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- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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After Church Bombings, Egyptian Christians Are Resigned but Resolute
After Church Bombings, Egyptian Christians Are Resigned but Resolute
ALEXANDRIA, Egypt — When the bomb went off at St. Mark’s Cathedral one week ago, William Frances had one thought: “Oh, my God, it’s happening again.”
Six years earlier, Mr. Frances lost his mother, his sister and a cousin in a bombing at another Alexandria church that left him devastated. Now he prayed he hadn’t lost anyone else.
“I had enough,” he recalled. “I said: ‘Please, God, no more. Please.’”
The coordinated suicide attacks on St. Mark’s, Egypt’s historic seat of Christianity, and at another church, in the city of Tanta, took 45 lives and dealt a heavy blow to the country’s embattled Coptic Orthodox minority. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for both attacks.
The bombing in Alexandria, a bustling seaport of crumbling elegance, also dredged up painful memories of 2011 church attack that, despite years of investigation, remains unsolved. The trail is stone cold: Not only have the Egyptian police failed to arrest those responsible for the bloodshed, they can’t even say which group carried it out.
Ineptitude? Indifference? As Christians in Alexandria mourned the latest victims, some wondered if this time it would end differently. Not Mr. Frances.
“Nothing has changed,” Mr. Frances, a 29-year-old computer technician, said in a cafe on the city’s sweeping seafront boulevard. “It happened six years ago, it happened this week, and it will happen again. I don’t feel safe in this country.”
His hard-bitten skepticism mirrors that of many Egyptian Christians, who say they have lost faith in a system that swings between an apathetic shrug and outright discrimination.
Egypt’s strongman leader, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, styles himself as a staunch defender of Copts, who account for one-tenth of the country’s 92 million people, and who openly rejoiced when he came to power in 2013.
Yet Copts have had little to celebrate under Mr. Sisi, and find themselves still vulnerable to prejudice, violence and the vagaries of a system in which impunity is rife.
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
- tennyson
- Exchanger
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Re: After Church Bombings, Egyptian Christians Are Resigned but Resolute
A sad state of the religions who all are from the God of Abraham.
"Do not confuse motion and progress, A rocking horse keeps moving but does not make any progress"
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