Discrimination and violence are nothing new for Christians living in the Middle East, but after the Muslim Brotherhood rose to power in Egypt in the wake of the 2011 “Arab Spring”, emboldened Islamists increased their attacks. Terrorist attacks on Christians at the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood increased even more after Mohammed Morsi was ousted on July 3.
“The world is watching”, Mr. President:
After torching a Franciscan school, Islamists paraded three nuns on the streets like “prisoners of war” before a Muslim woman offered them refuge. Two other women working at the school were sexually harassed and abused as they fought their way through a mob.
In the four days since security forces cleared two sit-in camps by supporters of Egypt’s ousted president, Islamists have attacked dozens of Coptic churches along with homes and businesses owned by the Christian minority. The campaign of intimidation appears to be a warning to Christians outside Cairo to stand down from political activism.
In the past 48 hours alone, some 57 Egyptian churches have been burned to the ground in the Nile valley. It will not be lost on the Egyptians that Mr. Obama has spent the crisis playing golf at Martha’s Vineyard.
Scores of Christians are being consumed in this conflagration, some burned beyond recognition defending their churches, even as Mr. Obama’s much-despised envoy in Egypt, Ambassador Patterson, still tries to effect a reconciliation between the the Muslim Brotherhood conducting this devastation and the Egyptians who revolted against the Brotherhood’s rule.
Mr. Obama came out against a pastoral background to urge the Egyptian military and government to take it easy on his favored Islamists and to hint at even more sanctions if they do not. As Mr. Obama retreated back to the beach, his aides warned of a cutoff of the $1.5 billion a year that American has been providing, though such aid is now being overwhelmed with a package of $12 billion that began flowing from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates only last month.
In Arab culture, such language and mannerism, including the wagging of fingers, will be seen as insulting, which at least partly explains the rush by the oil-rich countries to help the revolutionary government in Cairo.
Unless the president puts out a strong statement condemning this latest spate of attacks on Christian in Egypt, I think it’s reasonable to assume that he consents to violence against Christians.
Obama has rarely mentioned religious freedom, or made a point of condemning violence against Christians in Muslim countries. He’s airbrushed over it a few times – but the growing problem of Muslim atrocities against Christians has been given short shrift by the Obama administration. This has been the appalling pattern since he took office.
Now, his allies, the Muslim Brotherhood, want “the world to believe that it is comprised of persecuted and repressed underdogs that it is not,” according to former Muslim Brotherhood terrorist, Walid Shoebat. “On the contrary, the Brotherhood is a group that will lie, cheat, steal, and murder while fooling others into believing it is on the short end of that stick.”
Western media continues to play along with the Brotherhood’s Pallywood script. It’s simply not believable that these figures are dupes too, which makes them accomplices in a despicably deceptive narrative.
Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) released a scathing statement Saturday accusing the media of “steer[ing] away from objectivity and neutrality,” resulting in “a distorted image” of events in Egypt to their audiences.
Via Foreign Policy:
“Egypt is feeling severe bitterness towards some Western media coverage that is biased to the Muslim Brotherhood and ignores shedding light on violent and terror acts that are perpetrated by this group,” the statement read.
The SIS laid out seven ways in which international coverage of Egypt was lacking. In addition to ignoring the Brotherhood’s “thuggery and sabotage,” the statement said, some media “are still falling short of describing the [anti-Morsy protests] of June 30 as an expression of a popular will.” The Egyptian government, in other words, objects to international coverage describing Morsy’s ouster as a military coup.
The statement also accused foreign press of ignoring the support that the Muslim Brotherhood is allegedly drawing from foreigners and jihadists. It accused the media of “completely ignor[ing]” that the Brotherhood had sought support from al Qaeda elements, alleging that five vehicles flying the Islamist “black flag” and armed with automatic weapons had driven into Cairo’s Ramses Square during pro-Morsy protests there on Friday. “[The foreign press] also ignored making reference to the participation of non-Egyptian elements from Pakistan, Syria and Palestine in violent acts committed by the Brotherhood,” the statement read
Egyptian officials have also echoed the statement’s criticisms in their public remarks. In a press conference yesterday, Egyptian presidency spokesman Mustafa Hegazy opened with remarks in English — a sign that his message was geared to foreign media. He said that Egyptians were “bitter” that the foreign press had ignored stories of Brotherhood supporters killing soldiers, burning churches, and using women and children as human shields. The events in Egypt were not a political disagreement between two sides, he said, but a “war with terrorism … and Egypt will defend its sovereignty.
Egyptians are Lashing out at Obama: “Damn You Obama! Damn You!”
Israel Matzov links to a report that Egyptian army chief Abdel Fateh al-Sisi is refusing to take phone calls from Barack Obama and US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel.
Egypt is bleeding and angry. While the army and Muslim Brotherhood clash in the streets, at a high cost of hundreds of casualties in just one weekend, many Egyptians — especially the military — are furious at Washington. The United States, Egypt’s number one ally in the world with an annual aid package of $1.3 billion, has all of a sudden become irrelevant. One can assume that this is not what the American president had in mind when he delivered his famous Cairo speech in 2009. In Egypt, Obama is seen not as the person who did not prevent Mubarak’s downfall, rather as the person who supported the Muslim Brotherhood. At the same time, Obama could be perceived at home as breaking the law due to his refusal to recognize a military coup in Egypt, which would prohibit him from transferring aid funds. This is without doubt an awkward situation for the president.
Obama is humiliated. After he refused to answer U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel’s calls, Col. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, currently the strongest person in Egypt, also refused to answer a call from Obama. The Egyptian defense minister is waging a military campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood while simultaneously opening a diplomatic front against the United States. The cancellation of a joint military exercise with the U.S. is not much of a concern for Sissi. On the contrary, the cancellation is more of a concern for Jerusalem, which needs a friendly, professional and strong Egyptian army along its southern border.
Four short years ago, Obama seemed on top of the world when he gave a speech to the Muslim world in Cairo (to mixed reviews at best.) Open Doors USA, a ministry to persecuted Christians, pointed out that Obama had failed to elaborate on the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt or the plight of minority Christians in other Muslim countries.
A year later, a bipartisan government commission criticized Obama and the Regime’s handling of religious freedom in the world.
The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its annual report stated that Obama has rarely mentioned religious freedom since his Cairo and Ankara speech last year. The president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the report stated, have also exchanged the phrase religious freedom for the narrower phrase “freedom of worship.”
It took Obama more than two years to fill the post of religious freedom ambassador, that works against religious persecution across the world.
Obama filled it only after heavy pressure from the public and Congress. Suppose that there was a country where Muslims were being massacred every month, would the Obama Administration and media remain silent on a Muslim holocaust?
Every month we have thousands of Christians massacred around the world, but Obama and American media ignores the Christians holocaust around the world. A mob attack on Muslims in Burma immediately resulted in a condemnation from the State Department and Obama. But a carbombing and shooting attack on two churches in Nigeria have not been similarly commented on by the State Department.
Atlas Shrugs bluntly asks, “why is the Obama administration in league with these jihad butchers?”
At PJ Media, RAYMOND IBRAHIM writes:
With the recent decision to arm the opposition fighting Syrian President Assad, the United States has effectively declared a proxy war on Syria’s indigenous Christians — a proxy war that was earlier waged on Christians in other Mideast nations, resulting in the abuse, death, and/or mass exodus of Christians.
Ironically (if not absurdly) this proxy war on Christians is being presented to the American people as a war to safeguard the “human rights” and “freedoms” of the Syrian people. Left unsaid by the Obama administration is the egregiously inhuman behavior these jihadis visit upon moderate Syrians in general and Christians in particular, from bombed churches to kidnapped (and often beheaded) Christians. Days ago they massacred an entire Christian village.
Nor can one argue that the Obama administration is unaware that Christian persecution is an ironclad aspect of empowering jihadis. Both past precedents and current events repeatedly demonstrate this.
I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise that a Regime that has been conducting its own war against Christians here at home, would be aiding and abetting acts extreme persecution and violence against Christians abroad — but it’s appalling nonetheless.
Did you ever think you’d live to see a president this horrible?!
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