The below videos of Raymond Ibrahim's recent Congressional testimony regarding Muslim persecution against the Egyptian Coptic Christian community is one of the most helpful brief presentations I have yet seen on this extremely urgent issue. Mr. Ibrahim presents the historical context of Islam's domination of Egypt since the Muslims conquered the ancient nation in 641A.D., and demonstrates through historical analysis the unbroken continuity of the institutionalized discrimination against and persecution of Christians by Muslims in Islamic cultures spanning fourteen centuries and several continents, cultures and languages.
I cannot recommend watching these videos (or reading the transcripts) strongly enough. In addition to shining the clear light of real historical scholarship on the plight of Egypt's Copts, and offering sound, measured advice on what an informed American policy towards the new Egypt might look like, Ibrahim also exposes one of the great failings of our time, namely the willful subordination of modern Western academia to politically correct self-censorship when it comes to the study of Islam and its relations with non-Muslims. Of course, Western mainstream media is notorious for misreporting the situation in Egypt and the rest of the Islamic world so as to avoid casting a bad light on Islam. When 3,000 Muslims destroy and burn a Coptic church, the MSM reports it as "sectarian violence," which implies two relatively evenly matched protagonists, rather than the one-sided genocidal religious persecution it, in fact, is.
For the sake of brevity, I am posting the videos below, following a brief intro detailing Raymond Ibrahim's credentials. If you wish to read the transcripts online, you can do so here. A PDF version of the transcript is available also. For videos and transcripts of the testimony by Coptic activist Cynthia Farahat and some of the other witnesses, please visit the Center for Security Policy.
Raymond Ibrahim testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives. Reps. Frank Wolf and James McDermott presented "Under Threat: The Worsening Plight of Egypt's Coptic Christians."
Raymond Ibrahim is a Middle East and Islam specialist, is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center and an Associate Fellow at the Middle East Forum. A widely published author, best known for The Al Qaeda Reader (Doubleday, 2007), he guest lectures at universities, including the National Defense Intelligence College, briefs governmental agencies, such as U.S. Strategic Command and the Defense Intelligence Agency, provides expert testimony for Islam-related lawsuits, and has testified before Congress regarding the conceptual failures that dominate American discourse concerning Islam.
