What Is Being Done to Protect Copts?

by Max Boot


The plight of Coptic Christians in Egypt has caught the attention of Americans, and understandably so—they face a wave of attacks against their businesses, homes, and churches. The culprits are radical Muslims who are eager to hit back at the government for a continuing crackdown but lack the courage or means to fight back directly against the security forces. So instead they are victimizing innocent Copts who are one of the groups in Egyptian society most opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood and its goal of creating a more Islamicized society.

Yet there is more to this story than a simple narrative of reprehensible conduct by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and other, more radical Islamist groups. The Egyptian military is eager to publicize attacks on Copts to delegitimize the Brotherhood as a pack of terrorists—a criticism that resounds especially loudly in majority-Christian countries such as the United States. But the army, while eager to denounce church burnings, is doing little to stop them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that during a wave of anti-Christian attacks in the town of Minya, “security forces were nowhere to be seen,” and “in the days after no suspects appear to have been brought in,” even though “looting of the churches has continued.”

The Journal article quotes one “Christian who lives in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood,” who said “that as the local Bishop Moussa Church was under siege, he made several fruitless calls to the police. With no response from the fire station a few blocks away, either, he said, he and his neighbors put out fires with a garden hose.”

This is part of a long pattern with the Egyptian “deep state” which, in its statements abroad, condemns attacks on Christians but does little to stop them at home. This has bred widespread suspicion that the cynical generals are simply interested in generating fresh victims to justify their continuing crackdown on the Brotherhood.

The Coptic Christians feel used and ill-treated by the military regime. That’s something that American supporters of the generals should keep in mind before they use reprehensible attacks on the Copts to justify equally reprehensible attacks against demonstrators by the security forces.
 

Max Boot

Source: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/08/21/what-is-being-done-to-protect-copts/

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