How does the Saint Leo core value of Respect relate to the socio-cultural impacts of tourism - Essay Example

It is interesting to me that a few weeks after the bombing of a Coptic church in Alexandria, the uprising broke in Cairo (Stack 2011). A suicide bomber attacked Saints Church as parishioners were leaving after Midnight Mass on New Year’s Eve, killing 21 and wounding more than 100; on Sunday morning, there were demonstrations in the streets of both Alexandria and Cairo, perhaps a precursor of what was to come less than a month later. Shortly after the uprising began on January 25, The Washington Post (Boorstein 2011) speculated about how it would affect Egypt’s minority Coptic Christians, but like most in the media, made no connection to the church bombing.

They did state, however, that concern for the Copts were due to attacks on churches in Egypt and other parts of the Middle East like Iraq. The Washington Post reported that Coptic Christians in the U.S. was “terrified” about the prospect of an Islamist-controlled government in Egypt. 2. Background The Washington Post, when reporting on the concerns expressed for the Coptic Christians in Egypt, used the word “terrified,” an interesting word for a “non-biased” source to use. Later on, the article downplays the concern.

It quotes Joel Hunter, “an evangelical pastor of a Florida megachurch,” who stated that many younger American Christians “see the protests as something to celebrate…and older, more politically conservative Christians tend to be more skeptical of Islam generally and are worried about how a new Egyptian government will treat Israel.” This statement, however, demonstrates a misunderstanding about the history of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The New Years Eve church bombing was not an isolated occurrence.

90% of Christians in Egypt, which are a significant minority (between 5% and 18%), are Coptic, but although it is the largest concentration of Christians in the Middle East (about 7,000), thousands have either left the country or moved to larger cities in Egypt due to the intense persecution. In addition, the Egyptian government has been slow to prosecute crimes against Christians; one of the complaints after the New Year’s Eve bombing was the inaction of law enforcement officials (Von Mittelstaedt 2010).

In the American press, however, these events are rarely reported, and if they are, as in the case of the New Year’s Eve bombings, their importance is downplayed. The truth is that although there are 2.2 billion Christians in the world today, 100 million of them live in places where they are threatened or persecuted, and in many areas of the Arab world, brutally. Bishop Margot Klassman, head of the Protestant Church in Germany until last year, has stated that Christians are the most frequently persecuted group in the world (Von Mittelstaedt 2010).

The American press seems to find that hard to believe, or at least that is what their lack of reporting about the hundreds of cases of persecutions against Christian each year seems to indicate. 3. Analysis Newspapers like The Washington Post are supposed to be non-biased, but it is clear from the evaluation of just one article that American reporters have neither the perspective nor the historical knowledge about religion, especially religion in other parts of the world. The writer of The Washington Post article’s use of words, like “frightened” and “apprehensive” clearly demonstrate the press’ bias against religion, especially against Christianity.

It was as if the writer was saying that older, more