One Free World

Life within a liberal democracy that prides itself on equality of rights and opportunities of all its citizens along with equality under the law, can still be fraught with unseen dangers. With the importation of traditional, cultural, ethnic, ideological, political or religious antipathies the climate of safety and security can be compromised, and those who become targets are reminded of what they sought to escape when they emigrated from their home countries to Canada, the country of safe haven.

Geographic distance, and the letter of the law cannot, it would increasingly seem, guarantee security and peace of mind. Bad news seems to follow where it may, through the infiltration of Canadian society of those same elements that threatened elsewhere. A deadly evolution has taken place within Canadian society of people arriving as immigrants or refugees, becoming landed immigrants ostensibly with the purpose of attaining citizenship and without the obligation to becoming immersed in prevailing values of tolerance.

We live increasingly in a world where ages-old antipathies and grievances and a tendency to solve differences by intimidation and destabilizing violence results. Which is what is being reflected now as well within the large Egyptian Copt community in Canada. Threats emanating from traditional sources becoming emboldened by their success in Muslim-dominated countries, importing them to democratic countries of the world, like Canada.

"Religion-related violent attacks on Copts in Egypt are certainly not new - in fact they are endemic - there are dozens each year, including by the security forces", Paul Marshall, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom. Just as a massacre of Egyptian Copts took place in Cairo, an Islamist online site threateningly posted the names and addresses of Ottawa-area Canadian-Egyptian Copts.

The threat is clear enough, and warnings of potential attacks on Coptic churches have gone out internationally throughout Europe and North America, that such attacks may be imminent. Causing, given the heightened sense of awareness and danger, the Ottawa Christian Coptic community to hire private security guards to help ensure security at area churches.

(Which just incidentally, is similar to what Synagogues have had to resort to, in view of Islamist threats.)

Islamists are now increasingly targeting all Christians when perceived affronts to Islam come to the fore. The very reality that Arab Christians have a right to practise their heritage and venerable religion that much pre-dated Islam does not exempt them from Islamist charges of apostasy, a capital crime in many Muslim societies.

Majority-Muslim countries like Egypt where Coptic Christians were once respected and protected now deal with the growing incidence of violence among and from fundamentalist Islamists. And their governments seek to appease, to ignore abuses aimed at their Christian communities, while mouthing assurances to the Christians, and doing little to protect them.

"The government is in fear of losing power to the extremists but at the same time it sympathizes with many of their basic positions." Majed el Shafie, One Free World International