by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
Hudson New York<\/em><\/p>\n During a recent altercation in Egypt, a Christian inadvertently killed a Muslim. This incident, according to an\u00a0AINA report<\/a>, “turned into collective punishment of all Copts in the majority Christian village.” Two Christians “not party to the altercation” were killed; others were stabbed and critically wounded. As usual, “after killing the Copts, Muslims went on a rampage, looting and burning Christian-owned homes and businesses.”<\/p>\n Despite all this, “Muslims insist they have not yet avenged” the death of their slain co-religionist; there are fears of “a wholesale massacre of Copts.” Many Christians have fled their homes or are in hiding.<\/p>\n Collectively punishing\u00a0dhimmis<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 non-Muslims who refused to convert after their lands were seized by Muslims, and who are treated as “second-class” infidels \u2014 for the crimes of the individual is standard under Islam. In this instance,\u00a0dhimmis<\/em>\u00a0are forbidden from striking \u2014 let alone killing \u2014 Muslims, even if the latter perpetrate the conflict. Prior to the fight that killed him, the Muslim in question had, through the help of radical Salafis, burned down the Christian’s home and was threatening him over a property dispute. Still, non-Muslims are forbidden to raise their hands to Muslims, even in self defense.<\/p>\n Collectively punishing Egypt’s Christians is common. Earlier this year, when a Christian was accused of dating a Muslim woman, 22 Christian homes\u00a0were set ablaze<\/a>\u00a0to cries of “Allahu Akbar”; when Muslims made false accusations against another Christian, one was killed, ten hospitalized, an old woman thrown out of her second floor balcony, and homes and properties were plundered and torched, as documented in a\u00a0report<\/a>\u00a0aptly titled “Collective Punishment of Egyptian Christians.”<\/p>\n Nor are such examples limited to Egypt: when Muhammad cartoons deemed blasphemous by Muslims were published in Europe, Christians in faraway Muslim countries like Nigeria were killed; when Pope Benedict\u00a0quoted history<\/a>deemed unflattering by Muslims,\u00a0anti-Christian<\/a>\u00a0riots around the Muslim world ensued, churches were burned, and a nun was murdered in Somalia. Months ago, when an American pastor from a fringe group\u00a0burned a Koran<\/a>, dozens of UN aid workers were killed by Muslims in Afghanistan; some were beheaded.<\/p>\n This practice of attacking one set of Christians as retribution for the acts of another set has roots in Islamic law. The\u00a0Pact of Omar<\/a>, a foundational text for Islam’s treatment of\u00a0dhimmis<\/a><\/em>, makes clear the consequences of breaking any of the debilitating and humiliating conditions non-Muslims are made to accept to be granted a degree of surety by the Muslim state: “If we in any way violate these undertakings \u2026 we forfeit our covenant, and we become liable to the penalties for contumacy and sedition” \u2014 penalties that include enslavement, rape, and death.<\/p>\n As Mark Durie points out in\u00a0The Third Choice<\/a><\/em>, a book on\u00a0dhimmitude<\/em>,<\/p>\n Even a breach by a single individual\u00a0dhimmi<\/em>\u00a0could result in jihad being enacted against the whole community. Muslim jurists have made this principle explicit, for example, the Yemeni jurist al-Murtada wrote that “The agreement will be canceled if all or some of them break it” and the Moroccan al-Maghili taught “The fact that one individual (or one group) among them has broken the statute is enough to invalidate it for all of them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It should be noted that this approach applies to all non-Muslim groups \u2014 Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc. \u2014 living amidst Muslim majorities. Yet, because Christians are the most visible infidel minority in the Islamic world, most examples relate to them. The Copts, for instance, are especially targeted because they comprise the largest Christian bloc in the Middle East. (Centuries before the Muslim conquests, Egypt was a major center of Christianity, and Alexandria arguably equal to Rome in theological authority. The result is, after centuries of\u00a0persecution<\/a>, there is still a viable Christian presence in Egypt.)<\/p>\n Today, however, as the world shrinks \u2014 and as Muslims conflate the West with “Christianity” \u2014 the reasons to persecute Islam’s Christians grow: ethnicity and geography no longer matter; shared religion, even if nominal, makes all “Christians” liable for one another.<\/p>\n Consider Iraq: its\u00a0persecuted Christians<\/a>\u00a0are being targeted in part “over theirreligious ties<\/a>\u00a0with the West.” Last year’s\u00a0Baghdad church attack<\/a>, when over fifty Christians were butchered, was initiated in “retaliation” to\u00a0absurd accusations<\/a>\u00a0against the Egyptian Coptic Church.<\/p>\n Yet, nearly a millennium ago, it was the Copts who were massacred when their western coreligionists \u2014 the Crusaders \u2014 made inroads into Islam’s domains. Again, the logic was clear: we will punish these Christians (Copts), because we can, in response to those Christians (Crusaders).<\/p>\n