By Theodore Shoebat
I was constantly verbally abused for being a Christian. Even on the public buses, they would insult me for being Christian, and accused us of being infidels, and that we as Christian people deserve to be wiped off the face of this country, because they believe that we do not deserve to live in this country.
These are the words of Christian Copt from a recent interview on the current sufferings of the Egyptian Christians.
Pogroms have been done by the Muslim Brotherhood against Copts, calling for their deaths and the destruction of their churches. One Brotherhood statement justifies the razing of sanctuaries, writing:
The Pope of the Church is involved in the removal of the first elected Islamist president.
The Pope of the Church alleges Islamic Sharia is backwards, stubborn, and reactionary.
The Pope of the Church sponsors Black Bloc groups to create chaos, pursue banditry, and siege and storm mosques.
The Church mobilizes the Copts in June 30 demonstrations to topple the Islamist president.
The Pope of the Church objects to the articles of Islamic identity and withdraws from the Constituent Assembly.
The Pope of the Church was the first to respond to Al-Sisi's call to authorize the killing of Muslims and the outcome of the authorization was more than 500 dead today.
The Pope of the Church sends a memo to the current commission to cancel the articles of Sharia.
After all this people ask why they burn the churches.
Here is a recent video of a patriarch orthodox church attacked by the Muslims:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KEC9GfIg0cE
Nina Shea gives a myriad of the names of the churches ransacked by the jihadists:
The litany of attacks is long: St. George Church, St. Mary's Church, Good Shepherd's Church, the Pentecostal Church, in Minya; St. Therese Church, Church of the Reformation, Church of the Apostle, Holy Revival Church, St. John's Church, in Assiut; Church of the Virgin Mary in Cairo, St. Damiana Church, the Evangelical Church, and Joseph's Church, in Fayoum; Church of the Archangel Michael, St. Saviors Anglican Church, the Greek Orthodox and Franciscan churches, in Suez; Fr. Maximus Church and St. George's Church, in Alexandria
This is a repeat of history, since great tyrants for the Muslim faith ruled over Egypt. By learning from history we can know that a major massacre of the Copts is inevitable. Al-Hakim, a past tyrant who believed himself to be Allah reincarnate, and was called an antichrist by the Christians, massacred many of the faithful; he burned down the Egyptian city of Babylon for its Christianity, beheaded saints, seized the property of the followers of Christ and tore down thirty thousand churches. He forced Christians to wear a huge cross around their necks, Jews to put a round piece of wood around theirs, outlawed Christian holidays and put to the flame any cross discovered. (1)
Years later, under a different ruler, a man named Nekam denied Christ to preserve himself, but once guilt seeped into his heart, and he realized that "whosoever will save his life shall lose it", *Matthew 16:25* he confronted tyranny to its face, threw away his Muslim garbs and wore Christian dress, and openly proclaimed Christ. He was arrest and sentenced to death, and when his father came to visit and convince him to leave his zealotry, he had already professed who is Redeemer was, and was beheaded. (2)
The patriarch of Egypt in the early thirteenth century, Nicholas, had this to say on the persecution occurring in a letter to Pope Honorius in Rome:
"If any Christian church from any accident happens to fall, we dare not rebuild it; and for these fourteen years past each Christian in Egypt is compelled to pay a [Jizya] tax of one bezant and fourteen karabbas; and if he be poor, he is committed to prison and not set at liberty until he have paid the whole sum. There are so many Christians in this country that the Sultan derives from them a yearly revenue of one hundred thousand golden bezants. What further shall I say when Christians are employed for every unfit and sordid work, and are even compelled to clean the streets of the city?" (3)
On one afternoon of June in 1320, mosques throughout Egypt were observing the Friday prayers, and in multiple congregations men arose and cried out "God [Allah] is great! God is great! O my brethren, let us go forth and destroy the churches!" In Cairo the same rallying cry was heard in three places at the same moment. It was a calculated plot, the conspirators understood the easily shaken conscious of the masses, and it worked sufficiently to rouse the mob to violence.
The attacked the church of Zehry, and not one stone of the santurary was left upon another. They then raided and ruined the church of St. Mena in the Hamra quarter. The mob broke through the Church of the Maiden, took out every nun and stripped them all naked, plundered the church of its valuables and then set it on fire. The same rabble destroyed another 56 churches and countless convents. A crowed rushed to the sultan and screamed "Let there be no faith except that of Islam! God protect the faith of Mohammad! O thou commander of the faithful, help us against the infidels. No favour to the Christians!"
The sultan unwillingly acquiesced to the wants of the masses just as Pilot had done, and the crowed was ecstatic at such freedom given to them. The details of the violence is left only to our imagination, but we know that they ferociously reduced the Christians into servility, with any Christian caught wearing a white turban or riding a horse swiftly put to death. (4)
This mob violence continued on for years. One Christian was tortured for a whole week and then beheaded for denouncing the wickedness and anarchy of the Muslims. Churches were frequently leveled to the ground and Christian tombs were torn open and the bodies burnt. One multitude of jihadists even went so far as to make a large to throw Christian in. (5) One Christian named Gabriel was seized, and under the order of the sultan, tortured and forced to parade naked through the streets as an official screamed, "Thus shall it be done to every Christian in the employ of the Sultan."
This type of violence is only going to occur again, but this era of persecution will be the ultimate one, unlike the past oppression. A holocaust of the Copts is coming, it is inexorable. But there is a great hope, for the prophet Isaiah prophesied:
In that day shall there be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the border thereof to the LORD. And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the LORD of hosts in the land of Egypt: for they shall cry unto the LORD because of the oppressors, and he shall send them a saviour, and a great one, and he shall deliver them. (Isaiah 19:19-20)
Theodore Shoebat is the author of the book, For God or For Tyranny
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