But, especially for not paying taxes levied on dhimmis (People of the Book, protected but do not enjoy legal equality), many Christians converted, and thus Islam became the majority religion in Egypt. By burning down churches, bookstores and monasteries throughout the country, the Muslim Brotherhood have shown their true face. A fanatic person even gunned down in the street a small girl of ten years, returning from catechism, with a Bible under her arm. The scenario is always the same with the Islamists in the Arab-Muslim world: When they are confronted with a force that exceeds them, they retaliate against the Christian minority, even if it is not responsible of their vicissitudes. We saw that in Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, Nigeria, etc..
In the case of Egypt, the man who gave the order to evacuate the Muslim Brotherhood by force is not a Christian. He is the army chief, General al-Sissi, who happens to be a devout Muslim whose wife wears a veil. Politically, it has been a long time that Christians do not count much in Cairo. Since Nasser’s revolution of 1952, the Coptic influence became marginal. Under Sadat and Mubarak, there have been a few Christians in the government, but they never occupied important ministries or high positions in the public service. By attacking Christian’s places of worship, terrorizing them in their daily lives, threatening them – more or less directly – on the waves of Arab satellite channels, Muslim Brothers – who have weapons while Copts do not – just add cowardice to their intolerance. Intolerant and obscurantist, they have always been. Only Americans were naive enough to compare the Muslim Brotherhood to our Christian Democrats of the postwar, such as Adenauer or De Gasperi. Let us not be duped by the soothing interviews broadcast on Al-Jazeera English: For a Muslim Brother, woman cannot be legally equal to a man, nor a Christian equal to a Muslim. They are systematically history revisionists: For them, as recently proclaimed the head of the Brotherhood’s Cultural Committee, the Holocaust is a huge historical lie, transformed by Jews into an instrument of international blackmail.
Oddly enough, much of the Western media seem to be offended by “the military coup that overthrew a legally elected government.” Have they forgotten that Hitler, too, came to the Reich Chancellery, in January 1933, in the most legal way? Mohammed Morsi was regularly elected president of Egypt in June 2012, as he had against him as a candidate a general who served under the previous regime. Egyptians expected Morsi to improve security and economy, not to change the society. When they realized that for him the ideology prevailed over all other considerations, and that the Muslim Brotherhood began to infiltrate all the machinery of government, Egyptians demonstrated in the millions to demand a change of direction. The military did not initiate the movement Tamarod (“rebellion” against the Islamists), but they merely followed. Morsi mistakenly believed that his election gave him all the rights. But democracy is not the freedom to do anything for the one who is, at a given moment, the leader of a political majority; it is above all respecting the rule of law and the protection of basic civil liberties. The Egyptians felt that once the Brothers had infiltrated the entire administration, they would never again cede power. Rightly, they were very worried.
In March 1939, after Hitler stomped his promises of Munich and invaded Prague, part of the German high military staff felt that he became crazy and needed to be eliminated. But not daring to make the decision alone, the Prussian officers secretly sent a delegation to London to get support from the British government. Believing this to be a trap, the British gave deaf ears and German officers departed empty-handed. The rest is history. The Egyptian army has had the courage to overthrow Morsi without asking the American’s support. History will vindicate the army.
_______________________________________________________________________________________
Renaud Girard is editor-at-large, Le Figaro. (Article translated from French by CS)