It takes a nation to protect the nation
We are to join in a chorus of condemnation. Jointly, Muslims and Christians, government and opposition, Church and Mosque, clerics and laypeople – all of us are going to stand up and with a single voice declare unequivocal denunciation of al-Qaeda, Islamist militants, and Muslim fanatics of every shade, hue and color; some of us will even go the extra mile to denounce salafi Islam, Islamic fundamentalism as a whole, and the Wahabi Islam which, presumably, is a Saudi import wholly alien to our Egyptian national culture.
And once again we’re going to declare the eternal unity of “the twin elements of the nation”, and hearken back the Revolution of 1919, with its hoisted banner showing the crescent embracing the cross, and giving symbolic expression to that unbreakable bond.
Much of it will be sheer hypocrisy; a great deal of it will be variously nuanced so as keep, just below the surface, the heaps of narrow-minded prejudice, flagrant double standard and, indeed, bigotry that holds in its grip so many of the participants in the condemnations.
All of it will be to no avail. We’ve been here before; we’ve done exactly that, yet the massacres continue, each more horrible than the one before it, and the bigotry and intolerance spread deeper and wider into every nook and cranny of our society. It is not easy to empty Egypt of its Christians; they’ve been here for as long as there has been Christianity in the world. Close to a millennium and half of Muslim rule did not eradicate the nation’s Christian community, rather it maintained it sufficiently strong and sufficiently vigorous so as to play a crucial role in shaping the national, political and cultural identity of modern Egypt.
Yet now, two centuries after the birth of the modern Egyptian nation state, and as we embark on the second decade of the 21stcentury, the previously unheard of seems no longer beyond imagining: a Christian-free Egypt, one where the cross will have slipped out of the crescent’s embrace, and off the flag symbolizing our modern national identity. I hope that if and when that day comes I will have been long dead, but dead or alive, this will be an Egypt which I do not recognize and to which I have no desire to belong.
I am no Zola, but I too can accuse. And it’s not the blood thirsty criminals of al-Qaeda or whatever other gang of hoodlums involved in the horror of Alexandria that I am concerned with.
I accuse a government that seems to think that by outbidding the Islamists it will also outflank them.
I accuse the host of MPs and government officials who cannot help but take their own personal bigotries along to the parliament, or to the multitude of government bodies, national and local, from which they exercise unchecked, brutal yet at the same time hopelessly inept authority.
I accuse those state bodies who believe that by bolstering the Salafi trend they are undermining the Muslim Brotherhood, and who like to occasionally play to bigoted anti-Coptic sentiments, presumably as an excellent distraction from other more serious issues of government.
But most of all, I accuse the millions of supposedly moderate Muslims among us; those who’ve been growing more and more prejudiced, inclusive and narrow minded with every passing year.
I accuse those among us who would rise up in fury over a decision to halt construction of a Muslim Center near ground zero in New York, but applaud the Egyptian police when they halt the construction of a staircase in a Coptic church in the Omranya district of Greater Cairo.
I’ve been around, and I have heard you speak, in your offices, in your clubs, at your dinner parties: “The Copts must be taught a lesson,” “the Copts are growing more arrogant,” “the Copts are holding secret conversions of Muslims”, and in the same breath, “the Copts are preventing Christian women from converting to Islam, kidnapping them, and locking them up in monasteries.”
I accuse you all, because in your bigoted blindness you cannot even see the violence to logic and sheer common sense that you commit; that you dare accuse the whole world of using a double standard against us, and are, at the same time, wholly incapable of showing a minimum awareness of your own blatant double standard.
And finally, I accuse the liberal intellectuals, both Muslim and Christian who, whether complicit, afraid, or simply unwilling to do or say anything that may displease “the masses”, have stood aside, finding it sufficient to join in one futile chorus of denunciation following another, even as the massacres spread wider, and grow more horrifying.
A few years ago I wrote in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, commenting on a columnist in one of the Egyptian papers. The columnist, whose name I’ve since forgotten, wrote lauding the patriotism of an Egyptian Copt who had himself written saying that he would rather be killed at the hands of his Muslim brethren than seek American intervention to save him.
Addressing myself to the patriotic Copt, I simply asked him the question: where does his willingness for self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation stop. Giving his own life may be quite a noble, even laudable endeavor, but is he also willing to give up the lives of his children, wife, mother? How many Egyptian Christians, I asked him, are you willing to sacrifice before you call upon outside intervention, a million, two, three, all of them?
Our options, I said then and continue to say today are not so impoverished and lacking in imagination and resolve that we are obliged to choose between having Egyptian Copts killed, individually or en masse, or run to Uncle Sam. Is it really so difficult to conceive of ourselves as rational human beings with a minimum of backbone so as to act to determine our fate, the fate of our nation?
That, indeed, is the only option we have before us, and we better grasp it, before it’s too late.
Tags: Copts, Egypt, HaniShukrallah, TerrorAttacks
So you noticed the absence of reporting too Alan. I posted about this yesterday on Facebook.
I'm really questioning now whether Christians globally have any interest whatsoever in what is happening to these Coptics? I've been trying for over a year now to draw people's attention to this and it seems that the Christians (at least on my friends list) can scarcely contain their indifference. What is it going to take for people to realize that this is going to spread, and is already spreading way beyond Egypt. What a sad state of affairs. Meanwhile the tourists will continue pouring into Egypt for cheap holidays, oblivious to what is happening outside their holiday resorts. We could have helped by hitting the tourist trade where it hurts, but again we just sink into apathy. What a sad state of affairs.
Alan Lake said:
I heard a report on the church bombing on BBC world service. I listened patiently to the long interview with the Muslim moderate about how unrepresentative the killings were. then unbelievably that was it, the report ended. no interview with a Coptic Bishop or leader or family of the 20+ dead. you see, for the BBC, non Muslims are just dumb cattle to be slaughtered, so no point in even talking to them.
the head of religion at the BBC is a Muslim. bias perhaps? certainly not, its just me being islamaphobic! How dare I suggest that those dumb kaffir have any human rights, haven't I heard if the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights?
truly, those BBC propagandists are the neo-fascists of today.
I read the above recently, left a brief comment, and thought that was the end of my part of the discussion. I was mistaken for there is yet more that must be said. Blogs that I have written about Islam have caught the attention of many of the Copts of the world. Some of whom have managed to find shelter in America, some who yet remain in Egypt, and still others who are scattered to any place where they seek safety. The Email that I have been receiving spoke of a desperation on the part of those yet trapped within the bounds of Islam. From those who have escaped the nightmare, come requests to help in any way possible, their fellow Christians whose everyday lives are fraught with danger at the hands and swords and the Molotov cocktails of barbarians.
Another blog, specifically about Copts, received a great deal; of attention, and led to still more Email. That blog "The Copts ... Yet More Victims of Islam" http://www.freedomrings1776.com/2010/11/coptics-yet-more-victims-of..., has troubled me. The research that went into it left no doubt in my mind about the hatred and the anguish in the minds of those who are tormenting these Copts. Their greatest pleasure seems to be tormenting a gentle people who only hope to live in peace, and worship as they choose.
There was but one thing in your soul stirring essay that troubled me...The columnist you spoke of quoting a supposed reader who would choose to die the victim of a crazed Muslim before asking the United States to intervene. I cannot help but believe that the columnist was a dedicated Muslim writing propaganda for the general public. I have been the recipient of many communications from Copts who now live in safety. One on my list of friends is a Coptic priest now living in Los Angeles. Without fail, each and all of these Emails are a plea for help for their fellow Copts but there are two that really bothered me that arrived via the internet, straight from the Middle East. It strikes me as odd how poor their English grammar is and yet how clear the message.
Name: Rafik Rofail on Nov 30, 2010
Comments: in Egypt they trying to do some bad things with us 1- to make us Moslem's if they couldn't they try to kick us out Egypt and if they couldn't they try to kill us they kicked me out and so hard for me to not see my country again all the rest of my life
One thing we can do is become more vicious and bad tempered in our responses to the inevitable plaintive questions and excuses that the liberal appeasers and leftist sympathisers give us. We are facing fascism lets not be in any doubt about that. So there is no point in continuing to be polite. Instead of discussions starting with the question to you about your 'islamophobia' and racism, start it with a question to the other person about how come they are happy to endorse fascist policies and ethnic cleansing.
We've nothing to lose. We're the ones walking round with violence threats on our heads, and thats succeeding in shutting up our members all the time, as their wives and children become more and more worried. With that as a daily condition, why should we be polite?
We need to start calling out the cowards on their support for mafia style thuggery, and silence in defence of free speech.
Welcome to 4 Freedoms!
(currently not admitting new members)
Just fill in the box below on any 4F page to be notified when it changes.
Most Western societies are based on Secular Democracy, which itself is based on the concept that the open marketplace of ideas leads to the optimum government. Whilst that model has been very successful, it has defects. The 4 Freedoms address 4 of the principal vulnerabilities, and gives corrections to them.
At the moment, one of the main actors exploiting these defects, is Islam, so this site pays particular attention to that threat.
Islam, operating at the micro and macro levels, is unstoppable by individuals, hence: "It takes a nation to protect the nation". There is not enough time to fight all its attacks, nor to read them nor even to record them. So the members of 4F try to curate a representative subset of these events.
We need to capture this information before it is removed. The site already contains sufficient information to cover most issues, but our members add further updates when possible.
We hope that free nations will wake up to stop the threat, and force the separation of (Islamic) Church and State. This will also allow moderate Muslims to escape from their totalitarian political system.
These 4 freedoms are designed to close 4 vulnerabilities in Secular Democracy, by making them SP or Self-Protecting (see Hobbes's first law of nature). But Democracy also requires - in addition to the standard divisions of Executive, Legislature & Judiciary - a fourth body, Protector of the Open Society (POS), to monitor all its vulnerabilities (see also Popper).
1. SP Freedom of Speech
Any speech is allowed - except that advocating the end of these freedoms
2. SP Freedom of Election
Any party is allowed - except one advocating the end of these freedoms
3. SP Freedom from Voter Importation
Immigration is allowed - except where that changes the political demography (this is electoral fraud)
4. SP Freedom from Debt
The Central Bank is allowed to create debt - except where that debt burden can pass across a generation (25 years).
An additional Freedom from Religion is deducible if the law is applied equally to everyone:
© 2023 Created by Netcon.
Powered by