Dahshoor, Giza Governorate, Egypt, and the New Egypt

Dahshoor is south of Giza, which is west and south of Cairo.  If the name of Giza stands for the greatness of ancient Egypt as symbolized by the great Pyramids, Dahshoor, one of the villages of that Governorate, shall always stand for the decline of modern Egypt as symbolized by the Muslim-Coptic clashes of recent days.  Those clashes epitomize the civilizational wreckage bequeathed to the new Egypt by 60 years of military dictatorship.

Sameh and Wael Youssef are two Coptic brothers who own a cleaner shop in Dahshoor.  Emad Ramadah Daher, a Muslim client brought a shirt to their shop for cleaning and ironing.  Due to equipment malfunction, the shirt was damaged by burning.  Soon, the Daher shirt accidental burning blossomed into a violent confrontation between the Muslims and Copts of Dahshoor.  In turn, this led to the burning of the house and shop of the Youssef family at the hands of Muslim hooligans.  Molotov cocktails were the weapon of choice.

Coptic families fled for dear life, and Dahshoor entered the annals of ignorance, bigotry and ethnic tensions, the wounds of which shall obviously take years to heal.

The Dahshoor events took place on July 25, eliciting formal statements from the Giza Coptic Diocese and from the Egyptian Government, from President Morsi down to top police officers of the Giza Governorate.

The Diocese, in its traditional efforts to foster normalcy between Muslims and Copts, stressed the efforts of the police and security forces at containing the crisis, and at apprehending the wrong-doers.  Yet the Giza Diocese could not avoid measuring the depth of the Dahshoor crisis.

So its statement pointed to the burning and looting not only of the house and shop of the Youssef family.  It went on to describe how other Coptic homes were torched, how the Coptic church in Dahshoor was vandalized, and how other shops owned by Copts, including a jewelry store and a soft drinks shops were also attacked.

Such acts were perpetrated following the burial of a Muslim victim of these riots who had died as a result of his being accidentally hit by a stray molotov cocktail..  The statement ended by appealing to the Government to bolster security in the area, to bring the outlaws to justice, and to apply the force of law equally to all.  Property losses have been estimated in the millions of Egyptian pounds.

For his part, President Mohamed Morsi said, through his official spokesman, that the law shall be applied to all malfeasants.  The goal, he stressed, was to maintain the customary harmony and amity between Egypt's Muslims (approximately 90% of the population) and Copts (10%).

And Mostafa Bakri, a former member of the Egyptian Parliament (now dissolved), described the Dahshoor sectarian upheaval as resulting from a vast conspiracy intended to destabilize the new Egypt.  He estimated the number of Coptic families who fled Dahshoor and its environs, at 120 Coptic households.  On his Twitter, Bakri posed a central question which must be on the minds of all fair minded Egyptians:


"There is a vast difference between freedom and anarchy.  For how long must Egypt await the arrival of a savior?  Anarchy must be arrested, otherwise Egypt might become a failed State.  If anarchy, such as what happened in Dahshoor, persists, together with the present economic free fall, the door shall be wide open for a revolt by the hungry hordes which shall devour everything in Egypt."