Are We Genuinely Disheartened by the Minya Massacre?
On Friday May 26th, masked men shot at a bus full of Egyptian Coptic Christians in El Minya Governorate . The massacre has amounted to the death of at least 28 people, and to the injury/wounding of at least 25 people.
Among the deaths, were two small girls who were only two and four years old. According to The Washington Post, There has been no official claim for the attack.
With all this tragedy, devastation, and terrorism premised on strong religious prejudice, within in Egypt, several international capitals have shown solidarity in several ways.
Indeed, Paris’ Eiffel Tower lit up in black, Dubai’s Burj Khalifa lit up in Egypt’s flag, and even Tel Aviv’s City Hall lit up in Egypt’s flag, all in solidarity with the victims, their families, and the lives lost in El Minya on Ramadan’s first day.
That being said, however, Egypt itself has not done enough. Egyptian popular culture, primary media outlets, official governmental institutions/organizations, and civil society have fallen very short in terms of allocating any sort of appropriate time or symbolic actions in respect of the sheer amount of travesty and loss that has occurred.
Egypt was simply too preoccupied with the start of Ramadan, and the plethora of TV series and TV shows premiering on Ramadan’s first day, to care or – perhaps even process – the extent of the tragedy that has occurred.
There is no reason for this need to sweep terrorism under the rug, other than a combination of denial, ignorance, and malicious level of increased tolerance/threshold for what counts as tragedy.
To add insult to injury, a hashtag trended on twitter “المنيا _ بتفرح # ” (the hashtag translates into #elminya_celebrates). The hashtag was utilized by individuals who actually supported the attacks that happened on Egyptian Coptic Christians.
The hashtag, thus, started a twitter feud between the religiously prejudice and extremist faction of Egyptian social media users, and those who condemned the attacks as an act of terror.
In other words, the death toll count became just that: a count and a mere number, used to wage a politicized twitter feud. Nothing makes the slogan “Muslims and Christians are one in Egypt” seem empty and devoid of meaning like all this passive inaction.
WE SAID THIS: Why Egypt Needs to Stop Fighting Terrorists, and Start Fighting Terrorism
