Monday, August 19, 2013

Egypt: Christian Schools, Churches Looted By Islamists, Nuns Abused As 'POWs'

http://www.csmonitor.com/var/ezflow_site/storage/images/media/content/2013/0818_world_ochurches/16742839-1-eng-US/0818_World_OCHURCHES_full_380.jpg

While the Muslim Brotherhood fascists haven't performed so well against the Egyptian Army, they've done somewhat better when it comes to assaulting Egypt's Christians. Over 47 churches and monasteries have been burned and looted by the Islamists since Morsi was deposed, along with dozens of homes and businesses owned by Christians. The latest tactic of the Islamists is to mark the targets with red paint graffiti beforehand, so the mobs know where to go.

Pictured above is the Coptic Saint Virgin Mary Church in Al Nazla, which had just been rebuilt after 13 years of construction in a country where the government strictly curtails building permits for churches, in accordance with sharia law.

“First they stole the valuable things, and then they torched the place,” says Sami Awad, a church member who lives across the narrow dirt alley from the church. “Whatever they couldn't carry, they burned.”

The attackers left graffiti on the ruins of the church reading “The religion of God is Islam.”

The UK's Daily Mail reported on what happened to the latest victim in the Brotherhood's war against Christians, the Franciscan School in Cairo.

Sister Manal, the principal told the Daily Mail how she watched for six hours as a mob looted the building, knocked the cross off the gate and replaced it with the black banner of jihad.

The classrooms were then burned to the ground and the nuns, along with several Christian women who worked at the school were taken away to be paraded through the streets as 'prisoners of war' by the Brotherhood.

‘We are nuns. We rely on God and the angels to protect us,’ Sister Manal said. ‘At the end, they paraded us like prisoners of war and hurled abuse at us as they led us from one alley to another without telling us where they were taking us.’

The frightened women were groped, hit and insulted by the Islamist mob.

‘I am terrified and unable to focus,’ said Boulos Fahmy, the pastor of a Catholic church a short distance away from Manal’s school. ‘I am expecting an attack on my church any time now.’

And Bishop Ibram, head of the local Coptic church, said he had instructed Christians and clerics not to resist the mobs of Islamists to try and avoid any loss of life.

‘The looters were so diligent that they came back to one of the five churches they had already ransacked to see if they could get more,’ he said.

‘They were loading our chairs and our benches on trucks and when they had no space for more, they just destroyed them.’

In contrast to the Brotherhood regime that was recently ousted, the current Egyptian regime has said that attacks on Egypt's Christians will not be tolerated and has promised government aid in rebuilding the burned churches and religious facilities.

President Obama has made a huge point  of being a professed Christian. Have you ever heard him say a word about this? Has he ever once criticized the Muslim Brotherhood for attacking Christians and burning churches?

No comments: