Chairman’s Report March 6th, 2015

My Journey to Egypt

Tears for Egyptian Christians – Previously I have not reported on my journey to Egypt in December of 2014 because I wanted to concentrate upon

William J. Murray in Cairo

the Christmas for Refugees program. In the first edition of the Chairman’s Report this year, all available space was used just to describe the joy of the children and families because of the Christmas program.

I had flown to Lebanon and Jordan in December on Egypt Air so that I would have the ability to stop in Cairo on my way back to the United States without cost. I stayed in Cairo, Egypt for three days and visited with a number of Coptic leaders as well as evangelicals who had converted from Islam. Most of the photos that were taken during that time cannot be reprinted here for various security reasons.

Because the Obama White House supported Muslim Brotherhood is at war with Egypt, the airport is locked down tight. No one without a ticket to fly can get into the airport, which meant the individual who was meeting me at the airport had to stand outside near an exit door. Outbound security is even tighter.

Before continuing with my own experience, I had better explain the Muslim Brotherhood and Obama White House situation. The Wall Street Journal first reported on Secretary Hillary Clinton “reaching out” to the Muslim Brotherhood in 2011, shortly after the Egyptian government fell to protesters. In reality her trusted aide, Huma Mahmood Abedin, had long before that moved Hillary toward the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abedin at the time was U.S. Deputy Chief of Staff at the State Department and had been a long time personal aide of Secretary Clinton. Abedin, whose mother and father were deeply involved in the Muslim Brotherhood leadership, convinced Clinton that to “control” the outcome of the Arab Spring and keep governments from falling into extremist hands, the United States must back “moderate” Islamist parties. Of course her “moderate” solution was the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that works for the same end result as the Islamic State but is willing to get there at a slower pace.

From the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010 the Muslim Brotherhood was assisted in taking over nations that had been secular leaning, including Tunisia and Egypt, under the guiding hand of Hillary Clinton. The attempts in Libya and Syria failed so far, but those nations are still bleeding as a result. The main victims of the Abedin/ Clinton plan accepted by the Obama White House were the real moderates, who are secularists, and of course the Christians.

Currently the only nation under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood is our NATO “ally” Turkey, which is supporting violence against Egypt for casting off the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 and voting in favor of a more secular government.

MEMRI, a media translation service, recently reported that:

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has recently escalated its statements and activity against the Egyptian regime, to the extent of explicitly calling for using terrorism and violence against it, and even for assassinating President ‘Abd Al-Fattah Al-Sisi. These calls included an MB communique calling on movement activists to prepare for a lengthy and uncompromising jihad and to hunger for a martyr’s death; clear incitement to violence on MB TV channels broadcasting from Turkey.

In the battle between the now secular Egypt and Muslim Brotherhood controlled Turkey, the Obama Administration still supports the Muslim Brotherhood, even with Hillary Clinton gone from the State Department. The delusional concept that a “moderate” Muslim Brotherhood being in control will restrain “extremism” is alive and well at the White House. A blind eye is turned to the fact that 90% of the jihadist from all over the world going to fight jihad in Syria and Iraq have used Turkey as their entry point.

Not just a visit to the Pyramids – The young man who met me at the airport was a convert to Christianity with a very Islamic Ottoman name. My Coptic friends in Egypt were seriously worried about me, just based upon his name, until I assured them of his dedication to the Lord. Christians of all denominations are rightfully fearful. Copts have difficulty accepting Arab Christian converts. Copts are not Arabs. They are the descendants of the original Egyptians who accepted Christ through evangelism. The Arabs brought Islam with them when they invaded Egypt in 638. Egypt is Arab and Muslim by violent conquest.

Although I did visit the home of a lay Coptic leader who heads a large Christian media outlet, I spent most of my time in the Marriott Hotel interviewing various ministries seeking help from the United States. Because of my contacts with other Christian leaders here in Washington, DC I have been able to connect several Egyptian ministries to those who can assist them. One of those I spoke with produced a music video called “Justice Song,” recorded in a burned Coptic Church in Egypt. I have done my best to promote the viewing of that video which is very powerful and is available at our YouTube site.

The photo above  is in Coptic Cairo in the Old City. Nearby is Ben Ezra Synagogue,  which dates back to the 9^th Century and is the oldest in Cairo. Of course there were many places of Jewish worship in Egypt at the time the Holy Family fled King Herod. Not too many Western Christians are aware that there are many more sites in Egypt that are associated with the Holy Family than in Israel. There are tour companies that specialize in following the route of Joseph, Mary and Jesus as they traveled throughout Egypt for three years before returning to Israel after the death of King Harrod.

This all brings me to the Obama response to the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians.

Obama sees anti-Islamic terror in North Carolina but no terror against Christians in the beheading of 21 Coptic Christians

During a neighborhood dispute over parking spaces, an activist atheist whose online postings showed him to be hostile to Christianity killed three Muslims in February of this year. Immediately President Obama blamed their deaths on discrimination saying, “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship.” Had President Obama known then that the killer was an atheist and a far left “progressive” Obama fan, he probably would not have said anything.

Then, just a few days later when twenty-one Egyptian Coptic Christians were marched onto a beach in Libya by the Islamic State and beheaded, President Obama could find no religious reason for the killings at all! His White House issued a statement saying: “The United States condemns the despicable and cowardly murder of twenty-one Egyptian citizens in Libya by ISIL-affiliated terrorists. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims and our support to the Egyptian government and people as they grieve for their fellow citizens. ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect, or ethnicity.”

In the case of the parking lot dispute in which the victims were Muslims, FBI agents were ordered in by President Obama to investigate possible Civil Rights crimes. When Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed thirteen fellow soldiers plus one unborn baby at Foot Hood in 2009 while shouting “Allah Akbar,” President Obama saw the “crime” as “work place violence.” Within hours he asked the nation to be “constrained” and not blame Islam or Muslims for the death toll.

The Islamic State produced a polished production video showing the 21 Christian men, hands bound behind them, being led one-by-one along a beach to their brutal slaughter. They could be heard crying out Ya Rabbi Yasou which translates as “Lord Jesus!” while others recited the Lord’s Prayer. The video, titled A Message Signed with BLOOD to the Nation of the Cross, is indisputably and intensely religious. The entire production is full of references to the Qur’an and the Hadiths of Muhammad.

In an article concerning the video production, theologian and scholar Dr. Mark Durie wrote: “The whole event was meticulously choreographed and rehearsed.  The video’s obvious purpose is to humiliate and terrorize Christians, whom it derisively calls, “The Nation of the Cross.”

The White House will not even refer to the Islamic State by name and uses the initials ISIL in all official statements. To say the name that the organization calls itself is even taboo at the White House because the word “Islamic” is a part of that name.

The logic for this refusal was made clear by Obama’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Jeh Johnson, in a Fox News Sunday program on February 22^nd.

Johnson said, “To refer to ISIL as occupying any part of the Islamic theology is playing on a battlefield that they would like us to be on. I think that to call them some form of Islam gives the group more dignity than it deserves frankly.” Identifying Islamic terrorists as Islamic gives them “dignity” is the liberal logic.

But the Obama Administration has no problem using the term Christian to identify terrorists even if they are not Christian. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf on MSNBC must then have given “dignity” to Joseph Kory’s Lord’s Army when she called it a “Christian militant group.” In reality Kory’s group is a strange mixture of religions including animism. His recognition of Jesus is just about as authentic as is the Islamic version of Jesus. Even so, Kory’s army is at most responsible for 1 act of terror for every 10,000 acts of terror by Islamic groups in the world today; this is not to say that he should not be brought to justice quickly.

During his interview on Fox News, Secretary Johnson did let slip the real reason why the Obama Administration does not use the word “Islamic” when describing terror, and where the term “violent extremism” came from. Muslim leaders in the United States don’t want the Obama Administration to refer to Islamic terror as Islamic terror. Johnson said, “The thing I hear from leaders in the Muslim community in this country is, ‘ISIL is attempting to hijack my religion’.”

President Al-Sisi reacted to the brutal slayings of the Copts by bombing Islamic State positions inside of Libya almost immediately. Al-Sissi is already on a death target list of both the Muslim Brotherhood and the ISIL, and he needs the Coptic support against the Muslim Brotherhood which he dethroned. This does not mean that the Egyptian government has somehow turned a corner after 1,200 years of persecuting Christians. Egypt still today has a very extensive record of not prosecuting Muslims who have committed crimes against or even killed Christians within its own borders. 

The young convert I mentioned above who picked me up at the Cairo airport in December, does not go to a church in his own neighborhood. Each Sunday he drives across town to attend worship out of fear for his family. Perhaps the willingness of the 21 Copts to call out the name of Jesus as they were beheaded will encourage him, but even in a nation where Christians are ten percent of the population and number in the millions, they are not safe in expressing their faith publicly, particularly if they are converts.

As chairman of the Religious Freedom Coalition I do my best each and every day that Congress is in session to bring to light on Capitol Hill the true terror that Christians face in dominant Islamic nations. I also do my best to explain to congressmen and Senators the ideology behind that persecution, as it is written in the Koran.

A people, a nation that refuses to identify its enemy cannot defeat that enemy. It is not possible to defeat a shadow; the figure that casts the shadow must be defeated.

Thank you for helping me make this work possible.

William J. Murray, Chairman

Religious Freedom Coalition, 601 Pennsylvania Ave. NW #900, Washington, DC 20004 * (202) 742-8990