Silent No More: Coptic Pope Condemns Egypt's Sharia-Based Constitution

Sharia's built-in inequities? The Coptic Pope is crying foul:

The 60-year-old pope took issue with references that Morsi has made to Christians as a minority, underlining that the community — which makes up about 10 percent of the country's 85 million people — must be seen as having an equal voice with the Muslim majority. 

"We are a part of the soil of this nation. We are not a minority when it comes to value, history and the love of our nation," he said, speaking during a visit to the historic al-Muharraq Monastery, a centuries-old site some 180 miles (300 kilometers) south of Cairo in the province of Assiut. 

He also criticized the constitution, which Morsi's Islamist allies rammed through to approval in December, angering opponents who said the move reflected the Brotherhood's determination to impose its way without building consensus. Provisions in the document allow for a far stricter implementation of Shariah than in the past, raising opponents' fears that it could bring restrictions on many civil liberties and the rights of women and Christians. 

"Some clauses bore a religious slant, and that in itself is discrimination because constitutions are supposed to unite people not divide them," Tawadros said of the charter. 

Tawadros' active public stance on politics reflects a new attitude among Christian activists, who say the community must become more vocal in demanding equal status with Muslims. In the past, activists say, Christians relied too much on the church to represent them behind the scenes with the country's power-brokers, a strategy they argue consigned Christians to second-class status...

There's a well know Yiddish term for relying on "behind the scenes" entreaties to "power-brokers" to defend yourselves. It's called "sha shtill," and it never works.