The Vice President of the Jihad Watch Board of Directors, Hugh Fitzgerald, observes that the reaction of the Coptic community in America to the murders of the Armanious family is extremely telling in itself:
Surely what is of note in this case is that the Copts in Jersey City seem to have little doubt as to who carried out, or was behind, the murder. Consider the fury expressed against Muslims and against Islam at the funeral, a fury heightened by what the Copts in attendance took to be a transparent attempt by one Muslim cleric to make an appearance not out of any real sympathy, but only, the Copts believed, to shore up the Muslim position with the American media.
That suspicion, that fury, tells us a good deal about what the Copts must have suffered at the hands of Muslims, in Egypt and even here. And that remains true, no matter who committed the murder, though we are entitled to speculate reasonably. If the Louvre were bombed tomorrow, it would — given what we know about the Islamic attitude toward almost all art, reasonably believe that Muslims were behind it, even if in the end it turned out to be someone else.
Furthermore, the statements quoted in the press by Muslims in Jersey City are entirely full of self-pity (“Why does everyone blame us?” “We are ‘sick of this crap’ about Islam”) and noticeably devoid of any expressed pity for the murdered family of Copts.
Finally, one can find expressions of satisfaction about the murder at Muslim websites about the murder. Those remarks should not be forgotten.
All of these — the suspicions of the Copts, based on their felt history of persecution, and their belief that Muslims are quite capable of such actions (now, where would they get such ideas, if not from their entire life experience?), and the behavior of Muslim neighbors devoid of sympathy, and of other Muslims crowing at the event — remain true no matter who committed the murders.
But the point remains: the father and the older daughter were too proud, too unapologetic, too enthusiastic, about their Christian beliefs, and this infuriated Muslims who believe that once a dhimmi, always a dhimmi (one wonders about the Chaldean Christians out in Dearborn, as they worry over their relatives subject to Muslim attack in Iraq). It is hardly unreasonable to conclude, at this point, that it was for that they were killed. And if it should prove otherwise, there is still this matter of how the Copts have reacted, and how the Muslims have also. Both reactions tell us a good deal.
If The New York Times and the rest of the media would give greater attention to this story, and at least try to make people understand why the Copts in Jersey City have no doubts about who committed the crime, by finding out what it is in the experience of those Copts that makes them come to that conclusion, instead of vague allusions to “communal strife” and so on — if, in other words, the persecution of the Copts in the land of which they are the descendants of the original inhabitants, and not those who call themselves Muslim Arabs (most of whom, no doubt, are themselves the descendants of Copts as well, if they only realized it, their ancestors over the centuries having concluded that it was easier to convert (“revert”) to Islam.
More seriousness please, less frivolity by the media. Less about the Armani fashion empire, more about the Armanious family murder, is called for.
Any attempt to “insabbiare” (sand over) the results of the investigation will not work for this case. Nor would it something to be forgotten or overlooked. It would be likely, in fact, to get more and more attention, and to become a “teaching moment” on the inculcated murderous hostility that can be found in many passages in Qur’an and Hadith. If the police in Jersey City are unaware of those passages, they — and the police everywhere in the West, as well as the other security services — need to learn about what Islam teaches. Repetition of pious phrases, pretense that it is only a “handful of crazies,” (akin to those Muslims who think that by constantly repeating that no Muslims cheered on the afternoon of September 11, we will simply forget the reports from Cairo, from Baghdad, from Riyadh and Jeddah, from Ramallah and Nablus and Gaza, from Amman, even from Hamza Street in Beirut — not to mention the reports from Pakistan, Indonesia, indeed everywhere except, of course, Tehran, where many are now heartily sick of the mullahs, and the Islamic Republic for which they stand), is accompanied by continued seeming unawareness of why it would be perfectly plausible that, for the sins of having promoted Christianity, the Armanious family would be killed.
Still more disturbing is the reliance, in the American armed services as well as in some of its police forces, on Muslims to come in and teach about “what Islam teaches.” The naivete here is the stuff of schoolgirls, and beyond belief.