Subcommittee on International Human Rights Committee on Nov. 15th, 2011

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

Street sharia court.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Did you say a street sharia court? I'm sorry, I'm not understanding you.

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

That's correct, sir.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

In other words, that's a vigilante action, as opposed to....

I spent time in Saudi Arabia in 1979, and I've personally seen some of the things done to people in the name of sharia law. In fact, I was there one day when a hand was removed. It's really horrific stuff, so I'm not trying to minimize it, but I am trying to be sure whether we have the institutional Muslim groups doing it through sharia law through their mosque, or whether we have it happening by people interpreting sharia law and doing it in a vigilante fashion.

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

Well, it is Islamic doctrine—whatever you'd like to call it, you can call it. It is in the Koran and they follow whatever their book says to them.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Okay.

We know that some Christian denominations are treated worse than others. For instance, are members of the Coptic Orthodox Church treated the same as Coptic Catholics? Or are there historical reasons for this?

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

I believe there are historical reasons for that. Also, Coptic Orthodox is a majority, more than Coptic Catholic or Coptic Evangelist or other denominations. You have to understand that Coptic Orthodox are about 90% of the Coptic population.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Malek, would you like to respond to any of that? I saw you nodding your head a moment ago.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

You have a very small amount of time.

[Nabil Malek]

As a matter of fact, there are cases where church buildings of denominations other than the Copts were attacked. Only about two weeks ago, a Catholic church had to accept the enforcement of the street vagabonds—who are groups of religious associations—not to put domes or crosses on the building. It's a culture. Please allow me to say that it was there, but it was suppressed to some extent by the regime of Mubarak because they used these people against the Muslim Brothers. The security apparatus under Mubarak used certain Islamic groups called Salafis and Sufis against the Muslim Brothers for political reasons. That's why now, after the collapse, they go out openly and do whatever they want.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

We'll now move to our next questioner. Mr. Sweet.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

It's quite an extraordinary situation that the Copts find themselves in. If they want any rights, they're bribed to convert. If they don't convert, then they're subject to persecution, violence, restrictions on the capability of having a job.... The list is really endless.

It would seem to me that one of the things that people who are mindful—certainly this nation—should watch is how the Coptic community in Egypt is treated. That would give us a good barometer of exactly how democracy is taking hold in any shape or form, considering the kind of long, systemic persecution of the Coptic Church—as one of our witnesses said, 1,400 years of discrimination.

I would like to have one piece of information clarified. I believe one of the witnesses, Mr. Ramelah, mentioned that in the incident of October 9, there were 56 Copts killed. In our briefing notes, I have 27. Is that correct that you said 56 were killed? And was it 300 who were injured?

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

No, I am saying 36. Sorry for the misunderstanding. The New York Times and another newspaper bring the same number.

And the 300 injured, that is correct.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

To both of the witnesses, I assume that you have very good networks in Egypt and you're in communication with them regularly. How betrayed does the Coptic Church feel now—Coptic Christians in Egypt—that they rose up in the “Arab Spring”, wanted to see freedom and democracy come to Egypt, and now they find themselves, as you have stated, with no regime change and, if anything, the circumstance significantly worse than it was before Mubarak was overthrown?

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

This is my personal opinion. I believe the Coptic Church put itself in a bad position when the leader of the church started to play policy. This created a problem for the people in the street, because for decades they could not do any political activity because the church was doing this. In the meantime, the church cannot really do a lot of policy because they were under the gun from the regimes.

I believe the intention of Egyptians in general with the state revolution of January 21 was genuine and they were really hoping to generate democracy and freedom for all the people. But due to the culture, the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafis ride the waves and they're more organized than the people, than the youth who started the revolution, and now we are in the middle of the ocean without any boats to take us in the right direction.

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

They may be organized, but do you see a significant number of moderate Muslim people in Egypt coming beside the Coptic Christians and supporting their pursuit to be treated equally, so that as we move up into these elections we'll see some pressure against those other groups and hopefully get some people elected who will bring some justice to everybody in Egypt?

[Dr. Ashraf Ramelah]

I don't want to be a pessimist, but I believe when you have a culture for 60 years or more, it is really hard to have change right away. Certainly there are Muslims who are secular, moderate, who believe in freedom and justice, but the percentage is so little that it will be crushed by the majority. The level of ignorance is very high, so when you hear an imam saying democracy is evil, 90% of the people who hear him will believe him, and they will be against anybody talking about democracy.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

Okay, we're going to have to end that question there.

We have a problem here time-wise. We have three questioners left on our list. We can all see from the clock that it would be very hard to wrap up five minutes before the hour and deal with three additional questions. We can all do math.

May I just ask a question from the members of the committee? Is there essentially a consensus about this motion that was—

[An hon. member]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

There is?

We can all agree, therefore, right now to—

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

There's a friendly amendment, but I think we can do it within one minute at the time of—

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

If you don't mind, can we do that now? I want to make sure that's done before we lose people.

The friendly amendment would be from yourself, Mr. Sweet?

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Yes.

It is basically the last paragraph. It states, “And calls upon the Canadian government to...”, and I'd just like to insert the words “to continue”, because that has already been in the process.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

That's fine.

[The Chair, Conservative, Scott Reid]

It's Mr. Marston's motion, or is it Mr. Cotler's?

Professor Cotler, is that okay?