Some 3,000 angry Muslims, spurred by their imam, went on a rampage in the coastal city of Marsa Matrouh in Egypt recently, completely destroying 18 homes, 23 shops, and 16 cars owned by Christians according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The Muslims had just finished their Friday prayers when they were exhorted by the mosque’s imam to cleanse the city of its infidel Christians, whom they call Copts, the WSJ said.

During the rampage some 400 Copts barricaded themselves in their church for 10 hours until the frenzy died down.  Since May of last year, over a dozen violent incidents have occurred in villages in Egypt.  One of them was a drive bye shootout at Christians leaving a Coptic Christmas church service, resulting in seven dead and 26 seriously injured, according to the WSJ.

The Copts comprise 12% of the population of this primarily Muslim country.  The last few years have resembled a Christian purge however, with waves of mob assaults forcing up to thousands of Christian citizens to flee their homes, the WSJ said.

Despite frantic appeals the police usually arrive after the violence is over.  Then they coerce the injured to accept “reconciliation” with their attackers.  No Muslim to date has been convicted for any of these crimes, the WSJ said.

The Egyptian government insists that there is no sectarian problem in the country, and they say those who draw international attention to the Copts’ plight are traitors, the WSJ said.

The United States and the rest of the Western democracies, despite repeated Coptic appeals, have done little besides calling upon the Egyptian regime to foster greater tolerance, the WSJ reported.

Egypt’s Christian Copts suffer customary and official discrimination.  For example, no church can be built or even repaired without a presidential decree.  Also, Copts may not join intelligence and security services because they are deemed a security risk, the WSJ said.

The discrimination springs from a traditional social norm that rules the elite and large sectors of the Muslim community.  This norm, though no longer legal, lives in the social psyche that views Christian and Jewish minorities as dhimmi in Muslim lands.

The dhimmi status presumes it is unreasonable in an Islamic society to expect strict equality between Muslims and the infidels; and that an individual offense by a dhimmi against a Muslim warrants retribution for the entire dhimmi community, the WSJ said.

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A group of Egyptian and foreign Christians sought government action recently against a suit they filed against the Muslim author of a bestselling, award winning novel that they say discriminates against their Christian faith.

The novel, entitled Azazeel (Beelzebub) by Youssef Ziedan, won the 2009 International Prize for Arabic Fiction, backed by the Booker Prize Foundation.

However Mamdouh Ramzi, a Coptic (Christian) lawyer, called the novel offensive adding, “He insulted priests and bishops and said many things with no proof or evidence from books or history…He is not a Christian man, what does he know about the Church?”  Reuters reported.

The case has been joined in by Coptic groups in the United States, the Netherlands, Canada and Austria.

This reflects broader complaints by Copts that they are discriminated against and marginalized in Egypt, where they comprise only 12 percent of this primarily Muslim nation of 78 million.

“We should receive attention from the authorities or we will start to wonder why the law does not respond unless the matter includes an insult to Islam,”  Ramzi said to Reuters.

Egyptian law prohibits insults against Islam, Christianity and Judaism.  However, even Al-Azhar, the world’s preeminent Sunni Islamic institution, has published a pamphlet declaring the Bible a corrupted document and Christianity a pagan religion, according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

Al-Azhar’s textbook for its high-school students, called “Al Iqna’,” states that killing a Muslim is punishable by death, but if a Muslim kills a non-Muslim he is not subject to capital punishment since the superior cannot be punished for killing the inferior (p. 146).

It also states that the blood money (compensation for manslaughter) rates for a woman is half that for a man, but for a Christian or Jew it is one third that of a Muslim (p. 187); and that there can be no stewardship (such as a superior in work) of a non-Muslim over a Muslim (p. 205), the WSJ reported.

Hundreds of thousands of Azhar schools in Egypt, monitored by the state, indoctrinate and discharge annually hundreds of thousands of young Muslims into Egyptian society with an ideology of intolerance, contempt and hatred toward Copts (and even more intensely toward Jews), the WSJ said.

Meanwhile, the hand of the law is more clearly seen when it involves writings that criticize Islam—even when the author is Muslim.

For example in 1995 an Egyptian sharia court declared Egyptian intellectual Nasr Abu Zayd to be disloyal, and called him an apostate from Islam.  They took issue over Zayd’s liberal, critical approach to Islamic teaching.  As a result his marriage was annulled and he was forced into exile, Reuters reported.

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After recent successive issues that have reached the courts over Christian symbols such as the cross and an army emblem, some are asking, “Are Christian symbols under attack?”

The most recent issue, as reported by the Associated Press (AP) involves an army emblem of a Colorado hospital.  The emblem contains a cross and the motto, “Pro deo et humanitate” or “For God and humanity.”

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has asked the Army to change the emblem of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, Colorado noting it could violate the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state, the AP reported.

The AP said the MRFF is the same group that persuaded the Pentagon to rescind their invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to speak on the May 6 National Day of Prayer, because in 2001 Graham had said that “Islam is evil.”

In a separate incident, a judge had ruled recently that the National Day of Prayer, which is an annual event that has been held since 1952 is unconstitutional.  The Obama administration expressed plans to appeal the ruling and the Justice department filed a formal notice of its plans for appeal, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.

With regard to the hospital emblem, Lt. Col Steve Wollman said Fort Carson commanders will review the MRFF complaint.   However he noted that the motto on the emblem, approved in 1969 by the Army Institute of Heraldry, dates back to pre-Christian, Hippocratic times.  Hippocrates is renowned as the father of medicine, the AP said.

Wollman also said the cross with the spiked base was used by pilgrims to mark the ground of their campsite.  Mikey Weinstein, president of the MRFF said he filed his complaint on behalf of 43 people in Fort Carson.  However, Weinstein said the 43 did not want to be identified, according to the AP report.

In another incident, the Supreme Court (SC) overturned a federal court ruling which sought to remove a 75-year-old, seven foot tall cross from the Mojave National Park in California, the AP said.

The SC, through a slim 5-4 vote said the cross honored military veterans from WWI and furthermore, the land on which the cross stood on had already been transferred to private ownership.

Two similar cases are currently filed in the Federal courts.  One involves a 29-foot cross on Mt. Soledad, San Diego.  The other involves the state of Utah, which uses 12-foot high crosses that are placed along the roadside as memorials to honor deceased highway patrol officers, according to the AP.

The Supreme Court decision that overruled a lower court regarding the cross in the Mojave National Park noted that separation of church and state “does not require eradication of all religious symbols in the public realm,’’ the Boston Globe reported.

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The Military Religious Freedom Foundation recently objected to an invitation that was sent to Reverend Franklin Graham to address the Pentagon on National Prayer Day.

The MRFF said they were objecting on behalf of members of the Pentagon’s Muslim community who wrote to the organization and objected to Graham’s invitation.

After the 2003 attacks of 9/11 Graham described Islam as “evil” and “wicked.”  In a forthcoming letter to the Wall Street Journal Graham wrote, “As a minister … I believe it is my responsibility to speak out against the terrible deeds that are committed as a result of Islamic teaching.”

President of the MRFF, Mikey Weinstein said in a letter that inviting evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at the National Day of Prayer on May 6 “would be like bringing someone in on national prayer day madly denigrating Christianity” or other religious groups.  It would also endanger American troops by “stirring up Muslim extremists.”

The MRFF’s Web site is headed by a quote by Weinstein which says, “When one proudly dons a U.S. military uniform, there is only one religious symbol: The American flag.  There is only one religious scripture:  The American constitution.  Finally there is only one religious faith: American patriotism.”

Weinstein also objected to the Pentagon’s “noxious” affiliation with the National Day of Prayer Task Force which is headed by Shirley Dobson, although he stressed he does not object to the Pentagon Chaplain’s Office hosting an NDP event.

Graham is the son of famed evangelist Billy Graham and president and CEO of both Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian international relief organization in Boone, N.C., and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, in Charlotte, N.C.

Franklin Graham at the podium and on the big screen at the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Wash. in 2007. Credit:Flikr-publicjill

Graham, through a spokesman said, “As the father of a son serving in his fourth combat tour, I’d be glad to know someone was leading a prayer service at the National Day of Prayer, or any other day.”

The spokesman also said Graham will be a guest of the Pentagon and will speak only if he’s still invited.  A military spokeswoman said she was locating officials to respond to the criticism.

A federal judge in Wisconsin ruled last week that the National Day of Prayer is unconstitutional because it amounts to a call for religious action. The judge did not bar any observances until all appeals are exhausted.

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