Violence against the Coptic Christians continues in Egypt
(Fox News)
The much-heralded "Arab Spring" continues in Egypt as Coptic Christians are attacked while protesting a goverment that will not protect them from attack.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2011/10/09/riots-erupt-in-egypt-over-church-attack-at-least-1-killed/
The long-standing predicament of the Copts should not be forgotten as the latest episode demonstrates.
The Egyptians really take to heart the old saying:
ReplyDeleteFirst the Saturday people,
Then the Sunday people.
They got rid of their Saturday people, now it is time to get rid of the Sunday people.
I told you that they would do this months ago!
That's funny... without Fousesquawk's informative clarification, I could have mistaken this photo for a large number of Coptic Egyptians displaying crucifixes in public.
ReplyDeleteWho exactly is "they" Findalis?
ReplyDeleteThe way you talk about "The Egyptians" sound exactly like people who talk about "The Jews."
To throw this into a third context for perspective, there is an old Langston Hughes column called "Coffee Break" where Jesse B. Semple explains that his boss, "a white man," is always asking him "what does the Negro want now?" Semple's comment was "As if there were not fifty-eleven different kinds of Negroes in the USA."
Ditto, there are fifty-eleven different kinds of Jews, fifty-eleven different kinds of Egyptians, and probably at last half of fifty-eleven different kinds of Copts.
But you would go into a self-righteous rant if I called your comment racist. Well, I won't. I'll just call it ignorant.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteIn the immortal words of Strom Thurmond during the Clarence Thomas hearings, "I still don't know what Long John Silver's got to do with all this."
Findalis, your statement is quintessentially, clinically, bigoted. It is like saying that "The Jews" are all this or all that. I would call it racist, but as we all know, Muslims are a pan-racial religion.
ReplyDeleteSome Muslims match your description exactly. Others do not. Some Muslims were on the streets defending the Copts from the security forces, saying "We know what the army is trying to do here." Hopefully they will push their revolution forward again. That is the best hope for the Copts, and the Muslims.
Siarlys I suggest you read the Koran. Although the Old Testament calls for the death of people, Jews and Christians don't go about fulfilling this.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand the Koran specifically tells Muslims to kill, rape and destroy. And if they are a believing Muslim, they have to fulfill this commandment from their false god.
Here are just a few:
Quran (3:56) - "As to those who reject faith, I will punish them with terrible agony in this world and in the Hereafter, nor will they have anyone to help."
Quran (5:33) - "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"
Bukhari (52:177) - Allah's Apostle said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. "O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him."
Bukhari (8:387) - Allah's Apostle said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah
Just a few delights from the Religion of Peace!
Findalis, as I've mentioned before, I have a copy of Marmaduke Pickthall's, The Meaning of the Glorious Koran, which he did not call a "translation" for the same reason Talmudic scholars rightly insist that the Torah and the Nevi'im cannot be "translated" into Greek, Latin, English, etc. -- only explained rather crudely in those languages. Those who really want to understand must learn Hebrew, Aramaic, and, in the case of the Koran, Arabic.
ReplyDelete3:56 reads "As for those who disbelieve I shall chastise them with a heavy chastisement in the world and the Hereafter; and they will have no helpers."
That is pretty standard language for any of the monotheistic faiths. Orthodox rabbis teach that the Churban Europa was God's punishment for the sins of Jewish secularism, e.g. Note that it does NOT authorize anyone on earth to punish the unbelievers; it says that God will do so.
5:33 references war against The God and his messenger. The messenger is dead. What constitutes war against God is rather debatable.
Bukhari is not part of the Koran, and does not have the same authority. In Christianity and in Judaism, people have always debated whether this or that scholar was right or not, and if so, what they really meant.
In short, there is no case that all Muslims MUST engage in violent warfare against all non-Muslims. Khaybar was a rather minor military engagement for most of human history -- it served as no precedent to prevent Jews from aiding the Islamic conquest of Jerusalem (which opened the city to them after being banned for centuries by Roman and Byzantine authorities), or the Islamic conquest of Spain, nor to Jews having honored roles in both places, or serving as officials in the Ottoman empire, including admiral.
Finally, deny this if you can: There is only one God. There are not Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and Muslim gods hanging out in the firmament fighting proxy wars through their minions on the earth. As Malcolm X said on his return from the Hajj, "The God we worship is the one who created the universe. Isn't that the God you worship." The problem for the priests of Ba al is that they were praying to no god at all. Every Arabic speaking Jew has always prayed to al-Lah, for the simple reason that the Arabic language has no other word for God.