Anti-Coptic Rhetoric

Egypt's Islamist al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya has unleashed some pretty inflammatory rhetoric:

"Christian community has raised fears of a return to sectarian violence. Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah, formerly one of Egypt’s most dangerous Islamist terrorist groups, has weighed in on Coptic claims of persecution, claiming in a June 10 statement that the Copts were using the incidents to create 'a parallel state,' suggesting that 'many men of the Coptic Church have become, together with their churches, enmeshed to the marrow in political activism.' The statement went on to claim that Church leaders were 'seeking protection behind its walls to proclaim from behind them their mutiny against the state and rebellion against it' (al-Hayat, June 11). Even some Copts have suggested that the flow of funds from the successful Coptic diaspora has enabled the church to assume responsibility for aspects of their community that were once the sole domain of the state (al-Araby, January 6, 2005)."

A bigger problem than Coptic remittances is the refusal to many mainstream Egyptian Muslims to acknowledge that anti-Coptic prejudice exists, and thus doing the things necessary to combat it.