THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XII, Issue # 228, November 1, 2010
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
EGYPT CUTS A DEAL: CHRISTIANS FED TO MUSLIM "LIONS"
By Raymond Ibrahim
THE DIRE SITUATION IN WHICH CHRISTIANS IN EGYPT FIND THEMSELVES: TODAY, AS EGYPT REVERTS TO ITS
MEDIEVAL CHARACTER & ALL BUT SPEARHEADS THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT, THE COPTS FIND THEMSELVES AGAIN IN A
PERIOD OF SEVERE PERSECUTION, DISCRIMINATION, HUMILIATION, & OVER ALL SUBJUGATION IN THEIR EGYPTIAN
HOMELAND. THERE APPEARS TO BE NO ONE IN EGYPT WHO IS WILLING TO STOP THE TYRANNY. EVIDENCE
INDICATES THAT THE POLITICAL REGIME OF HOSNI MUBARAK IS INTENTIONALLY INCITING EGYPT'S MUSLIMS AGAINST
THE COPTS. THE REGIME IS SACRIFICING THE COPTIC SCAPEGOAT TO APPEASE THE EVER-BURGEONING ISLAMIST
MONSTER THE EGYPTIAN GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN NURTURING FOR SOME FOUR DECADES.
FULL STORY:
For centuries, the Copts Egypt's Christian, indigenous inhabitants have been subject to persecution, discrimination,
humiliation, and over all subjugation in their homeland (etymologically, "Copt" simply means "Egyptian"). In the Medieval
Era, such treatment was a standard aspect of Sharia's dhimmi codes, first ratified under Caliph Omar in the Seventh
Century and based on Koran 9:29. Conversely, during the Colonial Era and well into the Twentieth Century, as
Egypt experimented with westernization and nationalism, religious discrimination was markedly subdued. Today, however,
as Egypt all but spearheads the Islamist movement giving the world Sayyid Qutb, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Aymen
Zawahiri in the process that is, as Egypt reverts to its medieval character, the Copts find themselves again in a period of
severe persecution.
And there appears to be no one to stop it not even those most accountable: America's friend and ally, Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak and his government. Indeed, recent events indicate that the Mubarak regime is intentionally
inciting Egypt's Muslims against the Copts.
Consider: on September 15, 2010, prominent Egyptian Muhammad Salim al-Awwa, ex-Secretary General of the International
Union for Muslim Scholars, appeared on Al Jazeera and, in a wild tirade, accused the Copts of "stocking arms and
ammunitions in their churches and monasteries" imported from Israel, no less, since "Israel is in the heart of the Coptic
Cause" and "preparing to wage war against Muslims."
He warned that, if nothing is done, the "country will burn," urging Muslims to "counteract the strength of the [Coptic]
Church." Al-Awwa further charged that Egypt's security forces cannot enter the monasteries to investigate for weapons
an amazing assertion, considering that Coptic monasteries are not only at the mercy of the state, but easy prey to
Islamist/Bedouin attacks.
Needless to say, these remarks have inflamed Muslim passions (not to mention paranoia) against Egypt's Christians, who
make up approximately 12% of the Egyptian population. To make matters worse, right on the heels of al-Awwa's
"monastery-conspiracy-theory," Islamist leaders began to circulate baseless rumors that the Church and Pope Shenouda
III "kidnap" Coptic women who willingly convert to Islam, and trap them in desert monasteries, "torturing" and
"re-indoctrinating" them back to Christianity even when the women in question publicly insist they never converted to
Islam.
Due to all these allegations, since September, 2010, there have been at least ten mass demonstrations in Egypt most
numbering in the thousands condemning the Copts, the Coptic Church, and Pope Shenouda. The "Front of Islamic
Egypt" issued a statement promising the Copts a "blood bath." Most recently, on October 8, Muslim demonstrators
chanted "Shenouda, just wait, we will dig your grave with our own hands," while burning the 86 year-old pope's effigy.
At the very least, the usually intrusive Mubarak regime could have easily dispelled the absurd rumor that Coptic monks,
among Egypt's most humble figures, were stockpiling weapons for an imaginary coup d'ιtat in Egypt, by formally
investigating and clearing the monasteries of the charge. Same with the ludicrous rumors that the Pope is kidnapping and
torturing Coptic women who freely convert to Islam an especially odd rumor considering the reverse is true: in Egypt,
Christian women are regularly kidnapped and compelled to embrace Islam.
To further exasperate matters, on September 26, Al Azhar, a formal state body of Egypt, denounced a remark on Koran
5:17, which accuses Christians of being "infidels," made by a Coptic clergyman at an internal meeting on dogma, as
"blasphemous." It further took this opportunity to state formally that citizenship rights in Egypt "are conditional to
respect for the Islamic identity" of Egypt, thereby reversing any modern progress made regarding Egyptian equality and
reinforcing the Copts' historical role as dhimmis (i.e., conditionally tolerated religious minorities). Pope Shenouda was
further compelled to publicly apologize, "if our Muslim brothers' feelings were hurt."
All this in a nation where Christian and Jewish scriptures are systematically denounced as fabricated. Indeed, mere weeks
earlier, a well known publishing house in Egypt issued a book dedicated to "proving" that Christians had forged the Bible.
Such double standards are well entrenched: after all, whereas the Coptic clergyman privately remarked on a Koranic verse,
the Egyptian government openly interferes with Christian doctrine, while preventing Muslims from converting to
Christianity, in accordance to sharia's ridda, or apostasy, laws. For example, Mohammad Hegazy is one of many Egyptians
who tried formally to change his religion from Muslim to Christian on his I.D. card in Egypt, people are Gestapo-like
categorized by their religion only to be denied by the Egyptian court. (Many other such anecdotes abound.)
Considering the citizenship rights Copts enjoyed in the early to mid-Twentieth Century, how did things come to this pass?
Much of this can be traced to Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, who altered Egypt's Constitution by adding Article
2, "Sharia is the principle source of legislation" only to be rewarded, ironically, with assassination by the Islamist
"Frankenstein monster" he had empowered. Since then, there has been a tacit agreement between the government and the
Islamists. As Youssef Ibrahim puts it, the agreement "turned over to Islamists control in media, education, and government
administrations in return for allowing Mr. Mubarak's rule to go on unchallenged, setting the stage
for his son, Gamal, to
succeed him. As part of the deal, [Mubarak] agreed to feed Egypt's Christians to the growing Islamic beast."
Hence the dire situation the Copts find themselves in. Magdi Khalil, a human rights activist at the forefront of the "Coptic
question," states that "Egypt is on the verge of chaos and change of regime and there is a plan for Copts to pay the price
of this predicted chaos, by directing the surplus violence, hate, and barbarism towards them." This redirection onto the
Copts is obvious even in subtle things: aside from the habitual anti-Copt indoctrination that goes on in mosques all of
the aforementioned demonstrations occurred immediately after Friday's mosque prayers Egypt's state run public
education system also marginalizes, if not ostracizes, the Copts (see, for example, Adel Guindy's "The Talibanization of
Education in Egypt", MERIA Journal, Volume 13, Number 2, June, 2009).
More obvious proof of the Egyptian government's complicity is the fact that, not only has it not prevented or dispersed the
increasingly rabid demonstrations against the Copts the way it viciously and unequivocally does whenever any protests
are directed against itself but Egyptian security, as Magdi Khalil affirmed in a phone conversation, actually facilitate, and
sometimes participate, in these mass demonstrations. After all, Islamists who publicly call for the death of the Pope do so,
writes Ibrahim Eissa,
". . . knowing quite well that State Security will not touch
them, since demonstrations are directed against the Pope
and not the President, the Church and not the inheritance
issue [Gamal Mubarak as successor of his father]. Those
who go out in Jihad against 'inheritance,' democracy, and
election fraud are beaten mercilessly by security forces,
but those who go out to incite sectarian violence between
Muslims and Christians believe
that they are the friends
and 'buddies' of the police and the State Security."
As history teaches, whenever a majority group casts all its woes onto a minority group, great tragedy often follows. This is
especially so when the majority group in question begins taking on an Islamist that is, intolerant, violent, and medieval
character. Yet, if Egypt's "secular" government and U.S. ally is willing to sacrifice the Coptic scapegoat to appease the
ever-burgeoning Islamist monster it has been nurturing for some four decades, to whom can Egypt's Christians look for
relief?
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Egypt, Arabs, & the Middle East
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
North Africa -- The Arab States of Islamic North Africa
The Middle East & the Arabs
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Raymond Ibrahim, a historian of Islam, Islamism and the Middle East, is the Associate Director of the Middle East Forum,
a guest lecturer at the National Defense Intelligence College, and the editor of The Al-Qa'ida Reader, a collection
of tranlations of key texts and documents of the Islamist movement. Ibrahim's translations of the religious texts and
political propaganda comprising this collection help readers comprehend the origins, development, history, and serious
danger of the Islamist war doctrines of Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the Founders of Al-Qa'ida and
implacable enemies of the U.S.A. and the West.
The foregoing article by Raymond Ibrahim was originally published in Hudson New York, October 18, 2010, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-ΰ-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(URL: http://www.meforum.org/2762/coptic-persecution-mubarak)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
October 18, 2010
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