EGYPT: Hands off our pope

You search our pope; we frisk your dignitaries.

Such is the messy tenor between Egypt and Britain in this spooked era of terrorism and high security.

It began, perhaps not surprisingly, with a holy man. Earlier this month, Egypt's Coptic Pope Shenouda III was forced to go through security checks, including stepping through a metal detector, at London's Heathrow Airport.

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry was outraged and has retaliated by proclaiming that British officials entering Egypt will be subject to the same measures. The British government attempted to make nice by stating that no offense was meant to the pope, but “in light of the terrorist threats,” even a frail 84-year-old man with a staff has to be considered a potential threat.

Such is a world where nuns take off their shoes to have them scanned by airport X-ray machines and clerics give up their toothpaste and hair gel if they’re an ounce or two over the see-through-bag limit. And, yet, the bearded man in the cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan eludes us.

—Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo: Pope Shenouda III leaves a hospital in November after being treated for a gall bladder infection. Credit: AFP