Why are all these Copts praying for equality and an end to discrimination? Don’t they know how tolerant Islam is? Alas, only Muslims who are speaking to reporters in the West talk about tolerance and respect for other faiths. The Muslims in Egypt obviously have a different view. The Copts are asking the government “to issue a uniform law for building worship houses” because while it is very easy to get a permit to build a mosque, it is virtually impossible to get a permit to build a church. This is a reflection of the old dhimmi law forbidding dhimmis to build new houses of worship. Here again, Islamic apologists in the West would have you believe that such laws are a relic of history, but they have not managed to convince their Egyptian coreligionists of that. Nor, by the way, have they even bothered to try.
“EGYPT: Thousands of Christians gather to pray for equality in a Muslim land,” by Amro Hassan in the Los Angeles Times, September 13 (thanks to James):
Around 7,000 Coptic Christians gathered at the Father Kyrillos church on the outskirts of Cairo to pray for an end to “discriminaton” during the celebration of the Egyptian Coptic New Year this weekend.
The gathering Friday came after calls by a number of Coptic organizations to abandon this year’s celebrations as a protest against the perceived oppression of Christians in Egypt were met by deaf ears.
Thousands of Copts attended ceremonial masses on the same day.
But groups like Youth Against Discrimination and Copts United for Egypt urged Copts to show anger by declaring Sept. 11 — Coptic New Year — a general sit-in for Christians throughout the country….
The attending crowd carried signs with slogans asking the government to issue a uniform law for building worship houses and condemning what they called the forceful conversion of Coptic minors to Islam.