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One of the last and largest Christian populations in the Middle East faces mounting persecution---and begins to flee. In the aftermath of President Mohammed Morsi’s overthrow earlier this summer, Egypt’s Coptic Church has faced an onslaught of persecution. Pro-Morsi supporters vented their anger by burning Christian homes and shops, and when the military staged an August 14 crackdown on protesters, the repercussions for Copts were enormous and tragic: at least 42 churches were assailed, looted, and demolished. Mobs destroyed Christian convents, orphanages, schools, shops, and homes.This is the culmination of several years of rising persecution for the Copts, whose freedoms...

Christians in Egypt are under the worst persecution by Islamic radicals in recent memory, Syrian believers are displaced in massive numbers and the effort to assist them in both countries goes on despite tremendous upheaval in both nations. Most of the recent attention has been focused on Egypt. Christians have been in the Muslim Brotherhood’s cross-hairs since the 2011 Arab Spring, but the persecution has greatly intensified in the weeks following the July 3 coup that removed Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from power. The violence is a result of radical leaders blaming the coup on Christians. It’s a...

In highly anticipated protests to mark the first anniversary of President Mohammed Morsi’s inauguration, millions of Egyptians took to the streets across the country in unprecedented numbers Sunday to demand his removal from office, three years before his term expires. The protests were largely peaceful after days of worries that they would unleash violence between pro- and anti-Morsi camps. But in those places where they came together, the two sides kept their distance, with Morsi’s supporters vastly outnumbered by the president’s opponents. This normally bustling city set aside its usual business what in Egypt is the first day of the...

<p>While the United States considers cutting aid to the Egyptian military in an attempt to stop violence between the military regime and the deposed Muslim Brotherhood, Brotherhood members and allies are reportedly parading nuns through the streets, looting churches, and tearing down a cross in favor of an al Qaeda banner.</p>

I'm in the process of transferring here the articles I had on another, older blog which I'm closing down. They are still relevant, showing how things haven't changed at all in the Islamic world but maybe - just maybe - have developed a little bit chez nous. The Guardian article that I quoted from in here might have still made today the same unfounded, false claims that death for apostasy is not part of Islam that it made then. But, while it's becoming more and more obvious every day that the Muslim persecution of Christians throughout the world is the...

As a distraught woman yells in Arabic, the man in question can be seen clutching what is described as a gunshot wound. However, when the man’s hand is moved it becomes apparent that he has not been injured despite a pool of blood. The fake death was first flagged by FSA Crimes, an advocacy website that tracks alleged war crimes committed by rebel fighters battling Syrian President Bashar al Assad. “Covered in blood, his hand rests on what would seem to be the source of that blood, a gunshot wound,” FSA write of the apparently staged death. “‘Doctors’ surrounding him...

Excising the ‘Cancer’ in Egypt Link only -- Bloomberg

NEW YORK – President Obama’s half-brother in Kenya could cause the White House more headaches over new evidence linking him to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and establishing that controversial IRS supervisor Lois Lerner signed his tax-exempt approval letter. Malik Obama’s oversight of the Muslim Brotherhood’s international investments is one reason for the Obama administration’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, according to an Egyptian report citing the vice president of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, Tehani al-Gebali In a news report on Egyptian television of a Gebali speech, translated by researcher Walid Shoebat, Gebali said she would like “to...

President Obama has “contributed to [Egypt's] descent into chaos” by providing foreign aid to the military regime while maintaining an otherwise “detached and abstract” position, according to Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who called for an end to financial support. “President Obama’s detached and abstract statement yesterday on deteriorating conditions in Egypt is only the most recent manifestation of this administration’s failed policy in that country,” Cruz said. “As there can no longer be any reasonable doubt that what occurred in July was a military coup, the first step is to send an unequivocal message that the United States is a...

<p>CAIRO - Dozens of deaths were reported as clashes broke out during mass demonstrations by supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi in Egypt Friday.</p> <p>Morsi's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement had called for a “Day of Rage” in the wake of a military crackdown that killed more than 600 people.</p>

When Obama went down to Cairo in the spring of ’09, his speech, titled “A New Beginning,” was little more than a thinly disguised call for regime change. It wasn’t so much the words that mattered as the message behind them that the Mubarak government no longer enjoyed backing from Washington, D.C. The alliance between Egyptian liberals and Islamists that overthrew Mubarak, in a coup mediated by the military, was cheered as an expression of popular will. What it actually was, was the whistling sound of air escaping into a post-American power vacuum. Obama’s call for regional regime change led...

Obama has taken this country to new lows on the international stage. I have never seen the US so disrespected and held in such contempt. America was once synonymous with freedom. The US under Obama is the laughingstock of the world. Looking forward to seeing this Rgyptian tune performed on Jon Stewart, Bill Maher and Letterman show .... (vid thanks to TH)

Hamas is a political party, not an "arm of Iran," Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said. "If the whole world had given them the chance of becoming a political player maybe they would not be in a situation like this after the elections that they won. Palestine today is an open-air prison," he said.

A top Israel envoy criticized Turkey’s outreach to terror groups Friday, hours after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Hamas is not a terrorist organization. “Turkey has embraced the leaders of Iran and Hamas, all of whom called for Israel’s destruction,” declared Israeli ambassador to the US Michael Oren. “Our policy has not changed but Turkey’s policy has changed, very much, over the last few years,” he said. “Under a different government with an Islamic orientation, Turkey has turned away from the West.”

Israel, Saudis and U.A.E. Support Military Moves The U.S.'s closest Middle East allies are undercutting American policy in Egypt, encouraging the military to confront the Muslim Brotherhood rather than reconcile, U.S. and Arab officials said. The parallel efforts by Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have blunted U.S. influence with Egypt's military leadership and underscored how the chaos there has pulled Israel into ever-closer alignment with those Gulf states, officials said. A senior Israeli official called the anti-Muslim Brotherhood nations "the axis of reason." The Obama administration first had sought to persuade Egyptian military leader Gen. Abdel Fattah...

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's latest comments entirely consistent with a history of anti-Semitic remarks and conspiracy theories. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said that Israel is behind the removal of former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi by the Egyptian military. “Israel is behind the coup in Egypt, we have evidence,” Erdogan declared to members of his party meeting in Ankara on Tuesday, according to the Turkish Today's Zaman.

Over 60 churches across Egypt have been targeted by Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers as conflict rages across the country. Nonetheless, Coptic Christians are now returning to their church in Minya, which was burned by raging Islamists. “This will learn us to be better Christians” said Pastor Sameh Ibrahim. Fourteen churches in the area were burned in the past few days. In Minya, Christian churches have been slathered with black Xs to mark them for violence by Islamists.

As church after church is put to the torch in Egypt by members of the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies, one of the things that is going up in flames is the reputation of President Obama. In the past 48 hours alone, some 57 Egyptian churches have been burned to the ground in the Nile valley. It will not be lost on the Egyptians that Mr. Obama has spent the crisis playing golf at Martha’s Vineyard. Scores of Christians are being consumed in this conflagration, some burned beyond recognition defending their churches, even as Mr. Obama’s much-despised envoy in Egypt,...

Saudi Arabia has emerged as the foremost supporter of Egypt's military rulers, explicitly backing the violent crackdown on Islamists and using its oil wealth and diplomatic muscle to help defy growing pressure from the West to end the bloodshed in search of a political solution. As Europeans and the United States considered cutting cash aid to Egypt, Saudi Arabia said Monday that it and its allies would make up any reduction — effectively neutralizing the West's main leverage over Cairo.

Amid escalating violence against Egypt’s Copts, churches in Minya, located in upper Egypt, cancelled Sunday Mass for the first time in 1,600 years. Other churches in Minya also didn’t hold prayer services. "We did not hold prayers in the monastery on Sunday for the first time in 1,600 years,” Priest Selwanes Lotfy of the Virgin Mary and Priest Ibram Monastery in Degla, just south of Minya, told the al-Masry al-Youm daily. He said supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi destroyed the monastery, which includes three churches, one of which is an archaeological site. “One of the extremists wrote on the...