GH
Junior Member

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Australian Politics
Posts: 98
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One last thing, as I have no words to describe Islam and allit stands for.
The last quarter of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty first have seen a deterioration in relations between Muslims and the Coptic minority in Egypt. This is seen in day-to-day interactions such as the insulting of Coptic priests by Muslim children, but also in much more serious events such as attacks on Coptic churches, monasteries, villages, homes and shops, particularly in Upper Egypt during the 1980 and 90s. From 1992 to 1998 Islamist extremists in Egypt are thought to have killed 127 Copts.
By the end of the 1990s, in Minya province "an ancient center of the Coptic faith", five churches, two charity organizations, and 38 mostly Christian-owned businesses had been burned. Witnesses described the destruction as having been carried out "by gangs of young Muslims wielding iron bars and Molotov cocktails and shouting `God is Great!`" The police have been accused of siding with the attackers in some of these cases. And in Southern Egypt, there were problems in which involves terrorists going into monasteries, harassing, capturing, and torturing monks (such as the 2008 attacks on the monks of the Monastery of Saint Fana).
Some observers have connected the robberies, extortion and "collection" of "taxes" from Copts to the belief by Islamists that the traditional Jizya poll tax on non-Muslims should be reinstituted. Muslim Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mustafa Mashhur expressed this belief in a 1997 interview. He also stated that while `we do not mind having Christians members in the People's Assembly [national legislature] ... the top officials, especially in the army, should be Muslims since we are a Muslim country," and Christians can not be trusted to fight for Egypt against Christian foreigners.
With his freeing members of the Muslim brotherhood, persecution of the Copts only increased. , statements by Muslim Brotherhood and Sadat further exacerbated the situation of non-Muslims (namely the Copts).
In 1981, President Anwar Sadat, internally exiled the Coptic Pope Shenouda III accusing him of fomenting interconfessional strife. Sadat then chose five Coptic bishops and asked them to choose a new pope. They refused, and in 1985 President Hosni Mubarak restored Pope Shenouda III.
In May 2010, The Wall Street Journal reported increasing "waves of mob assaults" by Muslims against Copts, forcing many Christians to flee their homes. Despite frantic calls for help, the police typically arrived after the violence was over. The police also coerced the Copts to accept "reconciliation" with their attackers to avoid prosecuting them, with no Muslims convicted for any of the attacks.
* 6 November 1972
Muslim mob attack and burn a prayer meeting by Egyptian Christian Copts at the Holy Scripture College, an attack which preceded the infamous Khanka attacks on the Copts.
* June 1981
81 Copts were killed by a mob of Muslims. Interior Minister Abu Pasha blamed the deaths on a lack of adequate security measures for which his predecessor Ennabawy Ismael was responsible (according to Abu Pasha).
* 17 November 1981
Coptic priest the Reverend Maximose Guirguis is kidnapped and threatened with death he does not denounce his Christianity and publicly convert to Islam. He refuses and his throat is cut leaving him bleeding to death.
* 20 September 1991
Muslim mob attacks Copts in Embaba, an outer suburb of Cairo.
* 9 March 1992
Manshiet Nasser, Dyroot, Upper Egypt. Copt son of a farmer Badr Abdullah Massoud is gunned down after refusing to pay a tax of about $166 to the local leader of Islamic Group. Massoud's body is then hacked "with knives."
* 4 May 1992
Villages of Manshia and Weesa in Dyroot, Upper Egypt. After being Manshiet Naser's Christians for weeks, an Islamic extremist methodically shoots 13 of them to death. Victims included ten farmers and a child tending their fields, a doctor leaving his home for work, and an elementary school teacher giving a class.
* 12 May 1992
A bloodshed in Manfaloot, Upper Egypt, on the Coptic Easter day with 6 Copts murdered and 50 injured, followed by some 200 arrests.
* 15 & 16 October 1992
Muslim mob attacks with burning and looting of shops and 42 houses owned by Christian Copts, with 3 Copts injured and the destruction of an estimated 5 Million pounds of property, live stock, merchandise and work places Kafr Demian in Sharqueyya in the Nile Delta.
* 2 December 1992
Muslim mob attacks Copts in the city of Assiut, Upper Egypt.
* December 1992
Muslim mob attacks Copts in the Village of Meer, Al Quosseya, Upper Egypt, murdering four Copts and slitting the throat of a Coptic jeweller for refusing to pay protection money.
* 13 March 1997
Muslim mob attacks a Tourist Train with Spanish Tourists, killing 13 Christians and injuring 6, in the Village of Nakhla near Nagge Hammadi.
The terrorists increased the frequency of their attacks and widened it to include whom the viewed as collaborators with the security force, launching an attack on the eve of the Adha Eid using automatic weapons killing Copts as well as Muslims.
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