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of all Muslim countries, are a reflection of the Islamist elements in the population, and these security forces have a huge number of Islamists in their ranks. Thus, the police and the army often stand by without doing very much while unarmed Christians are massacred. Yet they are quick to arrest injured Copts while they are being treated for their wounds.
    Even when people demonstrated against the killing of Christians and the burning of their churches, the demonstrators were brazenly attacked by Muslims. Copts then protested outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo to ask for protection. This was unprecedented, because Copts have always been reluctant to ask for help from the West, for fear of being accused of allying themselves with Egypt's enemies. Yet at that point, they had no choice. The fate of the Copts looks more and more grim.
    The escalating violence against the Christians reminds me of what happened in the fifties and the sixties when Egypt embarked on a campaign to purge its Jewish population. The expulsion of the Jews began after the 1952 revolution, but the purging did not end with the Jews. The hostility expanded to other minorities in Egypt, including Greeks, Italians, and Armenians, who felt that there was no place for them any longer and started to leave. Even the Muslim king Farouk, who had Ottoman roots, was criticized as not being a true Egyptian.
    “First comes Saturday; then comes Sunday!” is an Islamic saying that means “First we kill the Jews, then we kill the Christians.” History seems to be repeating itself in the 2011 revolution, which has begun to purge the Sunday people, the Christians. Since the time of Mohammed, it has been an Islamic mission to rid Muslim lands of Christians and Jews. Caliph Umar decreed that Jews and Christians should be removed from Arabia to fulfill a commandment the prophet gave on his deathbed: “Let there not be two religions in Arabia.” That same goal became the mission of Osama bin Laden when in 1998 he issued a “Declaration of the World Islamic Front for Jihad against the Jews and the Crusaders.” This purging of Christians, Jews, and Hindus is going on today across the Middle East, from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Iraq to Lebanon and Egypt.
    This purging does not look like an Arab Spring; it is a shameful ethnic cleansing. Islamic intolerance of others is now directed at full force and without mercy against the Copts, the only minority left in Egypt. They were also the original natives of seventh-century Egypt before the country fell under the control of the Arab Islamic invasion. The current purging, which started with the Jews, followed by other minorities, is now being completed to turn Egypt into a pure Islamic state like that of Saudi Arabia. One minority after another has been removed. Who will be alienated and purged next? Will it be those suspected of apostasy from Islam, socialists, moderate Muslims, critics, intellectuals, the educated classes, or women who refuse to wear the hijab? Islamist hatred and intolerance have no end. Islamists have no tolerance for differences and do not intend to coexist with other groups. This intolerance is not unique to Egypt, by any means. It is simply more noticeable in Egypt because Egypt has the largest Christian population in the Middle East. Christians are threatened all across the Middle East—in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries. This moral catastrophe cries out for coordinated international action.
    Another very disturbing trend is the rise of vengeance toward Israel. It emerged clearly on May 13 when a huge rally took place, again in Tahrir Square, in which the demonstrators openly expressed their wish for renewed hostility against Israel. Some even claimed that Ilat, the Israeli city on the Red Sea, was actually Egyptian property that Egypt needed to get back from Israel. This trend undermines the peace and stability that are necessary to establish the freedom and democracy that