Radical Islamists Threaten The Life of All Christians in the Middle East

Christians in the Middle East have suddenly become targets of the Islamist movements after the Islamic State of Iraq, a Muslim radical movement, said on a Islamist site that Christians around the Middle East, where they are a minority, are “legitimate targets,” in response to an alleged kidnapping of two women who had converted to Islam by the Coptic Church in Egypt.

On Sunday, a group of radicals defiled a holy liturgy of the Christian Catholics in Baghdad and killed a priest and around 57 worshippers during the rescue operation that followed.

Ever since the churches in Middle East have been placed under strict protection of the police and security forces of the Middle East or Northern African states on whose territory they are.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq posted on the Internet a statement saying that the sword of Islam shall not be lifted from the necks of the Christians in Iraq and the region.

The group threatened to “go after your children” in Syria, Lebanon and Egypt if the Christians do not submit to their demands. They also reminded that there are thousands of Christians and hundreds of churches on Islamic soil that could become targets to the Islamic movements.

They called the pope in Vatican the “hallucinating tyrant in Vatican,” and the Christian faith “idolatry.”

The main demand refers to the release of the two Egyptian women, but the Coptic church in Egypt denies any involvement in such abduction and called these allegations as “illusion in the mind of sick people.”

The terrorist organization gave the Coptic 48 to comply counting down from the moment of the assault in Baghdad on Our Lady of Salvation church.

The whole thing is about two women, Kamilyah Shehatah and Wafaa Constantine, wives to Coptic priests who have sparked a local controversy on whether they might have converted to Islam in order to get a divorce. Both women disappeared from the public attention.

However, it would seem that not all the Muslims in the world share this radical vision. In Egypt, The Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic political group in this own right, has maintained that the Muslims should protect the sacred places of all religions and urged the state to protect the Christian church in Egypt against all attacks.

Egyptian government also referred to this matter in its statement that condemned the Baghdad church attack saying that something like this will not be permitted in Egypt.

The Christian community in Egypt, counting eight million people, is by far the largest Christian community in the Middle East, though its numbers have declined in the last decades.

There are problems in Egypt related to the security of the people who confess the Christian religion.

The toll of violence continues in Iraq where the capital has been shook up by explosions that claimed the lives of 113 people of Shia Muslim faith. The explosions are believed to have been orchestrated by groups like Islamic State of Iraq, which is an Sunni Muslim group.

Threats against Christians were made also before the elections in March in Iraq, and convinced many people not to vote and flee their cities to escape attacks.