This week, Egyptian political activist Cynthia Farahat testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives. Reps. Frank Wolf and James McDermott presented Under Threat: The Worsening Plight of Egypt's Coptic Christians.
Ms. Farahat spoke about her experiences as an activist and co-founder of the Liberal Egyptian Party in 2006, while in her twenties-- the platform of which argued for "secularism, human rights, capitalism, the rule of law, and rejection of pan-Arabism and Islamic imperialism," not to mention the rejection of Shariah.
“I‘m a woman and I’m a Copt. I’m a fourth-class citizen in Egypt.”
That was among the many chilling revelations put forth in a testimony to Congress this week by Egyptian political activist Cynthia Farahat. The Coptic Christian and co-founder of the Liberal Egyptian Party, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the House of Representatives, sharing her experience on the worsening plight of Christians under sharia law, and soon-to-be Islamic authoritarian regime in Egypt.
Reps. Frank Wolf and James McDermott presented the hearing, “Under Threat: The Worsening Plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christians.”
According to the Center for Security Policy, the organization that organized the hearings and brought this must-see video to The Blaze’s attention, describes Farahat’s political platform as advocating, ”secularism, human rights, capitalism, the rule of law, and rejection of pan-Arabism and Islamic imperialism.”
Below is a partial transcript of Farahat’s moving testimony before Congress. The video follows:
In 1971, President Sadat introduced shariah law to the constitution and now I think it’s, qualifies to say that Egypt is a constitutional theocracy and it’s not a modern state. The consequences were that Copts are no longer, according to shariah law, identified or defined as citizen. I have an Egyptian passport, but I’m not a citizen. The concept of citizenship is a Western concept that does not apply to us in Egypt. I‘m a woman and I’m a Copt. I’m a fourth-class citizen in Egypt. A first-class citizen in Egypt is the Sunni male, Muslim male. The second-class is the Sunni female. The third-class is the Coptic male. And fourth-class is the Coptic female.
And that’s why none of the people that committed crimes, none of the criminals that committed crimes against Copts were prosecuted in any way. Because it is against shariah law and that’s a fact. It’s not an opinion. To persecute someone for – a Muslim, for killing, raping, torturing, or vandalizing the property of a non-Muslim or a dhimmi. So this is our legal status. And this has been happening under the Mubarak’s so-called moderate regime, an ally of the West, and it’s now happening now. It was only inevitable that they take their radicalism a step further and start killing Copts in the street in front of TV cameras with live ammunition and running them over with armored military vehicles they probably got from the United States of America.