Based on several discussions with fellow Coptic-Americans, I can say with a degree of certainty that the majority of the community strongly disapproves of the current president and his administration. Many of the reasons for this disapproval are understandable and justified. However, there has been a lie circulating among many members of the Coptic, and more generally, Egyptian community. This lie is extremely harmful to our perception of the country we live in, and which many of us are citizens of. It produces a toxic anti-American sentiment which estranges us from the rest of the US. This lie usually goes something like the following:
1. The American Administration, namely Obama, backed the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) with the “intention of destroying Egypt,” and:
2. The American government is still supporting the MB, affiliated terrorist groups, and ISIS with weapons, arms, and intelligence in an attempt to destabilize the Middle East,
And to explain this, they usually advance American Far Right’s theories that President Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim, and is using his influence as the leader of the free world to promote radical Islamic terrorist cells throughout the world.
The sad fact is that many people I speak to on a daily basis really believe this. The reality is, however, that none of the above holds up under decent scrutiny. Let us address it all piece by piece.
1. American government did not help the MB with the intent of destroying the country. The American government definitely cozied up to the MB; that much is undeniable. America helped and advised the MB. But they did so because they had to; the MB was, in the eyes of most policy makers, an inevitable outcome for Egypt after the fall of Mubarak’s regime. When a group like the Muslim Brotherhood, which has often voiced its hatred for America and all America stands for, is about to become the dominant force in a strategically essential country like Egypt, American leaders would be negligent NOT to talk to top MB officials and negotiate terms of Egypt’s future relations with America.
Furthermore, there’s no reason that the US would need to install the MB “to destroy the country.” (They could have destroyed Egypt it in much easier, faster ways—if they really wanted to in the first place!)
2. The US is not funding these terrorist groups. Many cite that these groups have American-made weapons as proof for this claim. However, the US sells more arms internationally than all other nations combined. It logically follows that, from this gigantic flood of weapons, the very rich and very influential business leaders (mostly in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey) who have actually been proven to fund these terrorists can get their hands on American-made weapons and ship them with ease (Biden himself went on record saying “Our biggest problem is our allies [referring to these countries]”). More importantly, another big reason ISIS’s weapons are American is because ISIS seized all of the American-made weapons of the Iraqi military during the disastrous first battle of Mosul (the one where all of the Iraqi military threw off their uniforms, abandoned their equipment, and ran away). Yes, the US funded and armed similar terrorist groups during the Cold War against the Soviet Union, but it doesn’t make sense to fund the people you are trying to destroy.
3. Obama is not a Muslim (and even if he is, it doesn’t really matter!) The reality is that he is not supporting Islamism. Under Obama’s executive order, over 8,000 ISIS members have been killed by a US- formed NATO coalition. After removing on-the-ground fighters from the count, that is several times more than the total reported kill count from the rest of the coalition against ISIS combined. He has ordered almost all of the American drone strikes that have ever taken place, and nearly every single one is against some Islamic terrorist group or another.
– There were reports that America “accidentally” dropped arms packages into ISIS territory, and this is proof that America is supporting ISIS. These claims fail to mention that the accidental drop site was soon after targeted and bombed vigorously to destroy the weapons before ISIS could make use of them.
– There are also those reports that Obama recently appointed a MB member to be the special envoy for counterterrorism, Rashad Hussain. No credible evidence exists to indicate that Rashad Hussain is a member of the MB. The only websites that claim this association also have articles titled “Obama is the Antichrist” or “Hillary Clinton Wants to Take Away our Guns” or “How Black Privilege is Ruining America.”
All that has followed is not to say, in any way, shape or form, that there are no valid criticisms of Obama’s policy in the Middle East. Obama has made many mistakes in the Middle East (too many to list here), and we, as the American public, should hold him accountable for them. Among the things we must hold the US government to is the fact that in a way, yes, the US helped make these terrorist groups. The two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the thousands of innocents killed in them, provided a fertile breeding ground of instability and hate for these preachers to spread their toxic message far and wide.
However, when we make statements like the ones mentioned above, it de-legitimizes our position, and therefore, even the valid claims we make go ignored. Because enough members of our community have distanced themselves so fully from reality, our community risks being removed from the conversation that is currently happening about the Middle East. We seem to have manufactured a narrative that fits very cozily with preconceived biases and beliefs, and then look after news sites and articles to re-validate those beliefs. We should not believe everything we hear on the Internet.
Our understanding of the tragic and dangerous situation currently engulfing the Middle East has to be intelligent and nuanced. We cannot be expected to be taken seriously if we are constantly brainwashing ourselves with lies so unrealistic they sound like they were pulled from the Red Scare. Please, let’s take a step back and do a reality-check, for the sake of our culture, our faith, and our way of life.
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Markos El-Far is a Coptic American undergraduate student at New York University.