[PRB]

Collective Punishment

Many attacks on Coptic churches occur in the context of "collective punishment," which also has echoes tracing back to the Conditions of Omar. After naming any number of other conditions—including not displaying crosses, not ringing bells, not singing loudly—the Conditions of Omar concludes by having Christians agree that "if we change or contradict these conditions imposed upon ourselves . . . we forfeit our dhimma [covenant], and we become liable to the same treatment you inflict upon the people who resist and cause sedition."

Accordingly, throughout Islamic history to the present moment, anytime any Christian anywhere has been accused of breaking Sharia's dhimmi laws, churches—at once the most obvious and vulnerable representation of Christianity—are first to be attacked in retribution by the Muslim mob, often in the context of collective punishment.

This has centuries of historical precedents. While discussing the status of churches in the Middle East after the Islamic invasions, Bat Ye'or writes "they were often burned or demolished in the course of reprisals against infidels found guilty of overstepping their rights." Collective punishment is even doctrinally approved: the Yemeni jurist al-Murtada wrote, "The agreement will be canceled if all or some of them break it." At the other end of the Arab world, the Moroccan jurist al-Maghili taught that "the fact that one individual (or one group) among them has broken the statute is enough to invalidate it for all of them."

Thus, for some 14 centuries churches have been treated as hostages to guarantee good (that is, submissive) Christian behavior. For example, in March 2011, a Muslim mob attacked the local Church of the Two Martyrs in Sool, south of Cairo, burning it down, even as a Muslim prayer leader called on Muslims to "kill all the Christians." Adding insult to injury, the attackers played "soccer" with the ancient relic-remains of the church's saints and martyrs. Afterwards, throngs of Muslims gathered around the scorched building where they spent some 20 hours pounding its walls down with sledgehammers to cries of "Allahu Akbar."

Even minor details like desecrating the relics of Coptic saints have immense continuity. Discussing the Muslim attack on the Church of Shubra, Maqriz writes: "after it had been demolished, the fingers of a [Christian] martyr which were kept in a casket…. Were then burnt in presence of the Sultan…"

Neither the military nor state security appeared—and this was happening near Cairo, Egypt's capital, not some inaccessible village. After demolishing it, a group of Muslims held prayers at the site and began making plans to build a mosque atop the destroyed church—a live example of history, almost identical to the examples recorded a millennium earlier by the Egyptian historian Maqrizi and others. Because of the attack, Copts in Sool fled to adjacent villages. Women who remained in the village were sexually assaulted.

Less violently, in January, 2012, before a bishop was going to celebrate Epiphany Mass in the Abu Makka church, several Muslims, mostly Salafis and Muslim Brotherhood members, entered the building, saying that the church had no permit and no Christian can pray in it. One Muslim was heard to remark that the building would be suitable for a Muslim mosque.

In May 2011, throngs of Muslims, estimated at 3,000, fired guns and rifles and hurled Molotov cocktails at Coptic churches, homes, and businesses in the Imbaba region near Cairo: twelve Christians were killed—some shot by snipers atop rooftops—232 injured; three churches were set aflame to cries of "Allahu Akbar," while Coptic homes were looted and torched. As usual, Egyptian leadership did little to stop this rampage, showing up nearly five hours after it began, providing ample time to terrorize the Copts. One priest said "I called everyone, but no one bothered to come. I mourn all those young people who died." The pretext for this particular attack was that a Christian girl had converted to Islam and the Coptic Church had supposedly responded by abducting and torturing her into renouncing Islam. Muslims found this argument persuasive, of course, because that is precisely what Islam requires Muslims to do to female apostates who convert to Christianity.

In February 2012, thousands of Muslims attacked a Coptic church, demanding the death of its pastor, who, along with "nearly 100 terrorized Copts sought refuge inside the church, while Muslim rioters were pelting the church with stones in an effort to break into the church, assault the Copts and torch the building." They did this because a Christian girl who, according to Islamic law, automatically became a Muslim when her father converted to Islam, fled her father and was rumored to be hiding in the church. Again, one is reminded that the Conditions of Omar stipulate that Christians shall not prevent any of their family members from converting to Islam—or in this case, aid a hapless Christian who, because of Sharia law, found herself Muslim one day.