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Dec 24, 2014
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European Coptic Leader Medhat Klada: West Is Not Responsible for Persecution of Christians in the Middle East

#4691 | 02:28
Source: Mayadeen TV (Lebanon)

In a TV program, Medhat Klada, head of the European Union of Coptic Organizations, said that the West did not bear responsibility for the tragedies faced by the Christians in the Middle East. "Arab thought is afflicted with double standards and religious narcissism," he said.


Following are excerpts from the program, which aired on the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen TV channel on December 24, 2014:


Medhat Klada: I believe that it would be a mistake and a distortion to place all the responsibility on the West. The West is not responsible for what is happening to the Christians in the East. The responsibility lies with the East. In the East, there is hate speech...


Interviewer: Let's call it a shared responsibility...


Medhat Klada: Most of the responsibility lies with the East. In the East, one encounters pulpits of hatred, religious narcissism, and rejection of the other. This did not come out of the blue. Hatred has been building up for a long time.


Can we really claim that ISIS and its ideology emerged from the West? Perhaps you could say that it is financed by this or that country, but can we really say that this is the ideology of the West? It is not. It is our own ideology, originating from our own region. Hatred is a product of the Middle East.


As for what is happening in Gaza – Hamas is an organ of the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas acts against its own people. It terrorizes its own people. They fire missiles, hoping to benefit from this, but the victims are the Palestinian people, not the leaders.


[...]


What happened to the Christians in Iraq and Syria is viewed as peanuts, while the Arab and international media talks about nothing but Hamas and Israel. What about the millions [of Christians] who are being banished and killed? Arab thought is afflicted with double standards and religious narcissism. This is the reason behind the tragedies that we face in the Middle East.


[...]

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