Car bomb hits church in Egypt, five dead

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: Reuters

A car bomb exploded outside a church and killed at least five people in Egypt's northern city of Alexandria as worshippers gathered to mark the New Year, security sources said on Saturday.

A further eight people were wounded in the incident, which swiftly prompted hundreds of Christians to take to the street in protest. Some Christians and Muslims pelted each other with rocks, a witness said.

"We sacrifice our souls and blood for the Cross," shouted Christians near the Coptic Orthodox church where the blast struck, the witness reported.

Christians in Muslim-majority Egypt make up about 10 percent of the nation's 79 million people. Tensions can flare into violence, often over issues such as the building of churches or relationships between members of the two communities.

Read more: http://af.reuters.com/article/egyptNews/idAFLDE6BU0O420110101

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Wait. There will be a post shortly...

....blaming it on Christian extremism, and Christian proselytizing. There's one after every similar incident in South India, and in Iraq, and there were a bunch after the recent attack in Nigeria.

[Rage for Order]

2. That's what they get for living in Egypt

They need to learn their place. After all, they're only 10% of the population; what did they think was going to happen when they went around shoving their Christianity down everybody's throats?







:sarcasm:

[Cutatious]

6. But the ROP is so merciful

I find it hard to believe that the followers of the most peaceful religion on Earth would kill so many innocents on new years eve. But isn't the call to prayer in the AM the most beautiful sound on Earth?

/s

[No Elephants]

8. What percentage of the world's 1.5 billion Muslims would you guess were involved in this incident?

[Igel]

16. Is that the whole problem?

The Copts have a rather big problem in Egypt.

1. Muslim men can marry Copt women. Sometimes by force. If a Copt man marries a Muslim woman, all hell breaks out. Not among one or two Muslims, not among all 1.x billion Muslims in the world. But among a hefty percentage of the local population--and the government, another chunk of the population, says little about it unless forced to. Somewhere between 1 man and 100% of a large population is the truth, and it's that % of the population that matters.

2. Copts can't build churches. They have trouble getting jobs. They have trouble getting into good schools. They have trouble getting into colleges. What percentage of the world's Muslim population is responsible for this? Stupid question: What percentage of the world's Muslim population determines Egytpian public opinion? Not a huge percentage. What, 70 million out over 1.5 billion (using your number)? The problem is that the Copts aren't in India or Indonesia (although there the same kind of interethnic hatred occurs, as well, with many of the same religious texts and reasoning cited). Do you think this kind of thinking helps the killers, or they came up with it entirely on their own, just walking along and though, "Gee! I hate Copts. They offend me. They humiliate me. How dare they pollute the land with their barbarism and false religion! I will kill some."

Think Jim Crow, to protect the "pure". Think of miscegenation laws (in which, similarly, the honor of the female of the "tribe" was most at issue). Think lynchings, to "restore" the majority's honor and put the lesser folk in their place.

Now, ask yourself, In all the lynchings, what percentage of white Americans physically put the nooses on the black men's necks? Not a big number. A couple hundred probably. Those in attendance were in the thousands, but then again criminal hangings also attracted large audiences--death makes for good spectacle, even if it's whites watching a "privileged" white man die. We have to think that in a population of millions, a scattered few of the tolerant, completely non-racist members of the majority population, having heard nothing but peace and tolerance all of their lives, suddenly determined that it was wrong for blacks to be prosperous, to interact with whites (much less even think of having sex with them), to be treated as equals, they concluded blacks were inferior. There was nothing in society to promote this kind of deviant thinking, to say otherwise is to individually smear every single white person with such calumny as to be unforgiveable and promote the crime and moral deviancy of anti-Weissheit. So, we have to conclude, anti-black racism was really a trivial problem confined to a few deviant whites.

Isn't that the exact same kind of thinking trotted out whenever anybody asks if maybe, just maybe, there's some sort of societal problem behind this kind of incidents? It sounds the height of idiocy if applied to American or South African racism, to ethnic hatred by Hindus in India or to Rwanda or SE Europe, doesn't it? More than idiocy, it sounds downright evil.

Of course, it's bad to assume all whites are race-extremists because some are; so it's bad to assume all Muslims are religion-extremists because some are.

[demosincebirth]

5. Yup, one just showed up below.

[No Elephants]

9. Are you assuming the term "religious loonies" in Reply # 4 is to the Copts who were attacked?

[demosincebirth]

17. No sir. Just reading between the lines

[No Elephants]

10. Wow.

[Bragi]

13. It's called debate.

And though I may not share their viewpoint, I prefer to hear them out, and then respond as I see fit.

[Tx4obama]

3. Now it's at least SEVEN dead, 24 injured - see link below

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/31/egypt-church-explosion-new-years_n_803136.html

[The abyss]

4. religious loonies are the most easily exploited.

After all - the big sky dude with the big dick is always on "their side"

Hey - did not the Egyptian authorities just run a mossad critter out of their domain?

[Rage for Order]

18. Even though Muslims slaughtered Christians in this instance

I am compelled to state that both are equally to blame and there is no difference between those who murdered and those who were killed

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. Now 21 dead

Egyptian officials now believe that an attack on a church which killed at least 21 worshippers in Alexandria was the work of a suicide bomber.

Earlier the blast outside the church was said to have been caused by a car bomb. At least 43 people were wounded by the explosion, officials said.
...
"It is likely that the device which exploded was carried by a suicide bomber who died among others," Egypt's interior ministry said in a statement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12101748

[LeftishBrit]

11. Horrible.

And why do religious extremists of all stripes always think their God wants them to KILL people?

[Igel]

15. They don't.

We just only think of those who want to kill people as the only religious extremists.

I knew a woman who rose every morning at 4:30 to pray for an hour before work. She made little at the restaurant she worked at, and dutifully tithed to a church, gave an extra 10% for the "widows" and saved to go to church retreats. She'd collect leftovers at work to subsidize her diet and those of other poor people she knew--and that saved money on food so she could donate more to charities. She'd take the bus to visit the sick and "less well off" widows. She was a pacifist; she was content with her station in life. She thought herself unworthy because she could do so little and showed so little piety.

A suicide bomber is far less extreme, IMHO. He plans for a day, makes a single self-denying decision that gives into his hate and which he believes simultaneously makes him a big and powerful and that's that. He's a piker, an amateur. There are those who would call his act an act of piety, but they humiliate themselves and trivialize their god by burying their highest standards in the latrine and calling the aroma good and pleasant--and that's before we even get to the details of the act itself. (I dislike mocking people, especially gratuitously, but make an exception to mock those to whom honor is their god and whose sensitivities to humiliation are so exquisitely refined and honed. I also make an exception for those confuse their genitals with god, too, but since I usually avoid obscenities mocking them in public and there aren't that many of them in public life, that's a challenge.)

[AlphaCentauri]

12. Mr Mubarak : "terrorist operation which carries, within itself, the hallmark of foreign hands,

Egyptians riot after 7 killed in church attack (2010)
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34736848/ns/world_news-mideast/n_africa/

Muslims Halt Church Construction, Pelt Coptic Christians with Stones
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/11/egypt-muslims-halt-church-construction-pelt-coptic-christians-with-stones.html

[Bragi]

14. You're going to cite AtlasShrugs2000 as a source here?

That's at minimum bad form here. I say that while conceding that there is whole undercurrent of information (and disinformation) you can track and get only from racialist web sites like AtlasShugs.

However, IMHO, it's always wise to double-source and cite from more conventional sources anything you learn from such sites.

[Swede]

19. Worshippers return to Coptic church after deadly blast

Worshippers have returned to the Coptic church in Alexandria, one day after an apparent suicide bomber killed 21 people. Egyptian newspapers have called on Christians and Muslims to stand together amid fear of further sectarian violence.
Blood stains of Saturday’s attack were still visible on the façade of the Al-Qiddisin Church where dozens of grieving worshippers gathered for Sunday’s mass.

21 people were killed and 79 people were wounded in what appears to be a suicide bombing. Egypt has blamed international “terrorism” for the attack on New Year’s Day.



http://www.english.rfi.fr/africa/20110102-worshippers-return-coptic-church-after-deadly-blast