 |
|
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Oct. 29, 2009
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our
Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
JWisdom.com Why what we wear
impacts who we are
With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love
With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks
With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really?
By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A
Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious
By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things
By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices
By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 15, 2009
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 3, 2005
/22 Adar I, 5765
Life of fear for Christian Arabs
By
Richard Z. Chesnoff
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Last month's grisly murder in Jersey City of Hossam Armanious, his wife, Amal, and two daughters, Sylvia and Monica, remains unsolved. But friends and relatives of the family are convinced the bloody crime is rooted in a growing wave of violence and oppression against Christians taking place in Arab countries.
They may well be right.
The Armanious family was devoutly Coptic Christian — an ancient orthodox Egyptian sect that has long suffered from discrimination and coercion in largely Muslim Egypt. Armanious did something in America that he wouldn't dare try in his native Egypt: He attempted to convert Muslims to Christianity.
That, say members of the local Coptic community, angered Islamic extremists and led to the murder.
New Jersey police say they have no proof it was religious murder and are still considering robbery among the motives, although Armanious was far from rich and family jewelry was found untouched in the house.
Hudson County Prosecutor Edward De Fazio tells me he doesn't believe it was religious murder, although he also won't rule it out.
Local Coptic Christians, understandably, think otherwise. The Armanious family was found bound, gagged and stabbed multiple times — a murder style that follows a Koranic prescription for ritual execution, according to Michael Meunier, a representative of the the U.S. Copts Association.
"This was no robbery," a frightened-looking New York City Coptic shopkeeper whispered to me recently. "Arabs did it."
The fears of our country's Coptic community are even more understandable in light of what is happening to Christians across the Arab world.
"Christians, natives of Arab countries, are escaping their countries of origin," says Iraqi columnist Majid Azaza. "The reason is the harassment to which they are subjected by government agencies on the one hand, and extremist groups on the other hand, in countries they have inhabited for thousands of years."
Azaza says that Lebanese Christians — once a solid majority — continue to emigrate by the thousands as a result of the pressures placed upon them by Lebanon's growing Islamic fundamentalists. In Saudi Arabia, organized Christian religious worship is outlawed altogether - even for the oil-rich kingdom's foreign workers.
In Egypt, Copts say their community is subject to new discrimination in work, even violent attacks, and the forceful abduction and conversion of their daughters to Islam. In Palestinian areas, says Azaza, "Christians are becoming almost extinct."
Thirty years ago, 70% of the population of Bethlehem was Christian Arab. Today, the traditional birthplace of Jesus is more than 70% Muslim.
"People are afraid not only of the Arab versus Israeli violence, but of Muslim extremist pressure on us," a Christian businessman told me on a recent visit. "They want our land, they want our businesses, they want our children."
In light of this worldwide persecution, it's time to find out who slaughtered the Armanious family and why.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
JWR contributor and veteran journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff is a contributing editor at US News & World Report, a columnist at the NY Daily News and a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Demoracies. A two-time winner of the Overseas Press Club Award and a recipient of the National Press Club Award, he was formerly executive editor of Newsweek International. His latest book is "The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can't Stand Us & Why the Feeling Is Mutual". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR. ) He is also the author of "Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History".
© 2004, NY Daily News
|
