U.S. Copts Association

As Christians worldwide prepare to celebrate the birth of the man they regard as humanity’s savior, those in Muslim nations must wonder whether the West’s Christian leaders have abandoned them.

Throughout the autumn, Christians in Asia and the Middle East became targets of arson, extortion, mob violence and even murder in Allah’s name. Instead of addressing those problems, however, Western Christian leaders indulged in sanctimonious pedantry, fashionable naiveté and outright appeasement in the name of dialogue and peace.

The Church of England commemorated the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon by endorsing an official apology to Muslim leaders for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq.

The church’s report, “Countering Terrorism: Power, Violence and Democracy Post-9/11,” advocated “truth and reconciliation” meetings with Muslim leaders that would give Christian counterparts the opportunity to perform “a public act of institutional repentance” for the West’s “long litany of errors” in dealing with Iraq, including the 2003 war.

Moreover, the report’s addendum concerning Iran’s nuclear program suggested universal disarmament as the ultimate solution: “If certain countries retain their nuclear weapons on the basis of the uncertainty and potentially violent volatility of international relations, on what basis are the same weapons denied to other states?”

Not to be outdone, 95 bishops from the United Methodist Church — President George W. Bush’s denomination — publicly regretted their “complicity” in the “unjust and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq” in a statement they issued in November.
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By Tarek Heggy

“Last month, members of the Coptic community (Orthodox Christian Egyptians) and other individuals convened in Washington, D.C. to discuss the problems facing Copts in Egypt. Despite the complete personal disagreement between myself and the individual who initiated this conference, I will put aside the personal angle in dealing with this topic… since I feel that my way of thinking and writing is above getting dragged into the kind of style known from the security services’ investigations department, which [tends to] abandon the heart of the matter and pursue marginal issues related to personalities, suspicions and conspiratorial thinking.

“This security-service mentality is one of the factors that contributed to the collapse of objectivity and rationality in our thinking, and which [cause this kind of thinking] to be so far removed from objective and civilized modes of analysis which are one of the achievements of human civilization.

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The Middle East is the birthplace of Christianity and home to some of the world’s most ancient Christian denominations. But Christian communities across the region are declining in numbers because of a combination of low birth rates, emigration and, in some places, persecution.
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The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest opposition group, is covertly communicating with senior members of the Coptic community.

Brotherhood members wish to dismiss any fears that the Copts may have concerning the brotherhood’s increased power in the parliament, the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat reported.

Participants told the paper the talks were “positive.”

The Muslim Brotherhood made impressive gains in the recent legislative elections, increasing its parliamentary representatives fivefold.

The movement has been banned since 1954, and as such is barred from fielding candidates in the elections, but it has dodged this sanction by fielding its members as independents, gaining at least 76 seats in the 454-seat People’s Assembly.
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by Sally Bishai

If I have to say so myself, I am a pretty fearless person.

The best thing my dad ever taught me (and he’s chock full of great lessons) can be summed up as “Ana Makhafsh Men Hadd Gher Rabena,” otherwise known as “I Ain’t Gonna Get Scared Off By No One But God.”

Having said that, I must confess that the title I’ve elected to use today is rather frightening to an anti-hippie like me. Not that I dislike Hippies, mind, I just hate bellbottoms and ironed hair parted down the middle. (On men and women both, though it can look quite pretty, sometimes.)
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