HISTORIC ST. MARK'S CHURCH ATTACKED BY RAGING MUSLIM MOB

During my first trip to Egypt in 1980, my friends in Cairo escorted me to Old Cairo and the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, supposedly the site of the exile of the Holy Family.  Old Cairo, or Coptic Cairo, contains various locations venerated by the Coptic Orthodox Church, which traces its origins to 42 A.D. and credits St. Mark (the author of the Second Gospel) as its founder. Today, although most people would consider Egypt a Muslim country, its population includes almost 9,000,000 Copts.

While walking through the narrow passageways of Old Cairo, I encountered a fellow Christian, a Copt, who engaged me in conversation, relating what it was like for him as a member of a religious minority to live in Egypt.  To say that the conversation was enlightening would be an understatement.  At that point, I was totally unaware of the persecution faced by Egyptian Christians.  I surmise in looking back that I had heard of Butros-Butros Gali, an Egyptian Christian who had served as Secretary General of the United Nations, but I was ignorant as to how most Egyptian Christians daily faced maltreatment and discrimination in education and in qualifying for employment in the public sector.

St. Mark's Church Burning

The recollection of that long-ago conversation came back to me this month when I learned of the Muslim attack on April 9th on Cairo's St. Mark's Cathedral, which contains the reliquary housing the remains of St. Mark.  Of course, there was no mention of this outrage in our head-in-the sand American news media, which seem to prefer the coziness of playing the Dodo in an Alice in Wonderland approach to the dissemination of what now passes as "news."

 

Masked Man in US Taxpayer-Funded Armored Vehicle Prepares to
Fire on St. Mark's Cathedral

Contrary to the Polyanna Principle peddled by the present administration that the new Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo would usher in a new day of enlightened behavior, the lot of Egyptian Christians has deteriorated.  But what would one expect with a Muslim Brotherhood president such as Mohamed Morsi at the helm, spouting off such claptrap as "Israelis are the descendants of apes and pigs" ...who are nothing but "warmongers and bloodsuckers"? Ironically, Morsi, who has lately hamstrung what was left of the Egyptian judiciary, was educated at the University of Southern California.

In an effort to keep the peace in the Middle East, the U.S.has made Egypt, since the Camp David Accords, number two on the list of foreign aid recipients.   Annually, more than 1.5 billion dollars in aid is spent on Egypt.  With the rise of Islamic extremism and the coming to power of the radical Muslim Brotherhood, American policymakers might like to reconsider whether this expenditure of OUR funds is a good investment.  At the very least, we should expect that those who formulate foreign policy should be standing up for human rights and religious toleration.  After all, wouldn't this be the "politically-correct" thing to do?