Oh, look. The AP has discovered that there are Christians in the Middle East.
CAIRO, Egypt Sep 18, 2006 (AP)— Extra security guards around churches in Egypt and Lebanon. Armed officers surrounding at least one. With the tensions over Pope Benedict XVI’s remarks on Islam still high, many in the Mideast’s large Christian communities are worried about a backlash.
“We are afraid,” said Sonia Kobatazi, a Christian Lebanese, after Sunday morning Mass at the Maronite Christian St. George Cathedral in Beirut, Lebanon, where about a dozen policemen carrying automatic weapons stood guard outside.
Christians a minority in the Mideast that varies from nearly 40 percent in Lebanon to tiny communities in the Gulf states generally live in peace with the majority Muslims.
But relations are sometimes strained and outbreaks of violence have occurred in recent years. Some worry the flap over the pope will lead to a new round.
Don’t you love how the AP downplays the murder of Christians by Muslims as “outbreaks of violence” in recent years? Show me the fabled 9/11 backlash resulting in anywhere near as many “outbreaks of violence.” You can’t. There were almost none. But those “outbreaks of violence”? The AP buries them further down in the article:
Christians have been targeted in other cases. Car bombs exploded in January, killing at least three people in a coordinated spree of attacks outside the Vatican mission and at least five churches in Iraq, where Christians make up just 3 percent of Iraq’s 26 million people.
Egypt where Coptic Christians are about 10 percent of the country’s 73 million people saw instances of sectarian violence during the past year. A Coptic and a Muslim were killed and at least 40 others wounded in clashes in the port city of Alexandria in April. Last fall, Alexandria also witnessed deadly Muslim rioting targeting Christian churches.
What they don’t say is that the rioting was caused by Muslim reaction to a Christian DVD that had already been withdrawn from the market and was no longer on sale. What they don’t say is that the Muslims started it, every time, and murdered Christians to soothe their outrage.
“We in Egypt, despite coming from two different religions, have lived together for 14 centuries and engaged in religious dialogue,” the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda III told reporters Sunday in Cairo.
Yeah. Religious dialogue that always seems to result in Christians being hurt, killed, and having their churches and homes burned down.
And watch how the AP spins down the palestinian attacks on churches in the West Bank and Gaza:
There were no reports of violence against Christians in much of the Mideast on Sunday, but two churches in the Palestinian West Bank were set afire a day after Muslims hurled firebombs and opened fire at four other West Bank churches and one in the Gaza Strip.
Protesters also have taken to the streets in some cities, with some angry demonstrators calling Christians “infidels,” and ralliers labeling the pope’s comments as evidence of a new Crusade against Muslims.
Once again, imagine it was Jews attacking churches, and imagine the headlines, the scornful leads, the angry editorials. But since it’s only Muslims attacking, the media is blaming—wait for it—not the Muslims for reacting violently to the Pope’s speech, but the Pope, for making the speech in the first place.
Go back in my archives and read the stories about Ahmadinejad’s threats to destroy Israel, and see how the world media spun that to be just words. They excused and explained it away, with some mendaciously insisting he was mistranslated.
In this recent furor, all the Pope did was read a brief quote from his Church’s history, and the world media screams in unified indignation.
Yeah. Whatever. I don’t care for the Pope myself, what with his being a different religion from mine, but when he comes out with something boneheaded about Jews (and he has already done so), we tend to react by writing nasty letters, posts, and editorials. Oh, and we manage to do it without mentioning that we want the Pope beheaded.
Hey, I managed to write some pretty nasty stuff about Mel Gibson without asking for his beheading.
I think we should swipe that Religion of Peace(TM) label from the Muslims. Unless they mean it in an Orwellian fashion. In which case, they can have it.
Well, Pope Shenouda needs to make sure he stays good (I don’t like to toss the term dhimmi around as much as some people, but I think dhimmi law was at least partially created for his people), or else unpleasant stuff may happen to him again.
You don’t have to imagine at all. A few years ago PA murderers armed with select-fire rifles invaded Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, took the monks and tourists hostage, desecrated the church, and used the church as a base for sniper attacks. The IDF put the church under seige in order to free the hostages; eventually the terrorists surrendered to an international body (which released them after a brief interval, in defiance of their deal with Israel, but that’s another matter.)
Shortly after the seige began, Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) remarked that he was very troubled by the religious implications of Jews initiating a seige of the church. Oddly enough, as far as I know he never expressed any qualms about the religious implication of armed Muslim terrorists invading it and taking hostages, and using it as a base to shoot at Israelis.
The Italian paper LaStampa went even further, of course, running a cartoon showing Israeli tanks menacing baby whatsisname, who was shown lamenting “Don’t tell me they are planning to kill me again?”
I forget, what’s the polite word for Christ killer? Oh, yeah, I remember now it’s Zionist.
I think perhaps we need to recast some this opprobrium towards Muslims in a different mold. The analogy I wish to draw is between rampant bigotry among Muslims towards Christian and Jewish minorities living in their midst and rampant bigotry not so long ago among white Americans towards black American minorities in living in their midst.
The rampant bigotry among Muslims even leads to uppity Christians being lynched.
In this light, Muslims who justify their bigotry and their behavior by referring to the Koran are no different than white Christians who abused the Bible in the same way.
So – all those Muslims who responded to the Pope with violent protests? Miserable bigots, the lot of them. Do you fight bigotry by moderating your criticism of it?
There were plenty of white Americans who did little but quietly say to their kids, “We don’t act like that.” There were plenty of white American leaders who did nothing effective to fight bigotry for decades after the Civil War.
Take a deep breath here and consider this historical parallel. Change could be a long time coming.
Yours,
Wince
With my prescience, I predict that the reaction of the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians to the attacks on the churches in Gaza and other Christian sites across the Middle East will be…any day now in righteous anger at the plight of their co-religionists they’lll…actually, this they’ll manaage to let pass but the sins, real or imagined of Jews, that’s what really upsets them.
“Take a deep breath here and consider this historical parallel. Change could be a long time coming.”
And if it doesn’t come at all?
What if we change before the Muslims do? We wouldn’t really even need to accept the authority of Sharia, just of the UN… something many of our own liberal political leaders have actually demanded of us.
I don’t think there were any verses in the Christian Bible (or the Jewish one for that matter) which gave specific instructions to the faithful to oppress the blacks in America which the Southern whites could cite. In any case Jim Crow was smashed within a century. On the other hand the Quran specifically states that the faithful should fight the infidel until he converts, dies, or pays the jizya. This has lasted 14 centuries and the Muslims will tell you that the injunctions of Allah are as fresh and relevant today as they were 1400 years ago.
If you had to live under the rules of Sharia as a dhimmi you’d call it Apartheid, and you’d be right. Take a deep breath here, Wince, and consider the historical non-parallel. Change has already been a long time not coming for the Muslim world, and it looks to be getting worse for non-Muslims real soon now.