Saturday, July 7, 2018

The Abuse of Egypt's Coptic Christians

by Salim Mansur • July 7, 2018 at 5:00 am

The violence, and incitement to violence, directed by Egyptian Muslims against the Copts -- especially those organized sectarian campaigns by the Muslim Brotherhood and related groups -- are crimes against humanity and should be treated as such by the international community.
We know that a few drops of lemon will curdle an entire bowl of milk. Egypt's Muslims, as many Muslims elsewhere, have poured the entire Nile River -- made toxic by their bigotry and violence -- into their faith-tradition. We, Muslims, have degraded our culture by authoritarianism and the obstinate tendency to blame others for our own failings. We have thus perverted the very Islam that we believe is the final revelation.
Muslims in Egypt and elsewhere know from experience the extent to which Western powers have betrayed in practice what they pronounce in theory when it comes to support for people subjected to authoritarian regimes.
What is long overdue from the West is a robust policy to defend and secure human rights for everyone, especially minorities, in Muslim-majority countries... [as in] the Helsinki Agreement of 1975.

Egypt's President, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, delivered a historic speech to top Islamic scholars and clergy at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, December 28, 2014. (Image source: MEMRI)

We have seen and recoiled from the horrific footage of Coptic Christians beheaded by ISIS in 2015 in Libya and the repeated bombings over the past two decades of Coptic churches in Egypt. We read about the Maspero massacre in 2011, when Egyptian military tanks, deployed to protect peaceful Christian demonstrators, instead rolled over them, crushing many to death. And we continue to receive reports of Coptic girls abducted, compelled to convert to Islam and forced into marriages with Muslims.

Each time there is news of another act of hate-filled violence against the Copts, or other religious minorities, we shudder. When there are attacks against Yazidis in the Fertile Crescent, the Baha'is in Iran and Christians and Ahmadis in Pakistan, we ask how Muslims can affirm these crimes against humanity perpetrated under the banner of Islam.