Muslim Brotherhood Incites More Terror Attacks Targeting Egypt's Coptic Christians

Patrick Poole | 1:03 AM on May 29, 2017
Women cry during the funeral for those killed in a Palm Sunday church attack in Alexandria Egypt, at the Mar Amina church, Monday, April 10, 2017. Egyptian Christians were burying their dead on Monday, a day after Islamic State suicide bombers killed at least 45 people in coordinated attacks targeting Palm Sunday services in two cities. Women wailed as caskets marked with the word "martyr" were brought into the Mar Amina church in the coastal city of Alexandria, the footage broadcast on several Egyptian channels. (AP Photo/Samer Abdallah)

This past Friday I reported here at PJ Media on the attack just hours before the beginning of Ramadan on Coptic Christian pilgrims in Upper Egypt who were on their way to pray at a remote monastery in the desert.

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Three vehicles full of gunmen opened fire on a bus with mostly women and children, killing 28. Only three children survived the attack.

This most recent attack, claimed Saturday by the Islamic State, comes amidst a rising tide of anti-Coptic incitement by leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood here and abroad.

Over the weekend Eric Trager of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy published an article at Foreign Policy identifying some of the recent examples of Muslim Brotherhood incitement and encouragement of terrorism targeting Coptic Christians.

Among the examples Trager discovered after Friday’s attack on Coptic pilgrims was a Facebook post by Muslim Brotherhood youth leader Ahmed El-Moghir:

That comment has caught the attention of several Middle East media outlets. Here in the U.S., not so much.

https://twitter.com/AlBawabaEG/status/868676304660574213

This is far from the first time that El-Moghir has made the news:

After the dual Palm Sunday church bombings last month, Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leader Wagdi Ghoneim justified the attacks that killed 49 because Coptic Christians had supported the Egyptian government.

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State Department records going back to the late 1980s identify Ghoneim as a Muslim Brotherhood leader back to the time he was one of the group’s most visible figures in Alexandria.

https://twitter.com/Mokhtar_Awad/status/852758338420867072

But as I noted on Twitter yesterday, Ghoneim was also a senior leader in the American Muslim community in Southern California until he was deported by authorities in December 2004:

And as I reported earlier this month, Muslim Brotherhood fanboi and former Homeland Security adviser Mohamed Elibiary also justified the attacks on Coptic Christians, saying they had it coming:

Nor was this the first time that Elibiary engaged in anti-Christian incitement:

Mohamed Elibiary is not the only Muslim Brotherhood supporter in the U.S. engaging in anti-Christian rhetoric.

New York-based Ayat Oraby, a former Egyptian state news anchor, recently directed Islamic supremacist comments at the Coptic Christians in Egypt:

After Friday’s attack she was at it again:

It should be noted that she was on Capitol Hill earlier this month lobbying against the proposed terror designation of the Muslim Brotherhood, a $5 million effort that the Muslim Brotherhood has bragged about in Middle East media.

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Since before the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2011, the Muslim Brotherhood has engaged in direct attacks targeting Christians in Egypt.

As I reported here at PJ Media, in April 2014 I toured several churches and monasteries in Upper Egypt that were targeted by the Muslim Brotherhood for looting and arson in August 2013 following the massive protests calling for the removal of Mohamed Morsi as president and his subsequent ouster.

I noted in that report that Coptic church officials specifically identified the Muslim Brotherhood as leading the attacks on their churches and monasteries:

The Brotherhood’s involvement was not a state secret.

One of the international media’s favorite “moderate” Islamists, Tariq Ramadan, grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna, claimed that the government, not the Muslim Brotherhood, was to blame for the torching of the 70+ churches and monasteries throughout Egypt:

Last month I visited the Two Saints Church in Cairo targeted by a suicide bomber during a worship service last December.

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While the Islamic State claimed credit for the attack, the bomber had previously been arrested for Muslim Brotherhood activity.

The Egyptian Interior Ministry specifically fingered Muslim Brotherhood elements operating in the Gulf for their role in the Two Saints Church bombing.

https://twitter.com/JoumanaGebara/status/808581949740683265

The December and Palm Sunday bombings were preceded by the 2011 New Years Day bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria that killed 23 people.

In that instance, senior Muslim Brotherhood official Essam El-Erian later boasted that the 2011 bombing had helped bring down Egyptian President Mubarak just a few weeks later.

After the election of former Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Mohamed Morsi as president, attacks on the Coptic Christian community accelerated.

Protests that began in November 2012 after Morsi publicly declared himself above the law and the courts continued for months afterwards. When Christians rallied against Morsi’s policies in March 2013, Muslim Brotherhood cadres were unleashed to seize and torture the Christians inside a mosque near the presidential palace.

Just days after, five Coptic youths who were killed in sectarian clashes were mourned during their funeral at the Coptic cathedral in Cairo. During the funeral, the cathedral was attacked by mobs with rocks and molotov cocktails.

One of Morsi’s aides later blamed the Copts for the attack on the cathedral.

The April 2013 attack on the Coptic cathedral was one of the defining moments that galvanized opposition to Morsi and led to the June 30, 2013, protests against Muslim Brotherhood rule — the largest protests in recorded human history. Morsi was removed from office days later.

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One of the things that concerned many Egyptians was the Muslim Brotherhood’s direct role in inciting sectarian attacks:

During December protests against Morsi at the presidential palace, which ended with clashes that killed 11 people, senior FJP leader Mohamed El Beltagy said in a television interview that the majority of the anti-Morsi protesters were Christian. The Muslim Brotherhood’s official Arabic website published stories suggesting that the founder of an anarchist group called the Black Bloc, vilified by the Brotherhood, was a Christian who also led a Christian militia. During the referendum on a new constitution, the website published multiple stories alleging violations by Christian voters.

FJP officials sometimes associate with nonmembers who stir up tensions with their comments. Safwat Hegazy, a preacher who is not a member of the Brotherhood, spoke at campaign rallies on Morsi’s behalf and last year warned Christians that if they “splash water” on the legitimacy of the president, “we will spill his blood.” The FJP-dominated Shoura council, the upper house of parliament, appointed Mr. Hegazy to the National Council for Human Rights last year.

I’ve already noted the August 2013 attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood on churches throughout Egypt.

https://twitter.com/KirstenPowers/status/370524342834057218

But even before that campaign of destruction, 16 human rights groups in Egypt issued a statement calling on the Muslim Brotherhood and their supporters to stop religious incitement and anti-Christian rhetoric:

Needless to say, the attacks on Christians only escalated.

In the Upper Egypt village of Delga, where I toured the 1,600-year-old monastery and its three churches that had been completely destroyed, a Christian man was set upon by a Muslim Brotherhood mob and literally torn to pieces. When some of the few Christians remaining in the village buried his remains, his body was dug back up by the local mob.

Attacks on Christians by Muslim Brotherhood mobs have continued on a regular basis.

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In one horrific incident, two Coptic women were videotaped as they were raped by a Muslim Brotherhood mob.

When 21 Coptic Christian men were beheaded by ISIS in Libya in February 2015, the Muslim Brotherhood issued a statement blaming President Sisi for the murders:

And yet just a few weeks later the families of many of those martyred Coptic men in Libya were attacked by the Muslim Brotherhood in the village in Upper Egypt where many of them came from:

A documentary done later showed the families continued to live in a state of fear.

And so the violence and incitement by the Muslim Brotherhood not only continue, but become more extreme. And the Islamic State has decided to draft off the Muslim Brotherhood’s anti-Christian activity as they have bombed three separate churches since December and committed the attack on pilgrims last Friday.

https://twitter.com/Mokhtar_Awad/status/851065783434260480

The Palm Sunday suicide bomb attacks displayed how deep the anti-Christian hatred runs through the group:

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The sectarian rot driving the Muslim Brotherhood comes directly from the group’s leadership.

https://twitter.com/Mokhtar_Awad/status/852804264330010624

One of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most senior leaders has openly indulged in conspiracies involving the Coptic church bombings:

It’s worth noting this same Muslim Brotherhood leader was warmly received at the State Department in January 2015:

Yet the incitement continues:

Leading some to take the overwhelming evidence of the Muslim Brotherhood incitement to violence to its logical conclusion:

Patrick Poole
For media inquiries, please contact [email protected]

Patrick Poole is a national security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia. Follow him on Twitter.
Category: HOMELAND SECURITY
Tags: HOMELAND SECURITY

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