Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: The Islamic State in Iraq and th...: As of today, the situation discussed here has gone from bad to worse. ISIS, or ISIL, depending upon the term you use, has taken the city o...And now this horror has spread on to the Libya, where ISIL beheaded 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians simply for being Christian. Egypt has retaliated with airstrikes against ISIL in Libya. This is significant in two ways. One, it shows that ISIL's reach is expanding. Secondly, Egypt has now joined Jordan as a Middle Eastern, Moslem majority, country that's now actively engaged in warfare with ISIL.
To my surprise, 10 to 15 percent of Egyptians are reported as being Coptic Christians, a much higher percentage that I would have guessed. Generally they're second class citizens, but all Egyptians appear to be rallying to their cause.
Not unrelated, a Moslem terrorist also struck at a free speech event in Egypt. Armed with an automatic weapon in a society which strictly controls access to firearms, he had a pretty free hand so the fact that the casualties were as low as they were is truly amazing. This event should have the added impact of causing European nations to further wake up to the fact that Islamic extremists are both in their midst, and at war with their open societies. While I am sure it won't have this effect, it should also cause nations in Europe to ponder their gun control provisions and consider the example of the US, which is the opposite of what they imagine, in that as gun control provisions have very much waned in the past 30 years gun violence has actually declined (which is also contrary to what many Americans imagine). On a continent which now finds itself at war with a quasi invisible radical fifth column, with access to automatic weapons coming out of the Middle East, allowing the population to protect itself deserves some consideration.
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