MONTREAL - Last May, I wrote a long Opinion article for The Gazette on the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution. The headline, “Still waiting for an Egyptian revolution” expressed my disappointment at its results and my concern for the Islamic radicalism it had let loose on society, particularly on the Christian minority. Describing the surge in Islamic violence, I wrote: “The Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the tens of millions of their supporters smell an Islamic state in the making. Only one barrier stands in their way: 10 million indigenous Egyptian Christians who have preserved their faith intact despite 14 centuries of uninterrupted suffering. And so the Islamists are accelerating their attacks that led to last week’s bloodshed, and whose end no one dares to imagine.”

This last weekend, we were forced to imagine it. A week before, a mob had burned down a Christian church in a small southern village – the fourth incident of its kind in less than a year. The church was 60 years old, had all the valid permits from the government, and had already agreed not to hang a cross or ring its bells. Yet that still wasn’t enough. In yet another sign of lawlessness and a drive for hegemony by radical Islamists, the governor of the province condoned the church’s destruction and refused to bring the perpetrators, who in the meantime had also destroyed several Christian homes in the village, to justice.

That was finally enough for the Christians. On Sunday, they marched peacefully in Cairo to protest and stage a sit-in in front of the national television building, whose news anchors had waged a campaign against Christians for the last several months. What followed was state-sponsored terrorism directed at the state’s own people, a crime against humanity. The army fired live ammunition into the crowds, and used its armoured personnel carriers to mow down protesters. Thirty people were killed, and more are dying every day of serious injuries. More than 100 Christians have lost their lives to violence in Egypt since the beginning of this year alone.

On Sunday, Egyptian army soldiers were killing their own countrypeople indiscriminately, yelling “Allah Akbar.” They were encouraging marauding gangs with clubs, machetes, and swords to capture and kill Christians. Victims were mutilated, and many corpses were riddled with bullets. Egyptian state television, now slave to a new master – Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the supreme commander of the armed forces – incited the people to come out and defend the army against the Coptic Christians. It aired interviews with soldiers and others describing Christians as “sons of dogs” and “not worthy of living.” The next morning, anchors were rationalizing this behaviour by claiming that there are more churches than mosques in Egypt.

The Egyptian official establishment – government, army and media – has evidently decided to join other elements of society in marginalizing Christians. Each Friday, sermons blasted on mosques’ loudspeakers describe Christians as infidels, foreigners, crusaders, aliens. Imams are directing their followers to boycott Christians, turn their faces away from them, prevent their children from playing with Christian children. The prime minister, Essam Sharaf, has stood and watched, unwilling to enforce existing laws against incitement of violence, let alone indiscriminate killing and destruction of property.

Does all of this sound familiar? It should.

Egypt has become a pre-genocidal society, where a segment of the population has been singled out for labelling as sub-human, unworthy of rights, unworthy of protection. The message is that Christians can be killed with impunity and their property and rights can be violated without repercussions. This is no longer just the work of Islamist groups. It has now been condoned and institutionalized by the government and the military, a military infiltrated with Islamists, a military that still receives

$1 billion a year from the U.S. government. The end result that we dare not imagine is dangerously close.

Sunday’s events will quickly fade from the news – until the next massacre. But we, who thanks to television and the Internet have witnessed peaceful young Egyptians dragged, clubbed and killed, who hear the terror in the voices of our families in Egypt, who can attest to the resilience of Egyptian Christianity in the middle of unbridled hostility – we will not let this pass. We will call these incidents what they are: crimes against humanity.

We will ask Western governments to immediately cut off all aid to the Egyptian military – a military that is behaving more like a street gang than a professional army. This is no longer a time for statements, condemnations or marches. It is a time for action. This is Egypt’s last chance to step back from an intensely dark future, and it is our collective responsibility to see to it. The Gazette.

Sherif Emil is a Montreal physician. He left Egypt at age 17.