Oleh: Raymond Ibrahim

Salah satu dari sedikit perkembangan positif yang mengikuti meningkatnya kaum Islamis selama "musim semi Arab" adalah bahwa hari ini banyak Muslim rata-rata dan/atau Muslim nominal tengah melihat wajah Islam yang sebenarnya dan ajaran-ajarannya. Dan banyak dari mereka – seperti yang ditunjukkan oleh Revolusi Mesir tanggal 30 Juni, yang melihat tersingkirnya Ikhwanul Muslimun – tidak ingin menghadapinya.

Contohnya, dalam sebuah episode "Bersama Dr. Islam Buhira" di stasiun TV Al Qahira Wa Al Nass, Buhira menerangkan bagaimana dia menghadiri "sebuah konferensi di Maroko mengenai status wanita di masyarakat setelah musim semi Arab," dan bagaimana pada konferensi itu penafsiran al Quran oleh ahli tafsir al-Qurthubi (w.1273) berikut ini dibacakan: "Wanita itu seperti sapi, kuda dan unta, karena semuanya dinaiki (ditunggangi)."

Setelah mengutip kata-kata al-Qurthubi, Dr. Buhira melanjutkan, dengan nada kecewa, "Beginilah al-Qurthubi berbicara mengenai wanita, yang termasuk ibunya, anak-anak perempuannya – pada dasarnya semua Muslimah. Dia mengatakan mereka 'semua ditunggangi'. Inilah yang membuat mereka sama dengan binatang."

Sulit untuk percaya atau tidak percaya, faktanya, gagasan bahwa "Wanita seperti sapi, kuda, dan unta karena semuanya ditunggangi", tercatat dalam Tafsir al-Qurthubi (lihat vol. 17, hal. 172), salah satu dari kitab-kitab tafsir, atau tafsiran mengenai ajaran-ajaran al Quran, paling otoritatif.

Kenyataannya, membandingkan wanita dengan binatang bukanlah sesuatu yang aneh dalam Islam dan jejaknya kembali ke nabi Muhammad sendiri, yang tercatat mengatakan, "Wanita, anjing, dan keledai, membatalkan shalat seorang pria" (Musnad Ibn Hanbal vol. 2, hal. 2992).

Saya pertama kali menterjemahkan dan mendiskusikan teks-teks yang menyerupakan wanita dengan binatang ini pada tahun 2008, dalam konteks bagaimana gundik perempuan dalam Islam tidak dianggap manusia, karena relative pronoun dalam bahasa Arab yang digunakan dalam al Quran untuk menunjuk kepada budak-budak sex adalah "dia (benda)" – seperti untuk binatang – dan bukan "dia (perempuan)" (mis. Al Quran 4:3).

Meski demikian, banyak Muslim, termasuk kaum wanitanya, baru sekarang ini mempelajari teks-teks dan ajaran-ajaran ini. Faktanya adalah, kebanyakan Muslim benar-benar tidak tahu banyak tentang Islam di luar Rukun Islam yang lima. Tapi mereka telah dikondisikan untuk percaya bahwa apapun yang Syariah katakan pastilah terpuji dan bijaksana – Syariah menjadi hukum dari Tuhan mereka seperti yang disampaikan oleh nabi mereka yang tercinta, Muhammad. Lebih-lebih, beberapa dekade terakhir ini slogan "Islam adalah solusinya" menjadi populer sebagai obat mujarab bagi semua penyakit masyarakat.
Itu saja, sampai hal itu berubah dari teori menjadi kenyataan.

Diletakkan secara berbeda, sekarang setelah musim semi Arab membawa kaum Islamis pada kekuasaan – di Tunisia, di Mesir, di Libya, dan yang akhir-akhir ini sedang berusaha (di ujung pedang pejuang jihad) di Syria – kaum Muslim nominal dan "kultural" yang tidak taat, dan mereka tidaklah sedikit, yang selama beberapa dekade diperintah oleh para diktator yang kebarat-baratan dan media, akhirnya melihat wajah Islam yang sebenarnya dan ajaran-ajarannya, dalam semua detilnya, secara dekat dan akrab. Perkenalan baru dengan kebenaran ini tengan membebaskan beberapa di antara mereka, sebagaimana memperbudak lebih jauh mereka yang senang melihat apa yang mereka lihat.

• Spanish

Now that the Egyptian military has finally begun to neutralize Muslim Brotherhood terrorist bases, the so-called mainstream media are doing what they do best—twist reality to the Islamists’ benefit by casting them as innocent victims merely “holding vigil” only to be slaughtered, while calling for the prosecution of the military for “human rights abuses.” They essentially follow the pro-Brotherhood Al Jazeera’s lead of portraying these bases in Rab‘a al-Adawiya and elsewhere as peaceful “sit ins.”

What the mainstream media have failed to report is that for over two months in these “sit ins”—or more appropriately, mini-emirates in Egypt—many Egyptians have been tortured, mutilated, raped, and mass murdered in the name of Islam and/or Brotherhood rule. (Of course, this is unsurprising considering how the media also failed to report on the nonstop and heinous attacks on the nation’s Christian minority and its churches, all validated by Brotherhood leadership.)

The anecdotes are many. For instance, one man accused of stealing was tortured and had his finger chopped off (in accordance to Sharia). He appears in this video—his face beaten to a bloody pulp—describing his ordeal. Like so many in Rab‘a, he was there not as a Brotherhood supporter, but because he worked in the area. Accused of stealing, he insisted he was innocent. When his accusers refused to relent, he said, “Fine, if I’m a thief, hand me over to police,” but they said, “No, we will hand you over to Allah.” He was taken to a room and tortured for fourteen hours, including by being sprayed with water and repeatedly electrocuted and stabbed and sliced with a switchblade (in minute 3:47 he exposes his mutilated chest). Then, his “pious” tormentors supplicated their god by saying, “In the name of Allah,” before hacking his finger off.

Women are also easy prey in the Brotherhood camp. According to a recent report, they are being abused for refusing to have sex with Brotherhood supporters. One woman was reportedly tortured to death and another critically injured and hospitalized. An Egyptian organization concerned with female rights said it “will expose in the coming days the extent of the violations and crimes against humanity which our sisters have been exposed to by the orders of the General Guide [of the Brotherhood, Muhammad Badie] to coerce women to engage in sex-jihad, with torture to death for those who refuse.”

Here is another live interview with an Egyptian reporter who was kidnapped in Rab‘a, beaten, and told she must stay “because we need women for sex.” The logic behind the sex-jihad (or in Arabic jihad al-nikah) is that women are permitted to copulate with single, male Brotherhood protesters to help alleviate their sexual frustrations so they can focus on empowering Islam—which among the Brotherhood is synonymous with empowering the Brotherhood—without becoming too restless and possibly abandoning the jihad.

Then there are the corpses that are being found. According to journalist Ahmed Musa on Tahrir TV channel, one of the arrested terrorists confessed that Brotherhood leadership murdered more than 80 people who were either suspected of being police informants or were trying to escape the Brotherhood camps. The Brotherhood then buried the bodies in a mass grave inside Rab‘a. According to the arrested terrorist, the Brotherhood fears that, “if their camps are broken up, their crimes against humanity will be exposed and that the Ministry of Interior will take pictures of this mass grave and broadcast them to the world.”

Aside from these atrocities and accusations of atrocities, reports of general beatings were surfacing every day. The majority revolved around people working or living in Rab‘a, who were pressured to join the pro-Morsi protests, only to be beaten savagely for refusing.

Despite the many serious human rights abuses that took place under Brotherhood auspices, the only Western media ever to allude to any of this was an AP report that, after explaining how bound, dead bodies were found near Rab‘a and how many in Egypt insist it’s the work of the Brotherhood, immediately went into default mode by suggesting these could all be false allegations and, if dead bodies are being found, perhaps it’s the work of the military trying to frame the Brotherhood—exactly what the Brotherhood has been caught doing, killing their own supporters to frame the military.

Brotherhood exploitation of the media to garner sympathy is an old phenomenon. Years back, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, discussing how Islamists often turn to violence when “dialogue” doesn’t go their way, said:

But when I see that you are firing at me, trying to kill me—well, I have to defend myself. Then the international news agencies go to these [Islamist] groups for information, and they tell them, “They are killing us, they are killing us!” Well, don’t you [news agencies] see them killing the police?! I swear to you, not one of the police wants to kill them—not one of us.

And now, as the Egyptian military disperses the Brotherhood’s terrorist camps, right on cue, the Western press is doing what it does best—skewing reality to the benefit of the Brotherhood.

Still, there is one positive side to all this. Because so many Muslim Brotherhood members and their Islamist allies had congregated in Rab‘a and elsewhere, turning them into mini Islamist states where Brotherhood rule was enforced—torturing, chopping fingers off, sexually abusing women, and murdering dissenters—we have gotten a glimpse of exactly what sort of state the Brotherhood sought to transform Egypt.

But just as it took several months before even Fox News told of the Muslim Brotherhood torture chambers—despite the fact that any number of Egyptian media had for months been disseminating pictures and videos of those tortured—no doubt it will take a while before news of the Brotherhood torture camps is ever disseminated in the West.

Update: Now that Egypt's military has cleared out and is investigating Rab'a, buried bodies are indeed being found. So far, 28 bodies, most bearing marks of severe torture, including charring from electrocution, have been discovered — the handiwork of the Muslim Brotherhood.

National Review Online

While Western media, following the lead of pro-Brotherhood Al Jazeera, continue demonizing the Egyptian military’s attempts to neutralize the Muslim Brotherhood terror bases – where people have been tortured, raped, and killed, all according to Islamist fatwas (yes, including the rape, more on this later) the media portray them as “sit ins” where Islamists are “holding vigil” only to be slaughtered by the military. Conversely, the media has been incredibly silent about the terrors being visited on Egypt’s Coptic Christians, the nation’s original inhabitants, by the very same people in the “sit ins.”

For starters, and as CBN’s Gary Lane just put it, “What do Muslim Brotherhood members do when Egyptian Security Forces launch a forewarned operation to clear them from Cairo tent cities? Attack Christians. That’s right. Morsi supporters responded with a monumental attack — unprecedented in modern times — on churches throughout Egypt. The torching and destruction of churches occured within six hours of the start of the military crackdown.”

Indeed, the abuse of Egypt’s Christians has reached unprecedented levels in the modern era. Al-Qaeda’s flag has been raised above their churches; their pope is in hiding under threat of death; a priest was shot in front of his church, and another Copt beheaded; their children are being abducted; nary a day goes by without a church being attacked or set aflame; hate filled graffiti covers their homes and churches.

And why has the persecution reached unprecedented levels? Because the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was ousted by a revolution that saw as many as 30 million Egyptians, most of them Muslims, take to the streets. But of course, the Brotherhood does not want to admit that Muslim majorities do not favor their rule, so they scapegoat the already-hated Christians, portraying them as fundamental to the ousting of Morsi. Any number of Brotherhood leaders — from the general guide, Mohammed Badie, to the group’s spiritual father, Sheikh Yusif al-Qaradawi, all of whom publicly denounced the Coptic pope for being supportive of the revolution and supposedly even killing Muslims – are responsible for this rise in persecution of Copts.

Accordingly, among some Islamists, anti-Christian fury has taken on genocidal proportions. Recently a Libyan Muslim named Tamar Rashad called in to a talk show, saying “I want to offer the good news to [Pope] Tawadros that, Allah willing, the day is coming when no Copt will ever again tread the ground of Egypt – and no churches. We will no longer allow churches to exist.” When the TV host appeared to protest, Rashad interrupted him saying, “It’s already decided, take your cameras and go to the churches and you’ll see what’s going to happen soon, Allah willing.”

In fact, it has become difficult in the last few days to keep up with the attacks on Egypt’s Christians, so many and nonstop are the reports emanating from human-rights organizations in Egypt. Especially throughout Upper Egypt – in Minya, Asyut, Sohag – Christians and their churches are under attack; dozens of Coptic homes and businesses have been set on fire. Due to the risk to Christian lives, many churches are no longer holding regular worship services.

Also often left untold by the major media is that Copts suffered unprecedented abuses under Morsi’s one year of rule – through legal measures as well as extralegal ones.

For example, in April, after Christians mourned several Copts who were killed by Muslims in St. Mark’s Cathedral, Coptic Christianity’s holiest site and home to the Coptic pope (before he went into hiding from recent death threats), Muslim mobs who had waited outside launched yet another attack. Eyewitnesses said as many as 40–50 tear gas canisters targeted the mourners, many of whom were women and children hiding in the cathedral. Two more Copts were killed and many dozens wounded as other officers stood by while the Muslim mob tried to destroy the cathedral. As one Egyptian political commentator pointed out at the time, under Mubarak, not even a pebble was thrown at St. Mark’s Cathedral.

Similarly, under the one year of Morsi rule, over a dozen cases of Copts being attacked, arrested, and given sentences double the maximum for supposedly insulting Islam, took place; under Mubarak’s thirty year rule, less than a handful of cases was ever registered—proof that, under the Brotherhood, Coptic persecution became legally codified in the context of “blasphemy.”

One can go on and on. Yet you won’t find out about the persecution of Egypt’s Christians – certainly nowhere near its true extent nor the historical continuity and patterns evinced throughout the centuries – following the so-called mainstream media or academia, as can be seen even now in their skewed coverage of the military’s attempts to disperse the Brotherhood bases.

It’s time the full, ugly truth about Muslim persecution of Christians was known – and acted upon.

— Raymond Ibrahim is the author of Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians and publishes monthly reports on Islamic persecution of Christians.

A woman in niqab prepares to take a swing at Egyptian security forces as the latter continue emptying the Muslim Brotherhood terror camps. Of course, considering that any number of Brotherhood members — including the supreme leader, Muhammad Badie — have been slipping in and out of Brotherhood camps by dressing in the niqab (more on this later), this may well be a man. And despite the Western media's attempts to portray Egyptian security as ruthlessly violent — following the pro-Brotherhood Al Jazeera's skewed narrative — the security agent being menaced by her does not appear to reciprocate the hostility.