Imagine a world where to offend someone is the kiss of death. Wearing white after Labor Day is a death sentence, cutting someone off in traffic and you’re slaughtered, call someone stupid and start planning your funeral.

While such outlandish scenarios are the work of fiction in most regions of the world, such is not the case in the Middle East. Indeed for some, their very existence is deemed offensive. In a story that is all too common in Egypt, worshippers at several Coptic Churches were attacked after Friday services. Coptic Christians make up 10% of Egypt’s population, they have resided their since the Apostle Mark journeyed to the region in the years following Christ’s death, long before Muhammad’s marauders invaded, yet the Copts are frequently the victims of Islamic radicals seeking to eradicate Christianity in the area and attempting to deny non-Muslims them their right to exercise their faith.

Such attacks represent the archetypical response of radical Islam to variety and difference, quite simply it is not tolerated and the very existence of such people is offensive and thus they must die in accordance with the credo of radical Islam: submit, convert or die. Their presence is especially offensive in the heart of Muslim Egypt, where minorities are already discriminated against, denied free and unfettered access to government services, presumed at fault in matters of civil conflict and denied access to jobs.

Intolerance is such a matter of course for such purveyors of hate, that even their fellow Muslims are not immune from the slaughter, witness the constant and almost daily attacks on Muslims and Mosques in Iraq. Such is our fate with the war on terror is lost.
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6FB2E8EA-4D3A-431C-8A44-EC89C950843F.htm