Islamic State Cites ‘Grievances,’ Claims Victim Status against Slaughtered Christians
How Muslim terrorists “justify” their cowardly deeds.
7 comments
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
The Islamic State in Sinai recently executed another Christian on video. In a clip recorded before the execution, the slain Copt, Nabil H. Salama, 62, “confessed” to his crime: building the only church in Bir al-Abd in Sinai—a church which was supposedly “cooperating with the Egyptian army’s and intelligence’s war on the Islamic State.”
Although Salama offered this “confession” only after being tortured—after his front teeth were busted out of his mouth—the charge that Coptic churches are actively and nefariously working to undermine the Islamic order is as widespread among Egypt’s Islamists as it is constantly morphing in absurd directions.
Thus, in an unrestrained tirade back in 2010, Muhammad Salim al-Awwa, former secretary-general of the International Union for Muslim Scholars, appeared on Al-Jazeera and accused the Copts, not of “cooperating” with the Egyptian military, but of “stocking arms and ammunitions in their churches and monasteries”—imported from Israel no less, “the heart of the Coptic Cause”—and “preparing to wage war against Muslims.” He warned that if nothing is done the “country will burn” and incited Muslims to “counteract the strength of the [Coptic] Church.”
In reality, all that ever “burns” are Coptic churches at the hands of Muslims—as when nearly 70 churches were attacked and many destroyed following the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Muhammad Morsi. This is to say nothing of all the Coptic churches that have been bombed, leaving scores of Christian worshippers dead, by terrorists. To name just some of the more notable incidents: on Palm Sunday, 2017, two Coptic churches were bombed and 50 worshippers killed (pictured above); on Sunday, December 11, 2016, a Coptic church was bombed and at least 27 worshippers killed; on New Year’s Eve of 2011, another church was bombed and about 23 Christians killed; and on Christmas Eve of 2010, seven Christians were shot dead while leaving their church.
The fact is, Muslim terrorists are notorious for offering any number of pretexts—many of which border on the absurd—to justify their cowardly targeting and murdering of Christians, in and out of Egypt. The Islamic State cited “grievances” to justify its grisly slaughter of 21 Christians—20 Copts and one Ghanaian—on the shores of Libya in 2015. An article in Dabiq, the Islamic State’s online magazine in English, titled “Revenge for the Muslimat [Muslim women] Persecuted by the Coptic Crusaders of Egypt,” claimed that the 21 Christians were slaughtered in “revenge” for two Coptic women who, back in 2010 and according to Islamic propaganda, were compelled by Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church to recant their conversion to Islam and return to Christianity.
Indeed, the late Coptic Pope Shenouda III, who was then nearly 90-years-old and immobile, was portrayed as “a U.S. agent, an abductor and torturer of female Muslim converts from Christianity, who was stockpiling weapons in monasteries and churches with a view to waging war against the Muslims and dividing Egypt to create a Coptic State.”
The Islamic State also cited the 2010 bombing of Our Lady of Salvation Church in Baghdad as a product of “revenge” for those same supposedly forced-to-reconvert-back-to-Christianity women in Egypt. Then, armed jihadis had stormed the Iraqi church during worship service, opened fire indiscriminately, before detonating their suicide vests, which were “filled with ball bearings to kill as many people as possible.” Nearly 60 Christians—including women, children, and even babies (pictures of aftermath here)—were slaughtered.
Nor is this blame-the-victim strategy limited to Egypt. Speaking two days after a series of bombings rocked Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, 2017, killing 359 people, a junior defense minister said that the attack “was in retaliation for the attack against Muslims in Christchurch,” where a New Zealand man killed around 50 Muslims in two mosques.
Two points give the lie to all such claims of Islamic “retaliation” due to “grievances”:
First, what did the Iraqi Christians of Our Lady Church, or the one decapitated Ghanaian, have to do with the imagined crimes of the Coptic Church? For that matter, what do Christians in the Middle East, Africa and Asia have to do with the secular West? Whenever the latter somehow offends Muslims—whether by publishing cartoons or launching military operations in Afghanistan—Muslims “respond” by terrorizing the Christian minorities in their midst. What exactly do brown Sri Lankan Christians celebrating Easter have to do with a white terrorist in New Zealand? Moreover, if the Easter day attack was a form of retaliation, what explains the fact that Muslims bomb churches on virtually every Easter (most recently in Indonesia).
Which leads to the second point: since when did Islamic terrorists that regularly preach hate for the other ever need a reason or excuse to make the lives of non-Muslims, chief among them Christians, miserable? For instance, since July 2011, I have been compiling monthly “Muslim Persecution of Christians” reports (published by Gatestone Institute). In virtually every one of these monthly reports, Muslims bomb, burn, or ban churches and generally terrorize Christians. Are we seriously to believe this is all due to Muslim “grievances” against the disempowered Christian minorities in their midst?
Indeed, even in the most recent murder, that of Nabil Salama the Copt in Sinai, his murderers, perhaps inadvertently, let escape the truth behind their animus. In his execution video, Salama appears on his knees, with three men holding rifles standing behind him. The one in the middle launches into a typical jihadi diatribe: “All praise to Allah, who ordered his slaves [Muslims] to fight and who assigned humiliation onto the infidels” — this latter part is said while the terrorist contemptuously points at the bound and kneeling man before him — “until they pay the jizya while feeling utterly subdued.”
This, of course, is a paraphrasing of Koran 9:29, which commands Muslims to wage jihad against the “People of the Book—Christians and Jews—until they pay tribute and feel themselves utterly subdued. Note: the Koran does not cite any grievances against Christians and Jews—except, of course, for the fact that they are Christians and Jews, that is, infidels, who reject the authority of Muhammad, and are therefore the enemy.
In short, all “grievances” cited by those Muslims who terrorize already disenfranchised religious minorities in their midst are false and meant to “legitimize” their otherwise cowardly and atrocious deeds.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Sword and Scimitar, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
'They Are Burning Us Alive!' Say Sinai’s Coptic Christians
Liquidated.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was first published by Coptic Solidarity.
The recent execution of a Coptic Christian man in the Sinai is a reminder that the peninsula is a hotbed of wanton, jihadi terrorism in dire need of a crackdown.
Although the murder of 62-year-old Nabil H. Salama was videotaped in an Islamic State propaganda video—meaning it received some media attention in the West—much lesser known is that the Muslim terrorists have been terrorozing, massacring, and displacing the small Coptic community for years in the Sinai.
Early 2017 probably saw the worst atrocities. Then, the Islamic State in Sinai had released a video promising more attacks on the “worshipers of the cross,” a reference to the Copts of Egypt; the terrorists also referred to the Copts as their “favorite prey” and the “infidels who are empowering the West against Muslim nations.”
Thereafter followed a massive “jihad” on the Copts; the following are some of the more notable examples, all occurring in early 2017, mostly in al-Arish, Sinai:
- A 65-year-old Christian man was shot in the head and killed; the Copt’s 45-year-old son was then abducted and tortured by the Muslim terrorists; they then burned him alive and dumped his charred remains near a schoolyard (image here).
- A 35-year-old Christian was in his small shop working with his wife and young son when three masked men walked in, opened fire on and killed him. The Muslim murderers then sat around his shop table, eating chips and drinking soda, while the slain Copt lay in a pool of blood before his terrified wife and child.
- A 57-year-old Christian laborer was shot and killed as he tried to fight off masked men trying to kidnap his young son from off a crowded street in broad daylight. After murdering the Coptic father, they seized his young son and took him to an unknown location.
- A 45-year-old Christian schoolteacher was moonlighting at his shoe store with his wife, when masked men walked in the crowded shop and shot him dead.
- A 40-year-old Coptic medical doctor was killed by masked men who, after forcing him to stop his car, opened fire on and killed him. He too left a widow and two children.
- A group of armed Muslims attacked St. George, a Coptic Christian church in the Sinai on Sunday 15, 2017, leaving seven—including a young child—dead, and 15, mostly women and children, wounded.
- A Christian father and his two sons were abducted; their decapitated bodies were later found discarded.
As a result of these 2017 slayings and threats of more to come, nearly 350 Christians living in al-Arish, Sinai, fled their homes, with nothing but their clothes on their backs and their children in their hands. Most had congregated in a Coptic church compound in neighboring Ismailia by the Suez Canal.
In a video of these destitute Copts, one man was heard saying “They are burning us alive! They seek to exterminate Christians altogether! Where’s the [Egyptian] military?” Another Coptic woman yells at the camera,
Tell the whole world, look—we’ve left our homes, and why? Because they kill our children, they kill our women, they kill our innocent people! Why? Our children are terrified to go to schools. Why? Why all this injustice?! Why doesn’t the president move and do something for us? We can’t even answer our doors without being terrified!
Although 2017 witnessed this uptick of attacks on Copts, they had been attacked before and after.
Back in 2012, and in response to what Islamists perceived as Christian support for the popular revolts against then president Muhammad Morsi—Sinai’s Copts were heavily plummeted. Even though Muslim support for Sisi dwarfed Christian support, as Christians make only ten percent of Egypt, only they—the “uppity infidels”—were targeted for punishment: one priest, Fr. Mina Cherubim, was shot dead in front of his church; a 65-year- old Christian man was beheaded; several other Christians, including youths, were kidnapped, held for ransom, and later executed when the exorbitant ransoms could not be met. Two churches were attacked, one burned. Hundreds of other Christians were displaced.
It should not be imagined that Sinai Christians are only murdered when the jihadis have a special reason (such as 2012’s “revenge” spree against pro-Sisi Christians, or 2017’s ISIS video inciting violence against Copts). For instance, In January 2018, three masked gunmen targeted and killed a 27-year-old man after identifying him as a Christian by the cross tattoo on his wrist. According to his older brother, the siblings were walking home after work when the men “approached us and asked Bassem to show them the wrist of his right hand, and when they saw the tattoo of the cross, they asked him: ‘Are you Christian?’ Bassem answered ‘Yes, I am Christian,’ and repeated that again in
Similarly, in June 2016, Coptic priest, Fr. Raphael Moussa, 46, was randomly shot dead in “a hail of bullets” outside the Church of the Martyr of St George in Sinai. And in January 2015, masked gunmen stormed the home of a Christian man residing in al-Arish. After robbing him and his family at gunpoint, they shot him several times in the head, instantly killing him. According to the slain man’s wife, her husband was murdered “only because he was a Copt.” She pointed out that the masked intruders robbed everything in sight—including the money in his pockets, the jewelry she was wearing, her handbag, cell phones, and even a Bible. Then, after stealing everything available, and for no practical purpose, they shot her husband dead. A month later, another Christian man in al-Arish was randomly and fatally shot.
Nor is it just the “terrorists” who despise the Copts. In 2019, after an ISIS attack in Sinai left eight Egypt security officers dead, the government responded by honoring the slain—except for one, a Christian. Although seven schools were named after the seven slain Muslim officers, authorities denied this same honor to the sole Christian, Abanoub Nageh, citing “severe objections by the village Muslims that a school would bear such a flagrantly Coptic name as Abanoub.”
All of this is a reminder that the Sinai is a hotbed of Islamic terrorism, where ISIS is alive and well. Moreover, it is well to remember that those who butcher Coptic Christians for no other reason than being “infidels” would butcher any non-Muslim, should the opportunity ever present itself.
Video: Raymond Ibrahim on ‘Disarming Hezbollah’
Shillman fellow discusses the volatile situation in Lebanon vis-à-vis Israel.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Raymond Ibrahim recently appeared in a brief documentary video by Church Militant titled “Disarming Hezbollah.” Check out his appearance in it below. The transcript follows the video:
TRANSCRIPT
Lebanon is spiraling into collapse, and the prime minister [Saad al-Hariri] asked Pope Francis Thursday, local time, for help. Hariri asked the pope to visit the beleaguered country, but Francis told the Sunni Muslim he could only do so after a new government is formed to handle the crisis.
Catholic-Maronite cardinal Bechara al-Rahi is allied with the prime minister against both the Christian president and the president's Shia terrorist allies. Shia-Hezbollah is a major political force with its own militia, which is said to be larger than the Lebanese army.
Islam scholar Raymond Ibrahim: "Hezbollah, of course, the Iranian proxy that's there — are its interests in Lebanon, or are its interests and loyalty in Iran to wage war against Israel? That's the real question. I personally believe the latter."
Cardinal Rahi is harnessing the popular civilian movement against the government to demand Hezbollah disarm its militia as part of the reforms.
Ibrahim: "He's been coming off robustly against Hezbollah, which is usually not common for that area and for political reasons because Hezbollah portrays itself as a defender of Lebanon and whatnot. But he [Rahi] sees through it, and other people see through it."
Hezbollah began solely as an Iranian-backed militia group in the 1980s to fight against the Israelis. After gaining major political power in the early 2000s, Hezbollah ramped up assassinations and terrorist attacks in both Lebanon and other nations.
Cdl. Rahi: "We support understanding between countries instead of wars. We support peace conferences between countries instead of wars. Wars are vile and it is the people who suffer their consequences."
Cardinal Rahi is accusing Hezbollah of wanting to start a war with Israel. Rahi favors Lebanese neutrality over spreading Islamist wars.
Cdl. Rahi: "But here, in Lebanon, it is not the government who handles this issue — [it's] a certain party, Hezbollah, of course. Who is talking war and peace with Israel? The Lebanese State? Who calls the shots? Isn't it Hezbollah?"
Lebanon was formed after the First World War with the idea Christians, Sunnis and Shias could share power in peace. Peace cannot last, however, when one party — known terrorists — have all the guns.
No comments:
Post a Comment