Posted on 01/20/2005 7:49:06 PM PST by Destro
A Bloody Crime in New Jersey Divides Egyptians Once Again
By ANDREA ELLIOTT
Published: January 21, 2005
JERSEY CITY, Jan. 20 - Muslim and Christian students of Egyptian descent suddenly no longer sit together during lunch at Dickinson High School on Palisade Avenue. At Halal butcher shops and Christian-owned grocery stores, sales clerks speak in equally hushed tones about the unsolved murder last week of a Christian Egyptian family, wary of who may be listening.
And friendships that were once free of religious division are now strained, in ways subtle and blunt, as speculation that four members of the family were killed because of their religion has run rampant, even though there has been no official findings by the authorities.
For years, Mohsen Elesawi, a Muslim Egyptian, shared shisha pipes and games of chess with Christian Egyptians at the Christian-owned El Saraya cafe on Vroom Street. Now, when he walks into the room, he often hears a quiet pause, "like a subject change," he said.
"Now there is no trust between Muslims and Christians and there is a lot of anger," said Mr. Elesawi, 52, a limousine driver who immigrated to Jersey City 21 years ago. "It's changed dramatically."
In the words of Fakher Fahmy, 53, a Christian Egyptian who owns a construction company in Jersey City, Muslims and Christians "spoke as friends" before the murders. "Now everybody is scared of everybody," he said.
For decades, Jersey City has been an experiment in peace between Muslims and Christians from Egypt. At odds in their homeland, the two groups had bonded as immigrants, mingling at the same cafes, schools and taxi stands, glued by one language and national identity. They shared eagerly in forging a new, American life.
But in the week since four family members, including an 8-year-old girl, were found in their home here with their throats slit, a centuries-old rift has come to the surface.
To the outsider, the extent of vitriol and near-paranoia provoked by the slayings seems hard to fathom: the police have yet to make an arrest and believe that robbery was a motive. Still, in the days after the four victims were found bound, gagged and stabbed to death, the scant known facts of the case have been supplanted by a swirl of rumor and innuendo that the victims were the targets of Muslims, leading to scenes of chaos at the funeral, with mourners shoving each other and threatening to beat a sheik who attended.
The murder case, while tragic on its own, has opened a wound and produced an outpouring of emotion that even Egyptian Christians and Muslims struggle to explain. The answer is layered: there are old-world grievances, a largely unspoken anger toward Egyptian Muslims after 9/11, and a newfound immigrant power that has left the Egyptian Christians - a repressed minority in Egypt - unafraid to assert their voice here.
The murder victims - Hossam Armanious, 47, Amal Garas, 37, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8 - were Copts, or members of the Coptic Orthodox church. In Egypt, Muslims are the majority and Copts, who are roughly 10 percent of the population, live with varying degrees of social, political and religious discrimination, according to the United States State Department and human rights groups.
But in Jersey City, which has the largest Coptic Egyptian community in the United States, Copts are estimated to outnumber Muslims, and the balance of power between them is more equal.
Many Copts, along with Muslims, have enjoyed financial success. Fred Ayad, a Copt who left Cairo for Jersey City 35 years ago, rose to become deputy mayor. And Copts from all walks of life, from surgeons to cab drivers, will attest that in America, they have found a new social comfort. They no longer live on the margins of society: they are among the religious majority.
But if anything altered that newfound comfort, and helped stoke the recent friction over the murder case, it was Sept. 11.
Muslims in the United States were not alone in suffering a social backlash. Arabs of other religions have also been subjected to hate crimes, searches at airports, loss of jobs and other problems experienced by Muslims after the attacks. But that shared distress has wrought some hard and painful realities within the Arab community, with non-Muslims wishing to distance themselves from Muslims.
"Here in the United States, they think all Egyptians are alike," said a 51-year-old Copt from Jersey City who identified himself only as A. Iskander. "We have nothing to do with 9/11. It makes me angry."
That anger strikes many Muslim Americans as deeply unfair - they often make a point of saying that they, too, had nothing to do with 9/11. But it may explain the rather startling scene that unfolded on the steps of the slain family's church on Bergen Avenue last Sunday. Hundreds of Copts stood watching as members of the American Coptic Association gathered before television cameras and declared the family's murder a religious "execution," drawing comparisons to slayings by terrorists in Iraq and Egypt.
"Wake up America!" yelled Dr. Monir Dawoud, the president of the group. If newcomers to the Arab community found the image of Arabs denouncing other Arabs as terrorists surprising, it was not unusual for Dr. Dawoud, whom some have criticized as using the murder case to advance Coptic rights in Egypt.
Almost immediately, rumors flew: Mr. Armanious had engaged in fiery debates about Christianity and Islam in Internet chat rooms, and may have been threatened with murder, his friends said. The police would not confirm or deny that, but discounted newspaper reports that a tattoo of a cross on Sylvia Armanious's wrist had been stabbed.
Muslim leaders responded by condemning the killings, but also decrying the recriminations against their religion, at a news conference on Wednesday. They invited a representative of the Coptic church to speak, but no one came.
"It's not the time for us to speak about anything now," said the Rev. David Bebawi, a priest at the slain family's church, St. George and St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church. The press conference was "appropriate for them," he said. "It's not appropriate for me. We are grieved."
It is impossible to know what permanence, if any, the friction in Jersey City will have. There are still moments of harmony - Copts and Muslims continue to share tables at El Saraya, for instance, and Copts still shop at King M & M Halal Meat on West Side Avenue. But many Muslims and Copts agree that, for the time being, a shift has occurred. It is both subtle and nakedly obvious, if perhaps short-lived.
"I'm not going to be friends with Muslims anymore - their parents killed my best friend," said a 17-year-old boy who attends Dickinson High School, his eyes welling with tears.
Sylvia Armanious was a star student at Dickinson, where fights between Muslims and Copts have been brewing since news of the murders hit, students and school officials said. One girl's headscarf was pulled off, according to several students, though school officials said they did not know about the incident.
"Why are they blaming the Muslims?" asked a 15-year-old student from Pakistan, cloaked in a black hijab, as she briskly walked home from school Wednesday afternoon. "I feel scared."
School officials said that counselors at the school have been enlisted to address the tension and grief. Of the roughly 3,000 students who attend Dickinson, about 150 are Egyptian.
"The superintendent is trying to do everything possible to make sure that nothing happens in the school," said Dr. Sharon Bartley-Monos, executive assistant to Jersey City's public schools superintendent, Charles T. Epps, Jr.
The city's first Egyptians, both Copts and Muslims, began noticeably arriving here in the 1960's. Today, both groups number in the tens of thousands. (The census does not track religious affiliation, but both Coptic organizations and the Jersey City chapter of the Council on Arab-Islamic Relations estimate the number of Copts to be above 30,000 and Muslims to total about 25,000, out of the city's population of 239,000.)The city's oldest mosque and its oldest Coptic church - the pillars of the Egyptian community - stand five blocks apart. Both were built in the 1970's, and are filled with hundreds of congregants every week. But when they are not worshipping apart, Muslims and Copts are working, shopping, walking and studying in many of the same places. And until this week, they seemed yet another example of how immigration to a new world can breed peaceful plurality.
For many children of Egyptian immigrants, the anguish surrounding the murders has brought to life a division they only heard about at the dinner table. Some have made their parents' grievance their own. Others have worked hard, despite the intensity of emotions over the last week, not to.
"We never talk about religion," said Moustafa Ahmed, 18, a Muslim of Egyptian descent, as he sat with his three best friends - a Muslim and two Copts - after school one day. The four young men, all of whom are students at Dickinson, began their lives together in Jersey City as neighbors in the same building, when their families first moved here, and have remained friends ever since.
"We don't put religion in our friendship at all," said Mario Gerges, 17, who is a Copt.
Nonetheless, young Copts like Mr. Gerges grew up hearing the stories of repression: how Copts in Egypt do not, for the most part, hold high-ranking positions in the government, the army or in universities; how the government appoints and pays the salaries of imams in mosques, but does not help finance or repair Christian churches.
"In my country, I can't have one tenth of this," said Mr. Ayad, the Copt who served as deputy mayor in Jersey City for nine years, until 2001. Mr. Ayad, who is also a Coptic deacon and a real estate investor, said he dreamed of being a politician in Egypt but never had the chance given his religious affiliation. And then there are the clashes between the groups, which date back more than 1,300 years, to when Islam took over as Egypt's leading religion. The most recent large-scale strife, in the upper Egyptian town of El Kusheh in 2000, left 20 Christians and one Muslim dead.
In June, the country's highest court upheld the acquittal of 94 suspects who were charged in the incident, leaving public prosecutors and human rights activists with no further legal redress, according to the State Department's International Religious Freedom Report.
The rage felt by many Jersey City Copts in the murder of the Armanious family was tethered, in part, to resentment over the Kusheh massacre, many Copts who were interviewed said.
"Why did so many people go into the streets, expressing their anger and belief that this is terrorism?" asked Dr. Dawoud. "Because the same things happened in Egypt."
Egyptian Muslims often provide a different portrait of life in their homeland, characterizing the complaints of Copts as far-fetched or exaggerated.
"If you go there, you wouldn't see what you hear here," said Hamed Elshanawany, the vice president of the Egyptian American Group, a nondenominational organization based in Jersey City.
Despite the lack of confirmation by the police, numerous Copts interviewed, from entrepreneurs to blue-collar workers, said they were sure the slaying was an act of religious hatred, given the way in which the victims were killed.
But that notion does not sit well with Muslims, who have grown weary of seeing their faith tainted by extremists.
"I don't know what being slaughtered the Muslim way means," said Mr. Elesawi, the Muslim limousine driver. "The person who does such an act does not belong to any religion."
Welcome to the Bigot Club, SL!
Not as scared as Sylvia Armanious felt before she died.
Search for International Terrorist Entitie
FBI Raids Connecticut Mosque Leader's Home in Terror Probe
By Matt Apuzzo
Published in: Associated Press
October 15, 2004 WOLCOTT, Conn. -- FBI agents raided the home of a Waterbury Islamic leader as part of an investigation into a Sudanese charity that federal officials recently accused of supporting Osama bin Laden and other terrorists.
Majeed Sharif, president of United Muslim Mosque, would not discuss what investigators took from his Wolcott home on Wednesday. But he told The Associated Press that he did volunteer work for the Islamic African Relief Agency, a charity the Bush administration said Wednesday was financing terrorism.
http://www.wtnh.com/Global/story.asp?S=2436848
Islamic Leaders Suspicious Of FBI Visits
Saturday, October 16, 2004 Islamic Leaders Suspicious Of FBI Visits
Muslims wary of improper questioning tactics during Bureau 'outreach' program
By BETHE DUFRESNE
General Assignment Reporter/Columnist
Published on 10/15/2004
Groton - The FBI paid a visit to local Muslims two weeks ago as part of a national effort to assess security risks for the presidential elections, but upon arriving at the mosque here found no one home.
Since then, directors of the mosque, known as the Islamic Center of New London, have contacted a lawyer from the Connecticut Civil Liberties Union who has pledged to be present if and when the FBI calls on them again.
" What happened was we got a call from an FBI agent saying they needed to urgently talk to the board," Imran Ahmed, president of the mosque, said Thursday. He spoke on the eve of Ramadan, a monthlong observance commemorating the beginning of divine revelations to the prophet Muhammad, founder of Islam.
The message left by the federal agent said it was all part of an "outreach program," said Ahmed. But having heard reports from other Muslims about being asked questions "outside the scope" of what's proper when no one is charged or suspected of anything, he said, board members weren't eager to meet without a lawyer present.
" Luckily we were left messages," said Ahmed. "He couldn't contact us directly, and then he missed us when he came to the facility two weeks ago, so he just left us his card."
Ahmed said an FBI agent showed up about the same time at a satellite mosque in Norwich, unnerving members. "They (agents) have you face-to-face to create a sense of urgency," said Ahmed, "and people who aren't trained, they don't know how to act."
" A lot of them were Muslim immigrants," he said, "and they got really shocked. They said, "Did they do anything wrong?'"
The Washington, D.C.-based Council for American-Islamic Relations, which last month opened its first office in New England on State Street in New London, says the FBI is interviewing members of mosques around the nation in response to intelligence reports that al-Qaida plans an attack in America around the elections.
" Just about every mosque we've spoken to has been contacted," said Ahmed, small and large, from New London to Hartford.
Since Islamic terrorists attacked New York and Washington, D.C., on Sept. 11, 2001, security agents also have been treating Ramadan as a time of heightened risk.
The national Interfaith Alliance, a nonpartisan group that claims to have 150,000 members, last week condemned the government program of "volunteer interviews" just prior to the election and during the holy month of Ramadan.
" The nation would be outraged if this were to happen to Jews or Christians during Passover or Easter, for any reason," said the Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, charging that it "has a chilling effect on our democracy."
Ahmed said Islamic Center board members would willingly meet with the FBI but want to be sure their civil rights are protected.
" CAIR warned us," said Ahmed, that the FBI "will ask questions from many, many angles. We contacted CAIR just in time," he said, adding, "It's fortunate they just established an office here." CAIR put them in touch with a CCLU lawyer, he said.
According to information from CAIR and circulars from other mosques, said Ahmed, the FBI's "modus operandi" is to open a friendly chat and then ask who comes to the mosque and how often, their names, and where they came from.
Many mosques have come under surveillance during the past three years by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security. But this was a first here, said Ahmed. "I'm not commenting on any conspiracy theories," he said. But if it was truly "outreach," he asked, why weren't non-Muslims in the community also contacted?
Ahmed said people at the mosque recognize the importance of security. "If someone comes in that we have never seen before," he said, "we will reach out and talk to that person, but always in a very nice, very cordial, respectful way."
" That's our way of being vigilant," he said, adding, "The best way of vigilance is to police yourself."
Muslims were anticipating this weekend's start of Ramadan, during which they fast during the day. The Quran, the holy book of Islam, mandates the fast as a means of introspection and learning self-restraint.
Ahmed wasn't sure whether Ramadan would start today or Saturday, because it is a lunar month, tied to a visual sighting. "It's very hard to see the moon (here) because it's very cloudy," he said. "Somebody in California may see it."
" There's a 50-50 chance" it will begin Friday, he said, but "a 100 percent chance for Saturday."
Ahmed said the lawyer from CCLU has called the FBI agent who visited and left a message that the board would be happy to answer questions any time with the lawyer present. "We're not comfortable or trained in legal lingo," said Ahmed.
But the FBI hasn't called back. Now, said Ahmed, "The ball is in their court."
b.dufresne@theday.com
When Christians are murdered by muslims in Jersey City, the authorities will...in typical "kneejerk" fashion...bend over backwards to find theft as the motive rather than face the reality that this crime implies and the actions that must be taken to protect other innocent families, communities and even our national security.
And that reality is that the demonic cult "islam" must be eradicated from the western hemisphere. Those that wish to continue the practice of islam would emmigrate to a land of their choice. Muslims would no longer hold property. No mosques or immams. No wahabbi schools for brainwashing children. Severe penalties would be levied for violation of laws pertaining to the practice of islam. Islam would no longer be winked at as a religion of love.
This shit of islam using the free institutions of host countries to take over the world would come to an end.
Well then DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT OR WE WILL.
Well that depends on who thier parents were.
I certainly hope you will be able to still believe what you are saying while they are wacking off you and your families heads!
In 850, 40 Christians were beheaded in Spain for Criticizing the Muslim religion.
Those who do not remeber history are doomed to repeat it.
_______________________________________________________
They can all get out and go back to their own countries and form their own Republics with their Muslim Religion.
This country was founded by men who were Christians and Islam and Christianity don't and won't mix because of the teachings of the Muslim religion.
These people will not defend the Constitution, they are out to turn this into a Muslim country to eliminate Isreal, that's it, they will never be able to lay down this fanaticism until then, believe it!
They will only be contributors to this country until they have the upper hand, then they wiil start to demand that their religious laws be placed into effect. Don't believe me? Look North to Canada, it's already happening there!
Thanks for the ping!
Apparently the police and prosecutor are now denying this.
Maybe a handful, perhaps even a large handful, want to lop off my head (perhaps even especially: I'm half-Jewish).
However, many of them are my friends and I don't appreciate the stereotypes applied to them.
Were/Are Shannon Elizabeth, Salma Hayek, G.E. Smith, Paula Abdul, Bobby Rahal, Doug Flutie, and Frank Zappa trying to kill us as well??
Ask Dan Pearl, and ask the ones on your list what they think of a representative Republic...
In a war, there is no presumption of innocence.
Jan. 18, 2005 / 8 Shevat, 5765
Radical Islam's double standard
By Daniel Pipes
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The mentality of radical Islam includes several main components, of which one is Muslim supremacism a belief that believers alone should rule and otherwise enjoy an exalted status over non-Muslims. This outlook dominates the Islamist worldview as much in the elegant streets of Paris as in the rude caves of Afghanistan.
Two recent American criminal cases highlight this attribute. Both involve the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Saudi-funded group whose leadership sometimes announces its goal to Islamize the United States ("Islam isn't in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant").
The first criminal case concerns Dale T. Ehrgott, a non-Muslim insurance broker living in Reno, Nevada. Appalled by CAIR's record of apologizing for terrorism, plus the then-recent arrest on terrorism-related charges of its former employee Ismail Royer, Ehrgott dashed off four angry e-mails to CAIR in mid-2003.
One read: "We accept you [ sic ] holy war. Looking forward to it very much. We can deal with you easily especially since you are on our soil. You have taught us much about terrorism so get ready to be the receiver." In another message, some weeks later, he wrote: "You are making a lot of people angry and you idiots are sitting ducks."
" It wasn't a threat, just a nasty e-mail," Ehrgott told The Associated Press . He described CAIR as "an anti-American organization" and points out that at no time did he physically intimidate it. CAIR saw matters differently and forwarded the notes to law enforcement, which came down heavily on Ehrgott, perhaps because the Department of Justice decided to make an example of him.
Describing these e-mails as containing "a threat to injure members" of CAIR, the U.S. attorney for Nevada, Daniel Bogden, convinced a federal grand jury in March 2004 to indict Ehrgott. Bogden then threw the book at Ehrgott, who, if convicted, faced up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
But after his September 2004 trial ended in a hung jury, the feds abruptly lost their taste for prosecuting Ehrgott. They settled with him on Jan. 13, letting him off with a trivial sentence one year's probation and fifty hours of community service, implicitly acknowledging that he had acted rashly but not dangerously. The second case concerns Taiser Hosien Okashah, a Muslim food broker (and an illegal immigrant from Syria) living in Miami Beach. On June 3, 2004, Okashah threatened to destroy Best Buy store in Plantation, Florida, because, according to the store clerk's sworn testimony, he was displeased with a rebate offer on a laptop computer. "I am going to come back and blow up this place if I do not get my money this time," the clerk quotes him saying. On June 29, the authorities arrested Okashah, charged him with threatening to detonate an explosive, and briefly jailed him without bond.
Altaf Ali, executive director of CAIR's Florida office, leapt to Okashah's defense. Muslims, he said, are "very concerned that a very humble member of the community, for asking a question about a rebate, can be put in jail." Ali attributed Okashah's travails to a miscommunication exacerbated by the negative stereotyping of Muslims. A CAIR press release further specified that the arrest stemmed from "language barriers and over-reactions by store employees and law enforcement officials."
Ali also sought to have the judge in the case removed because he had ordered Okashah to undergo a psychological evaluation. Nonetheless, Okashah is scheduled to go to trial on Feb. 14, for the second-degree felony charge of "threatening to detonate an explosive device."
In CAIR's eyes, then, when a non-Muslim broker responds too emotionally to terrorism, he deserves years in jail and financial ruin. But when a Muslim broker threatens a store, he's the innocent victim of "negative stereotyping" who deserves release without any punishment at all.
The Ehrgott and Okashah incidents fit an ugly Islamist pattern of double standards. Although CAIR presents itself as a civil-rights group, it is just the opposite an organization asserting special privileges for Muslims and derogating the rights of others.
When Western institutions grant legitimacy to Islamist organizations like CAIR they strengthen Islamist supremacism and its drive for Muslim dominance. Those institutions need to get smart and retract that legitimacy, reserving it for Muslims who reject radical Islam. .
It's pretty damn convenient when some psycho killers can step out of the nominally peaceful Muslim community, slaughter four Christians like sheep, then retreat back to it's anonymity. This is how the Muslims would like it to be. No blame cast on the Ummah (Muslim community)
If these murderers arose from the internet the killers just might not be local. It could be a hit team that came in from Detroit (Dearborn) and has left. The Mafia likes to fly in outside hit teams. They make murders harder to solve since there are no one local who knows anything. Except for the one or two guys who arranged, paid for, the murder
Some branches of the Muslim relgeon believe in the literal interpretation of the Koran, which does not allow for Democracy. Those are the ones to watch.
Wahabis (sp?), and Sunnis.
Jersey Murder ping...
If they embrace the Muslim Religion, they would -- or lose their own heads!! Names or notariety has nothing to do with it!
Mark Furhman, ex LA cop, said the crime scene robbery evidence seemed phony. The real motive was personal. Knife attacks are personal. Separating the family, duct tape, killing children who couldn't have i.d.'d robbers if they'd worn masks, all this is personal. This is standard cop deductive reasoning. Look for someone really mad at the family. (Looks like a Islamofascist hit.)
O'l Moshen, that's terrible! Only one thing to do: get out your "holy book", it'll tell you the proper was to kill these heathens! (sarcasm)
But are they denying it because they don't want to stir up trouble? They're denying a lot of obvious stuff too - like saying it was a burglary when the family says jewelry wasn't taken.
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