Monday, January 03, 2011

Christianity & Islam - Bridging the Gap in Egypt

You would have to be living under a rock to not have heard of the recent heinous attacks in Alexandria at the start of the New Year targetting a Coptic Church.

What you may or may not know, depending on whether you are on facebook and whether or not you have Egyptian friends on facebook, is that the country is slowly being segregated into muslims who sympathise with the victims families, and christians (coptics) who want retribution.

You would be familiar with the following picture being used as a profile pic:


Now, the one thing I do not understand is, the Muslim population, the majority, have changed their display pictures in solidarity for the public outcry against terror, claiming we are all one (as the picture says).

Whilst our Coptic counterparts are using this:



Granted. They are grieving, as a consensus, they are mourning.

However, I feel as though the Muslims of Egypt are trying to show solidarity, whilst the Coptics want to use this as an excuse to further stigmatise themselves from the Egyptian populace and demand a global outcry against Islam in general, citing oppression.

It is not a strange sight in Egypt to find Churches with security and police outside, whilst Mosques are left unsupervised and unsecured.

When has it become a norm for Islam to be linked to terrorism?

Why are we so quick to draw dividing lines, instead of coming together and communicating as one?
Why is that the Muslims must be blamed as a whole for the acts of vile, godless, deluded, individuals?
Why must WE defend ourselves everytime a terrorist attacks in the deluded name of Jihad?
Why must we ENDURE the scrutinising looks of all non-muslims who believe all muslims to be nothing but uneducated goat-herders, with an oil well somewhere?

This is a prime example.

I detest terrorist acts. I view them as cowardly. As do the rest of Muslims all over the world. Islam has the same view on suicide as Christianity does, people cannot differentiate between martyrdom and suicide, they are NOT one and the same.

The acts of these sick individuals should not put Islam on the defensive.

Ignorance breeds Hate, Hate breeds Fear.

Break the cycle, open your eyes.

5 comments:

LorD AymZ said...

Amen mon ami :)

with people like u & i.

its the media that plants the seeds of doubt and hate, that is why i no longer use CNN for news, and instead use BBC.

one of my posts was about exactly why. CNN wants to plant hate, and they allow every tom, dick and harry to post their own negative views on anything, without supervision.

like russell peters said, what they do is show u a place being blown up, then a video of the extremists jumping up and down. they fail to show u the millions who oppose the tragedy, who stand with their friends of other faiths in the face of this evil.

we need a wake up call, a call to unity.

LorD AymZ said...

a bird of a feather :)

the news is not there for the peoiple, it is there for ratings. there will always be an element of bias in it. i remember the time durng the second iraqi attack on kuwait, 2002ish.

my family was in kuwait at the time. i was worried sick, i would turn on the news every morning and remember seeing Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahhaf on TV, the former iraqi information minister, he always made it look like Iraq was winning, and i believed him. next day, BOOM, saddam is caught in a ditch. war is over (technically).

the statistics shown by both sides is definately biased. look at the Israel-Palestine conflict, how many palestinians have been killed? their casualties are in the 1000s, whilst israel, a few, not even a hundred. is this a real display of facts, or the twisted version? who decides?

LorD AymZ said...

if we're sharin songs, allow me to share a personal favorite of mine (especially the last verse):

Same direction by Hoobastank

Whenever i step outside, somebody claims to see the light
It seems to me that all of us have lost our patience.
'cause everyone thinks they're right,
And nobody thinks that there just might
Be more than one road to our final destination

But i'm not ever going to know if i'm right or wrong
'cause we're all going in the same direction
And i'm not sure which way to go because all along
We've been going in the same direction

I'm tired of playing games, of looking for someone else to blame
For all the holes in answers that are clearly showing
For something to fill the space, was all of the time i spent a waste
'cause so many choices point the same way i was going.....

So why does there only have to be one correct philosophy?
I don't want to go and follow you just to end up like one of them
And why are you always telling me what you want me to believe?
I'd like to think that i can go my own way and meet you in the end.

But i'm not ever going to know..........

Abir said...

I appreciate it, I am reposting this on my blog, if that is okay with you.

LorD AymZ said...

by all means abir,