Cracking Down

Sadat locks up his opponents

Tensions between Egypt's 37 million Muslims and 6 million Coptic Christians had been mounting in an ever more violent spiral for months. In June, fighting erupted among rival worshipers in a Cairo slum and left at least 14 dead. Soldiers were posted in front of Coptic churches but failed to thwart a bomb attack in August, on a Coptic wedding party, that killed three, including two Muslim guests. Last week President Anwar Sadat made good on his threat to deal harshly with what his government has described as "sectarian sedition." In the most sweeping crackdown since he took power nearly eleven years ago, Sadat's government banned six political publications and jailed at least 1,100 of his most volatile critics: religious figures, politicians, lawyers and journalists.

The massive wave of arrests was prompted, Egyptian officials explained, by Muslims and Christians who indulged in "irresponsible and suspicious acts." But political opponents of Sadat's regime charged that the President was exploiting the issue of religious strife to silence critics of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel and of endemic problems such as inflation, corruption and housing shortages. Said Khaled Mohieddin, leader of the leftist National Progressive Unionist Party: "Everyone who reads the names of the detainees will understand the aim of the campaign."

Egyptian police launched the roundup with late-night calls on leading political dissidents and religious militants. Mohammed Heikal, author, journalist and confidant of the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser, was roused at 3 a.m. at his summer villa in Alexandria and escorted --"gently," said an aide--to Cairo's Tora Prison. Sheikh Abdel Hamid Kishk, a blind fundamentalist preacher renowned for his rigid Islamic orthodoxy, was jailed for his vitriolic sermons against Copts. Five other Muslim imams were also arrested, along with seven activist members of the Coptic clergy.

Sadat's government has kept a watchful eye on a nascent coalition of opposition groups. Following Israel's bombing of the Baghdad nuclear reactor and Beirut, leftist and religious critics began sharing the same platform to denounce Sadat's wholehearted embrace of the U.S.-sponsored Camp David peace process. The broad purge seemed to reflect an uneasy concern that the regime's detractors were displaying new signs of unity.

In response to the arrests, several hundred Muslim zealots marched on a Coptic cathedral in Cairo, but were repulsed by riot police firing volleys of tear gas. Sadat's political response was equally firm. Late last week, he announced that he would show "no mercy" to Muslim groups involved in the strife and vowed to strip all powers from Pope Shenouda III, 117th Patriarch of the Coptic Church of Egypt.

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