News from Ukraine, Syria and Egypt

A militant Islamist group has demanded Christians living in the north-east of Syria pay it a tax in return for protection as it seeks to build a traditional “Caliphate” in areas it controls.

The Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) published the terms under which minorities could live under its rule in a statement on the internet.

“Christians are obligated to pay Jizya tax on every adult male to the value of four golden dinars for the wealthy, half of that for middle-income citizens and half of that for the poor,” their decree said. “They must not hide their status, and can pay in two installments per year.” Four dinars would amount to just over half an ounce of gold, worth £435 [$723.85] at current prices. [Syrian salaries vary widely: low-wage worker makes approximately $2,000/year per wikipedia.]

In return, Christians will not be harmed and will be allowed to worship privately, maintain their own clergy without interference and keep their own cemeteries, it added. They are implicitly allowed to continue drinking alcohol and eating pork, but may not do so publicly or trade them with Muslims. Nor may they build or renovate churches, or display the cross.

The demand carries weight because ISIS, which grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq, has become the most feared militia in Syria. It has now been disavowed by Osama bin Laden’s replacement as al-Qaeda leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and is effectively at war with the rest of the rebel movement, including Jabhat al-Nusra, the group seen by al-Qaeda as its representative in Syria.

It controls nearly all of Raqqa province in the north-east, where it is attempting to build the institutions of an Islamic state. The decree refers to Christians as “dhimmis” – effectively protected minorities – a term that originated in the seventh century when the Muslim world was ruled by a single religious leader, the Caliph.

Raqqa, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim in make-up, had a small Christian community but much if not all of it has already fled. … There was said to be one Christian family still living in the town, but if so they were in hiding. Later, the crosses were removed from the top of the city’s two churches. …

Christians used to make up around one in ten of Syria’s 22 million population, but the civil war has forced an estimated 500,000 to flee their homes and villages, which are scattered across the country. Some 1,200 are thought to have been killed.

As a religious minority they enjoyed protection under President Assad, and as such have become an indirect target of the Sunni Muslim led uprising.

John Pontifex, of Aid to Church in Need, a Catholic charity that has highighted the plight of Christians in Syria, said: “We have already received reports of this nature, and if true, they spell out loud and clear the degree to which Christians are under attack and at risk. “There seems to be a desire to flush Chrisians out or reduce them to second class status.”

Imposition of the so-called “dhimmi” rules conforms precisely with regime claims that the rebels are seeking to take Syria back to the Middle Ages. …

CAIRO | Egypt’s military leaders have come under ridicule after the chief army engineer unveiled what he described as a “miraculous” set of devices that detect and cure AIDS, hepatitis and other viruses.

The claim, dismissed by experts and called “shocking to scientists” by president’s science adviser, strikes a blow to the army’s carefully managed image as the savior of the nation. It also comes as military chief Field Marshal Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who toppled Mohammed Morsi in July after the Islamist leader ignored mass protests calling for him to step down, isexpected to announce he’ll run for president.

The televised presentation – which was made to el-Sissi, interim President Adly Mansour and other senior officials – raised concerns that the military’s offer of seemingly inconceivable future devices will draw Egypt back into the broken promises of authoritarian rule, when Hosni Mubarak frequently announced grand initiatives that failed to meet expectations.

“The men of the armed forces have achieved a scientific leap by inventing the detecting devices,” military spokesman Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali wrote later on his official Facebook page. Ali said a patent has been filed under the name of the Armed Forces Engineering Agency.

Well-known writer Hamdi Rizk noted that video clips of the presentation had gone viral on social media, with tweets and blogs saying the military had made a fool of itself and put its reputation in jeopardy.

“The marshal’s camp has been dealt a deep moral defeat,” he wrote in a column in Thursday’s Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper. “God give mercy to … the reputation of the Egyptian army, which became the target of cyber shelling around the clock.”

Professor Massimo Pinzani, a liver specialist and director of the Institute for Liver and Digestive Health at University College London, said he attended a demonstration of the C-Fast device during a visit to Egypt but “was not given convincing explanations about the technology” and wasn’t allowed to try it for himself.

“As it is at present, the device is proposed without any convincing technical and scientific basis and, until this is clearly provided, it should be regarded as a potential fraud,” he wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

None of the research has been published in a reputable journal.

The uproar escalated when a scientific adviser to Egypt’s interim President Adly Mansour denounced the claim and said it has no scientific base. “What has been said and published by the armed forces harms the image of the scientists and science in Egypt,” Essam Heggy, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology, told the daily newspaper El-Watan in remarks published Wednesday. “All scientists inside and outside Egypt are in a state of shock.”

He added that both Mansour and el-Sissi were surprised and their presence in the audience did not indicate approval.