It’s certain that those Libyan
criminals who shot dead seven Christian Egyptian citizens do not know that
Christianity has entered Egypt through Libya where Saint Mark used to live in Cyrenaica or Barqah and before that, he was in the company of Saint Peter
in Rome.
It’s also certain that those criminals
who dared to commit this racist crime – more vicious than those of Nazi and
Fascism – do not know that Libyan-origin priests have contributed to the
richness and diversity of the Christian theology in Egypt and the region as
well, like the Alexandrian priest Arius who was born there.
Again, it’s certain that those murderers do not know that the Pope of the Egyptian Church has an official historical ecclesiastical title where names of the five cities and the rest of Africa are proudly mentioned it… and most of those cities lie in Libya.
Also, it’s certain that those racist
criminal murderers do not pay attention for a single moment to the fact that
Islam has entered Libya through Egypt and that those martyrs’ ancestors were
the first to welcome the Arab Muslims and deal with them… and who also didn’t
join the Romans in their fighting against the them.
I say certain because of the ignorance
we live in and which led to poorness in intellect, feelings and conscience… we
lived such ignorance in Egypt during the time of the terrorist muslim
brotherhood cancer and all who had the same ideology… this happened in Egypt
with all what we know about its civilization, culture, intellect, knowledge and
history written in eternal human records… so you can imagine the effect of such
cancer in environment other than Egypt…
This ugly racist crime committed
against Christian Egyptian citizens shall not go unpunished despite I know that
the economic, security and political situation of Egypt does not enable it to
take decisions or actions to mercilessly punish those criminals… I also know
that the Libyan government is in a very critical situation… but all this shall
not prevent us from taking actions on all levels to revenge these martyrs…
first by adequately compensating their families… and second by working on
returning all our sons from there and providing them with jobs in their country…
so that we can pay attention to what is more important and dangerous in my
opinion…
The most important and dangerous is
that we have known the nature of this phenomenon and have documented using tens
of documentation and recording means the cruel crimes committed by this racist
criminal group… and so it’s due that we act on the level of regional and
international organizations to criminalize such criminal group and contain it…
also to generalize its terrorist nature…
Also, resisting such terrorist group
along with all its forms and symbols has become a national duty above being cultural
and civilized one… we shall not pay attention to all callings coming from time
to time claiming to seek reform, reconciliation and unity like before while
they are all ill-intentioned callings and those who launch them are not above reproach.
We shall not let such racist crime go
unpunished without resisting, lest we shift to other levels of killing over
religious identity, doctrine or even national identity; meaning those who have
different nationalities…etc.
Also, we shall take a proper reaction
toward the American and European West; meaning NATO, which interfered to hit
and dismantle then-existing regime at the time when Libyan people were
gathering around it either because they were afraid of the regime or because
they were loyal to it… we are not about to assess the Gaddafi regime now as I
have already written about my stance regarding this by condemning despotism,
corruption, ignorance and arrogance… all these were signs of that regime.
However, while NATO hastened to topple
the regime by force, they did not present an alternative to replace the toppled
regime… it’s obvious now that chaos, destruction and dismantling the Libyan
society were the alternative on NATO’s agenda…
We shall take this horrendous crime
committed against peaceful Egyptian citizens just because they are non-Muslims,
a starting point to adopt a more intense cultural and political discourse toward
the West to say out loud: these are the results of what you planned for the
region.
It’s time the new Egyptian cabinet, along
with the presidency which is supposed to be headed by Field Marshal Sisi,
set plans to protect the Egyptians abroad and also to protect and guarantee
their dignity and rights.
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
Translated into English by: Dalia Elnaggar
This article was published in Al Ahram
newspaper on February 27, 2014.
To see the original article, go to:
#alahram
#ahmed_elgammal #Egypt #Libya