STOP FUNDING THIS
MUSLIM DICTATORSHIP!
THE AMERICAN PEOPLE HAVE PUMPED
BILLIONS INTO THIS FILTHY
MUSLIM DICTATORSHIP
Like Christianity, Islam is a global religion. Unlike Christianity, Islam imposes an imperial global vision on true believers and denies them freedom of thought and movement.
MARK CHRISTIAN
A Muslim man butchered a Coptic Christian woman and her toddler son with a machete—“as if he were slaughtering chickens,” said eyewitnesses. He also unsuccessfully tried to slaughter the Christian woman’s young daughter.
Disappearance of Another Christian Girl Off the Streets of Egypt
And yet again, the only ones to be punished are the Copts themselves.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Yet another young, Coptic Christian girl recently “disappeared” off the streets of Egypt, and yet again the only ones to be punished were the Copts themselves.
On Dec. 2, Marna Barsoum ‘Aziz, aged about 15, disappeared on her way to a private tutoring lesson. Immediately her family contacted and pled with police to find and retrieve her. When two days passed, with the police displaying nothing but apathy, on Dec. 4, the Copts of al-‘Amoudain village in al-Minya, where the girl hails from, gathered together to stage a protest against both the disappearance of yet another Christian girl, and the police’s lack of concern. They held signs and chanted “Marna must be returned to us” and “We want our daughter back.”
To this, police were quick and zealous to respond; they descended on the village, and, according to eyewitnesses from the girl’s family, “in order to disperse the protest, police opened fire on us with tear gas,” which prompted “loud screams from the women and a state of panic in the village.” Police further arrested and hauled off 22 Coptic protesters during the clash. They were duly accused of “causing sectarian strife” and “illegal resistance of public authorities.”
Even so, “We demand our rights in returning our daughter,” responded a family representative and protest participant, and “in peacefully gathering to demand a revelation of the girl’s fate.” Due to such incessant calls for police to act, days later Marna was returned to her family.
A happy though also rare ending. Over the years, Coptic Christian girls have been and increasingly continue to be abducted, sexually abused, and forced to convert to Islam and marry their kidnappers—and the majority of them are never seen again. Moreover, in the few cases that they, like Marna, are recovered, no legal action is, per precedent, ever taken against the abductors, even though Egyptian law is extremely harsh in such matters (up to 25 years imprisonment for abducting a minor female). But such is the reality of Egypt’s “justice” system when it comes to the non-Muslim Copts.
It’s also worth mentioning that, as of this date, there’s been no word of the fate of the 22 imprisoned Christian protesters—many of whom were from Marna’s family.
This entire phenomenon and process is well discussed in a report by Coptic Solidary (CS). Fifteen-pages long and titled “‘Jihad of the Womb’: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt,” it documents “the widespread practice of abduction and trafficking” of Coptic girls. According to the report:
The capture and disappearance of Coptic women and minor girls is a bane of the Coptic community in Egypt, yet little has been done to address this scourge by the Egyptian or foreign governments, NGOs, or international bodies. According to a priest in the Minya Governorate, at least 15 girls go missing every year in his area alone. His own daughter was nearly kidnapped had he not been able to intervene in time…. The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights to safety, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscience and belief. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely ‘primitive’ level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary.
Since the publication of that CS report in September 2020, matters have only gotten worse. In the words of the World Watch List 2021, “In Egypt, kidnappings and forced marriages of Christian women and girls to their Muslim abductors has reached record levels.”
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Islam’s New War on Christians, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
During, for example, the 2011 Maspero Massacre—when the Egyptian government slaughtered and ran over with tanks dozens of Christians for protesting the burnings and closures of their churches—all that Obama could bring himself to do was call “for restraint on all sides”—as if Egypt’s beleaguered Christian minority needed to “restrain” itself against the nation’s armed and aggressive military.
The Obama administration further tried to suppress data concerning the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and regularly discriminated against Christian minorities, often in favor of Muslims. Indeed, for at least one former Nigerian official, the current genocide of Christians in Nigeria finds its source in “the evil called Barack Obama.”
Muslim Man Butchers Christian Mother and Child in Egypt
“As if he were slaughtering chickens.”
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article first appeared on Coptic Solidarity.
A Muslim man butchered a Coptic Christian woman and her toddler son with a machete—“as if he were slaughtering chickens,” said eyewitnesses. He also unsuccessfully tried to slaughter the Christian woman’s young daughter.
The facts are currently sparse. The incident occurred on April 3, 2021, in the streets of Minya Governate, Egypt. The name of the murderer, a tuk-tuk driver, is Abu Muhammad al-Harami; his victims are Mary Sa‘d and her six-year-old son Karas.
When their paths crossed in the streets, he made threatening and derogatory comments to the mother; she responded by saying that she would report him to police—at which point Abu Muhammad leapt on Mary with his machete, butchering her and her son. Her four-year old daughter fled and hid, as did the murderer, who was reportedly arrested four days later.
Egyptian media and authorities are currently warning people not to jump to conclusions concerning the motive of the murderer. The latest explanation is that the crime had nothing to do with the woman’s Christian identity, but rather was the unfortunate outcome of the man’s attempt to steal her golden necklace.
The reality, however, is that there have been many seemingly random attacks on Copts in the streets of Egypt.
In late December 2020, for example, two Muslim brothers went on a stabbing spree against Copts, killing one Christian and critically injuring two others. Authorities said the brothers were in mourning and upset, because their mother had died earlier that day. But as a local Coptic priest said, “what does the death [of the murderous Muslims’ mother] and the Copts have to do with each other??” He added that the two brothers had for years been in the habit of verbally harassing and insulting Christians.
That same year, on January 12, 2020, a Muslim man crept up behind a Coptic woman walking home with groceries, pulled her head back with a hand full of hair, and slit her throat with a knife in his other hand. Catherine Ramzi was rushed to a nearby medical center, where her throat was sewn with 63 stitches; doctors told her she came within an inch of dying. It is believed that he may have identified her as a Christian for not wearing a hijab around her hair or for having a cross tattoo on her wrist.
Two days before that attack, on January 14, 2020, another Muslim man tried to slaughter a Christian man with a sharp box-cutter in a public space; he managed only to slice off a portion of his victim’s ear. Although this attack was like the others also dismissed as a generic “crime,” the culprit, Muhammad ‘Awad, was actually arrested and, when questioned as to why he tried to murder the Copt, confessed that he did not know him, but that he simply “hates Christians, for they are from among the People of Lot, and the [death] penalty must be applied to them, for they commit indecencies.”
Whatever the true motive behind Abu Muhammad’s slaughter of Mary Sa‘d and her small child, here, at any rate, is the latest account of a Muslim butchering Christians in Egypt.
Egypt: Christians Ordered to Sell Home and Go into Exile
As “punishment” for a confirmed accident.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
An Egyptian government-appointed village mayor has just ruled that a Christian family must sell its home and leave their village, in what is being described as a strange and unprecedented incident for that village.
This happened during a traditional “reconciliation session.” In Egypt, local authorities and involved parties of a dispute often meet outside of courtrooms in an effort to resolve matters and restore peace before getting the law involved.
The case revolves around a Christian youth who accidentally hit and killed a Muslim girl with his motorcycle in the narrow streets of the village of Hawarat al-Maqta. Despite the fact that such accidents are immensely common in the chaotic and near lawless roads of Egypt; despite the fact that even the girl’s father acknowledged that it was an accident and is not accusing the Christian youth; and despite the fact that these sessions are informal and meant to find the most equitable solution before the courts get involved—Mayor Hanni Snofar of Fayum governorate, who was invited to the session, ordered not just the expulsion of the youth, but his entire family, who must sell their home as soon as possible and essentially go in “exile.”
According to the August 15 report (in translation):
It was just another reconciliation session but it turned into a courtroom with the animated mayor ordering the selling of the Christian family’s home and their expulsion. By what right does the mayor judge and issue mandatory decrees to expulse a family, force them to sell their home, and create other problems? Do we no longer have judiciaries to rule on such cases?
Needless to say, if the Muslim girl was accidentally killed by a Muslim youth, no one would be ordered to sell their home and move.
Reconciliation sessions are regularly used against Coptic Christians—particularly when they are attacked, by pressuring them to drop charges against their persecutors. This is so common that a 2009 book is entirely devoted to it. According to a review of the book, which is titled (in translation), Traditional Reconciliation Sessions and Copts: Where the Culprit Emerges Triumphant and the Victim is Crushed:
In some 100 pages the book reviews how the security apparatus in Egypt chooses to “reconcile” the culprits and the victims in crimes where churches are burned; Coptic property and homes plundered, and Copts themselves assaulted, beaten and sometimes murdered; and when even monks are not spared. Even though it stands to reason that such cases should be seen in courts of law where the culprits would be handed fair sentences, this is almost never allowed to take place. And even in the few cases which managed to find their way into the courts, the culprits were never handed fair sentences since the police invariably fell short of providing any incriminating evidence against them.
The farcical scenario of reconciliation sessions has thus without fail dominated the scene where attacks against Copts are concerned, even though these sessions proved to be nothing but a severe retreat of civil rights.
Politically speaking, the authorities’ aim—through the reconciliation sessions—to secure a rosy façade of the “time-honoured amicable relationships between Muslims and Copts,” implying that they live happily ever after. The heartbreaking outcome, however, is that the only winners in these sessions are the trouble mongers and fanatics who induce the attacks in the first place and who more often than not escape punishment and emerge victorious. The Coptic victims are left to lick their wounds.
* * *
Trump: Christians Are Treated ‘Horribly, Beyond Disgracefully’ in Middle East
Unlike his dissembling predecessor, the president calls it like he sees it.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Crucified Again: Islam’s New War on Christians, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
According to President Donald Trump, Christians in the Middle East are being treated in a manner that is “beyond disgraceful”; Christianity is being “treated horribly and very unfairly, and it’s criminal.” He said this during his August 13 news conference, in response to the question, “How does the accord today between Israel and the UAE help struggling and persecuted Christians in the Middle East?”
Below is the president’s response in full:
Well, I think it’s going to. I think it’s a big start. And you’re right about that: Christians have been persecuted by some countries in particular in the Middle East. And I think this is a big start. It’s going to be a very strong start, very powerful start, and it’s something that I will tell you — I’ve told David, I’ve told every one of our negotiators: If you look at the way Christians have been treated in some countries, it’s — it’s beyond disgraceful. It’s — if I — if I had information and if I had absolute proof — some of the stories that we’ve heard, which are not easy, which is not easy to get — I would go in and do a number to those countries like you wouldn’t believe. What they do to Christians in the Middle East — and it’s — it’s disgraceful. It’s disgraceful. You’re right. It’s a very big part of the overall negotiation. And as countries come in — for instance, UAE has agreed very strongly to represent us; I think they will very well with respect to Christianity, because in the Middle East, it’s not treated well. It’s not treated well at all. It’s treated horribly and very unfairly, and it’s criminal what’s happened — and that’s for many, many years. I think it’s a great question and very un- — it’s a very unfair situation.
As someone who has been daily following and documenting the phenomenon of Muslim persecution of Christians for over a decade, I can say that Trump’s description of and apparent abhorrence for the plight of Christians in the Middle East is very accurate. Only those who exclusively follow and believe “mainstream media” reporting—or rather lack thereof—can doubt this.
For example, since July 2011, I’ve been compiling monthly reports titled “Muslim Persecution of Christians.” Each report—there are currently well over a hundred—contains a dozen or so atrocities, including the banning, burning, or bombing of churches; the outright butchery of Christians (especially in sub-Saharan Africa); murderous assaults or imprisonments of Christian “blasphemers” and apostates; the abduction, rape, and forced conversion of Christian girls; and myriad forms of entrenched social discrimination.
Moreover, the majority of those treating Christians in a manner that is, to quote Trump, “beyond disgraceful … horribly and very unfairly,” are not professional terrorists but every day Muslims, including governmental authorities. The issue is systematic and permeates the whole of Muslim society.
This leads to the only curious section of Trump’s response: “if I had information and if I had absolute proof,” he said concerning the “beyond disgraceful” treatment of Christians, “I would go in and do a number to those countries [responsible] like you wouldn’t believe.” One wonders what sort of information or proof he is requesting or whether the good president just got ahead of himself (which itself is reflective of how strongly he feels about the subject).
While some may cite this as “proof” that Trump is “all words,” they overlook the crucial fact that just by acknowledging—to say nothing of vocally condemning—the persecution of Christians in the Middle East, Trump is helping create awareness where there was none.
This is especially the case when one compares Trump’s words with those of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Although the latter was president during the absolute worst time for Christians in the Middle East—thanks to ISIS, which came to power under Obama’s tenure—he never acknowledged it. For Obama, the abuse and slaughter of Christians and the bombing and burning of their churches was—as it still is for the “mainstream media”—a reflection of “sectarian strife” that has nothing to do with religion (but rather poverty, inequality, poor education, and all the other secularly satisfying pretexts).
During, for example, the 2011 Maspero Massacre—when the Egyptian government slaughtered and ran over with tanks dozens of Christians for protesting the burnings and closures of their churches—all that Obama could bring himself to do was call “for restraint on all sides”—as if Egypt’s beleaguered Christian minority needed to “restrain” itself against the nation’s armed and aggressive military.
The Obama administration further tried to suppress data concerning the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and regularly discriminated against Christian minorities, often in favor of Muslims. Indeed, for at least one former Nigerian official, the current genocide of Christians in Nigeria finds its source in “the evil called Barack Obama.”
It is for all these reasons and more that Trump is to be credited for speaking honestly about the plight of Christians in the Middle East. As president of the United States, his words go far and wide, and are heard by even the leaders of the worst offenders. It is for them to decide whether Trump is bluffing or not about wanting to “go in and do a number” on them “like you wouldn’t believe.”
Christianity: The #1 Target of Hate
Crimes
And guess who the primary hater is?
[Order David Horowitz's, Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America: HERE.]
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Hate crimes against Christianity and its followers in Europe — formerly and for centuries the guardian and disseminator of Christ’s teachings — are at an all-time high. According to a recent report, at least a quarter of all hate crimes registered in Europe in 2020 were anti-Christian in nature — representing a 70-percent increase in comparison to 2019. Christianity is, furthermore, the religion most targeted in hate crimes, with Judaism at a close second.
Worse, the true number of hate crimes against Christians is likely even higher. As the Nov. 16, 2021 report by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) explains (boldface in original):
24 states report data on hate crimes committed due to racism or xenophobia, 20 on LGBT groups, 16 states on anti-Semitism, and 14 on incidents against Muslims, but only 11 countries report data on hate crimes against Christians, and this obviously distorts the statistics significantly. Furthermore, of the 136 civil society organisations that provided descriptive data, only 8 organisations (!) consistently reported incidents against Christians. Both of these findings put the reality of the situation into a different perspective, which indicates that the actual number of hate crimes against Christians is probably way higher. When comparing the numbers of incidents from last year to the number of this year, we can see an increase of almost 70%. What is also striking, is the fact that of the 4,008 descriptive cases [of 2020], 980 are hate crimes against Christians, almost 25%, more than against any other religious group.
Indeed, whereas 980 hate crimes were anti-Christian in nature, 850 were anti-Semitic and only 254 anti-Islamic. But as the report explained, the true numbers are probably significantly higher — for whereas the majority of racial, anti-Islamic, or anti-homosexual attacks are reported as such, a great number of anti-Christian attacks are not. Even so and despite this discrepancy, attacks on Christians are still greater than against any other religious group.
Discussing these findings, Madeleine Enzlberger, head of Intolerance and Discrimination against Christians in Europe, said, “The media and politicians do not see the rise in hatred of Christians in Europe as a growing social problem. The OSCE report shows only part of this problem, yet it sends a very clear signal against indifference and the almost fashionable bashing of Christians.”
After offering the OSCE’s formal definition of “hate crimes” — “An offense against a particular group or a prejudice against a particular group that serves as a motive to commit certain crimes against this group” — Danish journalist Sonja Dahlmans elaborates,
This can be the destruction of Christian buildings such as churches or schools, but also Christian symbols such as a crucifix or a statue of Mary. It may also involve violent crimes against Christians, such as the attack on Orthodox priest Nikolas Kakavelakis in the French city of Lyon and the murder of Sir David Amess, a conservative Roman Catholic member of the British Parliament. Amess was murdered [by a Muslim youth] in a church during public conversations with his supporters. … The conclusion is that there are more and more anti-Christian hate crimes in Europe, but that the full state of affairs is unknown because not everything is reported to the competent authorities.
The growing number of hate crimes against Christians in Europe is consistent with other reports. Open Doors’ World Watch List, which annually ranks the 50 nations that most persecute Christians for their faith, has been consistently recording ever-growing numbers around the world. According to its 2021 statistics, “more than 340 million” Christians “experience high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith.” This represents a 31% increase from 2020 when only “260 million Christians experience[ed] high levels of persecution.” That represented a 6% increase from 2019 when the number was only 245 million Christians. And that represented a 14% increase from 2018 when 215 million was the number. In other words, between just 2018 and 2021, the persecution of Christians has shot up by nearly 60% around the world.
Who is responsible for this dramatic spike in anti-Christian sentiment? Although many groups affiliated with the so-called “left” are increasingly behind these hate crimes — from Antifa and BLM to neo-pagans — the lions’ share still goes to Islam. For every consecutive year, as many as 40 of the 50 worst nations ranked by the World Watch annual reports have been Islamic.
While European nations rarely if ever make the top 50, it only follows that the more Europe’s Muslim population grows, the more phenomena intrinsic to the Islamic world — from attacks on churches and crosses to the rape and forced conversion of Christian women — will grow with it, based on Islam’s Rule of Numbers.
Nor is this assertion merely deductive or conjectural. European regions with large Muslim migrant populations often see a concomitant rise in attacks on churches and Christian symbols. Consider Germany, where, according to the recent OSCE report, anti-Christian hate crimes have more than doubled since 2019; it too just so happens to have one of the largest Muslim populations of Western Europe — one that has exponentially grown in recent years.
Thus, according to a late 2017 German-language report, in the Alps and in Bavaria alone, some 200 churches were attacked and many crosses broken: “Police are currently dealing with church desecrations again and again,” the report relayed, before honestly adding, “The perpetrators are often youthful rioters with a migration background.” Before Christmas, 2016, in the North Rhine-Westphalia region, where more than a million Muslim migrants reside, some 50 public statues of Jesus and other Christian figures were beheaded and crucifixes broken. In 2015, following the arrival of another million Muslim migrants to Dülmen, a local newspaper said “not a day goes by” without attacks on Christian statues.
France, another Western nation that holds a significantly large Muslim population — and where two churches are reportedly attacked every single day, some with human feces — is also indicative that where Muslim numbers grow, so do attacks on Christianity, especially cowardly, anonymous ones on churches. A January 2017 study revealed that “Islamist extremist attacks on Christians” in France rose by 38 percent, going from 273 attacks in 2015 to 376 in 2016; the majority occurred during the Christmas season, and “many of the attacks took place in churches and other places of worship.” (For more on the plight of churches in increasingly Islamizing Europe, see here.)
Of course, just as most hate crimes against Christians are not recorded as such, so too are the identities of those most committing these crimes often left out. Moreover, in a climate where the media do everything possible to conceal the identities of Muslim criminals caught red-handed, surely there will not be a peep to suggest that Muslims might be responsible when the evidence is not concrete.
After all, the “news” is all about maintaining the narrative, one that paints Christians as aggressors and anyone and everyone else as victims — Muslims chief among them.
South Florida Classes on How Jews and Christians are ‘Enemies of Islam’
Radical mosques educate members using unfiltered teachings of the Quran.
Joe Kaufman is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Chairman of the Joe Kaufman Security Initiative. He was the 2014, 2016 and 2018 Republican Nominee for U.S. House of Representatives (Florida-CD23).
Tafsir is an elucidation or interpretation of the Quran, Islam’s principal text. Devout Muslims throughout the world have made tafsir a significant part of their lives. The work of Ismail Ibn Kathir, a 14th century expert on tafsir, is prominent in South Florida’s radical Muslim community. One mosque, the Islamic Center of Weston, is using a set of volumes from this work – Tafsir Ibn Kathir – to teach a class on the subject. This is alarming, given the amount of bigotry and violence contained within the books, including referring to Jews and Christians as “the enemies of Islam.” It is about time that these mosques are exposed for the centers of hate that they are.
The Islamic Center of Weston (ICW) was incorporated in the state of Florida, in July 2014, and moved to its present location in November 2016. In its short time in existence, the mosque has brought in a number of terror and hate-associated extremists through its doors.
In November 2020, ICW added Faisal Haroon to its board of directors. Haroon has used his social media to promote several videos featuring notorious anti-Semites Kenneth O’Keefe and TruNews host Rick Wiles. In the videos, O’Keefe: claims the US government is owned by Israel; refers to the Holocaust as “the so-called Holocaust”; labels Jews “dual nationals” and “traitors”; and says 9/11 was carried out by “billionaire Jewish businessmen” (Haroon called this one “A Must watch Video.”) In March 2019, Haroon was caught by Facebook posting “false information” about India’s dealings in Kashmir.
In February 2018, ICW hosted a speech by Syed Ammar Ahmed, who is currently the Government Affairs Coordinator for ICNA Relief USA, the social services division of the Islamic Circle of North America and a group with numerous links to South Asian terror. In February 2010, following a debate he participated in at a school, Ahmed wrote, “I hate white people”; called himself a “terrorist”; and at the suggestion of an acquaintance, joked that he “should have threatened to blow up the school.”
And in August 2017, less than a year after ICW began operations at its present property, the mosque hosted a three day ‘Quran Intensive Weekend Seminar’ featuring ‘Complete Tafsir of Quran in 3 days,’ given by the imam of Margate-based Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen (MJAM), Izhar Khan. Khan had previously been arrested and charged by the FBI (along with his father, Hafiz) with helping to finance the Taliban. MJAM, on its website, showcases a library filled with texts promoting female genital mutilation, death punishments for homosexuals, stoning of women, and hatred of Jews, Christians and Hindus. One of these texts is Tafsir Ibn Kathir.
On November 7, 2021, the South Florida Muslim Federation (SoFlo Muslims) placed on its Facebook page a post advertising a tafsir class being taught on Sundays, at ICW, by ICW board member Shakeel Hye. In the advertisement is a picture of a set of the same Tafsir Ibn Kathir. ICW is a member organization of the Muslim Federation, and Hye is part of the Federation’s Council of Imams. It should also be noted that MJAM is as well a member org of the Federation, and Khan too sits on the Council of Imams.
The subject matter found in Tafsir Ibn Kathir places its volumes on a level of bigotry and violence witnessed in materials published by the likes of al-Qaeda and neo-Nazis.
In Tafsir Ibn Kathir, Muslims are warned about befriending Jews and Christians (with a more hostile tone than its Quran counterpart), as the two peoples are described as enemies of both Muslims and their religion. It states, “[B]eware of the Jews, your enemies, lest they distort the truth for you in what they convey to you. Therefore, do not be deceived by them, for they are liars, treacherous and disbelievers… Allah forbids His believing servants from having Jews and Christians as friends, because they are the enemies of Islam and its people, may Allah curse them.”
The text further demeans Jews, labeling them with degrading and repulsive terminology. It states, “[T]he Jews… will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them… [Y]ou will find them (the Jews) the greediest of mankind for life… greedy to live longer, because they know their evil end… Allah cast terror in the hearts of the Jews… Allah decreed that the Jews would be punished in the life of this world and face the torment of the fire of Hell.”
The text repeatedly calls for the death penalty for homosexuals. It states, “Whoever you catch committing the act of the people of Lut (homosexuality), then kill both parties to the act… Whoever you find doing the deed of Lut’s people, homosexuality, then kill the doer and the one who allows it to be done to him (both partners).”
And the text sanctions domestic violence against women. It states, “Men are the protectors and maintainers of women… Allah has made one of them to excel the other… [T]he righteous women… guard in the husband’s absence what Allah orders them to guard. As to those women on whose part you see ill conduct, admonish them, and abandon them in their beds, and beat them… [I]f advice and ignoring her in the bed do not produce the desired results, you are allowed to discipline the wife…”
ICW, MJAM and the Muslim Federation, which according to its website, comprises 17 Islamic centers and many more outfits, all have youth components filled with impressionable children, who are ignorant of the dangerous and hate-filled environments they have been placed in. While these entities embrace such malevolence as described by this author, they operate deceptively as mainstream organizations. For these groups to welcome such a bigoted and violent work as Tafsir Ibn Kathir is proof of their fanatic nature and enough reason for all of them to be investigated and, if warranted, shut down.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.
Biden didn’t withdraw from Afghanistan. He brought Afghanistan to America.
Bombshell report shows Biden admin secretly transporting migrants around US
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uIaYGTFZK4
Egypt: Christian Building Abruptly
Demolished
No wedding or funeral services for Christians allowed.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was first published by Coptic Solidarity.
According to a recent Arabic language report, on September 7, yet another Coptic Christian prayer hall was demolished in Egypt.
Christians in the village of Bastra in Damanhour, who number over 500, were not permitted to have a church, so they decided to build a building, not to be used as a church, but as an event hall for their Christian community, as they had nowhere else to meet for wedding and funeral services.
Apparently this was still too much for Muslim sensibilities. Soon after the building was constructed, and without a word of warning, the city council sent demolition squads, supported by armed Central Security forces, to tear down the building, which stood atop a vast and empty field, on the pretext that it did not have the proper permits.
According to the report, the “simple Copts” of the village, who had worked hard to erect this building, instinctively rose to its defense, and were brutally savaged for it. Among other reprisals, security forces fired tear gas canisters into their midst, suffocating many. In the end, four Christians, two of whom were female, were seriously injured: one woman suffered a broken jaw and another suffered multiple injuries to her head. An additional 21 Christians were arrested and hauled off.
There and then, “before crying and screaming women,” the city council forces proceeded to tear down the building that the Christians had spent much time, effort, and money on.
The report concludes by mentioning how this building was “the village Copts dream destroyed.” One Christian interviewed explained that the nearest church was very far away and difficult to reach, and all they wanted was a place to celebrate their newlyweds and mourn their dead—just as their Muslim counterparts do.
The most distressing though hardly surprising aspect of this particular building demolition in Egypt is that the city council gave the Christians no warning whatsoever, waiting until construction of the building was complete—at which point they simply set out and demolished it, violently punishing any who dared get in the way.
Coptic Christian Girl Kidnapped in Cairo
Egypt’s “kidnap jihad” continues unabated.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was first published by Coptic Solidarity.
Earlier this month, a 15-year-old Coptic Christian girl disappeared off the streets of Cairo, Egypt; her mobile phone was turned off at the same time. Randa Fathallah Faleh was returning home alone, after helping another female member of her family move. Her family instantly reported her disappearance to police and even urged the Minister of the Interior to investigate.
A few days later, around August 10, online Arabic websites reported that the underage girl had happily been returned family—which turned out to be false. In fact, Randa’s father and uncle were at and pestering the police station the same day this false rumor began. A family friend responded by posting on social media the following message: “People, Randa has not been returned. Please stop promoting false rumors. Randa must be returned! Please copy and paste.”
Randa likely now joins countless Coptic Christian girls that have over the years been abducted, sexually abused, and forced to convert to Islam and marry their kidnappers. If she were to be “found” and returned to her family, no legal action will, per precedent, ever be taken against the abductors, even though Egyptian law is extremely harsh in such matters (up to 25 years imprisonment for abducting a minor female). But such is the reality of Egypt’s justice system when it comes to Copts.
This phenomenon is well discussed in a September 10, 2020 report by Coptic Solidary (CS). Fifteen-pages long and titled “‘Jihad of the Womb’: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt,” it documents “the widespread practice of abduction and trafficking” and estimates that there have been “about 500 cases within the last decade, where elements of coercion were used that amount to trafficking,” according to the UN’s own definitions, particularly per its “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children.”
According to the CS report:
The capture and disappearance of Coptic women and minor girls is a bane of the Coptic community in Egypt, yet little has been done to address this scourge by the Egyptian or foreign governments, NGOs, or international bodies. According to a priest in the Minya Governorate, at least 15 girls go missing every year in his area alone. His own daughter was nearly kidnapped had he not been able to intervene in time.
The report offers 13 separate case studies. Victims range from teenage girls, to newly-wed and pregnant young women, to married women with children. Most of the 500 disappeared in one of two ways: either they were publicly kidnapped, often by being forced into a car while traveling to school, church, or work; or—and this is especially true for teenage girls—they were lured into relationships with young Muslim men who promised them the world, until, that is, it was too late.
Why so many officials help in the abduction and forced conversion of Christian girls and women—or at the very least look the other way—“can be traced back to the second article of the Egyptian Constitution.” Its states that “Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic is its official language. The principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation.”
Although the entire CS report is worth reading to understand the totality of this phenomenon—which is plagues several other Muslim nations, most notoriously Pakistan—perhaps its most salient paragraph follows:
The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights to safety, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscience and belief. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely ‘primitive’ level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary.
Egyptian Muslim Immigrant Stabbed Rabbi in Boston 8 Times
Democrats tolerating and spreading antisemitism through the 'Squad' has consequences. So does an immigration policy that floods America with future terrorists.
UPDATE: The Boston Herald has a lot more information on the Egyptian Muslim immigrant who stabbed the Rabbi.
A 24-year-old native of Egypt is being held without bail after being accused of stabbing a city rabbi “seven or eight times” in a daylight attack some are demanding be treated as a hate crime.
That stabbing suspect, Khaled Awad of Brighton, is also being investigated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and won’t be let out until at least a dangerousness hearing is held July 8, a judge ruled today at his arraignment in Brighton District Court.
ORIGINAL POST: Which of these came together in this latest attack?
Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Shlomo Noginski was repeatedly stabbed today outside of the Shaloh House Jewish Day School in Brighton, Mass. Noginski serves as a rabbi and teacher at Shaloh House, a Chabad institution serving the Boston-area’s Russian Jewish community, and their summer day camp was in session. Noginski is recovering at home after being treated at a local hospital.
According to a report, Noginski was sitting on the front steps of the Shaloh House on his cell phone. The suspect approached him, drew a gun and asked Noginski to take him to his car. When the suspect attempted to force Noginski into the car, the rabbi tried running across the street to a small park called Brighton Common, where the suspect stabbed Noginski multiple times in the arm. As the rabbi tried to fend off the attacker he raised a commotion, finally causing the suspect to flee. The suspect was apprehended by police almost immediately.
The suspect is named Khaled Awad. He had a knife and a gun. And apparently tried to force the Rabbi into the van. While the police say that it looks like a robbery, it's a strange sort of robbery.
Dov Hikind, a former New York state assemblyman and founder of the grassroots coalition Americans Against Antisemitism, told Fox News he spoke with Rabbi Noginski's brother, who said the rabbi is expected to undergo surgery for eight stab wounds.
Hikind said the rabbi's family believe he was targeted because he is Jewish.
'Based on my conversation with his brother (he) believes the guy wanted to kidnap him,' he said. 'The perpetrator was not interested in his money, not interested in his cell phone, was not interested in anything except to attack this individual.'
It wouldn't be the first time.
Hikind tweeted that it, "Happened in front of Chabad House w/day camp full of kids - Attacker description: "dark/Middle Eastern" - Attacker didn't say/take anything, pointed his gun & tried to force rabbi into his car - Rabbi ran & was stabbed 8 times."
Rabbi Shlomo Noginski fought his attacker, otherwise he would probably be dead. Awad repeatedly stabbed him, rather than shoot him, but physical butchery is a big part of the death cult of Islamic terrorism. Jihadists prefer to use blades rather than guns because it's more brutal.
Khaled Awad had a knife and a gun, but he chose to use the knife. He targeted a visible rabbi outside a Jewish institution. He was trying to force him into a van, rather than just taking the van and getting away. These are elements that suggest that this was a terrorist attack.
But the media will begin claiming before long that Awad had psychological problems and is the real victim here.
Egypt Seizes an Ancient Christian Monastery’s Land
Due to COVID-19 lockdowns and financial hardships, the monks had failed to pay their taxes.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was originally published by Coptic Solidarity.
Egyptian authorities recently barged onto and seized land belonging to an ancient Coptic Orthodox Christian monastery that was originally founded in the year 360 AD—that is, more than 250 years before Islam first invaded (and subsequently conquered) Christian Egypt in the seventh century.
On May 30, 2021, authorities arrived with bulldozers and police at the Monastery of Saint Macarius in the deserts of Wadi al-Rayan in Fayum. They demolished a fence of the annex-farm and other structures, including a church that had been erected by the monks living there. Several monks who protested or tried to prevent this state sanctioned destruction were arrested but shortly released.
The reason for this takeover is that the monastery has been unable to pay the exorbitant levies that the government imposed on it a few years ago, in large measure due to the many government enforced COVID-19 restrictions, including on tourism, which would have helped keep the ancient monastery afloat.
Commenting on this, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a human rights organization, said:
Whilst we recognise the right of the government to collect the agreed taxes, we also recognise that this monastery has been on this site for centuries and that the rental levies are a relatively recent expense in its historic existence. We encourage all parties to engage in a process of negotiation to ensure a just settlement in this matter, including a reappraisal of the rent that the monastery is required to pay, which is a considerable financial burden even outside the unusual circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has negatively impacted livelihoods in Egypt and across the world.
It’s worth noting that this is hardly the first time that the Egyptian government harasses the ancient Christian monasteries scattered in the deserts of Egypt—the one in question, St. Macarius, in particular.
In 2015, for instance, the Egyptian government initiated a project to build a road around Fayum. The proposed road would have crossed the territory around and threatened to destroy ancient heritage sites connected to the Monastery of St. Macarius. Although its monks had submitted alternative plans that would allow for a road but also preserve the site’s integrity, authorities rejected them.
In the end, the monks had no choice but to lay their bodies down before the path of the bulldozers, which arrived to the accompaniment of triumphant cries of “Allahu Akbar” from the company drivers and workers (pictures here). Then, the monks were again arrested again, though later released, and the road construction started, against their will.
The Horror: No Justice For Coptic Grandmother Assaulted In Egypt
“Stripping an old woman in the street is not a crime because she is a woman and a Christian.”
A Coptic grandmother in the village of Al-Karm, in the Minya governorate, in Upper Egypt, was stripped naked, and her house burned down, by three Muslims, in 2016. It was certainly an atrocity. And the perpetrators are known; they denied nothing; they were proud of what they had done, teaching the odious Copts a lesson. She and her lawyers have been fighting for justice ever since. But for Copts in Egypt, there is no justice. The Egyptian state, in the form of its judiciary, ultimately acquitted the three Muslims, even though their guilt was never in doubt. The preliminary Jihad Watch report on this appalling case is here, and here is a news report on the fallout from the case: “Coptic Christians in Egypt say they can’t get justice,” Media Line, December 24, 2020:
Egypt’s Christian community is frustrated and angry after an Egyptian court acquitted three Muslim men in an assault on an elderly grandmother, in a case illustrating the sectarian tensions in the country that has dragged on for several years.
The court in Minya-Upper Egypt handed down its decision last week in the 2016 assault, which included the stripping naked of then-70-year-old Suad Thabet and the burning down of her home, and four other homes, as well as the injury of three other Copts.
The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) in a statement after the verdict was announced on December 17 warned of “the repercussions of not condemning those involved in these attacks, which entrench the absence of justice and discrimination between citizens on the basis of religion, and encourage the recurrence of such sectarian attacks, in addition to what they represent in terms of a message of tolerance of incidents of violence against women in a public forum.”
On May 20, 2016, the village of Al-Karm in the Abu Qurqas district, south of the Minya Governorate, located 180 miles south of Cairo, was the site of sectarian attacks on several Christian residents of the village, in the wake of rumors of an affair between a local Christian man and a Muslim woman. When a Muslim mob did not find the man at home, they thew Thabet and a daughter-in-law out in the street and stripped Thabet of her clothing in front of her home. Meanwhile, a gang of angry Muslims roamed the village streets chanting angry and hostile slogans at Christian citizens in general.
Mere “rumors” of a liaison between a Coptic man a Muslim woman led to a Muslim mob invading a Coptic neighborhood, determined to find the man and, there can be little doubt, kill him. But as he was not at home, as a kind of consolation prize the maddened mob seized his 70-year-old Coptic grandmother, Suad Thabet, pulled her outside to the front of her house, where they stripped her naked. After all, why not? She was a Copt, and the grandmother of the man they sought; she deserved no better. She should be thankful they didn’t beat or kill her.
“They dragged me out, burned the house, threw me in front of the house, and took off my clothes just as my mother gave birth to me … they did not even leave my underwear, and I shouted and cried,” Thabet said. “And then our Lord saved me from their hands … And people took me inside their house, I took an old jalabiya [a traditional garment in Upper Egypt] and put it on.” When some of the assailants returned looking for Thabet, her neighbors told them that she was not there.
Some of the Muslim mob, apparently not satisfied with having humiliated Suad Thabet in a particularly awful way, and having burned down her house, destroying what little she had — and burned down the houses of four other Copts, as well, just for fun — returned to see what further harm they might inflict on her. Fortunately, she was by that point in hiding.
The southern province of Minya is home to a large number of Copts, Egypt’s biggest Christian community.
A week after the attack, on May 27, 2016, a delegation of members of the Egyptian Parliament and leaders from Minya tried to hold a traditional reconciliation session and close the case without involving the courts. They went to Anba Makarios, bishop of Minya and Abu Qurqas, but he refused to receive them, and the Copts of the village refused to reconcile. The Diocese of Minya and Abu Qurqas, in a statement announcing its rejection of the traditional reconciliation session, called for the arrest of those involved in the attack and for them to be brought to trial in an Egyptian court.
Muslim leaders – members of the Egyptian Parliament and local leaders from Minya — thought that the Copts might be willing to engage in a “reconciliation” that is apparently a kind of informal justice, arranged between the parties and not involving the state (and thus there is no question of prison) where the payment of sums of money are negotiated so as to satisfy the victim and make the case disappear. But the Copts, right up to Anba Makarios,the Bishop of Minya, were not having it; they wanted the full force of the Egyptian criminal system to be brought to bear in punishing the three malefactors. They still had hope that even a Copt might obtain justice. They were wrong.
Eager to prevent more sectarian violence by Muslims and to reassure the Copts, President El-Sisi commented:
“All Egyptian women have all our esteem, respect and love. It is not appropriate for this to happen again. The law and accountability must be applied no matter how many wrongdoers,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said days after the attack. “I hope that this lady will not be sad. We do not accept the discrimination between us as Egyptians and whoever erred should be held accountable, starting with the president of the republic,” Sisi also said.
Welcome words from President Al-Sisi. They no doubt gave Suad Thabet and her family, and Egypt’s Copts, the hope that in this case, given how outrageous the crime, justice would be done. But that is not how things turned out.
Over the last four years, the Egyptian courts have heard three different cases regarding this incident. On April 7, 2018, the Abu Qurqas misdemeanor court in Minya sentenced Thabet’s son Attiya Daniel to two years in prison with hard labor for committing adultery, and in absentia sentenced the Muslim woman he is alleged to have been involved with. His sentence later was reduced to one year. The only witness to the alleged adultery was an 11-year-old girl. Thabet’s son served his sentence and left the village with his wife and children.
So those “rumors” about a possible liaison between a Coptic man – Suad Thabet’s son Attiya Daniel, and a Muslim woman – which led to the Muslim mob stripping her and burning her house down, turns out to be based on the word of an 11-year-old girl. How reliable is such testimony? How likely is it that an ll-year-old would have been present when illicit sexual congress was taking place? Isn’t this testimony more likely the result of a young girl’s perfervid imagination running wild, or perhaps the result of her having been coached by a grownup wanting to get a Copt in trouble? And hadn’t the 11-ear-old been raised, after all, to view Copts as the enemy, who like all non-Muslims, were “the most vile of created beings”?
The Public Prosecutor issued arrest warrants and summonses for several defendants in the case of the assault on Thabet, known as the “lady of Al-Karm,” and the burning of her home. All but one were later released on bail that ranged from one thousand to tens of thousands of Egyptian pounds. The case was later closed due to insufficient evidence.
In response, Thabet’s attorney filed a grievance against the Public Prosecutor’s decision. On February 15, 2017, the third circuit of the Minya Criminal Court decided to refer the accused in the incident for criminal trial, and ordered a reinvestigation of the case.
The act of the Minya Criminal Court, ordering a reinvestigation of the case, held out the hope that justice might – just – be done. Alas, It was not to be.
The first court hearings began in April 2018, but soon the trial was postponed, in part because the judges felt embarrassed to hear the case. Finally, on Jan. 11, 2020, the Minya Criminal Court sentenced the three defendants in absentia to ten years in prison and 100,000 pounds ($6,400 USD) in civil compensation.
Why would the judges be “embarrassed” to hear the case? Isn’t it a case, rather, not of embarrassment but of fear, fear that if the judges found the accused Muslims guilty, they themselves might become the target of violence from other Muslims outraged at the verdict? Nonetheless, after almost two years since the court hearings began, the judges of the Minya Criminal Court were brave enough to sentence the defendants in absentia – and possibly only because they were in absentia, which meant they likely would escape justice, would never be found among the 90 million Egyptian Muslims, so many of whom, finding nothing wrong with their behavior, would help them hide – to ten years and a fine of $6,400 USD. But even this decision, a symbolic victory of sorts, would not stand.
But on Dec. 17, 2020, the Minya Criminal Court acquitted the three defendants of their indecent assault on Thabet. A day after the verdict, on Dec. 18, Egypt’s Public Prosecutor ordered his office to study the possibility of an appeal.
And that is where things stand. The three Muslim defendants have been acquitted of indecent assault. Will there be an appeal? Don’t count on it. And what about the burning down of the Coptic grandmother’s house? Was there any judgment about that? The news reports do not say.
So that’s it. An inoffensive 70-year-old Coptic grandmother is assaulted by a Muslim mob because they could not find her grandson, whom they believed, solely on the testimony of an 11-year-old girl, had committed adultery with a Muslim woman. As he was unavailable to be beaten to a pulp, or perhaps murdered, they made do with punishing her, Suad Thabet, dragging her from her house and, in full view of the village, they stripped her naked, and then burned down her house. She is left with nothing. And the Egyptian judiciary finally acquitted all three of her Muslim tormentors because, as Coptic Christian activist Beshoy Tamry said, “stripping an old woman in the street is not a crime because she is a woman and a Christian.”
Persecution and injustice have been the unhappy lot of the Christian Copts in Egypt since the Muslim Arabs arrived in the 7th century. The Qur’an hasn’t changed; it still inculcates contempt and hatred of non-Muslims, including the Copts. Why should we have expected a different outcome – that is, real justice — for Suad Thabet today?
An 'Unimaginable Nightmare'
The abduction, rape, and forced conversion of Christian girls in Egypt.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article was first published by the Gatestone Institute.
The kidnapping, sexual abuse, and forced conversion of Christian women and girls in Egypt—a “particularly vulnerable group to exploitation” that is quietly living an “unimaginable nightmare”—is rampant with no signs of abatement. This is the finding of a report published on September 10, 2020 by Coptic Solidary (CS), an international organization based in Washington D.C., that works to promote equal citizenship rights for Egypt’s Christian minority.
In its 15-page report, titled “‘Jihad of the Womb’: Trafficking of Coptic Women & Girls in Egypt,” CS documents “the widespread practice of abduction and trafficking” and estimates that there have been “about 500 cases within the last decade, where elements of coercion were used that amount to trafficking,” according to the UN’s own definitions, particularly per its “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children.”
According to CS:
The capture and disappearance of Coptic women and minor girls is a bane of the Coptic community in Egypt, yet little has been done to address this scourge by the Egyptian or foreign governments, NGOs, or international bodies. According to a priest in the Minya Governorate, at least 15 girls go missing every year in his area alone. His own daughter was nearly kidnapped had he not been able to intervene in time.
The report offers 13 separate case studies. Victims range from teenage girls, to newly-wed and pregnant young women, to married women with children. Most of the 500 disappeared in one of two ways: either they were publicly kidnapped, often by being forced into a car while traveling to school, church, or work; or—and this is especially true for teenage girls—they were lured into relationships with young Muslim men who promised them the world, until, that is, it was too late.
According to a former Egyptian trafficker, “one of the strategies they used to gain the girls’ trust was for the kidnapper, a Muslim man, to tell the Christian girl he loved her and wanted to convert to Christianity for her. They start a romantic relationship until, one day, they decide to ‘escape’ together. What the girls don’t know is that they are actually being kidnapped. Most of the time they will not marry their kidnapper, but someone else.”
The same repentant trafficker shared another story: “I remember a Coptic Christian girl from a rich, well-known family in Minya. She was kidnapped by five Muslim men. They held her in a house, stripped her and filmed her naked. In the video, one of them also undressed. They threatened to make the video public if the girl wouldn’t marry him.” He continues:
Salafist networks began in the seventies and it’s reached its highest levels now, in the era of President Sisi... A group of kidnappers meets in a mosque to discuss potential victims. They keep a close eye on Christians’ houses and monitor everything that’s going on. On that basis, they weave a spider’s web around [the girls]…. The kidnappers receive large amounts of money. Police can help them in different ways, and when they do, they might also receive a part of the financial reward the kidnappers are paid by the Islamisation organisations. In some cases, police provide the kidnappers with drugs they seize. The drugs are then given to the girls to weaken their resistance as they put them under pressure. I even know of cases in which police offered help to beat up the girls to make them recite the Islamic creed. And the value of the reward increases whenever the girl has a position. For example, when she is the daughter of a priest or comes from a well-known family…. The Salafist group I knew rented apartments in different areas of Egypt to hide kidnapped Coptic. There, they put them under pressure and threaten them to convert to Islam. And once they reach the legal age, a specially arranged Islamic representative comes in to make the conversion official, issue a certificate and accordingly they change their ID…. If all goes to plan, the girls are also forced into marriage with a strict Muslim. Their husbands don’t love them, they just marry her to make her a Muslim. She will be hit and humiliated. And if she tries to escape, or convert back to her original religion, she will be killed.
Other tactics “include utilizing or planting Muslim female neighbors, colleagues, coworkers or friends to invite Coptic women to their home or travel across town during which time they are kidnapped by the groups who organized with the known female.”
Unfortunately, these kidnapping “networks are often supported by like-minded members (including high-ranking officials) of the police, national security and local administrations,” adds the report. “Their roles include refusal to lodge official complaints by the victims’ families, falsifying police investigations, organizing the formal sessions of conversion to Islam at Al-Azhar, or harassing families into silence and acceptance of the de facto trafficking of their loved ones.”
Why so many officials help in the abduction and forced conversion of Christian girls and women—or at the very least look the other way—“can be traced back to the second article of the Egyptian Constitution.” Its states that “Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic is its official language. The principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation.”
While there is no formal apostasy law in the Egyptian judiciary system, “as a matter of fact, it is prohibited for anyone wishing to convert away from Islam,” notes the report. Meanwhile, “conversion to Islam is always accepted and encouraged” without any fuss. “Based on shari‘a law,” then, the “obvious problem for kidnapped Coptic women and girls who are forcibly converted is that they are nearly always denied the autonomy to choose their faith or to return to their faith once forcibly converted.”
Such sharia stipulations undermine parental guidance of minors in other ways: Although Egyptian minors (aged 18 or under) cannot marry without parental consent, “a minor is allowed to formally convert to Islam, after which another (Muslim) custodian is assigned to approve a marriage. This effectively allows Muslim men to strip Copts of their parental rights and Coptic girls of their constitutional protections…”
Moreover, if a married Christian woman “converts to Islam, courts immediately annul her existing marriage (unless the husband agrees to convert likewise) and the woman becomes free to marry a Muslim man. (Needless to say, a vice versa scenario—a married Muslim woman trying to convert and marry a Coptic man—in no way invalidates her Muslim marriage.)”
Whenever asked or put on the spot regarding the abduction or disappearance of Christian girls, the government’s response, to quote Laila Baha’ Eldin, Assistant Foreign Minister for Human Rights of Egypt, is that “All reported cases of abduction had been investigated…. In most cases, it was about young women falling in love with someone from a different denomination.”
But as the report explains, “this defense … does not acknowledge or protect the ongoing rights of Coptic females”:
Regardless if a women is kidnapped from her home or in public, or if she agrees to elope and then discovers she has been tricked and wishes to leave, the elements of trafficking in persons and crimes against children are all still applicable. A woman in Egypt should have the right at any time to seek safety, have the right of movement, right of freedom of conscience and belief, and the right to change her views during her lifetime.
According to its mission statement, Coptic Solidarity works “to achieve equal citizenship for the Copts in Egypt.” Since its establishment in 2010, CS has been at the forefront of reporting and advocating for Egypt’s trafficked Christian women and girls. In 2011, its president, Caroline Doss, testified at a Congressional hearing titled “Minority at Risk: Coptic Christians in Egypt” (broadcast by and available on C-SPAN)
Perhaps the most salient paragraph of its report follows:
The rampant trafficking of Coptic women and girls is a direct violation of their most basic rights to safety, freedom of movement, and freedom of conscience and belief. The crimes committed against these women must be urgently addressed by the Egyptian government, ending impunity for kidnappers, their accomplices, and police who refuse to perform their duties. Women who disappear and are never recovered must live an unimaginable nightmare. The large majority of these women are never reunited with their families or friends because police response in Egypt is dismissive and corrupt. There are countless families who report that police have either been complicit in the kidnapping or at the very least bribed into silence. If there is any hope for Coptic women in Egypt to have a merely ‘primitive’ level of equality, these incidents of trafficking must cease, and the perpetrators must be held accountable by the judiciary.
No comments:
Post a Comment