By Micah Halpern
Sunday August 18, 2013I've Been Thinking:
Christians are paying a very heavy price in Egypt. They are suffering the brunt Islamist anger. Morsi supporters have targeted Christians in a way that can only be called bone chilling.
One must ask: Why? How?
Theoretically, the answer lies is the knowledge that in the eyes of Muslim extremists, i.e. the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters, Christians are outsiders.
Christians compose 10% of the 90 million people of Egypt, but they are different. History has taught us how powerful difference can be when the objective is to unify the masses. This is happening despite the fact that the Christian community of Egypt is one of the oldest in the world, dating back way before the rise of Islam.
Politically, the answer lies in the perception that the Christians of Egypt played a disproportionate role in the ousting of Morsi.
This might be true and bolstering that theory is the fact that over the past year some important bridges have been built between Christians and mainstream Muslims in Egypt.
The most important reasons is, simply put, logistics. The Christians in Egypt are an easy target. Their churches and schools are immediately identifiable and by blatantly attacking those symbols Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood need not attack the other Muslims of Egypt in order to publicly display their strength.
Targeting Christians is a win-win for the Islamists. They whip up anger at those who threw Morsi out of office and not attack or directly threaten the people who actually ousted him. There is visible, physical, evidence that they acted.
Bottom line is that the churches of Egypt are damaged and ransacked. Over 50 churches have been looted or torched, 23 others were attacked. Looters have come back a second time to steal even more from the churches. Looters loaded trucks with furniture. Nuns have been sexually abused and marched and paraded as criminals.
The West should be shouting at the top of their lungs about the desecration and the violence. I hear nothing.
Micah@MicahHalpern.com
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