The Arab Spring's Blooming Shrivels in the Cold Light of Reality !

Syria and Egypt are dying. They were dying before the Syrian civil war broke out and before the Muslim Brotherhood took power in Cairo.  They are dying because they chose not to do what China did: move the better part of a billion people from rural backwardness to a modern urban economy within a generation.

It was obvious to anyone who troubled to examine the data that Egypt could not maintain a bottomless pit in its balance of payments, created by a 50% dependency on imported food, not to mention an energy bill fed by subsidies that consumed a quarter of the national budget. It was obvious to Israeli analysts that the Syrian regime's belated attempt to modernize its agricultural sector would create a crisis as hundreds of thousands of displaced farmers gathered in slums on the outskirts of its cities.

It is cheap to assuage Western consciences by sending some surplus arms to the Syrian Sunnis. No-one has proposed a way to find the more than US$20 billion a year that Egypt requires to stay afloat. Egypt remains a pre-modern society, with nearly 50% illiteracy, a 30% rate of consanguineal marriage, a 90% rate of female genital mutilation, and an underemployment rate over 40%. As malnutrition afflicts roughly a quarter of Egyptians in the World Health Organization's estimate, and the Muslim Brotherhood's government was waiting for a bumper wheat crop that never will come.  Egypt is slowly dying.

Even if the Sunnis could eject the Assad family from Damascus and establish a new government -- which I doubt -- the best case scenario would be another Egypt: a Muslim Brotherhood government presiding over a collapsed economy and sliding inevitably towards state failure. It is too late even for this kind of arrangement. Equalizing the military position of the two sides will merely increase the body count.



And now we hear the President Obama plans to send military weapons to the rebels without a thought that these rebels are die hard al-Qaeda scum and follow Mohammad's teachings when it comes to infidels. Dutch Christian Martin Janssen found that out after a ''prayer walk'' in Syria in support of Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim, kidnapped by Syrian rebels. After the prayer walk Janssen had the opportunity to meet with Syrian Christian refugees, who told him how they came to flee their homes and villages. Their village was occupied by rebel forces, who proceeded to announce that they were under an Islamic emirate, and were subject to sharia law.

The Christian residents were offered four choices:

1. Renounce the ''idolatry'' of Christianity and convert to Islam;
2. Pay a heavy tribute to the Muslims for the privilege of keeping their heads and their Christian faith (this tribute is known as jizya);
3. Be Killed !
4. Flee for their lives, leaving all their belongings behind.

Syrian Muslim Rebel

Some Christians were killed, some fled, some tried to pay the jizya and found it too heavy a burden to bear after the rebels kept increasing the amount they had to pay, and some were unable to flee or pay, so they converted to Islam to save themselves. This Islamic based crap is a re-enactment of the historic fate the man of ''tolerance'', Mohammad, offered the conquered Christians and Jews across the Middle East in the 7th Century. You can see his evil has survived through to this century.

The Egyptians have put a different twist on this abhorrent attitude and its on the rise. They have a jihad on Christian children, both boys and girls. Take for example these incidents:  Last month, ten year old Sameh George, an alter boy at the Coptic church of At. Abdul Masih (Servant of Christ) in Minya, Egypt. was kidnapped by ''unknown persons'' while on his way to church to participate in Holy Day prayers. His parents and family reported that it was his custom to go to church and worship in the evening, but when he didn't return They began to panic when they received an anonymous phone call from the kidnappers, saying they had Sameh and would execute him unless they received 250,000 Egyptian pounds in ransom money.

And about a month before this latter incident, yet another Coptic boy, twelve year old Abanoub Ashraf was also kidnapped right in front of his church. His abductors, four men, put a knife to his throat and dragged him into their car and sped away. Later they called his family demanding a ransom for the boy's life. While the immediate motive behind these kidnappings is money, another purpose appears to be to frighten families from sending their children to church. Considering that some Egyptian Islamic clerics deem church attendance as worse than attending bars and brothels, the kidnappers likely deem this the ''altruistic'' side of their greed and hate.



Missing Egyptian Coptic Girls

Meanwhile, as females, Coptic Christian girls are even more vulnerable than Coptic boys. An International Christian Group says, ''Hundreds of girls have been abducted, forced to convert to Islam, and forced into marriage in Egypt. These incidents are often accompanied by acts of violence, including rape, beatings, and other forms of physical and mental abuse.''  Most recently, fourteen-year-old Agape Girgis went to school accompanied by a Muslim social worker and a Salafi teacher and never returned home. After protests, she was eventually handed over to her family. According to a Coptic bishop involved in the case, what happened to Agape--whose name is based on the biblical word for ''brotherly love''-- is disgusting. She was drugged and awoke in a secluded place with Salafis who tried to convert her to Islam, forced her the wear the full hijab, and beat her.

A few weeks earlier, another fourteen year old girl was abducted on her way to school and smuggled across the border to Libya (where Coptic Christians are being brutalized with the help of the Interior Ministry. In the last few years, some 550 cases of abduction, entrapment, rape, and forced conversion of Christian women have been documented in Egypt. Their rate has only increased after the ''Arab Spring'' and the empowerment of the Muslim Brotherhood-- which has seen a concomitant rise in sexual harassment of ALL Egyptian women. Ironically, when the scumbag Morsi was in Germany last February, he was asked about this issue of victimized Coptic girls, he responded by saying ''that the idea that they were being abducted and abused was merely a rumor.'' Good riddance to Morsi!!

The Way I See It....forced conversion of Coptic girls, which started four decades ago, has dramatically escalated after January 2011 (when the ''Arab Spring'' reached Egypt), shows a clear pattern of events that point to well organized ''hidden hands'' behind the process. Amazingly, the collusion of Egypt's security as well as judiciary authorities--in defiance of the existing laws concerning minors--shows the extent of the scheme. It is part of a way of attrition against the Copts in their own ancient homeland.

Thus, as with any number of recent indicators--including an unprecedented assault on their holiest sits and the codification of legal measures to oppress them--the jihad on the children of Egypt's Christian minority is yet another indicator that a rapidly Islamizing Egypt is hostile to its oldest and most indigenous inhabitants, the Copts, and, as happened to the Jews before them, an example of such a retrograde future if the young secular Egyptians can't finally get the democratic government they fought so hard for. Then that light of Equality will shine so bright that world governments might find it easier to come to its rescue.