Friday, November 28, 2008

Copts Under Siege in Cairo

Last weekend in the suburbs of Cairo, a congregation of Coptic Christians was besieged inside a newly-opened church by thousands of angry Muslims. It seems the Copts had had the temerity to open the church in a converted factory, and, as we all know, Islamic law forbids the establishment of new churches anywhere in Dar al-Islam.

The Muslim mob quickly converted the church into a mosque by praying there, and then went on a rampage against the church and the homes and businesses of Christians.

According to AINA:

20,000 Muslims Attack a Church in Cairo

One thousand Christians were today trapped inside the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Virgin Mary in West Ain Shams, Cairo, after more than twenty thousand Muslims attacked them with stones and butane gas cylinders. The Church’s priest Father Antonious said that the situation is extremely dangerous.

The Muslim mob that attacked the church blocked both sides of the street and encircled the church building, broke its doors and demolished its entire first floor. The mob were chanting Jihad verses as well as slogans saying “we will demolish the church” and “We sacrifice our blood and souls, we sacrifice ourselves for you, Islam”, while the entrapped Christians chanted “Lord have mercy”.

The incident started on the occasion of the inauguration of the Church today, when the Muslims hastily established a Mosque in the early hours of this morning, by taking over the first floor of a newly-built building facing the Church and started praying there.

When the security forces tried to disperse the mob, they went to nearby homes and shops owned by Christians, and were armed with sticks, butane, knives and other sharp objects. Witnesses said the mob included children from as young as 8-years old to men of over 50-years old, in addition to women.

The Church building was originally a factory that was adapted into its present state, the matter which took over five years to complete and to get the necessary permissions from the authorities to have a Church established.

Human rights organizations and lawyers were refused entry into the besieged Church.

AINA also has video of the incident.

The Voice of the Copts provides an account of a simultaneous attack at another church:
- - - - - - - - -
Muslims Attack a Coptic Wedding In Cairo

11/26/08 Egypt (Voice of the Copts) Another Muslim attack was carried out Saturday evening on a wedding held in the Coptic Orthodox Church of the Virgin ‘Farid’, in Ezbet El Nakhl, Ain Shams.

During the wedding ceremony a bearded man and a woman went inside the Church and started using profane insults to the people present. When the clash was taken outside the Church to be resolved, a large number of Muslims who were waiting in a shop facing the Church and who were armed with knives and weapons attacked the Coptic wedding guests.

Five Copts were injured, two seriously, one with broken limbs and the other sustained head injuries resulting in concussion. However, in spite of their injuries, the police took them into custody. Mr. Said Fayez, a Coptic defense lawyer said that the injured were charged with causing bodily harm.

It is worth noting that this attack took place at the same time, as the attack which was carried out on The Coptic Church of the Virgin, Ain Shams, and in which 1000 Copts were besieged inside the Church while 10-20,000 Muslims surrounded the Church and threw them with stones and used butane gas cylinders. Lawyer Fayez advised that three Coptic lawyers, who were present in Church during this horrific attack, were charged with causing public disturbance!

Mr. Fayez added that the distance between the two attacked Churches is only a 10 minutes walk, and wonders whether this is a coincidence or some form of a Muslim deliberate and concerted attack on all churches in Ain Shams.

Notice that the injured victims of the attack were arrested for daring to be Christians in a Muslim land.

This is a reminder that all the recent self-congratulatory high-minded nattering about “interfaith dialogue” is meaningless. Islam engages in dialogue with other religions only where it is in the minority. All dialogue ceases when Muslims become a majority. No more time for talking!

Meanwhile, a cardinal at the Vatican is grateful to the Muslims who returning religion to a secular Europe:

Vatican Thanks Muslims for Returning God to Europe

A senior Vatican cardinal has thanked Muslims for bringing God back into the public sphere in Europe and said believers of different faiths had no option but to engage in interreligious dialogue.

Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Catholic Church’s department for interfaith contacts, said religion was now talked and written about more than ever before in today’s Europe.

“It’s thanks to the Muslims,” he said in a speech printed in Friday’s L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Vatican. “Muslims, having become a significant minority in Europe, were the ones who demanded space for God in society.”

Cardinal Tauran is a bit confused: Muslims are not bringing God to European society; they are bringing Allah, which is not at all the same thing.

Across the Mediterranean things are different. There’s no room for God in Egypt, and there’s especially no room for the followers of Jesus Christ.

In the suburbs of Cairo, interfaith dialogue is conducted with sticks, butane, and knives.


Hat tips: ESW amd Holger Danske.

11 comments:

Czechmade said...

Egyptian ambassadors should already give some answers to MSMs and Prime Ministers.

Our other weapon might be the tourists. The tourist agencies should direct our tourists to the Coptic places of worship. The Egyptians start protecting the money flow. Opening a new tourist destination?

Schools might be also places to teach about christianity outside Europe.

Publicity is a double edged sword.

It seems trifle things matter much more to the European psyche: Right now Marco´s book about being jailed in Turkey becomes a bestseller in Germany. Marco Weiss was the German teenager detained for months in Turkey for sexual harrassement of a British girl in some touristic place. It takes main news time to discuss the book and his attorneys to quit their job for possible book influencing the Turkish judges.

Anyhow his description of a Turkish jail might be more detrimental than thousands reports about human right abuses in Turkey.

Follow amazon.de to see the extent of the one man blow to Turkey.

Another weapon would be pasting posters on mosques in EU countries advertising the plight of one new church in Egypt.

It would slightly desacrate the mosque and dim the power emanating from the mosque.

To make it more powerful let the atheists participate as well speaking of fundamental rights.

Anonymous said...

thanks for letting the world know about our suffering.

dienw said...

A senior Vatican cardinal has thanked Muslims for bringing God back into the public sphere in Europe and said believers of different faiths had no option but to engage in inter-religious dialogue.

This cardinal is a fool: he doesn't even know who God is. Allah is Satan: the very name allah can be traced back to Satan: alah == ascend; this word is used by God when He describes Lucifer's attempt to ascend to usurp God's throne.

With fools such as this cardinal in high places in the Roman Catholic "church"; one begins to wonder just who is the true god of the Romans.

Czechmade said...

Sometimes the muslims have multicultural problems even...with sitting:

Volume 9, Book 84, Number 58:
Narrated Abu Burda:

Behold: There was a fettered man beside Abu Muisa. Mu’adh asked, “Who is this (man)?” Abu Muisa said, “He was a Jew and became a Muslim and then reverted back to Judaism.” Then Abu Muisa requested Mu’adh to sit down but Mu’adh said, “I will not sit down till he has been killed. This is the judgment of Allah and His Apostle (for such cases) and repeated it thrice. Then Abu Musa ordered that the man be killed, and he was killed. Abu Musa added, “Then we discussed the night prayers and one of us said, ‘I pray and sleep, and I hope that Allah will reward me for my sleep as well as for my prayers.’”

Afonso Henriques said...

Two fast things:

1) It is ever more evident that some quarters of the Catholic Church have indeed abandoned Europe. They want "Catholics", they do not want the people who have been with them since... ever. As they have shown recently, many Catholic priests are also true believers of Marx, Lenine and Che.

2) The Copts have lost when they "aloud" multiculturalism to pop in in Egypt.
They are already doomed to extinction because nobody knows their real number.

So here goes a question to the Egyptian guy, how many Copts exist? Are the Copts Greek or something?

dienw said...

The Copts are the original Egyptians: autochothons to use a 25 cent word.

Czechmade said...

Afonso, your way of asking is quite offending and irrational too. You can do it with me (as we "know" each other and are somewhat close) but for someone who visits this site for the first time commenting, it is not well-coming.

And we need reporting from the Christians there or ex-muslims - not to live in a bubble.

I intercepted a comment from Germany where a Copt put some material on youtube to get a call from Egyptian Embassy next day and removed it out of fear for his family.

This is reality.
Think twice.

Exile said...

Why is the UN human rights brigade not up in arms about this?
Why is the European human rights brigade not equally up in arms about this?

..or anybody?

Oh well. Nothing to see here..

Afonso Henriques said...

Czechmade, maybe you are right but that was not by any means my intention. I called him "The Egyptian guy" to soften things and because to say... "an something" when refering to someone is at my hears rude. Even in English, though I am not sure about that. Here, to talk of someone in that way means we are refering to that person with comtempt, puting that person in a low light.
And the "something" thing is really about "some other possibility".

You see, I know there has always been a significant Greek presence in Egypt; I also know that the ancient Egyptians were refered to also as Copts (especially the Christian ones) but about the modern Copts I know nearly nothing.

I want to apologise if I was offensive to someone nonetheless.

ɱØяñιηg$ʇðя ©™ said...

Exile said...
Why is the UN human rights brigade not up in arms about this?
Why is the European human rights brigade not equally up in arms about this?

Unfortunately UN is owned by OIC and the saudis, thus effectively putting the blanket of silence all over. And as a more general comment to this posting, "the religion of peace" once again shows it's true face.

Czechmade said...

"We are all Kopts". Maybe the tourists - the holy cows of Egypt - might display some Koptic crosses to make the muslim used to our common Koptitude.