"On Saturday we kill the Jews, on Sunday we kill the Christians", or with greater tact, “first the Saturday people, then the Sunday people”, is not just a slogan. It deals with a precise program of religious cleansing, pronounced by Islamist leaders and promulgated by Jihadists. Today, almost all the “people of Saturday” have disappeared from the countries that were their home for centuries, even millennia. And now the Christians - the Sunday people - are paying a terrible price for their faith.
Their millennial history has become an immense requiem.
This week Marcelle Haroun, mother of the current president of Cairo’s Jewish community Magda Haroun, died at the age of 93. Her death leaves five Jews known to be living in the Egyptian capital. Say it again: 5. In Africa and Middle in the East there are hundreds of abandoned Jewish sites in Morocco (460), Iraq (352), Algeria (320), Yemen (301), Tunisia (231) and Syria (63).
Like the famous Eliahu Hanavi synagogue of Damascus. Or the synagogue of Djerba, in Tunisia. Or the dar al Bishi synagogue in Tripoli, Libya. When these Jews left for Israel, the West didn't care. When the Christians left for the West, the West didn't care, again.
“In February 2014, I met the head of the Jewish community in Egypt, Magda Haroun”, Samuel Tadros wrote in the New York Times. “Today, she told me, there are 15 Jews left in the country, out of a population that once stood at nearly 100,000. Ms. Haroun said she was afraid the Copts would soon follow. At the time I thought the prospect was overblown. There are millions of Copts in Egypt. Where would all of them possibly go? Surely some will remain, I reasoned. But I had left the country myself in 2009 — and so have hundreds of thousands of Copts. Ms. Haroun was right”.
Last April, the Wall Street Journal ran a headline: “Anti-Christian violence surges in Egypt, prompting an exodus”. In 1971, when Shenouda became Pope of the Coptic Church in Egypt, there were 7 Coptic churches outside the Middle East. When he died in 2012, there were over 600 Coptic churches worldwide. Today to enter the ancient Christian quarter of Cairo, you pass concrete blocks, metal detectors, armed men everywhere. To monitor the monasteries, garrisons with tanks.
Fear is everywhere. But also faith. The names Maria or Antonio continue to be given to newborns. Many carry the tattooed cross on the wrist. In case of attack it would be impossible to conceal the Christian faith. But the Copts of Egypt show a resistance and a pride unknown to us Westerners. And here comes the third part of the slogan: “First the Saturday people, second the Sunday people, third the secularized West”.
Born in Cairo in 1951 to a Coptic family, Jean Maher, after thirty years of career as an engineer in the automotive sector, has committed to defending human rights in his native country following the escalation of anti-Christian persecutions and the revolution of 2011. Maher said: “The Copts are important to them (the jihadists, ndr) as a symbol to be eradicated - they represent about fifteen million of people out of an Egyptian population of 90 million - and the attacks will continue. The Christians in their eyes represent the ungodly because, if one is not Muslim, one is kuffar (unbeliever, ed) and must convert to Islam. Hitting the Copts is also a signal for Europe: what happens in Egypt is what will also happen to the West”.
And here comes the fourth part of the slogan: “First the Saturday people, second the Sunday people, third the secularized West but it doesn't care”.
The same evil ideology which purged the Middle East of its Jews and Christians is now at work in Europe. Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, foreign Islamist regimes, they are working hard to Islamize the Old Continent. And if the situation does not change, they will succeed.