The question raised in my mind after reading this article is this: Since the Obama administration is providing aid to Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government (which is actively facilitating persecution of Christians), if we say or do nothing to protest, are we then implicitly culpable?
As an old legal saying goes, "Silence implies assent." The Church fathers also had something to say about silence.
St Gregory the Theologian warned, "By your silence you can betray God."
And St John of Kronstadt lamented a century ago (imagine what he would say today!): “How many are silent when it is necessary to defend the glory of God and of His saints, which is blasphemed by the children of this world!”
As long as the blogosphere is still free, let's share with our family, friends and elected representatives our concerns and warnings.
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by Robert Morrison
May 30, 2013
May 30, 2013
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Secretary of State John Kerry had signed off on $250 million of a projected $1 billion aid package for the new Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt. As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen said, “a billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” So perhaps it’s time to take a look at what American taxpayers are getting for their money.
Raymond Ibrahim is a Coptic Christian, originally from Egypt. He reports on a world too often overlooked by our increasingly secular media—the world of Christian persecution. In Egypt, it is a world of hurt. Ibrahim documents this and much more in his new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians. Here are some of his findings:
In November 2012, an Egyptian court decreed that eight Christians living in America—seven native Egyptians, and one American, Pastor Terry Jones—be sent to Egypt and executed in connection with the 16-minute YouTube Muhammad video. The prosecution offered no real evidence against the Christians, most of whom deny any involvement, and instead relied on inciting Muslims against the accused by replaying the video in the courtroom.
In September 2012, 27-year-old Copt Albert Saber was accused of posting clips of the Muhammad movie—which he had actually downloaded from a Muslim site, not YouTube. Muslims attacked and evicted him and his mother from their home; he was arrested and is currently awaiting a multi-year sentence.
In March 2012, Makram Diab, a 49-year-old Christian, was sentenced in a 10-minute show trial to six years in prison for “insulting Muhammad.” He had gotten into a religious argument with a Muslim colleague, who went on to protest that Diab had offended the prophet. The judge doubled the sentence to appease an angry mob, 2,500 strong, which had surrounded the courtroom demanding Diab’s death.
In August 2012, Bishoy Kamil, a Copt in his 20s who worked as a teacher, was arrested and given six years in prison for posting cartoons deemed insulting to Islam and its prophet on Facebook. Like Diab, he was given more than double the maximum penalty to appease mob calls for his death.
In April 2012, Gamal Abdu Massud, a teenage Christian student, was sentenced to three years on accusations that he had posted a Muhammad cartoon on his Facebook account, which had only some 135 friends. Apparently the wrong “friend” saw it, for it was not long before local Muslims rioted, burning the Coptic teenager’s house as well as the homes of five other Christians.
In June 2011, another Christian woman, Naima Wahib Habil, newly hired as director of a junior high school for girls, was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the accusation that she had torn a copy of the Koran in front of her students. The rumor inspired mob riots and calls for her death.
Note the dates of the legal persecutions and prosecutions of Christians in Egypt. Every one of them has occurred since the much-hailed “Arab Spring.”
President Obama’s own role in this pattern of persecution is by no means that of an innocent bystander. He went to Egypt’s Cairo University in June 2009, to deliver his “New Beginning” speech to what he then called “the Muslim world.” Right from the start, we knew there could be no place for Christians in that world he so designated.
President Obama referred to the Muslim scriptures as “the Holy Koran,” something no previous U.S. President had done there. He also said that the Mideast was “the region where Islam was first revealed.” That was a theological term freighted with meaning. It must mean, at minimum, that Islam has superseded Christianity and Judaism.
In that seat of Muslim learning, in that hotbed of Muslim Brotherhood underground activity, the forces of upheaval took Mr. Obama’s words at face value: They would find a new friend in the White House.
They soon did. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who had at least maintained a thirty-year “cold peace” with Israel and who had not given official sanction to the persecution of Egypt’s ten percent Christian minority, was soon swept away.
The “Arab Spring” would bring democracy and human rights to Egypt. The Obama administration welcomed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. And paid them generously out of money we must borrow from China. John Brennan, the current Director of the CIA, referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as “largely secular.” That is true only if you discount its origins, its teachings, its history, and its practices.
The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt began almost at the same time as Germany’s National Socialists and shared with that “Nazi” movement a strong commitment to dominate all of society. They also shared with the Nazis a fanatical judenhass—hatred of the Jews. Like the Nazis, they use electoral politics to achieve their ends because they couple open appeals for votes with the threat of violence if they don’t get what they want.
Not all the reactions to Islamist persecution have been those of outraged Western critics, however. Even in the midst of violence and hatred by the jihadists, some Christians are speaking truth to power.
Abraham Kuruvilla is an American of Indian descent. He brings his gentle manner to bear in this thoughtful essay. Abraham is a graduate of University of Virginia and recently returned from a two-year course of study in Defence and National Security at the University of Madras. Abraham’s column—“Amidst Jihadist Hatred, Something New”— is well worth reading.
Still, we as American citizens and taxpayers can use our rights just as Paul did with the Roman rulers. We can speak out and protest our tax monies being used to fund such murderous mistreatment of our fellow Christians in Egypt.
Source: Family Resource Council