Source: NewAge Islam.com
The beheading of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya by forces sympathetic to Islamic State over recent days is sadly not an isolated case. On the contrary, it is the latest of countless outrages perpetrated against Christians in or near the Church’s Biblical heartlands over many years.
The latest victims were migrant workers from Upper Egypt. The announcement by the authorities in Cairo of retaliatory bombing raids on terrorist training camps in Libya should not blind us to an inconvenient truth – that more than 600,000 Christians have left Egypt over the past 30 years under both Islamist and supposedly secular regimes. Many got out because their homes or churches or businesses had been firebombed.
Before travelling to Egypt to research my book Christianophobia, I interviewed immigrant Copts in Britain whose stories formed a pattern. One, a senior GP, explained how no Christian medical student at his university in Asyut, Upper Egypt, had been placed in the “Good”, “Very Good” or “Excellent” classes in their final exams. The injustice convinced him that he would never prosper in his own country, especially with the rise during the 1970s of the militant Gama Islamiya, whose members dominated some campuses. “They started attacking Christian students,” he told me, “barging into our rooms and tearing down pictures of the Virgin Mary and other religious materials. A fight ensued. I and other Christians were expelled from university accommodation, but the Muslims who caused trouble were allowed to remain.” My interviewee was fortunate in some respects. Other Christian students in the region were murdered.
This story reflects a broader reality: that acute hostility to Christians in the Middle East long predates the invasion of Iraq. After the assassination attempt on Nasser in 1954, many fundamentalists were rounded up and sent to prison. Egypt’s next leader, Anwar Sadat, faced with heavy challenges from the Left, indulged the Islamists and let many in from Saudi Arabia. He also called Egypt a Muslim country, even though 15 to 20 per cent of the population was then Christian. According to the charity Aid to the Church in Need, that figure has now fallen to around 5 per cent – still 4.2 million people – as a result of Christians leaving Egypt.
Categories: Asia
Atrocities committed on the name of religion cause wrath of God on earth so the countries in this region are facing. But no one ponders on this truth.
True, true, true … but more ‘Muslim blood’ has been shed at the same time. (let’s be realistic and ‘keep the balance’).
بسم اللہ الرحمن الرحیم
The Human life is sacred, whether that be a Christen, a Muslim, a Hindu, or Sikh or Jew or an Atheist for that matter, and we do not condone the bloodshed of our Christen Brothers in the Middle East and we condemn it with the Strongest words. Unfortunately against the very teachings of the Holy Quran and Sunnah of the Holy Prophet محمد ﷺ a group of Extremist Muslims, who has their own ex to grind and their own political Agenda and vested Interest, and knowingly or unknowingly they might be the Agent of the enemies of Islam, to defame its beautiful face in the World are doing all these atrocities in the very Name of Islam, they are misinterpreting Islam and unfortunately they are increasing in number in the World, not to speak of Christen they are not sparing even Muslims who do not agree with their Agenda, as such they have slaughter so many Muslim Shiahs over there.
There would have been residing many other Religious person in that land like, Hindus and Jews, and very strangely, we have not heard people of other Religion to be killed over there accept Muslim Shias and Christens. One more question come to mind, they have not the capability to prepare all this arsenal, so who is selling to them all these weapons that they are being a thereat to even Great power of the World, Their supply line must be cut off and as they do not understand the language of reason, they must be wiped off the surface of the Earth.
Zarif Ahmad