Sectarianism and its Discontents

American and Papal pretensions to be defenders of local religious minorities have contributed more to the situation of sectarianism, rather than to the “safeguard” of the Christian community

A GOOD PIECE

By Joseph Massad , Friday 7 Jan 2011
AhramOnline

"....Rather, we must understand how Europe and the United States, in claiming to “sponsor” and “protect” the local Christian communities and make it de rigueur to “admire” them and identify “their” contributions to the modern Arab world in sectarian terms, will bring about the very same exclusion of these communities in the countries where they live and belong as those hateful fanatics, who target them and who claim them to be foreign to the body politic, want to do.

Zionism sought to create an exclusive Jewish state and empty the world of Jews who would all flock to the Jewish colonial settlement to live in a racist intolerant state.

Similarly, these international forces are intent on transforming Arab and Muslim countries into Israeli-style exclusive enclaves of “intolerant” Muslims whom the (“Judeo-Christian”) world must not tolerate on account of their own alleged intolerance.

In this vein, I should mention that one week before the terrorist attack in Alexandria, the Egyptian authorities uncovered a major Israeli spy ring in the country. Given the history of Mossad bombings of Egyptian post offices, cinemas, cultural centers, and train stations in the 1950s, and Mossad bombing operations across the Arab world that have never ceased to the present (the Mossad has always had a flair for car bombings), it would be important to investigate possible or even potential links between the Mossad operatives and the church bombers.

The irony remains, however, that it is the intolerant Americans, Europeans, and the Israelis and their extremist intolerant, though at times unwitting, local allies, namely the violent minority of sectarians among Islamists, who stand to benefit most from the Alexandria tragedy.

Unless intellectuals in Egypt and the Arab world, Muslim and Christian, religious and secular, resist joining this international alliance of the intolerant, they may very well help them achieve their goals."