Egyptian Christians continue to suffer

From Fox News, with my emphases:

As pro and anti-Mubarak protesters clash in the streets of Egypt, the Christian minority continues to face mounting persecution, largely unbeknownst to the public eye.

Tom Doyle, Middle East director for E3 Partners, a Christian missionary organization that works extensively in Egypt and the surrounding region, and author of “Breakthrough: The Return of Hope to the Middle East,” tells FOX that colleagues on the ground report the murder of 15 more Christians outside Al-Minya, about 150 miles south of Cairo.

“With no police available, no one was willing to help them. Family members are taking turns keeping watch over their homes, as robberies, rape, looting, and car theft are occurring routinely now.”

Under Egypt’s constitutional rights, Christians are free to practice their faith. Persecution, however, has been rampant, as Muslim extremists seek to deny those rights. Twenty-three Christians were murdered and 70 injured as a suicide bomber attacked a Coptic Christian Church at a New Year’s Eve mass in Alexandria. Archbishop Raweis, the top Coptic cleric in Alexandria, denounced what he called a lack of protection.

"There were only three soldiers and an officer in front of the church," he said. "Why did they have so little security at such a sensitive time when there's so many threats coming from Al Qaeda?”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was recently asked about the onslaught of Christian murders across the Middle East. Gibbs deflected to the State Department, and said, “I have not heard the – an overarching theory” behind the attacks, and “the president is aware.”

Christianity in Egypt dates back to the first century A.D. as Alexandria was an early center of Christianity, and until the Islamic conquest of Egypt in the seventh century, it was predominantly Christian. Today, the Christian minority only makes up about 10 percent of Egypt’s population.

“With the Muslim brotherhood rising up, Christians are very nervous about who might be next in line to take over for Mubarak,” explained Doyle. “Many times it’s been stated that there’s democracy but it’s just been a veil for authoritarianism.”

The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in the 1920s, demanded today for Mubarak to step down, as well as Jordan’s new Prime Minister. Among the brotherhood’s graduates, Al-Qaeda’s No. 2 - the Egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri -- who was imprisoned for three years on weapons charges following President Sadat's assassination in 1981, as well as Hamas, the terror network behind suicide bombings and rocket attacks in Israel, and the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine whose goal is the destruction of Israel.

Walid Phares tells FOX the group is “the mothership for the Jihadi ideologies and thinking, and therefore one can say today's Al-Qaeda and today's many other jihadists are offshoots of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Asked today about how the Obama administration would handle Egypt if the Muslim Brotherhood takes control, Gibbs said, “I think we’re getting way ahead of the process. I don’t want to get into hypotheticals about what-if.”

Whether it will be addressed by the White House or not, Egyptian Christians fear what will become of the already persecuted minority should Muslim extremists take control.