A Muslim man crept up behind a Christian man and slit his throat, killing him in Alexandria, Egypt, on the evening of January 3.
Adel Suleiman, 48, the Muslim man who committed the murder, did so because his Christian victim, 45-year-old Joseph Lam‘i, owned a shop that sold alcohol, which the murderer deemed “contrary to the shar‘ia [Islamic law] and the religion [Islam],” according to an Arabic language investigative report.
A surveillance video captures the moment of the attack (see below). The Coptic shop owner can be seen sitting in a chair right outside his shop. Then a bearded man appears casually walking along in the background. He stops behind the seated Christian, pulls his head back, and very forcefully and deliberately slits his throat. The Copt instinctively jumps up and away from his assassin, though he quickly succumbed to his wounds by bleeding to death.
According to a preliminary investigation by the national security department of Egypt, “The accused was not prompted by any political or criminal motives but had embraced takfiri [“radical”] thinking four years ago.”
What is clear is that the assassin is a Salafi, one of those Muslims who closely follow the lifestyle and teachings of Muslim prophet Muhammad and his original companions. Both his appearance (the traditional Salafi beard with clipped mustache) and his actions (“defending” Islam from the “corrupting” influences of “infidels”) testify to this fact.