In this mailing:
- Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: Why Abbas Chose This Prime Minister
- Clare M. Lopez: The War on Terror is Over: Now What?
- Robert Ellis: Turkey's Secular Backlash
- Raymond Ibrahim: Jihad on Egypt's Christian Children
Palestinians: Why Abbas Chose This Prime Minister
by Khaled Abu
Toameh
June 3, 2013 at 5:00 am
June 3, 2013 at 5:00 am
|
Share:
 |
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
As long as
Fayyad was prime minister, it was almost impossible for Abbas and Fatah to lay
their hands on the hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid. Unlike
Fayyad, Hamdallah will serve as the obedient and faithful servant of Abbas, as
well as the Fatah and PLO leadership. On the political arena, the appointment
will have no impact whatsoever.
The appointment of Palestinian academic Rami Hamdallah as Palestinian
Authority Prime Minister is a big victory for Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah
faction.Hamdallah, who had served as president of An-Najah University since 1998, has been chosen by Abbas to replace Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who decided to quit in April following years of tensions and disagreements with the Palestinian Authority president and Fatah.
Abbas and Fatah want a weak prime minister who would never pose a threat to their hegemony over the Palestinian issue.
Until last week, many Palestinians were convinced that Abbas would be forced by the US Administration and the Europeans to keep Fayyad in office.
Western donors even threatened to suspend financial aid to the Palestinian Authority if Abbas insisted on removing Fayyad.
But in the end Abbas and Fatah got exactly what they wanted. Not only did they manage to get rid of Fayyad, but the man who has been chosen to replace him will be less problematic than Fayyad.
For Abbas and Fatah, Fayyad, a widely respected economist, posed a real problem and threat. As long as Fayyad was prime minister, it was almost impossible for Abbas and Fatah to lay their hands on hundreds of millions of dollars of international aid.
Fayyad was not only blocking Abbas and Fatah from seizing the funds; he was also beginning to pose a political challenge to them.
Abbas and Fatah leaders in the West Bank suspected that Fayyad had political ambitions, including running one day in a presidential election.
Yet more important than getting rid of Fayyad was finding an uncharismatic and inexperienced figure who would play the role of the loyal and dutiful servant of Abbas and Fatah leaders.
If getting rid of Fayyad was a victory, the appointment of Hamdallah, a "yes man" with no political experience, is even a bigger achievement.
Abbas wanted and finally got a prime minister who will play the same role as the prime ministers of Jordan and other undemocratic Arab countries.
Unlike Fayyad, Hamdallah will now serve as the obedient and faithful servant of Abbas, as well as the Fatah and PLO leadership.
This is exactly what they have wanted -- a powerless prime minister who would rubber-stamp their decisions and plans.
In this regard, Hamdallah will not be different from any official working in Abbas's office. In fact, some Palestinians reacted jokingly to the appointment by saying that a secretary in Abbas's office has more powers than the new prime minister.
On the political arena, the appointment of Hamdallah will have no impact whatsoever.
The PLO is the only party authorized to negotiate with Israel. PLO leaders, including Abbas, never allowed Fayyad to be part of the negotiations with Israel. Of course, they will never permit someone like Hamdallah, who has zero experience in the peace process, to be involved.
The appointment of Hamdallah does not mean anything for the peace process. Moreover, it will not bring about real changes, if any, in the Palestinian Authority's economic and security strategies.
The appointment of Hamdallah shows that Abbas continues to act as if the Palestinian Authority is his private fiefdom. PLO leaders said that Abbas failed to consult with them about the appointment of the new prime minister, the same way he keeps them in the dark about many things, including U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry's efforts to resume the peace process with Israel.
If anything, the appointment of Hamdallah serves to reinforce his status as an unelected dictator whose only goal is to remain in power for as long as possible.
Related Topics: Khaled Abu
Toameh
The War on Terror is Over: Now What?
by Clare M. Lopez
June 3, 2013 at 4:45 am
June 3, 2013 at 4:45 am
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
"We
must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define
us." — President Barack Obama
, National Defense University, 23 May 23, 2013
Just a few days before the Memorial Day holiday weekend in May 2013, the
President of the United States declared unilateral surrender in what used to be
called the Global War on Terror [GWOT] – that is, the war to defend the U.S.
and the free world against the forces of Islamic jihad and Islamic Shariah Law.
No, he did not actually wave a white flag from the podium, but he may as well
have done: in calling
for an end to the "Authorization to Use Military Force" (AUMF);
declaring al-Qa'eda "on the road to defeat" (again—or maybe it is
'still'), and expressing reservations about "keeping America on a
perpetual wartime footing," Barack Obama made it clear that he hasn't the
stomach for this fight. It is not that the war is actually over, of course, but
rather that, as Andrew McCarthy put it, "he wants it to be over."In an odd sort of way, though, Obama's abandonment of the field of battle to the enemy clears away a good deal of the "clutter" that has attended the so-called GWOT over the last dozen years since the 9/11 attacks. Obama even used language that may help the average American and those observers who see things rather differently from him to begin formulating a new, coherent, and comprehensive kind of national security strategy geared actually to defeating an Islamic supremacist adversary.
The president rightly noted that "[w]e need all elements of national power to win a battle of wills, a battle of ideas." He even went so far as to reference Islamic "extremists," and acknowledged that there remains a "pull towards extremism." Of course, after once again accurately mentioning that a "common ideology" fuels the terrorism we face, he shied quickly away from explaining just what that "common ideology" might be and instead launched into a shopping list of surrender terms that he is betting will somehow sap the fighting spirit of Islamic jihad, perhaps, one assumes, by the sheer force of their reasonableness. Among these are the U.S. retreat from Afghanistan and fewer boots on the ground everywhere (they are claimed to be "self-defeating"); suspension of the "Authorization to Use of Military Force;" partnerships with jihadist state powers such as Pakistan; addressing "underlying grievances," such as poverty and sectarian hatred (no details on how to get Sunnis and Shi'as to start liking each other, though); more foreign aid (perhaps to some of the oil rich jihad nurseries such as Qatar or Saudi Arabia?); greater respect for state sovereignty (Libya, Syria and Israel presumably excepted); and, of course, closing Guantanamo Bay [GITMO]. The one that's sure to grab jihadi attention immediately, though, is the president's determination to "be humbler." Unfortunately for the president's strategy, the ideology of this particularly savage enemy tends to treat "humility" as groveling -- and as an invitation to double down on aggression.
Now, back to this "common ideology" that fuels Islamic terrorism: as Michael Adebolajo, one of the two Nigerian-British jihadis, declared just after hacking Drummer Lee Rigby to death in the middle of the street in Woolwich, London, "…we are forced by the Qur'an in Sura at-Tauba [Chapter 9 of the Koran], through many, many ayah [verses] throughout the Koran that [say] we must fight them as they fight us, a eye for a eye and a tooth for a tooth." That is, even though Adebolajo. reportedly a convert to Islam from Christianity, was entirely wrong to suggest that British forces (or American ones, for that matter) have in any way impeded the application of Islamic Sharia Law in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, or anywhere else (quite the contrary, in fact, as Andrew Bostom points out here), his reference to Qur'anic verses that obligate Muslims to jihad against non-believers is quite accurate. The 9th Sura, or "Sura of the Sword," as the final word in the Qur'an about the Muslim obligation to fight and kill the infidel, is not only especially apt as the Islamic justification for this gruesome murder, but also theologically authoritative in that the Qur'anic doctrine of abrogation means this penultimate chapter of the Qur'an replaces any and all of the chronologically earlier verses that might have encouraged peaceful tolerance.
A continent away, in Tripoli, Lebanon, one of Adebolajo's former mentors, the exiled Omar Bakri Muhammed, founder of the outlawed UK Islamic supremacist group, Al-Muhajiroun, echoed Adebolajo's reference to Islam's teaching about "fighting for Allah" and beheading its enemies. Bakri spoke admiringly of Adebolajo's "courage" in attacking an (unarmed) British soldier in broad daylight and then waiting for the police to show up to arrest him. Referring dismissively to "moderate chocolate" Muslims who fail to act on their beliefs, Bakri quoted from the Muslim prophet Muhammad, saying "The prophet (Mohammad) said an infidel and his killer will not meet in Hell."
Dzhokhar Tsernaev, the younger of the two Chechen-American Muslim brothers who killed and maimed hundreds of innocent people at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, likewise identified Islam as his inspiration. As he lay bleeding in Watertown, Massachusetts inside a boat where he had hidden, he scrawled in pen on the side panel of the boat, "F*** America" and "Praise Allah." He also invoked the Islamic doctrine of "defensive jihad," writing "When you attack one Muslim, you attack all Muslims." Islamic doctrine holds that "defensive jihad" commands the involvement of all Muslims anywhere in the world who are able to enter the fight, even without the command of a Caliph, whenever any part of "Muslim lands" is attacked, invaded, or occupied by the infidel. In this case, the Tsernaev brothers, steeped in the jihadist traditions of their Chechen family and its ancestral homeland, and likely influenced as well by jihadist teachings in their Muslim Brotherhood-oriented Cambridge, Massachusetts mosque, appear to have been invoking just this doctrine, responding possibly to Slavic Christian domination of the Russian Caucasus, or to other places, such as Afghanistan or Iraq, where Islamic forces confront non-Muslims seen as invaders.
Chiheb Esseghaier, one of two Muslim suspects arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) in May 2013, was accused of plotting to derail a NYC-Toronto passenger train over the Niagara River gorge in a terror operation directed by the al-Qa'eda Shura Council that has been operating out of Iran since 9/11. At his initial court appearance, the Tunisian-born Esseghaier was just as frank about his Islamic faith as Adebolajo and Tsernaev; he told the judge that he rejects Canadian law because it is "a book written by humans." Despite his permanent residency status in Canada, he was openly declaring his allegiance to Islamic Shariah Law.
It cannot get much clearer than that. Each of these accused terrorists is a self-described jihadist in the service of Allah and Islam. Different plots on different continents by Muslims who never knew one another -- yet, the message from each is the same message that Usama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have tried to convey: writing in 2002, bin Laden offered a long list of grievances, imagined and otherwise, to explain why Muslims fight America and the West; but most revealing perhaps was the passage where he invoked the Islamic obligation to fight jihad against what he called "aggression":
It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge.
Ayman al-Zawahiri was even blunter in his recorded audio message to Barack Obama, shortly after he won the November 2008 U.S. presidential election; Zawahri told the incoming administration:
[You are] "facing a Jihadi [holy war] awakening and renaissance which is shaking the pillars of the entire Islamic world; and this is the fact which you and your government and country refuse to recognise and pretend not to see."
When President Obama described the jihad wars as "a battle of wills, a battle of ideas," he was, of course, exactly right. It is just that neither he nor his predecessor, President George W. Bush -- who, surrounded by the top leadership of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood at a Washington, D.C. Islamic Center on September 12, 2001, bewilderingly said "Islam is peace" -- actually meant, or perhaps even understood, that the battle of wills and ideas in question is for nothing less than the survival of Western civilization.
America's presidents are hardly alone in their refusal to recognize the "Jihadi awakening" that al-Qa'eda helped catalyze: UK Prime Minister David Cameron, speaking in response to the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, was no less clueless:
"This was not just an attack on Britain, and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to this country. There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful act."
This, of course, was after Cameron's intelligence officials had briefed him on how the two knife-and-machete-wielding attackers had screamed "Allahu Akhbar" as they stabbed Rigby to death and then tried to hack off his head before telling horrified onlookers that they acted in the name of Allah. It was also some six years after Adebolajo had been photographed at a public demonstration standing behind Britain's leading Muslim hate preacher, Anjem Choudary, who for all his rhetoric, consistently and accurately cites Islamic doctrine, law, and scriptures. And it was a year after British authorities had prevented Adebolajo from traveling to Somalia to fight jihad alongside the al-Qa'eda-linked Islamic terrorist group, al-Shabaab.
What is coming our way cannot be averted by duck-and-cover measures such as the British Defence Ministry order that British troops should not wear their uniforms off their bases. Nor will mumbling about how "confusing, horrific, bizarre" it all is or that "none of it made sense." A stiff British upper lip and making an effort at "keeping calm" are not going to be of much use either, as Bruce Bawer points out here. The enemy's motivations are based on both popular jihadi literature and mainstream Islamic jurisprudence. The truth we must face is that the jihadi renaissance (a theme ominously celebrated by Tariq Ramadan and the rest of the Muslim Brotherhood-linked leadership at the December 2012 MAS-ICNA Annual Convention) is not going to be subsiding anytime soon.
The massive human cost and disastrous strategic fallout from the entirely predictable power shift too many still call the "Arab Spring" were merely harbingers of the Islamic ascendancy now in probably unstoppable progress. U.S. and Western failure to take steps years earlier that would have at least helped to empower genuine proponents of liberal, democratic-style governance, instead of throwing our considerable but badly misguided support to al-Qa'eda and Muslim Brotherhood jihadis, drove a policy that is now unraveling before our eyes.
The United States is not at war with Islam—but Islam sure is at war with us. And that jihad, by the Dar al-Islam [Abode of Islam] against all of the Dar al-Harb [Abode of War] -- the two worlds into which official Islam divides the world -- is not going to stop unless we capitulate in unconditional surrender to the dictates of Shariah Law. As Barry Rubin notes, no amount of outreach is going to convince millions of jihadist Muslims that America is their friend. On the contrary, we are now in a period of rapid acceleration in the jihad wars, in large measure thanks to a feckless U.S. policy of aiding and abetting those who fight for Shariah in the name of Allah. Chaos is spreading rapidly across the Middle East and North Africa. The Muslim Brotherhood is rising to power in Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, and possibly soon, Jordan and elsewhere. "Popular will" in such places means the desire for loyalty to Shariah—not to individual liberty, pluralism, and tolerance. Al-Qa'eda is resurgent in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen; and jihadi offensives are underway on countless fronts (including AQAP, AQIM, East and West Africa, and the Internet), none of which was in play on September 11, 2001. The call for individual jihad (or fard 'ayn) against soft civilian targets has gone out from top al-Qa'eda tacticians such as Abu Musab al-Suri, and the call is being answered. A seeming drumbeat of attacks, attack plots, and street riots pounds relentlessly from Boston, Burgas, London, Paris, Sweden, and Toronto and beyond to wherever the next target site will be.
America really is "at a crossroads." In some ways, President Obama's throwing in the towel and calling off the GWOT are going to allow events to speak for themselves, thereby forcing a public reassessment of our failed national security strategy about Islam and the jihad wars. When one jihad attack seems to follow the last before the first news cycle has even reached its end, the false narrative about Islam as a "religion of peace" and outreach to the jihadist Muslim Brotherhood as the antidote to the jihadist al-Qa'eda will seem so much policy debris to be tossed out in favor of a fact-based review of what Islamic jihad and Shariah are all about. When jihadis from one end of the world to the other consistently, predictably proclaim devotion to Islam, their motivation for the litany of atrocities and "martyrdom operations" past and to come, one hopes that the confused ramblings of a Marc Sageman, for instance, who writes about how impossible it is to understand what turns young Muslim males to terror, will be replaced by a more sober study of the doctrinal issues at the core of the Islamic onslaught.
In this, President Obama was absolutely right: "We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us."
Related Topics: Clare M. Lopez
Turkey's Secular Backlash
by Robert Ellis
June 3, 2013 at 4:00 am
June 3, 2013 at 4:00 am
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
A recent
announcement on Ankara's subway called on passengers to "act in line with
moral codes." The reaction was a kissing protest – met with riot police
and a counter-demonstration by a conservative group, who attacked the
protestors.
Champagne corks are not popping in Turkey. On the contrary, Turkey took one
more step on May 24 towards becoming an Islamic republic. In the early hours of
the morning, Turkey's governing AKP [Justice and Development Party] took
advantage of its parliamentary majority to rush through Parliament a bill which
will impose severe restrictions on the sale and consumption of alcohol in
Turkey.However, this comes as no surprise: Prime Minister Erdogan has made clear his personal dislike of alcohol, and recommended that people eat fruit instead of drinking it.
At the Global Alcohol Symposium held in Istanbul in April, Erdogan warned that his government would introduce new measures to reduce alcohol consumption. He also stated that, as Turkey does not have any oil wells, the Special Consumption Tax on alcohol is Turkey's most important source of income.
The Prime Minister also claimed that he was mandated by Article 58 of the Constitution to protect the youth from alcoholism. Article 58 states that the state shall take measures to ensure the training and development of the youth in the light of contemporary science, and in line with the principles and reforms of Turkey's first president Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The article also states that the state shall take necessary measures to protect the youth from addiction to alcohol, drugs, crime as well as gambling and similar vices -- and ignorance.
In view of the not especially scientific shift that teaching creationism is on the way in at Turkish schools, and that the teaching of Atatürk's principles is on the way out, Erdogan's reference to the Constitution is characteristically selective.
Since 2003, a year after the AKP came to power, the consumer price index has risen 132%, while the prices of alcoholic beverages have risen 346%. This can also be seen in the present cost of beer, wine and spirits. For example, at the grocer's a bottle (50 cl.) of the popular Efes beer costs $2.25, Turkish table wine from $8 - $11 and a better Turkish wine from $16 upwards. A bottle of raki (70 cl.), the Turkish version of Greek ouzo or French absinthe, is $30. Imported wine and spirits cost considerably more. Consequently, the flourishing Turkish wine industry with its 7,000 years of history is struggling to survive.
This heavy taxation has already had an effect: the Istanbul think tank BETAM has estimated that alcohol consumption fell by a third from 2003-2008. According to one survey, only around 6 percent of Turkish households consume alcohol; another found that 83 percent of Turkish adults never drink alcohol. Perhaps it would be a shot in the dark to claim that much of the Turkish government's opposition is to be found among the 17 percent who do. Interestingly, only 193 of the AKP's 327 parliamentary deputies voted for the new law.
Among the new restrictions that have been imposed is a ban on the retail sale of alcohol between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m., and there will be no new licenses for the sale of alcohol within 100 metres of a school or mosque. Since Erdogan came to power, 17,000 new mosques have been built -- there are now 93,000 -- and there are 67,000 schools.
Last year Erdogan declared it his intention to raise a religious generation in Turkey, so this latest legislation is in harmony with his views. There has also been a significant increase in the budget allocated to the Religious Affairs Directorate [Diyanet], which now exceeds that of most other ministries.
There is also a ban on the advertising and promotion of alcoholic beverages; penalties for violations of this ban range between $2,700 and $107,000. Cigarette smoking is already blurred out on Turkish television and the same will happen to alcohol consumption. AKP deputy Cevdet Erdöl, chairman of the parliament's Health Commission, plans to go one step further and cut these scenes out altogether. There go Cheers, Casablanca and most westerns.
Critics have accused the government of turning the clock back to the time of Ottoman Sultan Murat IV, who banned tobacco, alcohol and even coffee. The president of the Constitutional Court, Hasim Kilic, has warned against interference in people's different lifestyles, but at a parliamentary group meeting Erdogan denied that the new regulations constituted intervention into anyone's identity, ideology or lifestyle. Erdogan, however, revealed his true intentions when he said that this law was not made by two drunkards (with a possible allusion to Atatürk and former President Inönü) but according to the dictates of religion.
Last month Prime Minister Erdogan declared that ayran (yogurt with water) was Turkey's national drink, but Turkey's Traditional Alcoholic Beverage Producers Association (GISDER) has applied to the EU's Codex Commission to patent raki as Turkey's national drink. The question is: who will win?
There was a recent announcement on the Ankara subway, calling on passengers to "act in line with moral codes." The reaction, similar to the clashes between urban activists and police over the future of Istanbul's Gezi Park in Taksim, was a kissing protest -- met by riot police and a counter-demonstration from a conservative group, who attacked the protestors.
Although there is talk of a "Turkish Spring," this is probably premature because of the strength of Erdogan's grassroots support. However, the Prime Minister's growing intolerance does not augur well for the future of Turkish democracy.
Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.
Related Topics: Turkey
Jihad on Egypt's Christian Children
by Raymond Ibrahim
June 3, 2013 at 3:30 am
June 3, 2013 at 3:30 am
|
Share:
|
Be the first of your
friends to like this.
"It is
part of a 'war of attrition' on the Copts in their own homeland." — Adel
Guindy, President, Coptic Solidarity
Attacks on Christian children in Egypt are on the rise.Earlier this week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy, Cyril Yusuf Sa'ad, was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid the ransom, the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy's "family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds [$4,300] to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy, was exhumed."
Weeks earlier, ten-year-old Sameh George, an altar boy at the Coptic church of St. Abdul Masih (Servant of Christ) in Minya, Egypt, was kidnapped by "unknown persons" while on his way to church to participate in Holy Pascha prayers leading up to Orthodox Easter. His parents and family reported it was his custom to go to church and worship in the evening, but when he did not return and they began to become alarmed, they received an anonymous phone call from the kidnappers, saying that they had the boy in their possession and would execute him unless they received 250,000 Egyptian pounds [$36,000] in ransom money.
About a month before this incident, yet another Coptic boy, twelve-year-old Abanoub Ashraf, was kidnapped in front of his church, St. Paul, in the Shubra al-Khayma district. His abductors, four men, put a knife to his throat, dragged him to their car, opened fire on the church, and then sped away. Later they called the boy's family demanding an exorbitant amount of ransom money to spare the boy's life.
While the immediate motive behind these kidnappings is money, another purpose appears to be to frighten Christian families to make them reluctant to send their children to church. Apart from presumably not wishing to kidnap a Muslim child, if one considers that that some Egyptian Islamic clerics view attending church as worse than attending bars and brothels, the kidnappers might deem this the "altruistic" side of their assault.
Meanwhile, Coptic Christian girls are even more vulnerable than Coptic boys. As an International Christian Concern report puts it, "hundreds of Christian girls … have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forced into marriage in Egypt. These incidents are often accompanied by acts of violence, including rape, beatings, and other forms of physical and mental abuse."
Most recently, after fourteen-year-old Agape Essam Girgis went to school accompanied by a Muslim social worker and two teachers, one of whom was a Salafi, she never returned. After protests, she was eventually "handed over to her family and the church priest where she stayed with his family for some time due to the terrible ordeal she experienced during her abduction." According to a Coptic bishop involved in the case, what happened to Agape—whose name is based on the biblical word for "brotherly love"—is "heart-breaking." She was drugged and awakened to find herself in a secluded place with an elderly woman and Salafis who tried to convert her to Islam, forced her to wear the full hijab, and beat her.
A few weeks earlier, fourteen-year-old Sarah Abdelmalek was also abducted on her way to school. It was later reported that "Sarah was smuggled across the borders to Libya [where Coptic Christians are being brutalized] with the help of the Interior Ministry." The new Coptic pope said the kidnapping and forced conversion of Sarah is a "disgrace for the whole of Egypt." He added, "Can any family accept the kidnapping of their daughter and her forced conversion?"
In the last few years, some 550 cases of abduction, entrapment, rape, and forced conversion of Christian women have been documented in Egypt. This rate only increased after the "Arab Spring" and the Muslim Brotherhood's empowerment, which has seen a concomitant rise in sexual harassment of all Egyptian women. When Egypt's President Morsi was in Germany last February, and asked to address the issue of victimized Coptic girls, he answered that such abductions and abuse were merely a rumor.
According to Coptic Solidarity President Adel Guindy, however, "Any objective and fair review of the cases of forced conversion of Coptic girls, which started four decades ago but dramatically escalated after January 2011 [when the "Arab Spring" reached Egypt], will show a clear pattern of events that point to well organized 'hidden hands' behind the process. Amazingly, the collusion of Egypt's security as well as judiciary authorities -- in defiance of the existing laws concerning minors -- shows the extent of the scheme. It is part of a 'war of attrition' against the Copts in their own homeland."
Thus, as with any number of recent indicators -- including an unprecedented assault on their holiest site and the codification of legal measures to oppress them -- the jihad on the children of Egypt's Christian minority is yet another indicator that a rapidly Islamizing Egypt is hostile to its oldest truly indigenous inhabitants, the Copts, and, as happened to the Jews before them, an example in such societies of what awaits groups considered "other."
Raymond Ibrahim is author of the new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (Regnery Publishing in cooperation with Gatestone Institute, 2013). A Middle East and Islam specialist, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an associate fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Related Topics: Egypt
| Raymond
Ibrahim
To subscribe to the this mailing list, go to http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/list_subscribe.php
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment