Its good to get stories like this out so everyone knows what kind of ally Egypt really is. If enough people hear about this sort of thing it could affect how much aid they get from the west in the future.

Posted by: Sheik Canuck (swt) at December 7, 2004 8:29 AM

This is an utter outrage. If Christians forcibly seized Muslim women and baptized them, the howls would reverberate worldwide.

And where are our guardians of justice and fair play in our mainstream media?

Posted by: Kepha1 at December 7, 2004 8:40 AM

Kepha1
Have you seen this post from March 2004 about more forced conversions in Egypt:

http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/archives/001302.php

Setanta

Posted by: Silvester at December 7, 2004 9:37 AM

Here is the Copts' website which seeks to inform the public about Copts and advocates on behalf of the Copts:

http://www.copts.net/index.asp

Posted by: Admiral Don Juan at December 7, 2004 10:33 AM

"Muslims are attacking Copts"? Muslims have been attacking Copts for more than a thousand years. Look at the tiny guide to the Coptic art treasures -- each more beautiful than the next, like the king's daughters in a fairy-tale by Grimm. And think of what was lost in all the years of Muslim depredations directed at non-Muslim sites. Imagine how a land peopled entirely by Copts, by degrees became peopled by Muslims -- who, moreover, have no sense that almost all of them are simply the descendants of people who once were Copts. Think of the pressures, the persecutions, the inability to repair or build churches, the financial burden of the jizyah. Even today the Egyptian legal code takes the Shari'a as its model, and many of its current provisions would be seen by outside non-Muslims as hair-raising.

The odd "Court Copt" such as Butros Butros Ghali (who remembers what happened to his grandfather, assassinated by Muslims) does not change the picture, nor does the fact that some Copts, while in Egypt, parrot the party line about Israel (and even believe it), because they have internalized the views of their Egyptian Muslim oppressors. Humanly understandable -- but it has not really helped the Copts within or without Egypt.

What might help is the kind of open expression of disgust -- as Pope Shenouda, in his self-imposed internal exile under Sadat (ah yes, Sadat, the Prince of Peace, who could do no wrong, and for whom the Israelis obligingly rolled over and played dead -- handing back, for the second time, the Sinai which had become, historically, part of Egypt only in 1922, and which Israel, by all the laws of warfare, had every right to hold onto -- surely as much right as Italy did to the Alto Adige after World War I)--exhibited within recent memory.

Imagine what Egypt would look like today, if it had not traded in its Coptic heritage for a mess of Muslim pottage. Look at that art work in the remaining churches, and think a bit about that.

Posted by: Hugh at December 7, 2004 10:39 AM

At least the Coptic leadership defends the human rights of their flock instead of displacing the responsibility for these crimes on the War on Terror, and other nonsense. The Vatican could learn alot from the Copts.

Posted by: Mike at December 7, 2004 10:55 AM

I may be labouring under an illusion (I'm sure Hugh can put me straight), but doesn't the very name, "Egypt" allude to its Coptic heritage, which is why Gamal Abdul Nasser tried to rename the region the United Arab Republic (albeit incorporating a little more territory)?

Posted by: waterdragon52 at December 7, 2004 12:52 PM

Copts are non-Human in Egypt. During a business flare-up in Asyut a few years ago, a Moslem went home and got his cousins and uncles to help him secure a better deal. By the time the shooting was done, by the time the Egyptian soldiers got their rifles back from the Moslem townsmen the place was wrecked, the Copts were slaughtered ten to one, and the press blamed it all on Christians. copts have so little protection from the Moslem majority that if you truely want a picture of dhimmitude in action you won't find a better example, to my knowledge.

As for European Christians, undeniably privledged in Arabia, to get an interview with a Catholic priest at his church he must get a permit from the state to speak and to have soldiers come to unlock the church doors if you care to take a look inside, the soldiers standing guard outside to keep out the locals. And for Christian services? Not on a weekday. Christians have to meet in the space between the church and the next building, a long strip of sand, generally.

It's not bad for the average Christian, regardless of one's depth of belief, in that the Moslems think of them as such low creatures that so long as they have money nothing is too intolerable. Get drunk, piss on the street, act like a Westerner in caricature, that's all fine. But go to a church, and then watch your head.

The Coptic section of Cairo, a small area on the Nile, is an open sewer, a literal open sewer. the churches are gutted and vandalized while "under repair," and the population lives in terror. we pay for that in tax dollars, foreign aid to Egypt.

If not for the foreign aid and tourist money that pours into Egypt, the population would sarve to death within a month.

In 1900 he population of Cairo was roughly one million; and in 2000 it had reached an unofficial 25 million. Mu math skills aren't very good, but if one works out that rate of increase over the coming 100 years the question is where are all those people going to go to find food? If, as Radio cairo said, the average female produces seven children and population is approximately 70 per cent under the age of 20, what's going to happen to them and to the rest of the world?

Teenagers cannot make sufficient money to raise children of their own. Men live at home till they're 40 before they've saved enough money to but a wife. And then it's baby-making time. they don't have the resources to provide more than the basic falafel for those kids. Egypt depends for its very survival on the West. Without us they will die. Millions of them will die in days and weeks. they are so primitive and so helpless that there is only intervention to save them. Maybe even a return to Christianity, if any of them survive long enough. On their own they cannot live. And there are more arriving every day.

The solution to the population problem in Egypt? The government builds shells of buildings to house the coming 500 million newcomers, shells in the desert, waiting for people to live on more foreign aid. The Moslems aren't simply a threat to the Copts in Egypt: they are a threat to the entire world, but especially to themselves. If their lives are so hopeless and desperate, what chance does a Christian in Egypt have? Copts are barely Human in that context.

If you have any interest in Christians as fellow religionists, or if you have any feeling for oppressed people anywhere, Copts are a good group to choose to help. They are generally more successful financially and more stable socially than Moslems, no polygamy to split up families, and they have a relatively higher education than Moslems. Also, Copts are eligible for immigration under the religion laws. They are welcome to be expelled if there's anyone willing to take them in. Otherwise, they try to keep their heads down and hope the Moslems don't decide it's hunting season again.

Christians have an evil future in Islamic lands. That includes the Dutch and the Swedes. Immediately, it means Christians in Egypt. Islreal transported stone-age Yemenis and Ethiopeans, and if the West has the will, the West could airlift Copts to America, to America's over-all benefit. It won't happen that way. But one Christian in one church might find a way to sponsor one Coptic family to come to America. If one's feelings of brotherhood extend so far, if one isn't simply a rock in Human form, there are numerous ways of aiding the desperate and deserving.

It's easily found in history that the worse Islamic conditions are, the greater the intensity of Islamic revivalism becomes, and that is manifest in the rage they act out against Christians and Jews and Hindus, et cetera. this is such a time. One man, one church, one Coptic family. That's not too much to ask.

Posted by: sonofwalker at December 7, 2004 1:15 PM

WATERGRADON52

To answer your question:

The term ‘coptic’ describing Egyptians and Egypt in general has old roots. The ancient Egyptians referred to their country as “Hwt-ka-Ptah”, which means “House of the Ka of Ptah”. Ptah being one of the earliest gods of Egyptian mythology. This name is also the root of the Greek name for Egypt “Aigyptos”, the root of the Latin “Aegyptus”, from which our own English term derives.

Today, the arabic name for the country is Misr. This is an arabic word that simply means “country”. It apparently is a term that comes from the koran.

Coptic today just refers to the dwindling Christian remnant of Egypt. A remnant that was once the sole population before the arab muslim invasion, the true inheritors of the ancient Greco-Egyptian civilization of pre-muslim Egypt.

Posted by: Belisarius at December 7, 2004 1:22 PM

I assume that the "United Arab Republic" was chosen to emphasize Arab identity, but it is hard to see what other choice might have been made. As to Egypt, for the Western world, and in world history, the word is simply too redolent and evocative to be jettisoned (for the Arabs it is "Misr" so al-Misri would be "the Egptian").

Now that the subject of toponyms has been raised, surely it is worth noting that the charge that the Israelis use those "Biblical names" -- i.e. Judea and Samaria -- for the "West Bank" seems never to be made about those equally Biblical terms, "Sinai," and "Gaza," not to mention such terms from the Bible as "Arabia" and "Egypt" and "Syria" and "Lebanon." Apparently all these terms, dating back to Biblical times and Biblical usage, are okay -- but that is only because they do not, apparently, carry any inadvertent pro-Israeli charge with them.

"Judea" and "Samaria" of course were the placenames used by, inter alia, Jesus and the Apostles (not the rock group, but the real thing). These are the placenames that for two thousand years appeared not just on maps made by Jews, but on English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese -- indeed, on all the maps made by all the mapmakers in the entire Western world.

The term that is ridiculous, and of recent and obvious political vintage, is "West Bank." A term never used before 1949, it was put into usage by the "Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan" (ne "the Emirate of Transjordan"), in order to avoid using the terms "Judea" and "Samaria." For the reason, the local Arabs, after 1967, became known in a stunning act of tendentious re-naming the "Palestinian people." And that is how we arrive at the following:

Statement 1. "The Arabs want the Jews out of Judea...."

Statement 2. "The Palestinian people have a right to all of Palestine.,"

The first is true, but no longer heard.

The second is false, in both its construction of a "Palestinian people" and in its use of the word "Palestine" which now becomes linked to local Arabs -- and what is more, which causes the listener to forget that it is not a place called "Palestine," which existed only in the consciousness of Western Christendom and in that of the Jews, never existed as an idea or an administrative unit for any of its Muslim overlords, including the Turks who possessed the land that then made up Mandatory Palestine beginning in 1921 (the same year that the British lopped off all of Eastern Palestine to create the Arab emirate of Jordan --and earned the fury of the League of Nations' Mandates Commission for so acting).

One last note about toponyms.

Question for study and discussion: in today's papers, in the story about the bombing of the U.S. consulate in Jiddah, some papers, such as The New York Times, show a map with a street grid of the area. It turns out that the U.S. Consulate is located at the corners of Palestine Street and Andalus Street.

Now it is well-known that various Arab countries have taken to immortalizing in street and other placenames their "struggle" against the wicked Jews in the vast Jewish Empire of Israel. That is why there is, for example, the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. Or a Haifa Street.

And in Saudi Arabia, it is not surprising that there is a Palestine Street.

But this is what one should ponder, especially if one is Spanish: why does the American Consulate sit at the corner of Palestine Street and -- Andalus Street.

Why is there an "Andalus Street" running into "Palestine Street" in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia?

Discuss, using appropriate citations from the canonical texts, and the Islamic understanding of what constitutes the dar al-Islam, and what should be its final dimensions.

Take your time in answering. Give it a little more thought than Tom Friedman has ever given one of his books, or than Ross, Indyk et al have ever given the Treaty of al-Hudaibiyya, or than Shimon Peres has ever given to the very idea of an ineluctable historical reality.

Take as much time as you need. Turn in your blue books whenever you feel like it. Spelling and grammar count.

Posted by: Hugh at December 7, 2004 1:31 PM

Like everywhere else they've invaded, the muslims pave over any indigenous culture and replaced it with the ready-made culture of islam, complete with history, language, mosques, and dhimmitude.

This is what Europe has to look forward to. Someday the 'Spaniards' will the remnant population of the original ihabitants of al-Andalus, as the go the way of the Visigoths and Celtic Hispani before them...

Posted by: Belisarius at December 7, 2004 1:33 PM

Christians in muslim countries are truly the forgotten people. They have been forgotten, initially because of our desire not to upset oil producing countries in the ME, and then subsequently, our multi-cultural policies, which were and are in reality, a cover for cowardice in the face of aggressive islam.

There is one sure fire way to stop the jihad and bring the islamic world to its knees- an exchange of populations. Muslims in the West for Christians in muslim nations. Left to themselves, muslim nations will collapse economically and socially. Resulting famine and war will make the average muslim question what allah is really about. They will be queuing up at Churches to register as Christians and sign up on the dole. Hasn’t anyone noticed that muslims in jail for terrorism, would rather stay indefinitely in jail in the West, then go free and back to muslim nations?

Expulsion of muslims suggested by some, carries a moral cost. The moral burden of the subsequent retaliatory massacres of Christians in muslim nations will also be on our shoulders. The advantage of an exchange of population is that it cannot be regarded as expulsion or ethnic cleansing.

The first step towards an exchange is to recognise that this is not a WoT but a religious war. Naming the enemy as Islam is the first step towards finding the right strategy to defeat islam for good.

Posted by: DP111 at December 7, 2004 5:34 PM

"Your christians for our muslims!"

Howz that for the sweetest deal of the century (millenium?). Am sure the christians in muzzie lands would be all to glad to leave and teh muzzies in the free world will have be (not-so-gently) nudged out i guess. Just atkes political will and the strong backing of public opinion.

Posted by: voletti at December 7, 2004 6:52 PM

Unfortunately, the Coptics that I knew (I lived in their community in Egypt for 2 yrs), dearly love their homeland, and are loathe to leave their heritage. Carter, in his day, offered to settle them along the Mississippi, and they refused. But who knows, maybe things have deteriorated such that an exchange program would work. How wonderful that would be to rescue them, and rid ourselves of the plague within, then watch them collapse in upon themselves.

Posted by: jmh at December 7, 2004 9:42 PM

A good book that has a lot on the Copts is "Le radeau de Mahomet" by Peroncel-Hugoz. It has been translated -- as "The Raft of Muhammad" -- and, while out of print, can be obtained through Amazon. Well worth it, and worth reprinting.

Needless to say, Peroncel-Hugoz, who had been reporting from Algeria and Egypt for Le Monde, was promptly taken off such assignments, and now is limited to writing travel articles. That is how those who saw through the Eric-Rouleauvian line at Le Monde were dealt with -- simply taken off the case, just like a detective who is on the verge of discovering that the real killer has burrowed within the police force.

Posted by: Hugh at December 7, 2004 11:03 PM

Setanta: I saw that earlier post, and was just as outraged.

Belisarius: the Arabic name Misr is etymologically related to the Hebrew word Mizraim, which is whay Egypt is called in the Bible. My guess it is what most of the Semitic-speakers along the Mediterranean coasts and points south and east called Egypt; and got carried thither when the Arabs conquered it.

I also think it is important to hold the Egyptian government's feet to the fire on the issue of forced conversion of Copts--especially the abduction of girls and women. Maybe, we could ask questions about this in interfaith conferences, and keep spoiling the show until the Islamic world learns to behave.

By the way, there are a few online petitions out there that can be signed. I've done so.

Posted by: Kepha1 at December 8, 2004 12:07 AM