Coptic Christians and Muslims in U.S. distrust each other

Some interesting information in this background piece published in the wake of the New Jersey murders. From Newhouse News Service, with thanks to all who sent this in:

In Egypt, they lived as a Christian religious minority in a predominately Muslim country.

That, along with economic troubles in Egypt, is what led many Coptic Christians to immigrate over the last 40 years to the United States, where several hundred thousand now live, mostly in New Jersey, New York and California....

"I don't think that Coptic people in the U.S. suffer from anyone," said Mamdouh Abdelsayed, a Coptic Christian who lives in Kearny. "We are not a minority anymore as we are in Egypt. . Dealing with Muslim people, we don't have problems. I'm doing my job, they're doing their job."

In Egypt, Coptic Christians feel their minority status every day, said Monir Dawoud, 65, who moved to the United States from Egypt in 1975.

"The media is all owned by the government, and the media is all Muslim, praising Islam and minimizing Christianity, making it very tough for Christians to live," said Dawoud, a surgeon in Hudson County and acting president of the American Coptic Association.

The killings of 21 Coptic Christians in riots five years ago in Kosheh, Egypt, remain a vivid memory for many.

In the United States, leaders of Egyptian Muslim and Coptic communities have tried to soothe relations, meeting several times at the Egyptian embassy in recent years.

"We can show we are the American-Egyptian family. We're all living here as foreigners," said Mohamed Younes, president of the American Muslim Union, a New Jersey group. "If we live in peace together, we give a good impression to people back in Egypt."

Yet some Copts and Muslims say distrust still exists.

Posted by Robert on January 17, 2005 8:08 AM | 6 Comments
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6 Comments

Andrew | January 17, 2005 8:26 AM

"Mistrust" is endemic in the Moslem world. In reality, it is closer to frustration and envy at those non-Moslems who dare resist and defy the Islamist onslaught.

The Copts have earned the right to view Moslems with mistrust if in fact they do.

Hugh | January 17, 2005 9:23 AM

The New York Times today carries a description of the funeral service for the Armanious family.It bears a misleading title: "Mourners Blame Religious Hatred in Killing of Family." Not "religious hatred" in the abstract, where each hates the other, and somehow, in this clash, a tragedy results -- no, but the inculcated murderous hatred that those Muslims who receive the canonical texts and take them fully seriously, feel for all Infidels, and for any criticism of Islam. The title should have been: "Coptic Mourners Blame Muslim Hatred in Murder of Family." That would have been accurate.

But unfortunately, the writers are confused about the Copts. They refer to a "centuries-old schism" between Copts and Muslims. A "schism" takes place within a single belief-system. There was never any unity of Copt and Muslim. When Coptic Egypt was invaded by islamizing Arabs, over the centuries those islamizing Arabs, forcing the Copts, in their own country, with their own civilizatin, to succumb to all the disabilities that the status of dhimmi requires This status, Muslims claim, arises out of a "contract," that is the agreement by which, in return for every member of the non-Muslim community obeying the rules set down by the Muslims, they may escape with their lives, and even continue to practice, in however circumscribed and constrained a fashion, their non-Muslim religions. [Apparently, in Islam, you supposedly have freely "contracted" into a permanent "status," or rather one that you remain in unless you become a Muslim -- an idea that would surprise Sir Henry Maine].


It was not a "centuries-old schism" -- it was persecution and hostility and murder, of Copts by Muslims, and it began when the Islamic invaders first came in. That they came in in small numbers, and that many of those who now call themselves Arabs, and have adopted Arab names, and have been joining in the persecution of the Copts -- who in their 6 million are, let it be repeated, those whom we know are the descendants of the original Egyptians, and whose claim to Egypt is certainly superior to that of any Arab invatders -- are, in large part, of distant Coptic descent themselves but, like so many "Arabs" in the Middle East, have been brainwashed into believing that they themselves are "Arabs" because of the clever linguistic and cultural arabization (including the adoption of Arab names) that so often accompanies islamization.

Of note, too, is the following paragraph:

"Since September 11 the Arab and Muslim community has been trying quite hard to build bridges between Arab Christians, Muslims and Jews," said Debbie Almontaser, a Muslim who is on the board of Women in Islam, a New York-based organization, and plans [sic] to attend the funeral. 'I'm really concerned about what this is going to do to therelationships that we have developed.'"

Yes, her first thought is for what this will do to the interests of "Arabs and Muslims," and what "this will do" to their campaign, which ought to be transparent, to establish a completely specious commmonality, in this country, betwee Muslims and "Arab Christians" and, apparently, "Arab Jews."

There is a good deal wrong with Ms. Almontaser's entire phrasing, and her whole outlook. In the first place, the very phrase "Arab Christians" contains within it the supremacist ideology of Arabs -- these are, in many cases, not Arabs at all, but only Arabic-speaking Christians. Certainly Maronites and Copts are keenly aware of the distinction between an "Arabic-language user" and one who is an Arab -- though the Arabs themselves, over the centuries, have employed the Arabic-language, and the imposition of Arabic names, on non-Arab populations, to force people to think of themselves -- and that includes Berbers and Kurds and many other of the smaller peoples with which, even a century ago (see, for example, Gertrude Bell's book on Syria) the MIddle East was filled.

Secondly, of course, the Copts in this country, may share certain foods with the Muslims of the Middle East, or Muslims in this country, but the latter were their murderous persecutors, those who seized their countries and slowly asphyxiated the native non-Muslims. It is preposterous for any Copt to be inveigled into this "building bridges" stuff, which is merely an attempt by Muslim Arabs to use a specious connection in order to find allies now that they, those Muslims, see that they will need them, as they try to square the circle: continue to defend an indefensible belief-system, by hiding the real contents of Qur'an, hadith, and sira, and refusing to own up to what that belief-system is all about, or how any of its adherents should rightly be viewed with the deepest misgivings by all those who are the objects of its inculcated hostility.

The same kind of phony Muslim "outreach" can be seen, for example, in the proposed course (at Columbia, natch) where a certain "Palestinian poet," Nathalie Handal, this past fall proposed to offer a course (I do not know if it had any takers) on "Arab-American Identity." Now it is not hard to understand what Ms. Handal was up to. She was attempting to enroll the recent arrival of Muslim Arabs into a kind of continuous narrative that would include the previous arrival of Lebanese, chiefly Maronite, Christians, and to attempt to suggest that there is some identity of interest between those Lebanese-Americans, whose ancestors left Lebanon (and Syria), precisely because anti-Christian activities, beginning with the riots and murders of Christains in Damascus in 1860, were making the centuries of persecution, which the Maronites had successfully resisted by retreating to the mountains of the Lebanon, were beginning again, and those who continued to subscribe to the very ideology, Islam, which caused the persecution of those Lebanese Christians, and often, along with economic opportunities, was the cause of their coming to America, or Canada, or Australia, in the first place.

This "building bridges" business by Muslims, without those same Muslims admitting, in the slightest, to the long history of persecution of Christians and Jews throughout the MIddle East, whereever Islam conquered, is simply idiotic. Any descendant of Christians or Jews who suffered from that persecution should not lend their names to such efforts, but rather, in this country, do everything they can to warn non-Muslims, so unwary, so innocent (just look at that crazy, tendentious reading-list of General Vines, full of Esposito and Armstrong and Sandra Mackey -- a list that could have been prepared by CAIR, save for the lone V. S. Naipaul volume thrown in for protective coloration).

The Copts, the Maronites, the Arabic-speaking Jews, even the Zoroastrians, and of course the ex-Muslims who have left Islam precisely in disgust at what they have actually come to realize Islam is all about (think of Ibn Warraq, Ali Sina, Irfan Khawaja, Azam Kamguian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali -- the very best people to have come out of the Muslim world, who have thought for themselves, and told the truth to themselves first to themselves, and then to others, and left Islam, slamming the door behind them) can do much to enlighten the rest of the Western world -- which, after all, is the world that they too belong to, in a way that Muslims, who do not wish that world, or its political and social arrangements, well. Egyptian Copts have far more in common with American Protestants and Catholics and Jews, then they will ever have with their fellow Muslims. And this they should understand. They belong here, in the West, if they cannot live in the country which, by rights, was theirs. They have nothing in common, really, with those Muslims who would slyly use them, in this country, outrageously, in order to shore up the position of Muslims.

Think of the Armanious family, and keep that family in mind, the next time the Nathalie Handals start prating about a common "Arab-American" identity (for a corrective, look at the articles of Habib Malik on line)or some Muslim group, well-versed in taqiyya, begins its "abrahamic faith" building-bridges spiel, designed to get Christian and Jewish "useful idiots" to help protect Islam while it sets down roots, or tries to, in this country.

No understanding of that "common abrahamic faith" did anything to save the Armanious family: not the husband Hossam, 46, not his wife Amal, 36, not his daughter, Sylvia, 15, and not Monica, aged 8.

Franze | January 17, 2005 10:29 AM

Killers, delenta est islam

Loren | January 17, 2005 1:34 PM

Mistrust? Now who could mistrust a "religion" in which the sacred scriptures say "Kill all Jews, Christians, and non-believers to the last."?

The only way to fight Islam is with exposure to the light of day. With understanding of the scriptures the religion collapses and thus the reason to kill in its name.

Catherine | January 17, 2005 1:54 PM

These are the people we Need to read the aribic for our FBI They understand the treat now they have to understand THERE IS NO WHERE ELSE TO RUN TO IT IS TIME TO STAND UP AND FIGHT THE MONSTERS !!

Hard on guy on Fox Talking that this was a warnig and they knew it when will the left in this counter wake up to the threat??

January 17, 2005
Coptic Christians and Muslims in U.S. distrust each other
NO SH-T CUTTING OFF HEADS AND RAPING CHILDREN AND BLOWIN UP CHURCHES ALL IN THE NAME OF ISLAM WILL DO THT TO PEOPLE!!!

Part of the American Tribe
Squirrrel Hunter
Spider Killer
God Bless the USA and her Fighting Forces and ALL who Fight with her give them Strength,Wisdom,Sight and Courage to stay the course to Victory[FREEDOM] to Destroy ALL islamic Terrorist and ALL who Support them Open the Worlds Eyes to their Theat give the World Courage to Stand Up and Fight this Evil Amen

PS
Here is a prefect story for those of you who have lefteys as friends DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE CHRISTIAN FAMILY WHO WAS KILLED BY MULSUMS BECAUSE THEY SAID SOMETHING AGAINST ISLAM????