Letter to Obama from a Coptic Christian....
I hope Obama reads and understand this letter...it was sent before the latest massacre...
President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington D.C.
Dear President Obama,
I am writing to you as Coptic Christian who immigrated to the United States in the late 1970s.
I am an American citizen.
I have grave concerns about what is going in Egypt regarding the Copts.
To put it bluntly, I fear that something very bad is going to happen to this community in the very near future.
Coptic Christians have been the victims of systematic abuse and oppression in Egypt for a long time. On November 17, 2010, the U.S. Department of State recently issued a report on religious freedom in Egypt that details the abuses they suffer on a daily basis. January of this year, six Coptic Christians were murdered outside their church after celebrating Christmas.
Sadly, I fear another attack will happen again sometime in the near future.
The tendency of blaming the State of Israel for every problem in Egypt, and linking it to the Copts, is on the rise, especially in the past a few months. By associating the Copts with the Jewish state, extremists and government officials are inciting hostility toward a beleaguered, defenseless minority.
The anti-Israel polemic is fairly well known. One official accused recent shark and jellyfish for attacks on swimmers at Sharm el-Sheikh on the Mossad. The aalleged goal was to kill the tourism season.
What is less well known is that Muslim Imams throughout the Middle East are demonizing Coptic Christians in Egypt. One oft-repeated claim is that Israel is using Coptic churches to store all kinds of weapons to attack Muslims. Such accusations lead to threats of violence.
For example, Sheik Wagdi Ghoneim recently said in a video message from the State of Qatar “I swear by God, you will not have time stay alive until America and the West arrive, this is for your own good, if you understand. Do you think the Muslims inside Egypt will say thank you and may Allah give you health? “No, by God.”
And on September 16, 2010 Mr., Muhammad Salim Al-Awa, Secretary-General of the International Union of Muslim Scholars announced on Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar): Copts Amass Weapons in Egyptian Churches and Are "Preparing for War against the Muslims".
Copts are even being blamed for the violence perpetrated against them by Muslim extremists in Egypt. For example, after a mob of 5,000 Egyptians recently attacked a Christian service building, President’s Mubarak former assistant, Dr. Mustafa El- Feki from Ain Shams University stated that Israel and the Copts were at fault for the attack and the two deaths that resulted from it. Dr. El Feki stated that Israel was behind the subsequent protests: “"It is almost certain that the Mossad is involved in these events. The State is dealing with dangerous events that could not have succeeded without external intervention with Israel at its head."
Here, it is important to note why the mob attacked the building in the first place. While the Egyptian government does not allow Christians to build churches, it does allow them to build “service buildings” where social services can be provided to the elderly and to young people in the Coptic Christian community. The mob attacked this service building after hearing rumors that the building itself was going to be used as a church and not merely to provide social services to its members.
Mr. President, in light of numerous acts of incitement and previous acts of violence, I fear that Coptic Christians in Egypt are going to have a very tough Christmas season. I implore you to use your good offices to insist that the Egyptian government protect the rights of its Christian citizens.
For reasons of my own safety, I can only sign my first name, but nevertheless, I offer wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I ask that you use your influence to make sure Christians in Egypt can celebrate their holidays in safety.
Michael
Dec. 24, 2010
posted by GayandRight @ 5:44 PM
1 Comments:
As a concerned US Citizen I am writing you today so that you voice my protest in the honorable US senate against the organized extermination of the Coptic Christian Minority in Egypt. On the New Year Eve in Alexandria in Northern Egypt a car bomb exploded in front of the Saints Church belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church killing at least 21 Christians and wounding scores. There were 1000 people in the church and the Egyptian Government did not provide any protection to the church even though they know of the potential dangers. The Egyptian government didn't take any measures to protect the Christian minority in Egypt and allowed massive demonstrations in the streets provoking Christian Killing and Church burnings (videos are available). The Egyptian government policy is to arrest scores of Christians and lock them behind bars to bargain for their release with the Coptic Church to keep quite. The Egyptian Government has caved completely to the Moslem fanatic movement and employed them in high ranks of the Government, especially the police, judiciary system and secret service. The Egyptian Government had made peace with the fanatic Muslims giving them free hand to kill and persecute the Christian minority, burn churches, loot their property and burn their businesses, abduct young Christian girls and forcing them to adopt Islam. The fundamentalist in Egypt have no resistance from the government as long as they do harm to the Coptic Christian minority in Egypt. The Coptic minority in Egypt is officially 10% of the population and according to our own sources (church baptism records) we estimate that the Coptic population reaches 15% of the total population of Egypt. This makes Coptic Christians in Egypt the largest Christian population in the Middle East.
The Coptic Christians face second class citizen treatment from the government and they are denied the right to build new churches and they need a presidential decree to renovate a bathroom in a church in Egypt. Otherwise, they face prosecution by the law (a law established 200 years or more during the Ottoman era). Life has become intolerable in Egypt for the Coptic Christian Minority.
The Egyptian government is prosecuting Moslems who decide to adopt Christianity and leave Islam. They face jail sentence without court orders where they are tortured to return back to Islam. The Egyptian government refuses to give recognition of change of religion to the Moslems adopting Christianity in their ID cards. The ID cards in Egypt must have the religion of the person written. It is estimated that the number of Moslems turning into Christianity in Egypt are on the rise due to their ability to read about Christianity on the internet and the Satellite TV and to know the reality of Islam from sources never available to them in the past. Missionaries were prevented to enter Egypt and faced life threats if they do so, and therefore, evangelism occurred through the internet and the satellite TV.
I am asking that my US government put a stop to the organized persecution of the Egyptian Coptic minority the same way the US bombed the Serbs to protect the Muslims of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The least the US government can do is to sound protest officially to the Egyptian government, which receives massive financial aid from the US. This money is used partially to build and increase the number of Moslem religious institutes (Madrasa equivalent) that curses the US government and encourages young Moslems to commit “Jihad” against the US and Christians in general.
Sincerely,
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