Nothing has changed, except for the new generation of victims. Note also the state's adherence in practice to Sharia guidelines rather than civil law, and al Azhar University's affirmation of Aisha's age at marriage as a precedent -- something apologists adamantly deny to Western audiences. "Forced Islamization of Christian Girls Supported By Egyptian State," by Mary Abdelmassih for the Assyrian International News Agency, December 23:
Cairo (AINA) -- The phenomenon of abduction, rape and forced Islamization of Christian girls in Egypt was shown for the first time on the Christian TV channel "Life TV", which broadcasts from outside Egypt and has nearly 60 million Arab-speaking viewers in Egypt and around the world.
The testimonies of the victims and their families came as a shock to many, including Egyptian Christians, since this issue is taboo for the Egyptian media, "Our role is to expose those behind those crimes," said Rasheed El Maghreby, the program's moderator.
The program was aired in mid-November 2009, and interviewed Mr. Magdi Khalil, an authority on Coptic affairs who has made a complete field study on forced Islamization of Christian minors in Egypt. Mr Khalil explained that this phenomenon in its present form is nearly 40 years old, and most of these conversion crimes, with a few isolated exceptions, are carried out by organized Islamization gangs or "Islamization Mafia", a termed coined by him, which are fully funded by the state and supported by State Security.
"Those highly organized gangs carry out systematic planning," says Khalil. "Besides violent forced abductions, other devious means include allurement, deception, psychological pressure, financial temptation, emotional relationships ending in rape and photographs taken to blackmail the victims into conversion, and spreading fear in the hearts of their families. They turn the minor into a broken, humble, and submissive person who drifts along a road which would have been impossible for her to take under normal circumstances or in an atmosphere of family or legal protection, and of her own free will."
The TV program aired three cases of victims throwing light on the complete disadvantage of the affected families in front of the "Islamization mafia", in view of the complete lack of support, if not collusion, of the authorities. [...]
Another incident was described by a villager who said that his daughter, who was less than 16-years-old, was abducted as she went to the nearby grocery store. When he reported the matter to the police, he was told he was causing 'sectarian strife.' He said: "I asked to see my daughter just for 10 minutes, but they refused. I was detained at the police station until the officer received a phone call that my daughter was taken away." He said that the police forced him to leave the village. "My daughter returned to the village 3 days after I left. They have taken my home by force and now my daughter lives in it with her Muslim husband....
Video of victims' testimony can be found at AINA's site, linked above.
"This is thuggery. As long as it is for the benefit of Islam, all authorities join together as if it is an 'armed invasion.' Sharia over the law and Islam over the nation," said Khalil.
The latest fraud mentioned on the TV program is that Muslim gangs who dress as Coptic priests, offer a car lift to Christian girls and then abduct them. "The Coptic Church has warned its congregation against letting any unknown person dressed as a priest into their homes or accepting a lift," said Khalil.
Several international organizations have criticized Egypt regarding forced Islamization of minors, among which is the International Religious Freedom report from 2005 to 2009, the Helsinki Commission Report of November 9th, 2006, Human Rights Watch Report of November 12th, 2007, and on November 10th, 2009, Christian Solidarity International issued a report quoting 25 cases of forced Islamization of minors.
H.H. Pope Shenouda protested as far back as December 17th, 1976, during a conference held in Alexandria, saying: "There is a practice to convert Coptic girls to embrace Islam and marry them under terror to Muslim husbands." He demanded that the abducted girls be returned to their families.
Sheikh Fawzy al-Zafzaf, former head of the Azhar committee for inter-religious dialogue told Al-Destoor Newspaper on November 17th, 2009, that he did not deny the existence of cases of abduction and forced Islamization of Coptic girls in Egypt. He called on the government to intervene to stop such acts by imposing just penalties on people who commit them.
Pope Shenouda warned during a lecture on March 17, 2004 that he received thousands of letters of abduction of Christian girls through certain Islamic store chains which lure them away by being told they won a prize and have to go to an upper floor in the building to collect it.
"Christian activists who work in cases of abductions and forced Islamization have a good idea about who the organizations, State Security officers and businessmen supporting the Islamization gangs," he explained. [...]
Despite the existence of laws in Egypt setting the minimum age of conversion to Islam at 21, as well as legally forbidding marriage of a girl younger than 18 without the consent of her parent or guardian, "we still find fatwas (religious edicts) being issued to justify those criminal acts," says Khalil.
The Chairman of the Al-Azhar Fatwa Committee, Sheikh Abdulah Mogawer, talking to Al-Arabya-net justified the marriage of two underage Christian girls (15 and 17 when abducted) by saying that they accept Islamization at the age of 16 . "According to Sharia, the main criteria for marriage to be valid is for the girl to reach puberty and is not tied to a specific age. Aisha married [consummated] the Prophet at the age of 9. Some girls might reach puberty at 14 or 15 years old, depending on her physical growth," said Mogawer.
no doubt about it...Islam is the worst religion on the planet..
I think the moslems that deny Aisha's age are the ones that are embarrassed by it, and they know it is indefensible. And yes, there are many that actually have no clue about it because their imam has not told them, or lied to them. The ones that try to defend the despicable act always start out with the lame excuse that it was part of the culture and a common practice back then. But when asked why their allah/Satan did not forbade their monster prophet from having sex with the child, they are at a loss for words. Whether it was common practice and excepted in that time and place is irrelevant since allah/Satan banned many other common and accepted practices of the day. Lots and lots of them. I think there are something like 70+ rules for moslem bathroom habits alone. So allah/Satan sure loved to set out rules. But, for some strange reason allah/Satan forgot to mention to his monster prophet that having sex with children was.....haram.
Bottom line is allah/Satan liked the idea of old men having sex with children, or the monster prophet made allah/Satan up in the his elaborate scam.
You be the judge.
OT - I have been reading on comments lately (other sites) that Jesus was a socialist because he advocated giving to the poor. Any thoughts on this, people? I don't know what to think about it. Thanks for your input.
Beyond the actual tragic lives of these poor souls, perhaps the important facet of this story is its suppression in the mainstream media. Like the "youths" who riot in France and the "militants" who kill and maim in "restive" southern Thailand and dozens of other localities in the world, the unreported persecution of Christians and other religious minorities throughout Darul Islam is one of the most important sociological phenomenon occurring in the world today. It is part and parcel of any true understanding of Islamic culture and theology...and it is so thoroughly repressed in the media that IT DOESN'T SEEM TO EXIST!
We are in deep shit, folks. Ignorance is the antithesis of bliss...(when the chickens come home to roost). Our fellow-countrymen are ignorant and deliberately kept that way by a spineless, obsequious, dhimmified media.
and al Azhar University's affirmation of Aisha's age at marriage as a precedent -- something apologists adamantly deny to Western audiences.
I've seen some leftards claim that, back in Mahound's time, 1 actually meant 2 and 2 meant 4; and, therefore, Aisha was actually 18, and not 9, when she was raped by the Arabian Hitler. Try to argue that with them, and they'll shout down anyone with an opposing point of view.
Just as Turkish PM erDOGan's claim that a mahoundian can never commit genocide, mahoundians' claims that mahoundianism gives women more rights and dignity than secular Western laws and some leftards' claims that Mao and Stalin were never responsible for the death of a single innocent individual, such claims have to be made up in minds that inhabit parallel universes completely disconnected from reality...
Darcy: Jesus as a "socialist" is stretching things. Yes, he advocated giving to the poor. However, to give or not to give is a choice each of us makes, not something compelled by the state.
Ask a redistirbutionist if he thinks I deserve a cut of his paycheck because I don't earn as much as he does, and he'll say, "not on your life!" Next, ask him why we should give to the abstract poor, and he'll say "it's the right thing to do!"
And, having lived in China and having visited Viet Nam and Laos, I assure you that socialist countries also have their poor.
This article comes as a surprise to me only insofar as I didn't know Copts had their own pope. The rest of it, not so much.
Darcy - As far as Jesus being a socialist goes, any time anyone gives a damn about people beyond themselves or their immediate family and friends, they can be technically branded a "socialist" Would Jesus have been a "redistributionist" had he managed to oust the Romans and take his rightful place as king of the Jews? Perhaps; he seems to have liked to lead by example, though. Remember, he never did denounce taxation, per se; but like other Jews of the time, he probably (and rightfully) had a real problem as to where those taxes were going (to the Romans, of course, and not to help the local Jewish poor). If he had been against taxation in general, he likely wouldn't have hung around with the tax collectors, and wouldn't have told the people of Jerusalem to "render unto Ceasar what is his". Not only was that statement one of separating state and church affairs, it also sets down taxation as a state's right (perhaps reasoning that well, money is minted by the state, so it can ask for some of it back for its own purposes.)
So, would he have imposed a Poor Tax of sorts upon wealthier Jews if he had been in charge? I think so. But he would have been the first one in line paying it, I think.
Of course, this is my usual sort of speculation, based on the idea of Jesus as a good man, a rightful king, and would-be benevolent leader rather than as anything supernatural.
This targetted abduction, sometimes preceded by studied acts of seduction, of Coptic girls in Egypt also takes place not over the rest of Dar al-Islam, but in the countries of Western Europe, especially among Pakistanis who target Hindu girls in Great Britain. Google a bit for the dismal and horrifying details.
This is the kind of grotesquely ultra-violent, fanatically disordered, systemically corrupt, pathologically mendacious society upon which "dave742" would depend for reliable statistics on crimes against women by which to glibly compare them with the statistics of vastly superior (but needless to say imperfect) societies in the West. Indeed, a key part of that superiority is the West's progress in self-critical transparency by which airing our own dirty laundry has become a science involving the news media, all branches of the law, and politics; and in addition self-critical transparency has in the West become a thriving cultural industry, thoroughly explored in all the arts as well as academe. This virtue of self-critical transparency is not imposed from without, but has grown organically with the West's progress, and is thus not only an institutional phenomenon, but partakes of the general sociological and psychological atmospherics.
And last but not least, this virtue of self-critical transparency has progressed so broadly and deeply throughout Western societies, it has been taken to excess -- oftentimes a morbid excess by many Westerners, most often seen in Leftists and in a more diluted form in PC MCs, an excess that resembles autophagy, hypocritically and incoherently parasitical in its relatively milder forms, pathologically self-destructive in its more virulent forms.
And speaking of this morbid excess of the good virtue of self-critical transparency, "dave742" -- that is, if he is as he claims a non-Muslim Westerner -- perversely uses this amazing, historically unprecedented degree of self-critical transparency of the West against the West, by exercising the gall to compare the West not only on an equal footing with Muslim societies, but even unfavorably with them! -- societies whose degree of sociopolitico-cultural self-criticism and transparency is rather on the level of totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or Red China, if not even far worse because the pathology of fanaticism among the general populace in Muslim societies is more endemic, whereas it is reasonable to assume that probably a majority of ordinary people in the classical totalitarian societies (Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or Red China) were unwilling and coerced participants, and not as brainwashed as are Muslims to voluntarily and fervently impose the totalitarianism of Islam upon themselves as much as to try to impose it upon others.
"I didn't know Copts had their own pope."
Not only that, Copts subscribe to a Christology that long ago was deemed to be heretical, called Monophysitism, which in a nutshell explains the paradoxical mystery of God's incarnation as Man in Jesus Christ as a phenomenon whereby the two natures (divine and human) became fused into one nature in Jesus Christ. By contrast, the main three branches of Christianity -- Orthodox, Catholic and mainstream Protestant -- maintain that the two natures in Jesus Christ remain distinct yet unified.
Copts thus are Monophysites, from the Greek mono (one) and physis (nature).
Thanks, Hesp.
Don't know much about them, though I have a cousin who is married to one; his family are Egyptian expatriates who got the hell out in the 1960s. They knew each other, and were friends since, early childhood. But they always lived quite far away, so I never got into that kind of stuff with him, and, since us kids grew up, we haven't had too much to do with each other. She's stage-shy, so they had their wedding in Hawaii so no one could show up for it. :)
There should be an 11th commandment for every
Christian living a country where the Muslim
population is over 10%. Thou should never go
out of thy home without a loaded gun.
This deeply-disturbing program was produced and aired by Fr Zakaria Botros' 'Life TV'.
Now what needs to happen next is for mainstream national broadcasters in every major non-Muslim country to do a deal with 'Life TV' to rebroadcast the program, exactly as is, only accurately dubbed or subtitled into the local languages (e.g. English for the Anglosphere, French, Italian, Russian, Spanish).
Aussie jihadwatchers - let's send this link to the folks at SBS and ABC and *demand*, vociferously, that they do a deal with Life TV to rebroadcast it...in primetime, preferably.
The Copts in Australia, the USA and Canada should *demand* of their national broadcasters, that this particular story from 'Life TV' be bought/ rented and shown.
Of course, what we now need is a 'companion' documentary, produced by non-Muslims in Pakistan, Bangladesh, *and the UK*, describing the very similar tactics being employed by Muslims to prey upon non-Muslim women in *those* countries. (One could focus, say, on the story of Anila and Saba in Pakistan together with the testimony of some of the Hindu families or Sikh families from that country whose daughters have been snatched and 'disappeared' and 'converted').
I understand Arab Muslims deliberately target naive Jewish girls in Israel itself, for similar seductions/ abductions; and there is, of course, the harrowing tale of Hannah Menashe, which would warrant a documentary of its own, no-holds-barred.
All these horrible facts need to become common knowledge across the entire non-Muslim world - especially in those places where the Muslim population is, at present, still small, smiling and lying and lying low while it builds up its power base.
Darcy: Good question. Just off the top of my head -- though the subject deserves (and I do not doubt has received) far greater attention than I am able to give it --, the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels served other people directly and not through some set of government agencies or bureaucracy. Also, he ministered both to the wealthy and the poor, making no spiritual distinction. (Though, he did claim, famously, at one point that a camel could more easily pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man could enter the Kingdom of G_d!)
My impression of Jesus is that his message centered on redemption, the salvation of the nation of Israel and the redemption of individual persons. According to him, righteousness consisted of treating "the least of these" as though they were sons of G_d. I submit, for an act to be righteous, it must be entirely voluntary, not commanded by government or other men, but solely by G_d and one's conscience. That seems to exclude entirely the ideology of Marx or any of its "socialist" derivatives and variants. Jesus' acts of mercy, which he strongly recommended to all his disciples and followers, reflected, I believe, in his view, the grace of G_d to His children, not instances of forceable redistribution by the state.