Coptic Orthodox Church Leader Blasts Egyptian Anglican Bishop

Funny that so often it is Anglican prelates who encourage the Arab/Muslim attacks on Israel, and in this case, the Anglican bishop is whitewashing the Egyptian govt's treatment of Copts.
Maybe it has its roots in the same mood that led Rosalind Hollis [I think that's her name], who appeared this morning on CNBC, to complain that Israel was being too harsh on Hamas. Ms Rosalind Hollis is an official of the Royal Institute of International Affairs which has a long record of favoring Arab nationalism and Islamic militancy, and which was formerly the fiefdom of the notorious Arnold Toynbee.

The young, naive, monolingual Rosemary Hollis appalls. She is, indeed, the director of what is optimistically called "Research" at Chatham House.

Here are her publications:

Recent Publications

‘Europe in the Middle East’ in Louise Fawcett, ed., The International Relations of the Middle East (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)

‘Britain's Strategic Approach to the Gulf’ in International Interests in the Gulf Region (Abu Dhabi: ECSSR, 2004)

‘The U.S. Role: Helpful or Harmful?’ in Lawrence Potter & Gary Sick, eds., Unfinished Business: Iran, Iraq and the Aftermath of War (New York: Palgrave, 2004)

‘Iran and the United States: Terrorism, Peace in the Middle East and Iraq’, in eds., Johannes Reissner and Eugene Whitlock, Iran and Its Neighbours: Diverging Views on a Strategic Region, Vol.II, Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Berlin (March 2004)

‘The Israeli-Palestinian road block: can Europeans make a difference?’ International Affairs March 2004

She's an apologist. Whether she's an antisemite, like Toynbee, is unknown to me. But as an apologist for Islam, she's doing his memory proud. Of course, like Alastair Crooke (Hamas apologist and defender), like Aziz Tamimi (Hamas admirer and would-be suicide bomber), Rosemary Hollis is one more of those "experts" called upon by the BBC World Service, under the direction of John Simpson (google "John Simpson" and "Jihad Watch" for more), to mislead listeners all over the world.

Vladimir Bukovsky, who had his own experience with the effect that the media, controlled by a totalitarian agenda, can so dangerously mold the minds of too many, has for years been trying to conduct a campaign to make people aware of the full awfulness of the BBC. So has Trevor Asserson. In Great Britain you are required to pay a license fee to support the BBC. In other words, you are forced to support John Simpson, and John Simpson's policies, and those of others just like John Simpson (who takes what modest direction he does take from the Foreign Office, under which supervision of the BBC World Service is uniquely placed). You are forced to pay for the anti-Israel and pro-Islam apologetics that are such a consistent and obvious feature of the BBC.

And the appearance of this young, foolish woman, completely ignorant of Islam but betraying in her voice nothing but brisk self-assurance (for no one asks her to discuss the nature, the tenets, the history of Islam, without which all discussion of that "Middle East" or "Arab-Israeli" or now "Israel-Palestine" (the latter carefully reified)dispute, is pointless, jejune, idiotic. They never put a dangerously well-informed person on when it comes to Islam, to correct Crooke or Hollis or any of the others spouting off.

That would never do.

Typical Brit, how these people manage to whitewash Muslim atrocities in any era is amazing to me. I hope they enjoy their Islam Expo this summer, something tells me it's going to be an anual event.

My brother in-law is a Christian born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. He's always amazed when he hears westerners tell everyone how wrong they are about Islam, and that it is tolerant of other faiths and people. His answer is, these comments come from people that have no clue, because if they grew up there they would really know what hate means.

Maybe more Brits, Anglican and non Anglican need to move to Islamic countries to enjoy the Religion of Peace first hand.

Niv

I see that the Right Revd (as I would call him, they may not be correct) Abba Seraphim is the Metropolitan of Glastonbury. It is amazing how faith is attracted to that place.

But I digress. I hope the Arch Druid takes some notice of his brother, I was very disappointed in him that he missed a golden opportunity himself during his visit to the Sudan last week.

Grass roots Anglicans are getting more vocal in expressing our concern at the lack of wisdom from our bishops lately. I walked into a church a few months ago while on holiday, I had never been there before, hadn't picked it because I knew of the tenor of opinion, so I was pleased to hear during the sermon that the vicar was quite adamant about two things, that the Koran was not the word of God and that it is our duty to tell our bishops and politicians when they get things wrong.

Thank you Niv, we don't need to move to Islamic countries to experience their ways, 52 of my fellow Londoners experienced it on their journey to work only a few months ago. Friends of my friends are still suffering from their injuries; they are not likely to forget.

I will mark the site that published this, the Voice for Global Orthodox Anglicanism for closer study. This site http://www.anglicansforisrael.com/ also has useful articles and is very supportive.

In Great Britain you are required to pay a license fee to support the BBC. In other words, you are forced to support John Simpson ...

Yes, this is what sticks in my throat.

Jon Snow of Channel 4 is absolutely shameless in his bias, but at least his employers have not got their hand in the audience's pocket. The BBC is, in effect, the only private organization in the UK that is permitted to levy taxation on Britons. And it so often violates the requirement of its charter to be impartial in its presentations as to morally vitiate its right to have that money.

Here's William H. Rubinstein on Why the BBC in its present form should be abolished.

Mr. Fitzgerald -

I must correct you on a point of fact whilst agreeing with most of your argument.

The BBC World Service is NOT supported out of the Licence Fee. It would require a change in law and to the BBC's Charter for Licence Fee money to be used in this way.

The BBC is paid by the UK Government, out of general taxation, to run a World Service on its behalf. The World Service from the BBC is a political animal responsible to the UK Government. Day to day administration is done using the establishment of the BBC and many BBC former, and current, employees contribute to or work, some part-time, for the World Service as do many people from all over the media. Those who write for, or broadcast on, the World Service are by no means exclusively from the BBC.

The policies of the World Service more nearly reflect the Government's outlook than BBC's - of course the two may have the same outlook at any given moment in history, but, depending on the courage of the Board of Governors of the BBC, similarity of outlook should be unlikely.

Yojimbo -

Bad choice. Channel 4 receives a Government subsidy of over £25,000,000 per annum. Some ITV companies also receive subsidies as does Channel Five. The subsidies are used primarily to ensure that nationwide coverage is maintained - rather like the railways - and that certain types of programe - such as news and current affairs - actually get made and broadcast instead of the non-stop pap and crap that the companies would prefer to transmit.

You pay for all the so-called independent channels every time you buy a product that has been advertised on television.

The BBC does NOT control and does NOT levy the Licence Fee. The Exchequer (Treasury) does this using various contractors, such as the Post Office for example. The Exchequer then remits to the BBC the amount that it deems to be appropriate for the maintenance of the BBC based on conversations that it had with the BBC in the preceding year. This may not be, and usually isn't, all of the money raised.

Oops, try 'programme'. This keyboard can't spell.

You pay for all the so-called independent channels every time you buy a product that has been advertised on television.

Oh, really, smartarse - naturally, I hadn't realized that.

However, I didn't know that the government subsidized Channel 4.

Yojimbo -

Sorry, didn't mean to come across as a smart-arse, nor to offend you. Really sorry.

These anglicans are very dhimmis it´s a pity, I hope they will get better.

Sorry, didn't mean ... to offend you

Sorry - I'd delete the post if I could.

Something else that occurs to me, since you mention advertising revenue - it seems to me that there is an issue with where the BBC advertises its jobs. AFAIK, they go in the Guardian. Now, as far as I'm concerned, the Guardian, like any other business, can make what revenue it likes from which advertisers it likes, but money from the BBC for classified ads has been collected from people who have no choice in whether it gets it or not. (And I need hardly point to the other issue here.) There seems to be a very unhealthy self-reinforcing Guardian-BBC axis.

Local Councils also tend to advertise jobs in the same place. Just today I saw this neat little dissection of that practice. This is public-sector money being given (a) to the Guardian (and not competing papers) for classified ad space and (b) to the successful applicants who will be Guardian readers. I'm almost inclined to call this kind of misuse of public money a form of jizya paid to the Guardian-reading classes.

Yojimbo -

I folowed your link and I take your point but I think that I disagree slightly. For all sorts of historical reasons that we need not go into here (since we are already off topic) various trades and professions have ended up advertising their positions to be filled in particular newspapers or magazines. Science, for example, always uses the magazine 'New Scientist' which is a general circulation magazine for anyone who is interested in science, not a specialist magazine at all. Local Authorities tend towards the Grauniad, educational establishments toward the Times Educational Supplement, advertising industry in the Indie, and so on. It's quite convenient if one is actually looking for a job in any particular sphere because you really only have to buy one national paper plus the local rags - and only on certain days, at that. Anyone working in, or wanting to enter, a particular profession generally knows which paper or magazine is the 'house' recruitment rag, so to speak. I don't think that it's a conspiracy or anything, it's just something civilised that happened and sometimes the happening is apposite - like social work and the Grainaud - and sometimes it isn't.

Imagine what it must be like to be a Copt in Egypt. You are among the 10% of the population that held firm; that did not convert, either on the point of a sword (as happened in the 13th century, when Copts were still 50% of the population), or in order to avoid enduring the onerousness of being a non-Muslim under Muslim rule. You visit your churches. You see the evidence of pre-Islamic Egypt, and the obvious linguistic link that Coptic provides to it. Yet you are treated as a foreigner, as someone who does not belong, and has rights only insofar as Muslim Arabs (most of whom, of course, are the descendants of Copts who were forcibly converted, but would be furious were that to be pointed out, just as Pakistanis never give a thought to the conditions which their Hindu ancestors must have endured, and finally could endure no longer). It is painful, always painful. Perhaps you parrot the Muslmi party line. On the hatefulness of Israel. On the wonderfulness of Islam. But you know. And it rankles. In the West, what do you do? Do you still have relatives in Egypt? Can the Egyptian government get to them, punish you through them? Are you here permanently? Do you wish to alert your new fellow citizens about the dangers of Islam, lest the problem follow you here, to Texas or Toronto, to Montreal or Mississippi?

What to do? Tell the truth, or lie low?

And speaking of that, what has happened with the Armanious case?

l have had some experience around Christina Arabs, and they seem quite hostile to Jews. it must be a way of keeping them alive when they lived among the muslims. its ingrained in them from when they were young, and seems too difficult for them to change their ways..even though Jews are in the same boat as Christian Arabs.. go figure!

O.T.

Campaign to preserve Nazi church
http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/content/news_syndication/article_060310nazi.shtml

"The Martin Luther Memorial Church in Berlin has embarrassed the authorities for six decades, but is also seen as a warning to the wider church about what can happen when Christians get too close to Government. "

A nazi version of dhimmitude? Circa 1933.

Actually, in spite of his Egyptian title and obedience, Abba Seraphim and his denomination - the British Orthodox Church - are as British as chip butties and black pudding. They are a tiny, astonishingly tenacious breakaway church arising from the great period of ecclesiastical [i]sturm und drang[/i] in the nineteenth century, and have been relatively recently received into the Coptic community - the only non-Egyptian church, I believe, to be. (Britain also has a Coptic immigrant community, and, I think, a bishop, but they are separate from the British Orthodox.) As such, they are in a privileged position: they can speak the truth on behalf of the persecuted Copts without involving them too much, because they are to a considerable extent autocephalous. The firm language of this letter is a case in point. Archbishop Rowan may feel that the letter of a fellow bishop who is at the head of twenty parishes or less does not matter for much, but in this case it is the tiny episcopal British ant who speaks the truth and the huge and corrupt Anglican dragon who is allowing itself to be led by the nose. I may also add that the minuscule British Orthodox Church is intellectually active and lively quite out of proportion to its numbers.

Recently I have been seeing a new doctor in my small town who is from Egypt He is a very competent dr.
As I am a long time reader of this site and jihadwatch I was curious about his background.
His " bedside manner " is very eficient and non-conversational, other than the medical matters immediately relevant. ie he does not make small talk about family, tv, the weather etc. He is a man of few words.
After several visits I managed to steer the topic around to his reasons for emigrating.
He told me IT WAS DUE TO RELIGOUS REASONS.
I said, " oh, so youre a Coptic Christian ? " (utilizing knowledge gleaned from this site)
Sensing that I was more au fait with his situation than the average patient he suddenly became more vocal than I've ever seen him .
Without going in to details he launched animatedly into a diatribe about his family's treatment at the hands of the muslim majority.
When I said most of my country's fellow citizens were blissfully ignorant about the real motives of Islam he said ( about the world's situatin re Islam )
"Its a real mess isnt it?
Have you read the Koran ? Just read the Koran"

Like I said I'd never seen him get so passionate till then.

Straight from the source. The unpalatable truth.

I decided to do a search for "John Simpson" + "Jihad Watch" as per Mr. Fitzgeralds' directions and, comicly, the most relevant search results in Google are posts containing Mr. Fitzgerald begging people to Google "_______" and "Posted by Hugh" or "_________" and "Jihad Watch/Dhimmi Watch", so that is pretty useless so far, maybe I need to dig further.

However, I did run into this link for "Watching JihadWatch" http://watchjihadwatch.blogspot.com/

Are you gentleman aware of this site? If so, what do you think about it and it's supposed refutations of the things you are saying on JW/DW?

The level of ignorance emanating from the Anglican hierarchy and British intelligentsia is astonishing. Are there no Chesterton's or Belloc's left in England? The latter was well aware of the potential for Islamic resurgence 68 years ago. In "The Great Heresies" published in 1938, he wrote:

"May not Islam rise again?

In a sense the question is already answered because Islam has never departed. It still commands the fixed loyalty and unquestioning adhesion of all the millions between the Atlantic and the Indus and further afield throughtout scattered communities of further Asia. But I ask the question in the sense, "Will not perhaps the temporal power of Islam return and with it the menace of an armed Mohammedan world which will shake off the domination of Europeans - still nominally Christian - and reappear again as the prime enemy of our civilization.?" The future always comes as a surprise, but political wisdom consists in attempting at least some partial judgement of what that surprise may be. And as for my part I cannot but believe that a main unexpected thing of the future is the return of Islam."

How is it that Belloc had a handle on it out 68 years ago, but Rowan, with the advantage of actually witnessing the resurgence of militant Islam, seems totally oblivious to the threat?

For John Simpson, then, better to google "John Simpson" and "Jihad Watch" and, as well, "Posted by Hugh."

Lepanto - nobody admires Chesterton more than I do, but, unfortunately, there was a genuine and very silly strain of anti-judaism in his and Belloc's writings, which have ever since been used by the cultural "mainstream" (i.e. atheist and materialist) to damn their writings. This has not quite led them to oblivion - they are too magnificent and prophetic for that, and every generation raises a new wave of Chesterbelloc enthusiasts; but it has given the cultural leadership, of which Williams is a card-carrying member, a great excuse to ignore them.

About Abba Seraphim and the British Orthodox Church, you might find this article from their magazine THE GLASTONBURY REVIEW interesting: http://www.britishorthodox.org/112a.php

Went to Watchjihadwatch site mentioned above and read most of it. Sounds a lot like King Tolerance. Really, it's mostly a lot of gas and has no real effect, just like Kinky. Let Kinky rant, it's good for him to ventilate...

For John Simpson, then, better to google "John Simpson" and "Jihad Watch" and, as well, "Posted by Hugh."

Perhaps put the name in as a string and also identify the site to search in to Google, viz.:

"john simpson" site:jihadwatch.org

And here are the results of that search.

Last week here in Toronto I attended a pro Denmark rally in front of the Danish embassy. It was a pleasant and emotionally gratifying experience—local politicians, media, and concerned citizens were present. Also in the crowd was a group of Coptic Christians holding signs that condemned the persecution of infidels in Egypt. As someone who has read Bostom’s legacy of jihad and Spencers incorrect guide to Islam and the crusades and Hugh’s numerous articles, I felt compelled to approach the Coptic Christians and inquire about their treatment in Egypt.

Our conversation was riveting and confirmed what I had read about the Coptic’s. They told me how they had to pay the Jizyah and other humiliating persecutions that eventually caused them to flee and come to Canada for safety. They also had a thorough understanding of Islam and its history, including the barbarity of Mohamed. One comment they said stood out: They emphatically proclaimed that the bin Ladens and the Zarqawis and the Zawahiris reflect the true Islam, and that moderate Islam is a myth. This statement had added poignancy because most people in the crowd erroneously believe the false dichotomy of “moderate” and extremist Islam, or the typical nonsense of terrorists hijacking a peaceful religion.

l have had some experience around Christina Arabs, and they seem quite hostile to Jews.

This is not an accurate general statement. I have quite a bit of "experience" as well.

There are genuine difficulties aroudn the Orthodox Church of Jeruslalem, which are a lot more complex than one would gather from reading the Israeli press -- with fault around.

I was an excellent syposium on the relationship of the Orthodox Church in Israel to govenrment last year, and I think one should know many Israeli academics support the point that both sides in this divide have made mistakes and that the hostility from the breakdown in relations is not as simple as some suggest.