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Comment by PebblesRox | Hacker News Reader

Also, they were lettuce -> pork converters :)

There hasn't been pork eaten anywhere in Egypt for the last 1500 years or so. And before then, at least for the last 5000 years, it was unpopular among a sizable chunk of the working classes, slaves, refugees and migrants from the North East.

Live and learn, PebblesRox, live and learn.

The Coptic Christian community in Egypt-- which numbers in the millions and predates the arrival of Islam-- raises pigs and eats pork.

read what I wrote again: "for the last 1500 years". Also, the entire pig population in Egypt was 300k[1], how many people did that actually feed in a population of 25 Million[2]?

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/world/middleeast/25oink.ht...?

[2] Coptic percentage of the entire Egyptian population. 15% - 30%, depending on who you ask, of 81 Million.

None of the pork was exported (or could have been exported)?

These are pigs that feed on garbage, who is going to slaughter them for export and what health regulations can they pass? They were mostly pets, and sometimes food for the poor. The Egyptian government is putting on this charade just to annoy the Christian community and appease the Muslim extremists for a bit.

The government plays the two religious groups against each other and has a habit of leaning against one to get favors from the extremists of the other. Recently, they prosecuted a Christian woman who converted to Islam and they handed her back to the church, who in turn revoked her conversion and punished her. Previously, they released a Muslim man who stabbed a Christian man, etc. etc.

As you, Gobbles, know (I know you just signed up, but why the trollish handle?) fascism works best when the public is kept in fear, hateful of each other, and divided.

Gobbles =/= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Goebbels

Anyways, it's nice to get a different perspective. Don't worry about the downvoters.

Thanks for the correction!

Since you're actually interested in fruitful discussion, let me leave you with this tidbit. Since the recent religious tension, the government tried to out-radicalize the Islamists, and their minion-clerics issued a fatwa by proxy calling for the boycott of all Christian businesses. The Muslim Brotherhood, the main Islamist opposition party in Egypt capitalized on this and issued a competing fatwa urging Muslims not to harm their fellow countrymen and to keep patronizing Christian businesses!

It completely exploded in the face of the government, they lost farther public support, and now the Islamists and the Christian community (i.e. the working classes) are chummy again. So now the government is leaning heavily on both groups; the Mubarak regime is going as far as talking up an imaginary Shi'ite invasion of Egypt and it's pickings diplomatic fights with Iran, even though the two have no border and the Egyptian Shi'ites are not even the same kind of Shi'ites as the Iranians (they're Ismaelis, adherents of a once ruling sect that once built the city of Cairo and the Azhar Mosque; the Fatimid dynasty.)

http://www.touregypt.net/food.htm ...Pork is considered unclean by Muslims, but is readily available, as is beef...

This was, of course, before the recent cull...

> Also, the entire pig population in Egypt was 300k[1], how many people did that actually feed in a population of 25 Million[2]?

Why are you assuming they only eat pork?

300k for 25M sounds too little, almost like having a muffin for a wedding cake.

But your question is very valid. Also valid are mine:

1) How many of those pigs are of edible age/weight? vs how many are still little piglets.

2) How many of those Egyptians are of chewing age (i.e. how many are not toddlers or toothless senior citizens unable to chew bacon.)

See, anybody can practice sophistry with little effort. We can debate this forever, but let's do each other a favor, shall we? Here is a quest:

Find ONE Egyptian coptic recipe with pork. Just one dish. Google for the rest of your life, call the Egyptian embassy in your country and summon the expat Coptic community. Why stop at copts? Go for all Arab Christian groups. Fact: pork is something the urban poor just resorted to recently, never part of their heritage or long-term diet.

mahmud: There hasn't been pork eaten anywhere in Egypt for the last 1500 years or so. mahmud: Fact: pork is something the urban poor just resorted to recently, never part of their heritage or long-term diet.

So which is the fact? That pork hasn't been eaten in Egypt for 1500 years or that it has only been eaten their recently.

You know what water hasn't been drunk in Egypt since the time of the pharoahs - go on prove me wrong find a Egyptician recipe for water ...

The recipe for pork is this. Take pig, cook over heat, eat. Also people who survive on garbage don't use recipe books.

Here you go - http://bit.ly/porkpork - Islam Online's (very clearly biased) article reporting a priest to have advised Egyptian Christians to stop eating pork. It's from 2007. It doesn't strictly say that people do, but does say they shouldn't - it could have been an entirely unnecessary edict but for any sane person it's sufficient to show pork was being eaten in large enough quantities for prelates to comment on and for Islamic news groups to report.

Doesn't the article you link to tell you that it's eaten by foreigners? i.e. tourists and expats?

Nope, "Egypt's Christians are divided over a piece of advice given by Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, who urged followers not to eat pork over health reasons."

All the quotes are from Egyptians including several church leaders in Egypt.

I love the "Scientists say" editorialising in it too ... hilarious.

I found an Egyptian pork recipe http://bit.ly/porkrecipe

also an account of a group called the Boheyreh who eat pork and dog http://bit.ly/2uYIY .

http://www.touregypt.net/food.htm from 1996 says pork is widely available.

But I'm sure it's all just a conspiracy of lies ;0)>

Excellent finding there with the second link. But please note that the Maghrebees are dogs as well, an exception in all mediteranean, semitic, ancient-egyptian and abrahimi traditions: these clearly are not representative of the larger community of the inhabitants of this region; they were either pushed by extreme hunger, or it's a culture brought in from other parts of the region (excepting consumption of these meets for medicinal or ritual purposes.)

But I'm sure it's all just a conspiracy of lies ;0)>

I never alluded to conspiracy, don't put words in my mouth.

Regards.

Next thing you will be telling us that no Egyptians drink alcohol either...

From the article.

For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs — which they then slaughtered and ate.

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