FOLLOWING UP ON THE VIOLENCE IN EGYPT

From Christianity Today comes this update on the situation in Egypt:

Despite the deaths of more than 500 Muslim Brotherhood supporters and the resulting retaliation against Christian targets nationwide, Egypt's Christian community stands with yesterday's decision by the military-backed transitional government to break-up the pro-Morsi sit-ins.

"If a peaceful sit-in took place in Times Square and locked down the city, how long would it take American authorities to disperse it?" said Ramez Atallah, head of the Egyptian Bible Society. "The government spent six weeks trying to solve this crisis, and finally used force. What were the alternatives?"

Youssef Sidhom, editor-in-chief of Coptic newspaper Watani, explained why one alternative—to simply allow the protests to continue indefinitely—was not a better choice.

"If it had been a peaceful protest, we should leave it there. Have the army encircle it to prevent more weapons from entering, and wait for their morale to falter," he said. "But the sit-in surrounded 20 to 30 high-rise apartment buildings, and the people had to submit to daily checks by the Muslim Brotherhood simply to go in and out of their neighborhood.

"They were terrorists, holding hostage thousands of residents."

Egyptian analysts disagree why the six weeks of negotiation with Islamist supporters of ousted President Mohamed Morsi failed. But once the decision to disperse the sit-in was taken, the confrontation was anything but peaceful.

The understanding of Christian leaders, however, reverses the predominant media narrative.

"The army did not attack the people," said Emad Gad, a prominent Coptic politician in the Egyptian Social Democratic Party. "They used tear gas and bulldozers, and were attacked by armed Brotherhood supporters, and then responded in kind."

Government officials announced 43 police personnel were killed in the clashes.

Sidhom anticipated violence, but hoped the dispersal would not be bloody. He praised the police for their self-restraint given the response of armed protesters. But many critics find the security forces used excessive force.

But even so, Muslim political commentator Abdullah Schleifer faults the Islamist misuse of the traditions initiated by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

"Non-violence … meant this," he wrote for al-Arabia. "Sitting or standing and offering no resistance to the British imperial forces and the American southern police when they would move in to arrest and often beat up the peaceful non-violent demonstrators.

"Non-violence does not mean building barricades to hold off the Egyptian riot police and breaking up pavement stones to throw at them."

Egyptian officials were quick to highlight video and testify to the armed nature of many Islamist protesters within the sit-ins. Amnesty International condemned protesters for torturing opponents within their grounds, though the Brotherhood rejects this statement.

Yet beyond the actions surrounding the dispersal of the sit-ins, Egyptian Christians find proof of violent Muslim Brotherhood intentions in the numerous attacks on churches and other Christian targets that occurred in the aftermath. CT earlier highlighted the burning of two Bible Society bookstores in Upper Egypt. Atallah believes such violence was pre-planned.

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