Talk Straight

Gunmen in central Somalia on Saturday, Dec. 8, killed an underground Christian who had been receiving death threats for leaving Islam, area sources said.

Two unidentified masked men shot Mursal Isse Siad, 55, outside his home in Beledweyne, 206 miles (332 kilometers) north of Mogadishu, for leaving Islam, Muslim and Christian sources told Morning Star News. The assailants fled immediately after the murder.

Siad’s oldest daughter (name withheld), 15, said her father was killed “because he failed to attend the mosque for prayers and used to pray at home. He used to share with us about Jesus.” She said that he had received messages on his mobile phone stating, “We know what you are doing, and you must stop, otherwise you risk your life.”

Siad’s 42-year-old wife (name withheld), three daughters and two sons have fled the area, fearing for their lives.

The militant Islamist group Boko Haram has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing that killed at least 15 people at an evangelical church in northern Nigeria.

In a statement e-mailed to journalists Monday, June 4, group spokesman Abul Qaqa said Boko Haram had “successfully launched” the attack. “We thank Allah for giving us victory. We successfully carried out a suicide bombing on a church at Yelwa in Bauchi state,” he said.

The email address was the same the militants always use, but reporters cautioned there was no way to confirm its authenticity.

The lower house of the Egyptian parliament has unanimously approved a text declaring that Israel is the number one enemy of Egypt and calling for the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador and a halt to gas exports to Israel.

On Monday, Egyptian MPs voted by a show of hands on the text of a report, which was compiled by the Arab Affairs Committee of the People’s Assembly (lower house of parliament).

“Revolutionary Egypt will never be a friend, partner or ally of the Zionist entity, which we consider to be the number one enemy of Egypt and the Arab nation,” the report declared, adding, “It will deal with that entity as an enemy, and the Egyptian government is hereby called upon to review all its relations and accords with that enemy.”

In 1979, Egypt became the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but was compelled to agree to supply gas to Israel as one of the main economic conditions of the US-sponsored peace deal.

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Another positive Arab Spring accomplishment: The total flushing down the toilet of decades of peace between neighbors.  Way to go!

 As Tunisian lawmakers wrestle over the drafting of a new constitution, the place of Islamic law is causing contention, but with Islamists dominating the process the new constitution looks set to describe shari’a as “the principal source of legislation.”

Tunisia, the country that launched last year’s political upheavals in many parts of the Arab world, is being closely watched, as observers across the region and in the West ponder the future of the so-called “Arab spring” amid the rise of Islamist parties.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been optimistic about Tunisia, saying during a visit to North Africa last week that she was encouraged by what she saw and heard. Testifying in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, she described Tunisia as “a country that I think deserves a lot of attention and support from the United States.”

Last October, the Islamist Ennahda (Renaissance) party won a plurality of the seats when Tunisians elected an assembly mandated to draft a new national constitution.

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So far the Arab Spring states (Tunisia, Libya, Egypt) are batting 3-for-3 on Sharia law. And here I was thinking the Arab Spring was all about Freedom and Democracy…how silly of me.

Radical Islam is on the march. It is being aided and abetted by the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently warned at a conference in Tunisia that the Arab Spring is backsliding. The democratic transformation of the Middle East and North Africa is not working out as Mrs. Clinton and President Obama had hoped. Liberal reformers are being eclipsed by Muslim militants. Islamist parties are coming to power. Mr. Obama has no one to blame but himself.

He has encouraged Arab street revolts against corrupt autocracies. Long-standing American allies, such as former Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, were abandoned. Yet, contrary to his simplistic narrative of freedom fighters battling tyranny, Mr. Obama has helped pave the way for the triumph of Shariah democracy - the drive to establish a global Islamic caliphate. At his core, Mr. Obama is a radical secular progressive. Like all multiculturalists, he believes in one seminal myth: Mass poverty and oppression in the Third World is America’s fault. Hence, he champions anti-colonial “liberation movements” - the uprisings of repressed peoples, especially those in the Muslim world, chafing under authoritarian rule. Yet he never bothers to ask: What comes next? What kind of regime replaces the previous one? The results are often even worse.

The Arab Spring is turning into an Islamist winter. Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen are now becoming Wahhabi Sunni theocracies. Shariah law is being imposed. Minorities, especially Christians, are being eradicated. Dissidents are imprisoned. Women are oppressed. The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies are in the saddle. One-man, one-vote is being used by religious fanatics to impose Islamofascist rule.

“We don’t feel as safe as before,” said Georges Nader, an Egyptian Copt who lives in Cairo. A year after the revolution that led to the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak, Nader said that the number of Egyptians Copts fleeing the country was on the rise.

“Half of my family is in Canada or the US, and they are trying to get us out of the country too. We are just waiting for the right opportunity,” the 25-year-old told NOW Lebanon.

Last fall, the Egyptian Coptic Church’s lawyer Naguib Gibrael estimated that some 100,000 Christian families had left the country in the preceding months, and that since Mubarak’s ouster, sectarian strife has escalated in the country. […]

Though on paper, Egyptian Christians and Muslims are equal by law, many admit that Copts, who make up approximately 10 percent of the country’s population, are often discriminated against. Between 2008 and 2010, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) recorded 52 cases of Coptic-Muslim conflict. Many fear that with the new Islamist majority in parliament, things will only get worse.

“At first, Islamic figures will come across as protectors of their Christian brothers, but that is solely about reeling in support,” said Georges al-Sanady, a 25-year-old engineer from Cairo. Sanady says that after paying lip service to equality, the Islamists in power will try to enforce Sharia law.

“It will not happen overnight, but Christians are not buying this, regardless of their social class,” he said.