Christians Are Forced To Learn Islam At Cairo University

ICC Note

Christian students at Cairo University are taught only Islamic perspective to various religions including Christianity.

By Robeir al-Faris

05/11/2008 Egypt (Watani)-A textbook used by the first-year students at Cairo University ’s faculty of arts is the History of the Arab Islamic State, authored by none other than Mohamed Barakat al-Biali who heads the Islamic History Department at the same faculty.

In 308 large-size pages, the book tackles Islamic history from the Mohammedan [prophetic] mission until the fall of the Umayyad State , with the life of the Prophet Mohamed taking up 123 pages. Given that the book is a history textbook taught in a civil—not a religious—university, one would assume it would stick to historical facts. But this is far from the case; the book brims with material that lies strictly within the domain of faith. Christian students must acknowledge in the examinations that the Torah and the Bible currently in use are misquotations of previous versions that included prophesies of the coming of Mohamed and that have consequently been disfigured by ‘Zionists’, and that the only true religion before God is Islam.

Contradiction

The author propagates the idea that the Islamic State which was born at the hands of Mohamed and his followers was an ideal State, since it abided by Islam’s principles and Islamic sharia . Remarkably, this is exactly the basis extremists build upon in their call for a religious State.

So this is History. And we used to think that History was all about incontestable facts, or at least that, if the facts were not clear, the study should include the different versions of the same story.

Approved

Watani talked the matter over with Atef al-Eraqi, professor of philosophy at the faculty of arts at Cairo University . At the outset Dr Eraqi said that matters of faith ought not to be tackled at all in any curriculum other than one concerned with religion. “I attended a conference on tolerance held by the late Pope John Paul II, where all the participants recommended respecting the tenets of faiths of all religions,” he said. “I don’t know to whose benefit is the spread of such fanatical concepts among students”