A number of clerics and activists have warned that the current wave of threats against Copts reflects the absence of the State of law, and a general climate that condones extremism.
Activists placed the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the State, claiming that it intentionally overlooks the implementation of the law and citizenship rights.
This week alone has witnessed threats against the lives of Copts in Ismailiya, as well as threats against Coptic bookstores that sell Christian icons or statuettes on the grounds that they were idolatrous. Copts in Upper Egypt are seen as easy targets by outlaws who break into their homes and do not leave till the Copts pay them huge sums of money. In other cases the sons of Coptic families and kidnapped and not returned till ransom is paid. Watani has reported on such incidents in the village of Gawli in Assiut and Badraman in Minya.
Anba Morqos, Bishop of Shubral-Kheima and member of the media board of the Coptic Orthodox Holy Synod, said it was the State’s responsibility to take firm action to stop the terrorisation of Copts at the hand of hardline Islamists. Left unchecked, he said, the spread of such extremism threatens to rock the social peace of the entire country.
Mohamed Mounir Megahed, Coordinator-General of Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination (MARED), warns that Egypt is now seeing a brand of hardline thought that is far more extremist than anything it saw before, and works to sow hatred and fanaticism.
The ruling Islamists, Mr Megahed told Watani, appear to look the other way while the extremists place at risk the social peace of Egypt.
However, he warned, it should be very obvious that the hardliners do not threaten the Copts alone but, even more perilously, moderate Muslims who do not embrace their extremist thought. The State, he said, should move to fight such thought, and combat religious discrimination. It should stop the dual standards that are so frequently applied when dealing with Copts: it is no secret that defamation of religion is only applied to any alleged insult of Islam not Christianity.
For his part, the Reverend Ikram Lamie of the Evangelical Church remarks that Islamic extremism has been on the rise ever since the security breakdown in the wake of the January Revolution. Today, he says, and after the Muslim Brotherhood has held the reins of power, Muslim hardliners feel that Egypt has become an Islamic State and accordingly give themselves the right to apply alleged Islamist rules based on non-acceptance of the other.
Rev Lamie criticises the Islamist practice of branding any secular or liberal activity as ‘Christian’, in an attempt to place it in an anti-Islamic light and thus rally Muslims against it. The most recent such allegation, he says, is that the demonstrations planned for 24 August to protest against Islamist rule were Christian demonstration, even though they have been called for by Muslim, liberal politicians.
WATANI International
17 August 2012