals the men allegedly sold have adverse effects on the nervous and respiratory systems and the heart.
As the IHT story notes, some consider this punishment cruel and have called for President Mubarak to intervene to have them freed. Others, however, fully support this punishment, considering that selling drugs is "min Al-Kaba'ir" or a grave sin. Some even consider it too lenient- Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyaa issued a statement calling for their execution.
A year ago, 138 Muslim leaders from 40 nations addressed a plea for interfaith dialogue to the leaders of the world's Christian churches in a bid to diminish the influence of extremism around the world. That initiative, "A Common Word Between Us and You," led to a conference between Muslim and U.S. Protestant leaders at Yale University last summer and another last week with Church of England leaders at Cambridge University, to be followed next month by a meeting with Roman Catholic leaders at the Vatican. Ali Gomaa, who as the grand mufti (chief Islamic jurist) in Cairo is the senior Sunni Muslim figure in Egypt, was one of the Common Word signatories. He presided over the Cambridge conference with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. newsweek's Stryker McGuire interviewed Gomaa at a local hotel. At one point, their chat was interrupted by a carpenter's power saw. "That noise," joked Gomaa, "is from the sphere of terrorism." Excerpts:
Newsweek: What signs of progress have you seen since the Common Word initiative was launched?
Gomaa: Meetings such as this one at Cambridge, working with Muslims and Christians because they represent much of the world's population, are a sign of progress. Our willingness to listen to each other is the first sign of the melting away of the iceberg between the two sides. It's really something of a small miracle. We need to go step by step. The massiveness of the current economic crisis is something else that we must come together to solve. A crisis in the United States affects the street trader in Cairo. We no longer have the option to live in isolation. We Muslims and Christians must be successful so that we can be an example to the rest of the world. We hope that Common Word becomes a massive international peace movement.
One of your goals has been to reduce extremism, including terrorism, in the Islamic world. Are the radicals listening?
We have two objectives here. The first is to reach young people. That is where the problems begin and where we must begin. I equate terrorism with cancer. If we leave it alone, it will affect the entire body. The second involves the actual terrorists themselves, and our effort is to dampen their negative effect. In that regard we have been successful, but it's a partial success. We want to create boundaries for terrorism and restrict its activity. We've had a specific experiment in Egypt with the people who killed [President] Anwar Sadat [in 1981]. In Egypt there were about 16,000 members of the group [Islamic Jihad] that was responsible for Sadat's assassination. We were able to discuss issues with them and convince them of their errors, and 14,000 of them ended up denouncing the principles of the terrorism they had espoused.
You are an eminent legal scholar, and as a religious judge, you issue fatwas , or religious rulings, in all kinds of disputes. You ' ve said in the past that ill-trained or manipulative Islamic pseudoscholars have misused fatwas for their own ends. How so?
It is from these people that you get fatwas that endorse terrorism. That leaves the cancer to spread throughout the body. If Islam is not approached from a proper, scholarly point of view, we will see many problems. These ignorant "scholars" have been able to use mass communications, and now they have satellite TV channels and they're speaking night and day, constantly. This is very, very dangerous. We deem these ignorant people to be criminals. So why are they continuing to do this? They are doing it because the satellite channels give them the money and the resources to do it. It's a moneymaking proposition. All of us need to come together and to try to stand against this phenomenon. We believe in freedom of expression, but what I'm talking about here is a form of deception. It's not a right to hurt others and create havoc on earth.
The war in Iraq is a source of grievance among Muslims. If the war begins to wind down, will that help you deal with the extremists who use the war as an excuse to commit terrorist acts?
Without a doubt. Military occupation is not something that's appropriate in our day and age. It can cause things to spin out of control. Sometimes there's a very fine line between terrorist activities and a legal armed struggle as outlined in the Geneva Conventions. When there's an occupation, there's a lack of balance, and then the concept of what's right and what's wrong is sometimes not understood by those committing violence or acquiescing in it.
Egyptian construction magnate Hesham Talaat Moustafa and former police officer Muhsen el-Sukkari pleaded not guilty to murder and incitement charges on Saturday at their trial for the killing of Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim late July in Dubai.
"God is sufficient for me, and the best trustee of affairs," Mustafa told the packed Cairo courtroom, wearing prison clothes and sitting next to Sukkari inside a cage. "I'm innocent."
Sukkari, who was detained in Dubai shortly after the killing, said "I didn't do it."
Mustafa, a stalwart of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party, is charged with paying retired policeman Mohsen al-Sukkari two million dollars to kill Suzanne Tamim, 30, whose throat was cut in a luxury Dubai apartment in July.
....
The arrest of Moustafa in September, after weeks of speculation about the case, hit the value of shares in Talaat Moustafa Group, the real estate development company which Moustafa's late father created and which Moustafa chaired.
The shares fell to 4.86 pounds ($0.87) after the arrest, from a peak of 13.46 pounds in January. They have since fallen ever further, to 3.51 pounds earlier this month, but mainly because the market as a whole has slumped.
The charge sheet said that Moustafa's motive was revenge but it did not explain their relationship in detail.
G. Willow Wilson writes: Having just returned from a trip to Egypt, I am no longer quite so worried about an impending Islamic revolution in the troubled state. When I left the country over a year ago, it seemed like the bull market for Wahhabism was unstoppable, fueled by political and social oppression, a vanishing middle class, and growing anger over food, water and housing crises. But I see growing signs of resistance. They make me wonder whether Wahhabism has reached the saturation point in Egypt, andmay now begin its inevitable decline.
Next to oil, Wahhabism is the Gulf's chief export. Brought home to Egypt by returning guest workers in the 80's, the sect has met with unqualified success there, filling the void left by Mubarak's non-government. Today, it is no exaggeration to call Egypt an unofficial Wahhabi state. The vast majority of mosques, waqfs, religious media and religious charities are Wahhabi-controlled. What resistance exists comes mainly from Egypt's ancient Sufi brotherhoods, but limited funds mean that their counter-propaganda reaches only a small number of Egyptian Muslims. 'Moderate' Sunni Islam is disappearing with the middle class, which has remained relatively insulated from extremist ideology by its traditions of economic and political progressivism.
But in the last couple of weeks I have seen signs of positive change. More and more mainstream Egyptians seem exhausted by the joyless edicts of the Saudi sect. They're inclined to see its demands for total gender segregation, erratic financial practices ("Islamic banking") and myopic obsession with dress as impractical, if not absurd.
....
What does this mean? I think that like the Gulf's oil wealth, its domination of Islam has a definite shelf life. With peak oil may come peak religiosity. Wahhabism's downfall is built into its DNA-it does not evolve, and once it has saturated a population, cannot offer it anything new. As the needs of that population change-which they must inevitably do-Wahhabism cannot change to answer them. To change would be to admit falibility, at which point the sect's claim to religious perfection would be permanently undermined.
Rob at Arab Media Shack writes: Al-Masri Al-Youm, one of Egypt's top paper's ran an interview yesterday with Joshua Muravchik, a hard-core neo-con. I'm a little disapointed with the paper's failure to show any context about where Muravchik stands ideologically. Muravchik does not represent mainstream foreign policy views, yet is identified as an "advisor for Democractic affairs to Condaleeza Rice." Then in the opening paragraph introducing the interview: "shortly a new administration will come and bring with it new ideas, but there will stay/remain those who produce ideas for any administration either new or old."
No context is given and as Morosavik goes on to say how he supports an attack on Iran it gives the Egyptian reader the impression that this is mainstream foreign policy. But he will have zero role in an Obama administration and probaly a marginal (if any at all) at best in a McCain administration.
Al-Masri Al-Youm rarely, if ever, runs interviews with US foreign policy people, and since there was no context given, the logical impression the average reader might get is "wow this guy is important and these views must be widely held in the US."
'Government is repeating the same error it made in the 1970s when it cultivated the Islamists as part of a strategy to defeat Leftist and Nasserist movements'
Nathan Field writes: A potentially important issue is emerging in the Egypt that is worth paying attention to. Is the Government using the Salafi movement as a tool to triumph over the Muslim Brotherhood? If so, is such a strategy wise?
In a very broad sense, there are two trends here: The first are the Salafis who choose to withdraw from society and do not participate in politics. One can get a sense of their priorities from watching their tv station, Al-Nass Tv. Shows usually consist of a Salafi cleric sitting in a austere room, discussing phrases from the Quran. Very, very literal fundamentalism is how I would describe it. I can't say I spend much time watching, but its notable how detached their programming is from contemporary political issues.
On the other hand, the Muslim Brotherhood might be described as a "political animal" and since its founding it has tried to compete in this arena. Its founder, Hassan Al-Banna, even ran for office. Because of this political ambition, they are a challenge or threat to the government and many commentators, such as Nabil Sharf Ad Deen (who for some context is not a big-name commentator), claim that the Government is conciously pitting the Salafis against the Muslim Brotherhood, which they say is a dangerous strategy.
In a recent editorial in Al-Masri Al-Youm newspaper, he argued that the government is repeating the same error it made in the 1970s when it cultivated the Islamists as part of a strategy to defeat Leftist and Nasserist movements. After spending most of the 1950s and 1960s in jail or on the run, under Sadat the Islamists were given unprecedented freedom. The typical narrative is that by supporting the Islamists, Sadat opened a Pandora's box which he could not control. And ultimately they killed him. Ad Deen believes that the Government might be making the same or perhaps an ever more dangerous mistake because the Salafi movement's religiosity is far more fanatical than the Ikhwan.
