BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) — A Saudi blogger has made a short video featuring alleged Christian extremists preaching violence and a Bible passage calling for war, in response to an anti-Quran film that sparked protests across the Muslim world.

Raed al-Saeed told The Associated Press on Thursday that the purpose of his six-minute video is to show Islam should not be judged by watching Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders' movie "Fitna," which links terror attacks by Muslim extremists with texts from the Quran.

"It is easy to take parts of any holy book that are out of (context) and make it sound like the most inhumane book ever written," al-Saeed said in a statement posted at the end of his video. "This is what Geert Wilders did to gather more supporters to his hateful ideology. To create schism."

Al-Saeed, 33, said he lifted footage showing alleged Christian extremists and British soldiers beating up Iraqis from YouTube and used the same methods Wilders did. The video appeared to include footage from "Jesus Camp," an American documentary about a summer camp for evangelical Christians that was nominated for a 2007 Academy Award.

However, al-Saeed said his movie, entitled "Schism," was not directed against Christians.
Wilders' film has angered Muslims around the world, sparking angry street protests in several countries and triggering calls for a boycott of Dutch goods.

Within 12 hours of posting, al-Saeed said his video was removed from YouTube in Saudi Arabia with a message from the site saying the content was inappropriate.

"I sent it again with a message saying, 'Before you delete Schism, look at Fitna. Delete both if you deem them inappropriate,'" he said.

Late Thursday, al-Saeed's video still could be accessed on YouTube and other Web sites, he said, adding that it had been viewed by more than 5,000 users.

--By CNN's Ben Wedeman

A friend is behind bars. Wednesday evening Egyptian security personnel arrested George Ishaq, a leading figure in the Egyptian democracy movement, at his home in Cairo. No formal charges have been filed, so it’s not clear at this point why and for how long he will be detained.

I met George four years ago while covering a demonstration by Kifaya—which in the Egyptian dialect of Arabic means Enough—outside the Journalists Syndicate in downtown Cairo. Kifaya is a small but vocal group bringing together activists from across the political spectrum, from old school Marxists to Islamists, joined by a common desire to see an end—thus their slogan—to the regime of President Hosni Mubarak, in power since October 1981.

I saw George again and again at similar events, where protesters were often outnumbered ten to one by riot police and plain-clothed policemen clutching rubber truncheons.

A demonstration by Kifaya supporters in Cairo in 2005. (Photo AP)

At first glance George doesn’t look like a political firebrand determined to bring down the regime. George is a bespectacled former school teacher in his sixties with a shock of white hair and an unwavering, mischievous smile. He possesses that unique Egyptian ability to combine biting humour aimed at the high and mighty with razor sharp political analysis, his observations on contemporary Egypt always on the mark, often funny but deeply saddening at the same time.

In an interview when his movement was at its height, George told me “The door [to democracy] is open and nobody can close it again. We will go through this door and we will struggle until the end, to be a democratic country. We will insist on it.”

But his determination to bring about change has been met by an even more uncompromising determination by the Mubarak regime to hold on to power.

George’s arrest is just the latest in a campaign by the Egyptian government leading up to the municipal elections held on Tuesday. More than a thousand members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood were rounded up, plus, according to Kifaya, around 50 of its members.

The vote was met with indifference by most of the population, disillusioned by decades of rigged, sham elections. The same day, Egyptians were shocked (and some thrilled) by photos circulating on the internet of angry striking workers in the industrial town of Mahalla Al-Kubra destroying a billboard featuring a picture of President Mubarak.

A Coptic Christian, George identifies himself first and foremost as an Egyptian patriot, a man profoundly committed to a tolerant Egypt which, alas, is slowly disappearing, a country fiercely proud of its profoundly rich culture stretching back thousands and thousands of years, the Arab world’s cultural and political centre of gravity, where literature and music and theatre and art flourished.

Today Egypt is impoverished, economically and politically, its cultural life a mere shadow of what existed fifty or sixty years ago.

But the spirit of Egypt—and an unflagging optimism that Egypt will rise again—is kept alive by people like George. Even if he is behind bars.

--By CNN's Aneesh Raman

Something’s off when the hardest things to find on election day are voters. And in Cairo, throughout the morning, across various polling sites, we saw just a handful.

President Mubarak called an election but in the end, it seems, almost nobody came. Its no secret why - as we entered those empty classrooms with empty ballot boxes, we passed a series of posters for candidates, suggesting an actual choice was being offered.

(Photo Ben Curtis/AP)

But that wasn’t the case. About 70 percent of the races for the 52 thousand seats on various municipal councils had only one party running – President Mubarak’s ruling NDP party.

The country’s main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, saw over a thousand members arrested in the build up to this election, others were disqualified, and ultimately the Brotherhood decided to boycott the vote. That meant most Egyptians knew the results of this election well before the first votes were even cast. And we've heard complaints that sounds like anything but democracy to the majority of Egyptians desperately looking for help with rising food prices and stagnantly low wages.

Later in the day we went to a few main squares to ask Egyptians themselves what the felt about the election. “I wont vote because nothing changes,” Refat told me. “It’s always the same and just look at the country and our lives, both are going from bad to worse.”

Ali told me, “Democracy is just a word here. President Mubarak’s party will win. There’s no real opposition so I wont waste my time and vote when we already know the results.”

President Mubarak is a close ally of the United States. And many within Egypt feel the West has failed in exerting real pressure on this country to open up it’s political process and move towards a real democracy. The reasons are varied but none of them justify, critics say, what amounts to silence by the world over a government in Egypt rolling back the rights of its citizens.

Riots police and demonstrators clash in the Egyptian industrial town of Mahalla.

“President Mubarak has been kidnapped and his kidnappers say unless a billion dollar ransom is paid they’ll douse him with petrol and set him alight. So we’re collecting donations.”

“Ok,” replies the man in the car. “On average, what are people paying?”

“Five to ten litres,” replies the other.

That the popularity of the Mubarak regime is at an all time low is taken for granted in the streets of Cairo. Hosni Mubarak has been in power since October 1981 following the assassination of his predecessor, Anwar Sadat.

Dramatically rising food prices (which have almost doubled since the start of the year), an ever more yawning gap between a tiny, fantastically wealthy elite and the vast majority of Egyptians (nearly forty percent of whom must try to get by on around two dollars a day), corruption, political stagnation and labour unrest all combine to make a very volatile situation that threatens to shake the monolithic Egyptian state.

“I don’t know what Mubarak is thinking,” a friend, whom I won’t identify for his own safety, told me when I was in Cairo two weeks ago. “Doesn’t he realise how bad things have become?”

Here’s another joke I heard: President Mubarak, who was an avid squash player in his younger years, is sitting with a group of his advisors.

“My friends,” he says, “I’m getting old and I don’t think I have much time left on this earth, so I need to know one thing: in heaven, do they play squash?”

“Mr President, we’ll look into it and get back to you as soon as possible,” replies his senior advisor.

The next day, the advisors return to the president.

“We have good news and we have bad news. Which do you want to hear first?” asks the senior advisor.

“The good news, please,” responds President Mubarak.

“The good news, Mr President, is that they do indeed have squash in heaven.”

“And the bad news?” asks a visibly relieved Mubarak.

“The bad news, Mr President, is that you have a game tomorrow.”

But after 27 years in power, many Egyptians suspect Mubarak is surrounded by advisors who don’t like to share the bad news, that Mubarak is completely out of touch with the harsh reality that is Egypt today.

Tuesday Egyptians are supposed to go to the polls to vote in municipal elections. I say ‘supposed’ because most probably will not. The Muslim Brotherhood, the largest and best organised opposition group in Egypt announced Monday that they would boycott the elections due to the unprecedented level of harassment the security forces have meted out to them.

In the past few weeks around a thousand of their members have been jailed. The Brotherhood is technically illegal in Egypt because the constitution bans any political party based on religion. The Brotherhood has been tolerated over the years as a fact of life, and in late 2005 made stunning gains in parliamentary elections. Those elections alarmed not only the Mubarak regime, but also the United States, which had been pushing Mubarak to democratize.

Needless to say, after the Brotherhood’s gains, after the Hamas electoral victory in January 2006, the US is no longer a great fan of democracy in the Arab world, though American officials do on occasion pay lukewarm lip service to the idea.

Adding to the tensions surrounding the municipal elections is labour unrest, focused around the factory town of Mahalla Al-Kubra in the Nile Delta. Sunday workers, who have been agitating for a pay rise, fought with police. At least two protesters were killed. Clashes broke out again Monday evening, and pictures were broadcast of a crowd tearing down and kicking one of the ubiquitous billboards of Mubarak.

People in Egypt are increasingly drawing parallels between the situation today and that that existed in the lead up to the 1952 coup d’état that brought down the Egyptian monarchy. That monarchy, like the Mubarak regime, was plagued by corruption and was out of touch with ordinary Egyptians. Furthermore, it was facing an increasingly assertive Muslim Brotherhood, and widespread labour unrest: the same combination confronting President Mubarak.

But the Egyptian state—with its omnipresent and often oppressive security forces—is not easily shaken. Through violence, intimidation, and the occasional use of the carrot, Mubarak may be able to weather this political storm.

The potential for things to get out of hand, however, is still there. And Egypt, the most populous Arab country, is still for many the standard bearer for the Arab world.

There’s a saying that where Egypt goes, the rest of the Arabs follow. And anyone familiar with the Arab world knows that the travails of contemporary Egypt—official corruption, dictatorship, political oppression, economic stagnation and growing public discontent—are ailments common to many countries in the region. If Egypt shakes, the rest of the region will feel the shivers.

According to a Knesset Channel poll released this week, 76% of Israeli Jews support the transfer of Arab Israelis to a future Palestinian state.

29% say they would like all Arab Israelis to be relocated regardless of whether they live near the border or would be willing to move.

24% say they are against the transfer of Arabs out of Israel.

The poll's margin of error is 3.7%.

The last time Egypt saw mass popular uprising was in the mid-seventies, when the government moved to lift subsidies on the price od bread.

According to the Associated Press, bread prices are up 35% and people stand in line for up to four hours a day to buy subsidized bread.

Today, rising commodity prices around the world and a major crisis in the country's bread supplies are once again igniting public fury on the streets of some Egyptian cities.