Comment: Egypt expects to seal IMF loan by end of 2012

Paper Edition | Page: 8

Aug. 22, Online/AP

Egypt’s prime minister says he expects to reach an agreement by the end of the year with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on an aid package to help boost the country’s sagging economy.

Your comments:

The IMF should impose strict conditions on its loans to Egypt based on the government’s treatment of the nation’s Coptic Christian minority.

No money should be loaned to Egypt until it establishes a government agency to combat the persecution of religious minorities through discrimination, harassment, forced conversions and murder.

Laws must also be put into place that criminalize all such behavior, monitor law enforcement and provide for accountability.

However, this will never happen. Everyone knows that a failed Islamist state would be infinitely worse for the Copts than the already unacceptable status quo. The IMF loan, as it is, will be another deal with the devil, signaling an accepting the continuation of the worsening treatment of minority Christians by majority Muslims.

The Copts are Arabs, too, and have existed as a distinct group for a longer time than have Muslim Arabs. This is not an Arab Spring; it is an Islamist Spring.

Summiter