Obama's Jihad on Christian 'Marys'

By Raymond Ibrahim, CP Op-Ed Contributor Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Who is more deserving of punishment by the United States? Millions of Egyptians, for ousting the Muslim Brotherhood? Or the Muslim Brotherhood, for habitually terrorizing and murdering Christians, among many other crimes?

According to the unmistakably clear actions of the Obama administration, it is the millions of anti-Brotherhood Egyptians who deserve punishment.

Last Sunday, the Church of the Virgin [Mary] in Waraq near Cairo was attacked during a wedding ceremony, leaving four dead and many wounded. According to Dr. Hisham Abdul Hamid of forensics, two of those who were murdered were Christian children-two girls; two Marys: 12-year-old Mary Nabil Fahmy, who took five shots in the chest, and 8-year-old Mary Ashraf Masih (Christ), who took a bullet in the back which burst from the front.

It should be noted that this scene-attacked Coptic churches and murdered Christians, especially on holy days and celebrations-has become a normalized aspect of Egypt's landscape (see Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians, especially pgs. 42-43 and 56-62).

So too are the murders of Christian children increasingly common in Egypt. Indeed, along with Sunday's two murdered Marys, back in July, another Christian girl, 10-year-old Jessi Boulos, was shot dead while walking home from Bible class.

All of these church attacks and murders are a direct byproduct of the Muslim Brotherhood's incitements against Egypt's Christians in response to the June 30 Revolution, which saw the ousting of the Brotherhood.

Needing someone to scapegoat in order to set Egypt ablaze, Brotherhood leadership-including supreme leader Muhammad Badie, Safwat Hegazi, and Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi-repeatedly demonized the nation's Christian minority, leading to any number of atrocities committed against the Copts.

As today's headline from one of Egypt's most read newspapers, Tahrir News, put it: "The Brotherhood's crime in Waraq [location of Sunday's church attack]. Seventeen murdered Copts and 85 torched churches since ousting of Morsi… Copts pay price of June 30 Revolution."

Now consider the response of the United States concerning the conflict between Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood in the context of U.S. aid.

For years, human rights activists have been imploring the Obama administration to make aid to Egypt contingent on respect for the human rights of all Egyptians, including Christian minorities. Such a move would dramatically ameliorate the plight of the Copts, as all of Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood, are more interested in securing money than they are in killing Christians.

Instead, the Obama administration's approach has been 1) to ignore the plight of Egypt's Christians or 2) when attacks are especially egregious (and exposed by the MSM) offer perfunctory condemnation. (After all, if the administration was able to get away with the lip-service approach with Americans-vocally condemning and promising to get the murderers of Americans in Benghazi but then ignoring it-surely it will not hesitate doing so with a foreign nation.)

But as for making U.S. aid contingent on respect for human rights, the Obama administration has been idle.

On the other hand, when those who are responsible for the destruction of nearly 100 Christian churches (including an unprecedented attack on the holiest Coptic church, when Morsi was still president) and the murders of Copts and their children finally get ousted by the Egyptian people and their military, it is then that the Obama administration moves and punishes, as it did recently, cutting hundreds of millions in aid to Egypt in direct response to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood (in other nations, like Syria, the administration supports the Christian-slaughtering, al-Qaeda linked terrorists).

What more proof can any sensible American need to know that the president of the United States is firmly in bed with Islamic terrorists?

Raymond Ibrahim, a Middle East and Islam specialist, is author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). Ibrahim's dual-background—born and raised in the U.S. by Coptic Egyptian parents born and raised in the Middle East—has provided him with unique advantages, from equal fluency in English and Arabic, to an equal understanding of the Western and Middle Eastern mindsets, positioning him to explain the latter to the former and making him a much sought after expert.