Posted on 12/09/2011 12:50:54 PM PST by bayouranger
This is from the salafi Nour Party, which apparently will be forming part of the majority coalition in the new Egyptian parliament. The votes haven't even all been counted yet, and already they're talking about implementing Islamic law to discriminate against Christians. This shouldn't be a surprise to anybody, as the candidate himself expresses below--it's not like these guys just "fell from the sky." We know who they are, and all along both the salafis and the Brotherhood have been very clear on the fact that they want Islamic law. Those of us with our eyes open know what that means--an assault on individual liberty, institutionalized discrimination against Christians, Jews, and women, and hostility and war against all non-Muslim countries. And yet the Obama administration and far too many Republicans tell us that this is 'progress.' Yeah, the same kind of 'progress' we saw when the Palestinians voted Hamas into power.
Translated from elfagr.com, 3 Dec 2011:
Candidate for the Salafi Nour Party in Assiut: Jizya Is Only Half a Dinar, and It's Taken from the Rich Christians
Muhammad Kamal, elfagr.com
A candidate for the salafi Nour Party, Ahmad 'Umran, expressed his surprise at being asked, "Who are you, and what is your role in politics?" He responded by saying, "They act as if we just fell from the sky."
He added, "The Copts should not forget that we were the ones who freed them from the hands of the Romans, and that jizya is only half a dinar, which is taken from the rich and given to their poor." This came during the Friday sermon at the Mosque of the Court in the city center of Abnub.
'Umran stated that they are planning to take their future in their own hands, and put into practice the Islamic Shari'ah. They believe that they must implement it gradually. 'Umran wonders at Egyptian law, saying: "The law which governs us in our Muslim country comes in three sections--first, statutory law, then customary law, and then the Shari'ah. So the Shari'ah comes in the last of the three sections."
BS. The Roman Empire was gone before the invention of Islam.
“The Copts should not forget that we were the ones who freed them from the hands of the Romans, and that jizya is only half a dinar”
Talk about a special purpose tax that never goes away...
The ability to tax is the ability to destroy, which is the whole idea here.
Byzantium was still the Roman Empire. It had just taken Egypt back from the Persians.
I forsee the day when the jizya is incorporated into US tax law.
I want a t-shirt that says (in Arabic) “All Jizya will be paid in lead.”
Fair enough. I forgot about the Eastern Roman Empire, and still would not consider them “Romans”, but I am sure they did.
Hey, reach into my pocket for the Jizya in My Pants.
BS. The Roman Empire was gone before the invention of Islam.
The Arabs considered the Byzantines the "Romans" and indeed, the Byzantines considered themselves Romans. I may be wrong, but even in the mid-late 7th Century, Latin was still used over Greek among the governing classes of Constantinople.
Regardless, the coming of the Muslims was a great period of war and upheaval and in no sense were the people "made free" by the them.
You are indeed wrong. Greek was the language of the Eastern Roman Empire even though they considered themselves to be truly Roman.
In the Western Empire in its last years, Latin was used by the ruling classes to converse with farmers and legionaires, but the educated classes spoke Greek among themselves.
Maybe he should ask the Copts if they want the Romans back.
He may be surprised at the answer.
When he had himself crowned Emperor, in 800, Charlemagne did not understand himself to be setting up a new Empire, but merely reviving the office of Western Augustus. Had the Emperor at the time (also named Zeno) accepted that view, history would be very different. As it was Charlemagne, functionally did establish a new Empire, and took to vilifying the Roman Empire, which didn't accept his claim, as "the Empire of the Hellenes", an insult because "Hellene" was by then used only to mean "pagan Greek", while all (Chalcedonian) Christians were Romans.
Roman policy toward the monophysites has been very harsh after Justinian's attempts to get then to accept Chalcedon by condemning Theodore of Mopsuestia and the writings of several other figures who had flirted with Nestorianism and repented at the Fifth Ecumenical Council had failed. It was for that reason that the Copts did not support Roman attempts to defend the southern frontiers against the onslaught of Islam.
If one speaks Arabic, us Orthodox Christians who accept the council of Chalcedon (which the Copts reject) are called Rum (Arabic for Roman), while Western Rite folks in communion with the Pope of Rome are called Latin (pronounced Lateen in Arabic).
Read Anna Comnena's Alexiad some time. It's a biography (well, biography, history and political puff-piece for) her father, Alexius I Comnenus, the Roman Emperor at the time of the Crusades. It's a lot of fun, and will disabuse you of a lot of the misconceptions about the middle ages you picked up in school because American and Western European history curricula ignore the elephant in the room: the Roman Empire was still there, off at the east end of the Mediterranean.
See Post #8
Yes, the Armenians, Chaldeans, and other eastern rite churches, in communion with Rome (Latin rite), but autonomous. Not to be confused with the Eastern Orthodox Church (e.g., Greek or Russian Orthodox), which are not in communion with Rome.
The Byzantines, who were the eastern part of the Roman Empire, continued to dominate the poor Coptic or Egyptian Christians even though the western part of the Roman Empire had been over-run by the barbarians.
The Copts were freed from them (the Byzantines) by the Muslims and, so, 1400 years later, now continue to have to pay dhimmi tax.
Now it’s all clear.
Except it’s all ridiculous.
First, our intercessor is Jesus Christ, not the priests. Way, way back in history, the priests were needed because of the awful poverty and ignorance of the human race. Today, all persons can be educated and make their own choice as to salvation. I’m not putting down the priests, in fact I love them, they have preserved for us the Bible and enliven the worldwide and timeless communion of saints. But, my goodness, this nationalistic approach to religion makes a mockery of the universality of the church.
Second, we are not responsible for the sins or debts of the past. We have our own sins and debts to worry about. What is being passed as Islam by the Salafists is a tribal religion. It should be an embarrassment to any educated person. It misrepresents God’s Holy Name. They are no better than blasphemers and polygamists. To think our brother Christians should have to pay a dhimmi tax to them!
“BS. The Roman Empire was gone before the invention of Islam.”
That’s what I was thinking, but the eastern half of the empire lasted until 1453. Maybe that’s what they are referring to.
The Armenian Church pre-dates the eastern rite Churches, and I don’t believe they are in communion with Rome. They are not Eastern Orthodox Churches either, as they pre-date the schism from which they were born (and most of the eastern rite Churches were formed in response to).
The Armenians are in communion with the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrian Jacobites and the Syro-Malabar Church in India. Collectively they style themselves “Oriental Orthodox”, though they are not in communion with us Eastern (Chalcedonian) Orthodox.
Actually it is odd that the Armenians ended up in communion with them, as the Armenians never took a hard line against Chalcedon. Armenia had been outside the Empire under Persian domination when the Council of Chalcedon met, but was within the Empire (they were sometimes in the Roman Empire, sometimes the Persian, sometimes neither, off-and-on for centuries) during one of the last Imperial attempts to resolve the monophysite controversy (all of which were ham-handed and none of which worked), the promulgation of the Henoticon in 482 by Emperor Zeno (yes, the same one who sent the last Western Augustus into retirement in 476), which simply forbade the discussion of Christ’s Natures, and were the only ones seemingly to approve of that approach, so their schism from the Orthodox is a little later (I’ve seen it dated to 491) than that of the Copts and Jacobites, who split immediately in the wake of Chalcedon in 451.
Of course, I should point out, that it’s the Western Church that was born in the later schism.
[:-)==== (Orthodox monastic smiley)
The Syro-Malabar Church is part of the Catholic Church; most Copts & Armenians are not. There are small groups of each that are Eastern Rite Catholic Churches, but The Coptic Church and The Armenian Church are not. For many of the eastern Churches there is a smaller eastern rite Catholic Church (the Maronites in Lebanon being one exception - there is no Orthodox version).
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.