Screaming “With our blood and soul, we will defend you, Islam,” jihadists stormed the Virgin Mary Church in northwest Cairo last weekend. They torched the Coptic Christian house of worship, burned the nearby homes of two Copt families to the ground, attacked a residential complex, killed a dozen people, and wounded more than 200: just another day in this spontaneous democratic uprising by Muslim hearts yearning for freedom.
In the delusional vocabulary of the “Arab Spring,” this particular episode is known as a sectarian “clash.” That was the Washington Post’s take. Its headline reads “12 dead in Egypt as Christians and Muslims clash” — in the same way, one supposes, that a mugger’s fist can be said to “clash” with his victim’s face. The story goes on, in nauseating “cycle of violence” style, to describe “clashes between Muslims and Coptic Christians” that “left” 12 dead, dozens more wounded, “and a church charred” — as if it were not crystal clear who were the clashers and who were the clashees, as if the church were somehow combusted into a flaming heap without some readily identifiable actors having done the charring.
Well, what, you may ask, would cause such wailing and gnashing of teeth?
The provocation that stirred Muslims this time, as if there had to be one, involved a rumor that Copts are preventing a Christian woman from converting to Islam — and who wouldn’t grab the blowtorch over that? The rumor is probably not true, but what difference does that make? A Christian woman about whom a similar claim was made a couple of years ago ultimately denied that she had ever attempted to become a Muslim. That didn’t stop enraged Muslims — rage being the default condition — from killing 51 people in a similar arson attack on a Syriac Catholic church in post-Saddam, “Made in the U.S.A.” Baghdad.
Go read the whole article here.
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