Word: sadat
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...Sadat had alleged in a weekend address following the arrests that an elaborate conspiracy was under way aimed at undermining his authority. Sadat fears that his secular enemies are hoping to bring him down not by a coup (he firmly controls the army) or at the polls (where he seems invincible) but by fomenting trouble between the Muslim and Christian communities in the hope of creating national chaos. In his speech, Sadat accused both religious and political enemies of "conniving together" to exaggerate several recent incidents of unrest, including a domestic quarrel between a Muslim family and a Christian family...
...quickly became obvious, however, that the President's targets were not limited to those specific troublemakers. The net had simply been spread too wide for Sadat to argue that the campaign was anything but an across-the-board attack on the opposition. Also rounded up by police were a number of political figures and other notables-including Journalist Mohammed Heikal and the elderly head of the now-defunct New Wafd Party, Fuad Seraged-Din-who obviously had no connection with the incident in June. At the end of his address, Sadat ordered the suspension of seven opposition publications...
Then, to the surprise of his audience, Sadat declared that he had revoked a 1971 presidential directive affirming Shenouda as the leader of Egypt's 6 million Coptic Christians, who form 14% of the population. Sadat accused Shenouda of failing to assist his government in quelling sectarian strife. Among the detainees were eight Coptic bishops, 13 priests and 125 alleged lay activists, as well as 55 secular dissidents and intellectuals...
...real target of Sadat's sweeping clampdown is the Islamic fundamentalists, who object to his eagerness to bring Western business into the country and to his dealings with the Israelis. Among the Muslims seized were Omar Telmissani, 75, head of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, and Dr. Hilmy Gazzar, leader of militant student groups, along with 28 of his lieutenants. Later, an additional 54 Islamic activists were arrested in Alexandria...
...total of 40,000 independent mosques, which had operated without government supervision and were often the centers of denunciations of the Sadat regime, were "nationalized," meaning that their imams (preachers) are to be replaced by "enlightened," government-sanctioned Islamic leaders. Complained one fundamentalist: "Every Muslim has his favorite sheik and his favorite mosque. How is he going to feel when he goes to pray on Friday and finds a government employee there instead...