OUT OF EGYPT
By Paul Merkley.
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On Palm Sunday of this year a local Egyptian acolyte of ISIS detonated his suicide vest at St. George’s Coptic Orthodox church in the Nile delta city of Tanta, about 50 miles north of Cairo. Then, a few hours later, a second of the same ilk joined the company of martyrs by carrying out the same mission at St. Marks’ cathedral in Alexandria. Altogether, at least seventy-five lives were lost and scores were injured in these two events. The Head (Pope) of the Coptic Orthodox Church (to which the great majority of Egyptian Christians belong) was in that church in Alexandria at the time of the outrage, so that there is reason to believe that his assassination was meant to be part of the prize that day.
As it happened, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Rome, who is called Father (Pope) by Roman Catholics, was already scheduled to visit the largest Coptic congregations in Egypt during April 28-29; he thus had to resist the well-meaning advice that he cancel his Egyptian visit.
The Palm Sunday attacks were just the latest in a long list of deadly attacks on Coptic churches and upon the persons and the homes of Copts in many parts of Egypt. Over recent months, a campaign of assassination and intimidation has driven hundreds of Christians from their homes in north Sinai – while being virtually ignored by the world’s press. A brave Coptic resident has told a brave journalist that between April 2011 and today a total of 59 Copts have been murdered at several Sinai locations, while 714 Copts have been wounded. Hundreds have been forced out of their homes, and so the properties of them all have been looted. 24 churches have been attacked, 4 of which have been completely destroyed. None of the perpetrators has so far been tried, but vigilant Egyptian police have imprisoned several Copts, including three children, for insulting Islam.
Then, on December 11, 2016, a suicide bomber attacked St. Peter and St. Paul Coptic Orthodox Church in Cairo, killing 29 and injured dozens. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Copts will now be joining the ranks of those who have in recent decades given up on the hope of decent life in this land and are seeking a new life in Europe or North America.
It is not as though Pope Francis is unaware of these at atrocities. He just feels that is better for the sake of peace to reckon these as “acts of religious people” (unspecified as to brand) against other religious people.
The Roman Pope’s visit followed upon an invitation from the Grand Imam of al-Azhar University to a conference on Religion and World Peace. Now, speaking before an audience in which participated the grand Imam of al-Azhar, Sheik Ahmad el-Tayeb; Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi; Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II; and Coptic Catholic Patriarch Ibrahim Isaac Sedrak of Alexandria, Pope Francis chose as his theme Egypt’s “glorious history.” According to the Vatican’s official news-site: “He called on all of Egypt to continue its legacy of being a land of civilization and covenant so it can contribute to peace for its own people and the whole Middle East….Egypt is the land where God gave Moses the Ten Commandments, which include ‘Thou shalt not kill’…. God exhorts us to reject the way of violence as the necessary condition for every earthly covenant.”
The kindest thing that can be said of this is that it might deserve a D-minus grade if it appeared in an undergraduate essay in the Journalism Department of, let us say, Carleton University.
I learned in Sunday School that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments (and the rest of His Law) to Moses, and that Moses, in turn, gave them to his band of fugitive slaves, These “Hebrews” were, at that time, in flight from Egypt, and being pursued by armies sent by the pagan regime that governed during that chapter of “Egypt’s great and glorious history.”
Let’s be candid: a mind burdened by such basic confusion will quickly lead all who follow him into a ditch.
The religion of Jews and Christians is based upon a Revelation about God’s purposes that He gave to the Hebrew slaves as they fled for the sake of their souls from the glories of Egyptian Civilization. .
As always, Pope Francis has one eye on world news; and so he thinks that the moment when he is celebrating the glories of Ancient Egyptian Civilization is exactly appropriate for denouncing all the ungodly forces at work in our daily lives. And as always and everywhere he happens to be, he insists that the real source of all the misery in the world—including the Middle East – is to be found in the misbehaviour, past and present, of European Imperialists, including the warmongering politicians who now hold the seats of power everywhere in the West. His message to the latter is this:
It is of little or no use to raise our voices and run about to find weapons for our protection. What is needed today are peacemakers, not fomenters of conflict; firefighters, not arsonists; preachers of reconciliation and not instigators of destruction. [The politicians must address] the root causes of terrorism, like poverty and exploitation, and stop the flow of weapons and money to those who provoke violence … .Only by bringing into the light of day the murky manoeuvrings that feed the cancer of war can its real causes be prevented.
The Grand Imam underscores the Roman Pope’s theme: “We should not,” the Imam says, “hold religion accountable for the crimes of any small group of followers.” For example, “Islam is not a religion of terrorism just because a small group of fanatics ignorantly misinterpret texts of the Quran to support their hatred.”
I find particularly baffling Pope Francis’ suggestion that “It is a duty of all good people to unmask the peddlers of illusions about the afterlife who rob people of their lives and take away their ability to choose freely and believe responsibly.” Typically, he does not “unmask” – that is, give actual names to–any of these” peddlers of illusions” – so that everyone can go on pretending that he is talking about somebody else .
This insight gets more and more troubling the longer one stares at it. Is “the afterlife… an illusion?” Like everyone else raised as a Christian, I was taught that there is “an afterlife,” and I continue to hold to that teaching. But today we find the Pope, the Father of the Church, who speaks authoritatively on all theological matters, referring — just in passing mind you — to the harm that is done by “illusions” about “an afterlife” Or does he perhaps mean that some details about “the afterlife” constitute “an illusion?”
I submit that this is not the fruit of carelessness, but rather of calculation. Popes are supposed not to be careless or vague or allusive. They have large staffs to see to this. What we have in this provocative passage, delivered before a mainly Muslim audience at “the foremost seat of Islamic theology,” is a deliberate and (if I may say so) an unethical dodge, intended to all appease an audience of outsiders to his own faith as well as others who feel superior to it. Muslims, too, believe in “an afterlife” – and do so at least as fiercely as most Christians and Jews. But then, Muslims put quite a different content to that belief.
Every informed person whose mouth has not be stopped by political correctness, knows that the Religion of Islam is the inspirational source of the overwhelming majority of actual terrorist deeds today. The Pope uses a shabby shell-and-pea trick to disguise this reality, warning his audience to “avoid extremism” – as though “extremism” were a generic, free-floating commodity, existing apart from the ideology in which it is embedded.
The Vatican’s own official newspaper, Osservatore Romano, says that Pope Francis “has developed a reputation for fearlessness.”
www.osv.com/…/Pope-Francis-preaches-peace-unity-in-Egypt.aspx
But surely true “fearlessness” – fearlessness appropriate to this challenge that the Pope was described as pursuing during his trip to Egypt — should require drawing attention to the one-sidedness of forces among the “extremists.” It is Egyptian Muslims that are wiping out Egyptian Christians – and for that matter throughout the Middle East it is Arab Muslims who are wiping out the steadily-declining communities of Arab Christians? It should be obvious to all that the 1% of Arabs who have survived as Christians cannot be considered responsible for what the Middle East has become. Yet the Roman Pope addresses his complaint to Christians and Muslims as equally responsible, on account of their failure of love and respect.
There is another way of looking at these matters, however – less judgemental, and more liberal. It has been articulated in a tweet by Homeland Security Adviser under President Obama , Mohamed Elibiary, coming in response to news that ISIS has shot a Christian man, Nabil Saber Ayoub, in a barber shop in el-Arish. Noting that Copts had approved of the removal by President Sisi’s army of President Mohamad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s champion, Elibiary tweeted on May seventh: “Subhanallah“(“Glory to Allah.”)What goes around comes around.”
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