Since I can remember I grew up with Nada who is a Muslim girl, we attended school together, went everywhere and did everything together. And since I have no sisters she was the best sister I could have ever got. Of course it was not acceptable by a hell of people specially my grandmother from my father’s side – sorry to write that before telling you about it – as she hates Muslims and we always have the same fights over and over when she says that “they can never be trusted” or “they hate us – Copts –“ but on the other side I have to admit that she has her excuse as she witnessed the massacre of Suez that happened in Jan 1952 when she was only 19 she saw her uncle taken, dragged by a hook in the streets and bled to death in front of her eyes by Muslim Brotherhood extremists, then heard her neighbor calling for them and pointing towards a building shouting “This building belongs to Christians go kill them”.
So, anyway I do still fight with her almost every time I see her to explain how Islam is just a religion like any other religion and how she is acting the same like those who discriminate against us.
On the other side, I will never forget how when I was about 7 years old returning from my religion class in school – in schools Christians leave the classroom in religion class to attend it in another room – a friend told me “the heaven belongs to us but you will all go to hell cause you worship 3 Gods” so I replied sarcastically “who told you so!” with a smiling face, and her reply was the religion teacher told us that God says so. Of course I was devastated and didn’t even tell my parents about it.
Another incident when I was walking in the classroom and heard the Arabic language teacher saying how the Higri date is away important than the Georgian one!!. When I grew up now I keep thinking that putting into consideration that my school was a private expensive school, how the hell is this thing going in poor governmental schools where ignorance & the lack of education are ones of its most features?
I have to admit that Nada’s mother – who is veiled – and her sister can be considered as one family in millions of Muslim families in Egypt who are more than OK with them being friends with a Christian man which is 2 things no one accepts, it just doesn’t happen and I am really lucky to know them as I can’t imagine my life without having a friend like her who stood beside me in every single problem I faced during the past at least 10 years better than any other boy or a Christian cause it just doesn’t matter, a good friend is a good friend whatever his or her religion is.
My happiest day ever was on the 6th of January 2011 after the Alexandria church explosion when Hossam Eid and Wael Khalil who I knew from twitter came to my church and attended the mass which was really boring just to show solidarity with Copts. I took Ahmed – Wael’s son – to play with the kids outside as it was really boring inside listening to prayers for hours. When I saw how the kids kept making fun of racism telling each other “yea someone came to blow us” and my brother who was telling Ahmed “there are a lot of chicks here let’s see if we can get some” in a church being together with a Muslim I was thinking to myself saying “A kid like that will definitely grow up to be a perfect citizen as he will never ever be one of the racists”.
Since I believe that the first step to solve a problem is admitting the existence of the problem itself, I do have to admit that religious discrimination do EXIST in Egypt with all those massacres, churches being looted, Sheikhs spreading violence and racism on TVs without being sued, etc…
In Sweden for example, religion classes are just to give the kids an idea about all religions not to brainwash them with their religion and how perfect it is and other religions are just bullshit.
From my point of view the most important thing is how the kids are brought up at home; my mother always told me how it is not important your friends’ religion but the morals are the important ones. I don’t know what we should do to reach those sick parents who teach their children how to discriminate against others but there must be a solution. And I hope everyone can contribute with such solutions to help us put an end to this in our beloved country.
PS: saying "all my friends are muslims/christians" and all this priest/sheikh thing will never work!
