If You Admire Juan Cole, You Are Seriously Deluded

I don’t remember which of my readers recommended this Juan Cole character for me to read but I get progressively more appalled with each post of his I encounter. Not only is the guy a sexist of major proportions, he is also a complete bigot. Here are some really offensive statements from his recent post on the persecution of the Coptic Christians in Egypt:

The current round of Christian protests was sparked by a Muslim-Christian dispute in the town of Mar Inabu near Edfu in distant Upper Egypt, over whether a storefront church there was properly licensed. The small Christian congregation of two dozen families in the town of 50,000 maintain that it it has been, for some time. Local fundamentalist Muslims argued that the building was not zoned for religious use but was rather a private apartment. The Christian attempt to build a second story over it with a dome was attacked by local Muslim fundamentalists. You wouldn’t think a dispute like that would be best resolved by burning down the church, but that is what the fundamentalist Salafis are accused of doing.

This sounds like a very nasty attempt to justify a burning of a church. Oh, of course, it so totally didn’t happen. How could it have happened if  it wasn’t the smart thing for the fundamentalists to do? Because, as we all know, fundamentalists always follow the most reasonable, logical path. Also, note the expression “the current round of Christian protests.” If you ever get a chance to talk to a Coptic Christian from Egypt (which I, for one, took the trouble to do before writing this post about the situation of Coptic Christians in the country), you will soon discover that this dismissive attitude to the “current round of protests” conceals the reality of constant and egregious persecution of this religious group.

The conflict between the Salafis and the Copts in Upper Egypt is likely at least partly over class and status hierarchies. Although Coptic Christians are only 10 percent of Egyptians, they are a larger proportion of the population in Upper Egypt, and there some are part of provincial elites, being landowners or merchants. Many Salafis are working or lower middle class.

So, of course, these nasty rich exploiters deserve everything they will get from the downtrodden victims. Who are, of course, the powerful majority in every respect.

The important thing to note is that while one can understand Christian anger over the events in Mar Inabu, it is a tiny place way out in the boondocks, and what happened there is, while hardly unprecedented, not typical of the fate of Christians in Egypt.

Oh, of course, if you can dismiss a place as “tiny” and being “in the boondocks”, then who the hell cares what happens there? Of course, this attitude is precisely the one that informs every invasion and bombing the US has engaged in overseas, but Juan Cole isnt willing to recognize that.

And then the post offers a convoluted discussion of why the military responded so violently against the Coptic Christians. Because, obviously, the simple truth that the Coptics are persecuted on religious grounds – as they have been for a very long time – is not sufficient. Fundamentalists persecute religious minorities everywhere in the world. And when fundamentalist Christians persecute the Muslim minority in the US, it is just as appalling when the Muslim fundamentalists in Egypt persecute a Christian minority.

I have news for every progressive / Liberal reader of this blog: if a grievance of a persecuted Christian / Muslim / Jew / Hindu / Sikh / Buddhist / agnostic / atheist / Confucian / Pagan, etc., etc. does not carry the exact same weight with you, you are just a stupid, bigoted fool of the Bush Jr. kind.