Coptic leaders have been unsuccessful in efforts to get an audience with Obama. Perhaps he fears that to meet with them would be "Islamophobic."
"Coptic Christians Voicing Frustration With White House As Persecution Widens in Egypt," by Youssef Ibrahim for the New York Sun, May 22 (thanks to George):
The leaders of Coptic Christians, whose community is facing growing persecution in Egypt, say they have been unsuccessful in efforts to gain a hearing from the White House or other parts of the Obama administration.Heightened persecution of Egypt's 12 million Christians coupled with growing power and prestige of their Coptic Diaspora in America and Australia is leading to new political efforts here. Educated and skilled Egyptian Copts who migrated in large numbers in recent decades are talking to Congress, organizing lobbies, and making other efforts to be heard.
They say they are frustrated by the current administration in Washington, particularly after President Obama's overture to the Muslim world via a speech at Cairo. In the speech Mr. Obama President apologized for America's misdeeds to Muslims, stating that he came "to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world." Coptic leaders say that even while reaching out to Muslims the administration has turned a deaf ear to the pleas Arab Christian minority in the very country where he delivered his apology to Muslims.
"The Obama administration's benign neglect of Arab Christians, is putting freedoms and human rights in the whole Middle East at risk," is the way it was put in an interview with the Sun by the president of the U.S. Copts Association, Michael Meunier, who is headquartered in Washington "Friendships with Muslims has been the Obama Administration's opening theme from his first day in office and in that famed Cairo speech in which he extended a hand to all Muslims in partnership."
Mr. Meunier added that that the president's failure to speak as extensively about the persecution of Arab Christians was a departure from American policy and a grave error. "We have no problems with American friendships with Islam and Muslims, but it cannot be accomplished at the expense of our rights as Egyptian Christians and Arab Christians, and as the very lives of our people there are endangered," Mr. Meunier told the Sun.
One area of complaint by the Copt community is a law banning the repair or construction of churches without a "presidential decree." The measure, known as the Hamayuni Law, is based on an 1856 Ottoman decree but was rarely enforced in Egypt under the monarchial dynasty overthrown by army officers in 1952....
This is an issue which should be thoroughly explored.
The speech of President Barak Obama in Cairo omitted one important fact.
I read that although it took place at Cairo University, it was co-hosted by Al-Azhar University.
He didn’t mention that Coptic Christians, although they are barred from attending this university, are forced to pay taxes to support it.
This is only one of the ways in which Coptic Christians in Egypt are discriminated against.
Surely this is like an American President visiting South Africa during apartheid and praising the country for it’s tolerance?
"Surely this is like an American President visiting South Africa during apartheid and praising the country for it’s tolerance?"
This is like an American president visiting Egypt where Christians are discriminated against and praising Islam for it's tolerance.
Which Hussein did. He praised Islam for it's "proud tradition of tolerance."
Which has got to be one of the biggest lies ever uttered of all time. Top Ten.
If someone says that Copts would be unlikely to want to attend Al-Azhar University since it only teaches Islamic theology, I would have to reply that this is untrue. It now seems to teach a variety of subjects including medicine. This seems to be the result of an attempted modernisation program initiated by the Nasser regime during the 1960’s.
Incidentally, do a google search for the video “Unreported World: Egypt's Rubbish People.”
You will see a very disturbing video of the discrimination faced daily by Egypt’s Copts.
Bush was expected to connect the dots ...now we ignore the dots, pretend they are not there that show that the man erroneously elected because he LIED is on the WRONG side in this war of Islam vs the west....
They knew our system of trusting our leaders could be used against us.. there is nothing Obama says that would show that he has our nations best interest at heart.. nothing..
Hey People: "Yemeni cleric advocates killing US civilians"
The esteemed (sarc on) U.S.-born Anwar al-Awlaki:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/ml_yemen_radical_cleric
Anwar al-Awlaki says in the video (see link in my above post):
"Speaking of Hasan [the Ft. Hood Jihadist] the cleric said, "What he did was heroic and great. ... I ask every Muslim serving in the U.S. Army to follow suit."
Mass-Murder of innocent people is "heroic and great." Can someone rid us of this evil human, poisoned by evil Islam?
the tax on the copts is what muslims do to all Christians and jews when they take over.. our faux health care reform is the same... a tax on all but the muslims and they threw in the Omish...Obama is islamizing our nation stealthly... the 9-11 imam wants shariah allowed.. when that happens they can begin to kill all nonbelievers as their constitution, the koran, DEMANDS.. they should not be living in the west.. they cannot abide by our laws and are here to conquer.
2 great websites to go to everyday to learn more are barenaked islam weblog and atlas shrugs....you can see what is coming to US because an islamic appeaser has been elected to lead us to dhimmitude.
Errata Sheet:
For "The Obama administration's benign neglect of Arab Christians, is putting freedoms and human rights in the whole Middle East at risk"
Read "The Obama administration's malign neglect of Arab Christians, is putting freedoms and human rights in the whole Middle East at risk is based on ignorance, confusion, and fear."
And now please add:
"Not a single high-ranking member of the Administration has bothered to read the studies on the treatment of non-Muslims under Muslim rule. Not a single one -- not Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton, not Biden, not Gates, Jones, not the Brennan -- has bothered to read, in all of this time, with all of the hectic meetings, all of the travels, all of the this and all of the that, to sit still of an evening and read "The Dhimmi" and "Islam and Dhimmitude." Not a single member of that group can read French, or has had the wit to ask that Antoine Fattal's study of the Muslim doctrine as to the legal status of non-Muslims under Muslim law, the Shari'a, be translated into English so it is available for reading by our monolinqual rulers, including the one at the top who fancies himself a Citizen of the World and who decries the "ignorance and arrogance" of others who made policies before him. Because if he did, he would realize that the treatment of the Copts in Egypt is linked to the treatment of the Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq, and to the treatment of Hindus and Christians in Pakistan Indonesia, and of Buddhists, Hindus, and Christians, in Bangladesh, and of Christians and animists in Sudan, and with the same essential impulses and attitudes, of Muslim supremacism -- and within that Muslim supremacism vis-a-vis non-Muslims, the Arab supremacism that causes Arabs to mistreat all non-Arab Muslims who live in the lands the Arabs rule -- including Berbers, Kurds, black Africans in the Sudan, and even non-Arab Muslim workers, such as Pakistanis, in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.
The Administration cannot see this. It refuses to find out what Islam teaches, and contents itself with less and less plausible banalities and avoidance of reality. And as a consquence they flail about, and ignore the most effective instruments of Jihad, and continue to squander another trillion dollars,on top of the two trillion already squandered, and they do nothing about the main military problem -- Iran's nuclear project -- and nothing that shows they have at long last recognized, nolens-volens, the meaning, and therefore the menace, of the ideology of Islam.
And so the benign or malign neglect of the Copts in Egypt, and of the Assyrians and Chaldeans in Iraq, and of Hindus and Christians in Pakistan and Bangladesh and of Buddhists and Hindus and (fill in all the rest here, please) will continue, and the instruments of Jihad that most matter in the place that is the made theatre of war, the countries of Western Europe, where deployment of the Money Weapon, propaganda, campaigns of Da'wa and, above all, demographic conquest, proceed apace. And the Americans appear not to notice, or even to take the side of those who out of ignorance and arrogance and criminal negligence, in the political and media elites of Western Europe, helped to create a mortal threat that was entirely avoidable. And the only thing the Americans seem to do, other than shovel more and more money into Afghanistan's hopeless case (and celebrating the incompetent and corrupt-by-family cheat and charmer whose writ runs no further than parts of Kabul, Mohammad Karzai, while shunning the much more honest and competent Abdullah Abdullah) and into meretricious Pakistan, some of whose rulers, now feeling their economic interests threatened (the Taliban and other groups have now exploited the theme of economic-justice from their lairs in North Waziristan, and this frightens the zamindars and the generals, and their spoiled anglophone offspring who expected to inherit the same system, only one where American billions would forever keep things afload, and some in the Taliban have other ideas)and so are willing, at the edges, to fight them -- not out of any new-found sense of loyalty to the Americans, not at all.
Three trillion dollars and thousands of lives might have been saved if those who made policy had studied and and not been afraid to grasp the implications of what they had studied, about Islam, and had done so not with the aid of smiling Muslim apologists, but by reading the greatest Western scholars of Islam, and by reading the Muslims who write for a Muslim audience and not, so carefully, so cunningly, so plausible-deniably, so deliberately misleadingly, for a non-Muslim audience. And finally, they might -- has Brennan, has Jones, has Gates, has Clinton, has Biden, has Obama? -- have read the most articulate and public apostates, that is the defectors from the Army of Islam, including Magdi Allam (in English), Wafa Sultan, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Nonie Darwish, Ali Sina, and dozens of others. Why not? Are they liars? Are they agents of some foreign power? Why are they, and the scholars, and the commentaries, and the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira themselves (with appropriate non-apologetic guides) not read in the upper levels of power? Why have the studies of Muslim psychology, from the recent article of Nicolai Sennels, all the way back to Andre Servier (with his "Psychology of the Musulman" in 1923) not been read? They are on-line; they are a click away.
Why? What do these people do all day, and why have they fallen away from the habit of reading? Their hectic vacancy, their making of policies based on ignorance, arrogance, and of course, continued propitiation of the Idols of the Age (Diversity is a Good Thing, Tolerance is a Good Thing - but what if it is a diseased diversity, a toleration of those who are murderously intolerant?).
And we, you and I, who did this studying and this reading, and who have pondered the matter, and who have not ignored how Muslims behave toward non-Muslims as the devout begin to assert themselves, and Muslims, the majority, the primitive masses of Muslims, not the smiling smooth rulers whom our own rulers, whom our own rulers, when they travel here and travel there, meet, and talk to, and think by meeting they have "better understood the situation" or now "know what the Arabs or assorted other Muslims want." No, they do not, not by talking to these masters of Taqiyya and Tu Quoque, not these permanent practitioners of the "War Is Deception" philosophy. No, that is not the way, that is often the worst way, to find out what is going on. A little sitting down by the reading light -- that is what is called for. That need does not come to an end when one has, cap-and-gowned, received that degree that, for some, signifies an end to all serious reading, as they start their appalling climb to the top.
Official Washington is full of mediocre but high-degreed people whose notion of reading at home is of some thick unreadable memoir by some former Washington bigshot, a Book-of-the-Month-Club level of cultivation. But these present bigshots who presume to protect and instruct us have not learned enough, not nearly enough, about Islam, or about ways to avoid the boots-on-the-goddam-ground squandering, and the mental, and moral confusion that persist and that cause such anguish, no unnecessarily, not only to the Copts now speaking out -- the occasion for this comment -- but to those other non-Muslims and even the most advanced Muslims, who out of fear and filial piety cannot speak truthfully and openly about all the ways that Islam itself is responsible for the political, economic, social, intellectual, and moral failings and failures of Muslim polities and Muslim peoples. In the advanced West, some of them -- Wafa Sultan, Ibn Warraq, Magdi Allam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and others -- can do so.
We ought to listen and to read. And many of us do. But those who run us -- they don't. And it is all of us who are suffering, and will suffer, as a result.
Odyessus
“Unreported World: Egypt's Rubbish People.”
Google "Krautwurst archive", it's in this archive with 35 other full length videos.
I feel objectionable today, but will comment anyway. Your statements that our present government is ignorant is, of course, correct, but I make one statement in their defense: You realize that most of them are products of U.S. schools and universities which are rank with perverted teaching, propaganda, and political motivation. Our Woodstock generation is to be pitied.
Odyessus
“Unreported World: Egypt's Rubbish People.”
Google "Krautwurst archive", it's in this archive with 35 other full length videos.
A short history of the Coptics who have been considered the first Christians
The word “Copt” is from the Greek word, “Ai-gypt-os” meaning Egypt. . From the time Egypt embraced Christianity in 54AD to the time Islam invaded Egypt in 642 AD, all the people of Egypt were called Copts,but after the Islamic invasion, some Copts embraced Islam and excluded themselves from the name. Those Coptics who remained faithful to their Christian faith clung to their Coptic identity, and still do today.
There is no official count for the Coptics of Egypt today. The Egyptian census bureau keeps this as a secret. This is also seen as a reason to avoid any demands by Coptics for fair and equitable treatment, however, reliable sources put the number at more than 12 millions,or nearly 15% of Egypt’s population of 80 million. In Western Countries that have Muslim populations within that percentage range, unfortunately the aggressive and non assimilating religion of Islam because a serious internal threat to a countries sovereignty
It was St.Mark who brought Christianity to Egypt, he was one of the 70 apostles of the early Christian church and wrote the "Gospel of Mark" of the New Testament. He was the first Patriarch of an unbroken 117 patriarchy of the Coptic Orthodox church. St Mark was the first martyr of many Coptic martyrs who gave their life for the faith. In 68 AD, St Mark was killed when he was seized and dragged with a rope through the main streets of the city of Alexandria..
In the year 642 AD the Arabs led by Amre Ibn El invaded Egypt under the banner of Islam ending the Coptic era. Islam spread in Egypt as a result of imposing a high tax on Coptics (People of the Book) called Jizya. Those among the Coptics, who were able to pay the tax, did so and remained as Christians. The poor Coptics were offered two choices, either to convert to Islam or be killed. Many Coptics were martyred. Those Coptics who remained Christians were reduced to the Dhimmi status, a third class citizenship, after the Arab Muslims and the Egyptian Muslims. It is a class of people who are allowed just to exist with little or no rights. Soon the Arabic language was forced onto all Egyptians and the Coptic language was restricted until it completely disappeared except in church liturgy.
Today Coptics in Egypt are suffering from discrimination and persecution. They are frequently subject to terrorist attacks on their persons, homes, businesses and churches. Nearly a month passes by without a major assault taking place. According to a study made by Ibn Khaldoun Research Center, more than 240 major attacks took place just between the years 1972- 2003.
Hundreds of Coptic young girls, including many under aged, are being kidnapped, raped, forced to convert to Islam and marry Muslim men.
The Egyptian Constitution stipulates that all Egyptians are equal under the law. But the discrimination is widely practiced with sanction from the government. Areas of discrimination include but not limited to education, employment, freedom of religion, building churches, and parliamentary representation.
Many colleges limit the enrollment of Coptics by imposing a quota of 1 or 2 % while the Coptics are about 15% of the populations. A total educational system, from elementary to college, called Al Azhar which is fully funded by all tax payers does not accept Coptics as students or as teachers or administrators
• Christians who want to convert to Islam are welcomed with open arms, while Muslims who would like to convert to Christianity are usually imprisoned and tortured, some die from torture.
• Building churches still require a permit from regional governess for repairs. Building new churches still require approval of the President. Even when the president approves, the security apparatus must also investigate to see if the Muslim community would not object. If they object, the church may not be built. Many new communities don’t have churches. A permit to build a church could take as long as 20 years and may never be secured.
As a result of this harsh treatment, many Coptics are leaving the country of their forefathers to become immigrants in countries all over the world.
A Muslim writer predicted that Christianity will disappear from Egypt within 100 years.
This was condensed in early may from an article written by Mounir Bishay who is president of the Los Angeles based Christian Coptics of California.
I just finished watching “Unreported World: Egypt's Rubbish People.” Excellent piece! The coptic christans live under tremendous cirumstances. The egyptian gov't is explicitly (eg. taking away the national ID pass) removing those coptic christans from their christans identites.
Coptic leaders have been unsuccessful in efforts to get an audience with Obama.
Uh huh...But people like Andy Stern of SEIU, several dozen visits, and other radicals and communists, as well as Muslims have no problem getting multiple audiences...How obvious is it that this guy has to go...The Manning trial, held on the basis of the 10th amendment to the Constitution, found Obama and Columbia University guilty on several criminal charges...
There was almost a total news blackout of this trial, not even much of the usual 'haw haw, your wacko' type of coverage...But no matter what, this was a historic event because this has not been done before that I know of...Liberals would have done it with Bush, had they thought of it...Any actual proof will be turned over to legal authorities for examination and possible charges...If there is something there that is 'actual proof of criminality', it will be hard to make it go away...
Another brilliant post Hugh. Where are you pulling these out of?
My gibus. I ran out of rabbits.
Seems there's a lot of things the folks in the Obama Administration don't read, like the texts of Islam and the new Arizona immigration bill, never mind history in general, which subject Obamanistas seem determined to remain forever ignorant of.
This is the actual "war on terror". The scriptural, and cumulative social force that is Islamic tradition. The reason why Egypt is the way it is in regards to the religious persecution of its minorities is the very same reason why a Catholic Church was burned to the ground by thousands of "radical" Muslims just a month ago outside of Jakarta. The same reason that the Government of Indonesia can not act upon the letter of the law in regards to religious freedom is the same reason why Egypt can not act upon the same supposed equality of faiths. The same reason why we can't have freedom of speech in the west any longer, jihad violence. The same reason why Egypt has not been able to follow through on banning FGM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=272w7vt_BJg, jihad violence, the reason why we in the west are being pressured into accepting Islamic norms, jihad violence. The reason is the religopolitical nature of Islam and the prescription for violence in Islamic doctrine.
This is what we are allowing into our society, this is what Muslims carry with them as cultural baggage. I am not going to say that all Muslims are bad people, but this is the reality, and we are already seeing the effects upon our society:
The reason why jihaad is prescribed:
http://www.islam-qa.com/en/ref/34647/establishing%20Islam%20by%20the%20sword
[al-Nisa’ 4:75]
3 – Removing fitnah (tribulation)
"The fitnah of the kuffaar themselves and their preventing others from hearing and accepting the truth. That is because the kaafir systems corrupt the innate nature and reason of people, and make them get used to worshipping and submitting to things other than Allaah, getting addicted to alcohol, wallowing in the mire of sexual licence, and losing all characteristics of virtue. Whoever is like that can rarely tell truth from falsehood, good from evil, right from wrong. So jihad is prescribed in order to remove those obstacles that prevent people from hearing and accepting the truth and getting to know it."
The greatest evil the world has ever known is growing inside our country, the war is not in Afghanistan, or Iraq anymore, because we have been unable to address what the real conflict is about. It is here being spread on the internet, in your local mosques, this doctrine is against everything this nation was founded upon, yet it gets protection under our constitution as a "religion". Well I say Islam should not have the protection granted by our constitution as a religion, because it is at direct odds with our liberty and freedom. Not only for us, but for non-Muslims, and even Muslims themselves around the world.
We will either stand up for what we believe in, which is at odds with Islamic doctrine, or we will lose our freedom, because Muslims will gladly take it away. The Pakistanis even said on national news the other day that making pictures of the Prophet Mohammed is blasphemy, and not protected by free speech. We see satirists all over the western world being persecuted by Muslims for exercising what we consider sacred rights in regards to freedom of expression whis is at odds with Islamic tradition. What is the president? Our rights go away under the pressure of Islamic jihad violence, which is the mandate of Islam.
To address Egypt in regards to their treatment of Christians would cause us to come full circle in our understanding of a great many things in the world today. There is much being done to suppress free discourse on this subject, the US government has been aware of the depth and proximity of this conflict since at least the early 90's in Bosnia when European Muslims began waging "holy war" on European soil. The Muslim president of Bosnia wrote this in his Islamic Declaration, which was reprinted during his campaign:
Page 26 of his Islamic Declaration part 2 "The Islamic Order" on Religion and Law, "The briefest definition of the Islamic order defines it as a unity of religion and law, upbringing and power, ideal and interest, spiritual interest and community, willingness and force."
Pretty soon, within our lifetimes non-Muslims will face difficult choices, because now it will be our freedom on the line. It starts now, the first wave has already happened. In 2004 the first western satirist was killed, the rest have been on the run ever since ... historically when our social canaries begin to fall from their perches tyranny is sure to follow.
Once the Coptic Christians were the only citizens of Egypt.Their very name suggests they are 'Egyptians'.But the Muslim Arabs came and conquered,and subdued the Coptics and as they did in Persia, they introduced Islam and forced the people to convert,or pay extra taxes for remaining a Christian.Sad to say all the rich people left Egypt and the poor had to succumb to Islam.
Now those Coptics,who are in USA organized a rally to white House to meet President Obama,but Obama refused to meet them.
Our Christian leaders in churches have more power to bring Obama to his right senses,and warn the Egyptian government to stop the persecutions,rapes,and kidnappings of Coptic Christians in Egypt,or the free money that they get from USA will be stopped..But our Church leaders are not taking any interest for their Christian brothers in Egypt. I doubt Obama will have a second term if he behave like this in America.
The moment I read the article, and before I had read any of the comments here, the phrase in that article that stood out to me, as though highlighted with fluorescent ink, was "benign neglect". At once I thought: No. Not 'benign neglect'. *Malign* neglect.
Then I read Mr Fitzgerald's comment.
Nothing to add, except that in Canada and in Australia, quite recently, the Coptic Christians have held public protests - marches and rallies - to raise awareness of the appalling way in which Copts in Egypt are being treated by the Muslims there.
It is incumbent on all of us jihadwatchers to keep an eye and an ear open, so that as and when other protests - by the Copts, and by other groups whom Muslims are tormenting - are held within our countries, we may if at all possible, attend.
We should also be writing to politicians, and those in charge of immigration and refugee intake in our countries, urging that if we are to take immigrants from places like Egypt, we are being very stupid to take in Muslims from those places; we should be taking the desperate, persecuted *non-Muslims* instead.
...benign neglect of Arab Christians
..................
As Hugh Fitzgerald well notes, there is nothing "benign" in this neglect...
While the world stares at Israel, obsessed with the subject of Jooooz ...
You know if all muslims read their korans from a small age, I don't see how any of them are free from racist bigotry.
Just by osmossis alone, some of that hate must reach their brains. I wonder how many muslims are really hate free and
non-bigots.
Idiot Americans have put an inexperienced traitor into the White House, and this is the result.
So at this point I simply EXPECT the anointed-closet-muslim "savior" to do everything against established American foreign policy and friendships and common sense, and instead take a borderline treasonous stance on every issue. So nothing surprises me anymore that Hussein does. I just consider what would be the worst thing he could do, and sit back and wait for him to do it, or when I hear about it, like this, it's no surprise: it's just in keeping with who he is.
Here's what that Muslim sympathizer Obama had to say in 2002:
"You want a fight, President Bush? Let’s fight to make sure our so-called allies in the Middle East, the Saudis and the Egyptians, stop oppressing their own people, and suppressing dissent, and tolerating corruption and inequality, and mismanaging their economies so that their youth grow up without education, without prospects, without hope, the ready recruits of terrorist cells."
So how about it, Mr. President?