Ted Poe: “Coptic Christians--the largest religious minority in Egypt and the largest Christian community in the Middle East--are…”

“Coptic Christians--the largest religious minority in Egypt and the largest Christian community in the Middle East--are constantly persecuted. In 2011, Ayman Nabil Labib went to school like he did every day. Ayman, like most Coptic Christians in Egypt, had a cross tattooed on his wrist as a sign of his Christian faith. When he got to school, Ayman's Arabic language teacher asked him to cover the tattoo. Instead, Ayman pulled the cross from underneath his shirt and left it hanging around his neck. The teacher became enraged. He choked Ayman and asked Ayman's Muslim classmates: What are you going to do with him? Then his classmates beat him to death to silence his faith. Ayman was murdered because he was a Christian. Religious freedom is a basic, sacred, universal human right. Alexander Hamilton said in 1775, ``The sacred rights of mankind . . . are written, as with a sun beam in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.'' And that is just the way it is. ____________________”