An Egyptian priest has explained that radical Muslims are trying to
rid the Middle East entirely of Christians, who once comprised the
largest religious group in the region.
“This is what the Muslim fundamentalists want,” the Egyptian Catholic spokesman Fr. Rafic Greische told Vatican Radio.
“They want the Christians to evacuate from the Middle East and leave.
And this is what is happening every day.”
He expressed frustration that
governments throughout the region, not noted for their responsiveness
to popular concerns, “do not take serious action to relieve or solve
these problems.”
Egyptian Christians face significant public and private
discrimination, including policies that make it nearly impossible for
them to build churches.
In November, a crowd demonstrating for their
right to build a church in Giza clashed with police, who fired on
unarmed protesters.
More than 150 people –including some children– remain in jail
following that incident, in a country notorious for police brutality and
other human rights abuses.
While Christians have difficulty even finding a place to worship in
Egypt, some Egyptian Muslims manage to make their antipathy against the
country's Christians well-known.
Fr. Greische said groups of Muslims are
known to “become violent and make demonstrations,” often burning
pictures of the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church.
They're particularly offended, he noted, by “people who want to
change their religion” – specifically, Muslims who want to become
Christians, who can expect ostracism and may face death threats.
Christians who dare to evangelize Egyptian Muslims can expect violent
retribution if their work becomes known.
Even instances of Christians becoming Muslims can make these tensions
turn explosive.
In October, when suicide-attackers at Iraq's Cathedral
of Our Lady of Salvation killed almost 60 worshipers at a Sunday Mass in
Baghdad, the Islamic State of Iraq group claimed it was an act of
retaliation for two alleged female converts from Christianity to Islam,
supposedly being held captive by Coptic Christians.
Iraqi experts at the time told CNA that they had no reason to believe
the story.
Fr. Greische noted that it might simply have been an
instance of an ordinary domestic disagreement, being turned into a
public libel against Coptic Christians in a climate of suspicion and
hostility.
He suspected that the Oct. 31 attack in Baghdad, one of the deadliest
acts of anti-Christian terrorism in years, was a response to the Synod
for the Middle East that had concluded earlier in the month.
That synod
ultimately issued only light criticisms of Islamic regimes, and
represented an exercise of the kind of religious liberty Islamic
extremists disallow.
Fr. Greische said the Baghdad incident had given rise to a climate of
fear among Christians throughout the region.
“All the churches, we have
police all around our churches,” he told Vatican Radio. “It’s as if we
are in a fortress.”
It's made for a difficult Advent season.
“Up to now, we don’t really
feel Christmas in the joyful way,” he acknowledged.
But within churches
that may feel like fortresses, Egyptian Christians have a deeper source
of security: “Jesus, who is with us (through) all these difficulties
that we have.”
SIC: CNA/INT'L