Posted on 01/18/2005 8:35:08 AM PST by conservativecorner
"Christians & Muslims Brawl," from the New York Post, with thanks to Jeffrey Imm:
January 18, 2005 -- An emotional holy war broke out yesterday on the streets of Jersey City, where Muslims and Christians clashed and lobbed insults at the funeral for a devout family of Egyptian immigrants who may have been slain for their religious beliefs. While mourners inside the St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church prayed for peace in the wake of a murder that escalated religious tensions at home and abroad, fights erupted amid the crowd that spilled outside the church, where angry Coptic Christians pointed accusing fingers at their Muslim counterparts.
Hossam Armanious, 37, his wife, Amal Garas, 37, and their two daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, were found dead in their Oakland Avenue home early Friday after relatives told police nobody had heard from them in days.
Investigators said each victim was bound, gagged and stabbed in the neck, and the early focus was on anti-Muslim remarks Armanious made in a popular religious chat room after a relative said Armanious was threatened online for expressing his Christian beliefs.
Officials said the religious persecution theory is still under investigation, but said some evidence points to robbery as a motive.
Members of the city's Coptic community — many of whom left Egypt like Armanious to escape religious threats — believe there is a connection between their faith and the murders.
That sentiment was expressed loudly by one parishioner inside who began yelling at Muslims, including a sheik, who attended the service.
"Muslim is the killer," he said over and over before he was dragged from the church by five police officers who hustled him into an unmarked police car and quickly drove away.
Tensions were high even before the first copper-colored casket arrived, when, during a procession to the church from Journal Square, family members asked mourners to put away anti-Muslim protest signs.
But emotions really boiled over in the moments after the wistful service when a skirmish broke out as the four black hearses adorned with the victims' pictures were being loaded.
Punches were thrown, people were shoved and police rushed in to break up the brawl that had moved up Bergen Avenue to a nearby parking garage.
For a while, cops kept the crowd separated with a metal garage gate until they could restore order.
"I think people here have fueled it," family friend Henry Simon, 35, said of the tension.
"The sheik came at the wrong time. It's like spitting on their graves."
Those too sad to be angry had kind words for the deeply religious family, especially young Sylvia, who died a day before her Sweet 16 party.
If robbery were the motive — and reports have been conflicting about whether the family was robbed at all — it would be strange that the victims were all stabbed in the neck, as opposed to any other place. But then there is the possibility that they were struck in the necks for being unbelievers, in accord with Qur'an 47:4. The idea that if it were a robbery, it couldn't be a religiously-motivated killing, is silly. After all, historically Muslim warriors always plundered the victims of jihad.
Note also this interesting detail buried at the end of the story:
Investigators learned that a relative of the victims had helped prosecutors in their case against Lynne Stewart, the lawyer charged with passing messages to followers of her client, blind Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a convicted terrorist ringleader. But sources close to the case said there is no connection between the relative and the murders.
Let them rise to the heavens.
The muzlims aren't the problem...They will do what we know they will do...The problem is the people of the U.S...We will let them kill us and take over our country...Just as we did with the communists...
I love my God, my family, my life, and my country. Muslims threaten all of the above.
I will not hesitate to take it to the streets if that is what needs to be done.
I need no further convincing, Muslims are evil, and the ones who aren't are facilitators.
I know that, I was proposing a Muslim v Muslim reality show.
The quadruple murder of a Coptic Christian family in Jersey City has strained already tense relations between Egyptian Muslims and Copts, despite the fact that no evidence has emerged that religious motives were a factor in the killings.
Imam Tarek, from a mosque in Brooklyn, attended the funeral in a show of peace despite protests from "youth" who didn't want a Muslim presence there, said Fred Ayad, a deacon at St. George and St. Shenouda Orthodox Coptic Church on Bergen Avenue, where the funeral Mass was held yesterday.
Tarek, who sat with the Coptic priests during the services, was escorted out of the building by police for his own safety when the services were over, according to Jersey City Police Capt. Jon Tooke.
According to Ayad, Bishop David of the Coptic church insisted that all who wanted to attend be allowed inside the church doors.
"The bishop said to let people in because we are Christians," in response to churchgoers who "get upset because they don't want to let people in," said Ayad.
Two people were ejected from the services for causing a disruption, said Tooke.
Ahmed Sheded, president of the Islamic Center of
Jersey City, was among those at the funeral. He wore a business suit instead of Muslim religious attire because, he said, "that might agitate people."
"We feel this is something that was very far away from our community," he said after the services, in reference to the brutal slayings. "A real Muslim can't do that. Any religious person who believes in God cannot do this, even to an animal."
Eric Davis, a professor of political science and former director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, offered some perspective on the historically strained Islamic-Coptic relations.
The Coptic church, an Orthodox branch of Christianity which extends from its headquarters in Alexandria, Egypt, down through Sudan into Ethiopia, has adherents among roughly 10 percent of Egyptians, said Davis, who lived in Cairo for 31/2 years.
"There are tensions in Egypt among certain segments. But on the whole, these relations are very good (in the United States) and in Egypt," he said.
Islamic resentment of Copts, he said, has several sources, the largest of which has to do with economics and not religion.
"In a nutshell, Egypt is a very poor country and the gap between the rich and poor has gotten much wider," said Davis. "This comes out in anti-Western and anti-Christian sentiment . To a certain extent, Copts are seen as affiliated with the West because of their religion."
The government in Egypt is dominated by Muslims and the Copt minority sometimes feels persecuted. Violence has erupted in Egypt between the two groups sporadically over the past several years.
Some in the Coptic community insisted that Jersey City the murders came at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists.
Monir Dowoud, president of the American Coptic Association, based in Jersey City, said Sunday that "Muslim terrorists" were responsible for the killings.
The bodies of the four, Hossam Armanious, 47; his wife, Amal Garas, 37; and their two children, Monica, 9, and Sylvia, 15, were found early Friday morning in their Oakland Avenue home with puncture wounds to their throats and bodies, police said.
Yousef Abdallah, outreach director at North Hudson Islamic Educational Center in Union City, did not attend the funeral but said he has closely followed the events in the news.
"First, there is a huge misconception in American media as what is an Islamic extremist," Abdallah said. "There is no such thing as an Islamic extremist. To be Muslim is to be equal and just with people, even if they don't treat you fairly . What happened in Jersey City, if it is a Muslim, I am not going to apologize for that because that was an ignorant and stupid individual act."
The headline of a flyer distributed by the American Coptic Association, based in Jersey City, asked if the incident was a homicide or execution and demanded justice. The flyer, printed in both English and Arabic, called the victims "martyrs" and mentioned Islamic extremist groups in Iraq and elsewhere.
No one at the American Coptic Association was available for comment on the flyer.
As stragglers milled about outside the annex during the services, Emad Soliman, 35, of Jersey City, who came to the United States from Alexandria, Egypt in 2000, said there is a faction of the Coptic community that is trying to put a political spin on the tragic murders.
Soliman, who works as a district manager for circulation at The Jersey Journal, lives three blocks from the Jersey City Heights home where the family's bodies were found.
"A lot of people try to make it about Christian versus Muslim religion, about 50 percent," he said. "It just starts more problems."
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"First, there is a huge misconception in American media as what is an Islamic extremist," Abdallah said. "There is no such thing as an Islamic extremist.
Rrrrriigghhttt...........
They hate the West. Why are they here ?
"They hate the West. Why are they here ?"
To bring us down from within. The new plan for the Muslims is to move in, reproduce, and overrun.
and why not? The ground work is being laid even as we write... Courtesy of the ACLU, activist judges and immigrants, professional racists and liberals in government.
It will very soon be out of the hands of government.
We're not Euroweenies.
Thank G-d for the Second Amendment.
I'm an orthodox christian myself...and let me tell you..there is no other christian sect that is more vocal about islam and how much we loathe it. This is nothing new, many orthodox living in muslims countries fall victim to murder by muslims.
This whole story reads like Voice of the Martyrs magazine, but it here, not somewhere in the Eastern Hemisphere. :(
As it should be.
I think it began around 570 AD. But now it's in New Jersey.
What legitimate reason could the Muslims have had for attending the funeral? Other than forcing a confrontation.
Funny, we never had a problem with coptic Christians acting violently until the Religion of Peace arrived on the scene.
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