Students in Cairo are still occupying their protest spaces, playing chess, distributing tea, and trying to stay warm and keep the energy going. According to the stories on the web this morning (as I write) the number of protestors has dropped off, but the faithful remain.

The death of Khaled Said, an anti-corruption activist, sparked the outrage that led to the recent protest. However, according to all the reports, there are many other causes, including economic, with students and others feeling increasingly financially stressed. They blame the government.

The government itself is, by Western standards, authoritarian. The organization Human Rights Watch has released a report called "Work on Him Until He Confesses." According to the Los Angeles Times and other media sources, it reveals many incidents of torture and death at the hands of the authorities.

Add to this that, again by Western standards (many of which seem to be universally valued), Egypt is not a particularly free nation. The dominant religion is Islam and that has historically meant that non-Muslims are second-class citizens. Just ask any Coptic Christian who has lived in Egypt or has relatives still there.

Egypt, as is the case generally with the Middle East, is a country from which Christians have been escaping for decades. Contrast this to Europe and North America that Christians are not attempting to leave, and ironically, to which many Muslims seek to move.

It is not to be wondered then that at least one news story carried a few lines saying the protests in Egypt have brought Muslim students and Christians together. All seek change towards a freer and more just society.

All people deserve to live in nation-states (as long as they remain necessary) where people are free - where freedom of religion, self-expression, association and communication is equally available to all. Muslims deserve such freedoms. So do Christians, atheists, and people of all theistic and nontheistic persuasions.

Why do I say this? It is because that is part of the vision for life found in the opening lines of the Christian Bible. (It is also part of the Jewish Bible, but I don't want to seem to be making claims on behalf of the Jewish community.)

According to that vision, all of humanity is blessed by God. He gives to all of us the opportunity to enjoy his good creation, to build communities and to create our tribal societies, our technologies, our bodies of wisdom, our libraries, our cities, our economies and (yes) our colleges.

It doesn't matter what your basic views on life are. You and I are all blessed by God. He blesses each one of us with the opportunity to thrive and to lead a good life.

It seems that, fundamentally, Egyptian students feel that they are deprived of such freedoms, oppressed by a government that supports brutality. They-and all peopledeserve better than that.

For this reason, we can hope and pray that Egypt will not emerge from the chaos of the present to become even more oppressive, perhaps influenced by Islamicist zeal. We can look for a better day when no one there will be persecuted because they disagree with the government, or because they are not part of the Islamic majority, or because they are students. Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect. Everyone.
Editorial opinions or comments expressed in this online edition of Interrobang newspaper reflect the views of the writer and are not those of the Interrobang or the Fanshawe Student Union. The Interrobang is published weekly by the Fanshawe Student Union at 1001 Fanshawe College Blvd., P.O. Box 7005, London, Ontario, N5Y 5R6 and distributed through the Fanshawe College community. Letters to the editor are welcome. All letters are subject to editing and should be emailed. All letters must be accompanied by contact information. Letters can also be submitted online by clicking here.