generalspeaking

An Immoral Criminal Act

Increasingly, Egypt has become a country polarized by diametrically opposing segments of society; one representing the millions of Egyptians who cling to the Islamist ideal characterized by the Muslim Brotherhood and the deposed former president, Mohammad Morsi. And the other comprised of a far more inclusive gathering of moderate Muslims, secularists and Christian Copts whose collective numbers outdistance those of the more orthodox fundamentalists.

In their fury over the removal of Mohammad Morsi from the helm of Egyptian government, supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have focused their irate condemnation on the Christian community within the country. Christians, comprising an estimated ten percent of the country's population have always had reason to complain about discrimination in the largely Muslim country of their birth.

The attacks in August alone by Muslim extremists against Egyptian Copts have destroyed about 40 churches in areas south of Cairo where large Christian communities exist side by side with militantly Islamic extremists. Their close exposure to each other's presence provides combustion for violently fiery relations culminating in atrocities committed against the vulnerable Copts.

Muslim Brotherhood functionaries have preached their versions of events leading to the removal of the Brotherhood from government power, directly relating Egyptian Christian support for the military in its deposing of Mohammad Morsi, to his downfall. The coup in fact, was predated by the mass street protests featuring large numbers of Christian protesters, leading to Mr. Morsi's removal.

It isn't difficult to understand why this occurred, since the plight of Egyptian Christians under the presidency of Mohammad Morsi became increasingly fraught with violence. Which has only become more exacerbated during the current aura of virulent unrest. The fact that Pope Tawadros II, head of the Egyptian Coptic Church publicly supported the coup gave further impetus to blame heaped upon the Christians.

All of the most vicious attacks against Christians among their Muslim counterparts have taken place outside the capital. A drive-by shooting by masked gunmen using automatic weapons took place outside a Cairo church several days earlier, which took the lives of four people, two of them young girls, and wounded 17 other people. As the government and religious leaders condemned the atrocity, thousands of Christians assembled to attend the funeral of the four.

"With our blood and souls, we will redeem the cross", chanted the crowd of mourners at the Virgin Mary Church in Cairo's Warraq district. Two girls, eight and thirteen, a man and a woman, attending the joyous celebration of a family wedding a day earlier were shot to death at the very same church where a day afterward, they were buried in sorrow and pain.

Egyptian Copts carry one of four coffins down the aisle of the Virgin Mary Coptic Christian church in Cairo’s working class neighbourhood of Al-Warrak, on October 21, 2013, as thousands attend the funeral of the victims, gunned down as they attended a wedding the previous evening at the same church. ( AFP PHOTO / KHALED DESOUKI)

Since the ouster of former president Mohammad Morsi, Islamist radical jihadis have launched attacks in the Sinai against Egyptian military and police stations, killing dozens of security forces officers. In rural provinces waves of mob attacks led by Islamist extremists have attacked churches, looted them of treasure, and burned them.

Egypt's interim prime minister, Hazem el-Beblawi insisted that the barbaric motorcycle thugs who opened fire on innocent civilians would "not succeed in sowing divisions between the nation's Muslims and Christians". From Al-Azhar, the premier Sunni seat of Islamic learning, its most prominent cleric characterized the shooting as "a criminal act that runs contrary to religion and morals."

"Places of worship are sacred", the National Alliance for Supporting Legitimacy and Rejecting the Coup claimed in a statement. One imagines that because places of worship are sacred, mosques are never attacked, nor their worshippers, by Islamist terrorists claiming they are doing the work of God -- let alone Islamist fundamentalists attacking, looting, killing, torching Christian churches and their parishioners.

Egyptian mourners gather in front of the coffins of of several Copt Christians who were killed late Sunday, during their funeral in Warraq's Virgin Mary church in Cairo, Egypt, Monday, Oct. 21, 2013. Egypt's Christians were stunned Monday by a drive-by shooting in which masked gunmen sprayed a wedding party outside a Cairo church with automatic weapons fire, killing several, including two young girls, in an attack that raised fears of a nascent insurgency by extremists after the military's ouster of the president and a crackdown on Islamists. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)

Labels: Atrocities, Christianity, Conflict, Egypt, Islamism, Muslim Brotherhood

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, October 23, 2013