The recent clashes in Cairo between peaceful Coptic protestors and Egyptian security forces are only the latest sad example of an old and recurring phenomenon: persecution of native non-Muslim minority communities in the world of Islam.

The sequence leading up to this bloody event is a familiar one: a Coptic church in Upper Egypt was burned by Islamist extremists, and there was no reaction from the authorities. Frustrated Copts gathered in Cairo’s Maspero neighborhood to protest the absence of security around their places of worship; the scene turned ugly when Army units fired upon demonstrators, with a resulting death toll of 25, most of them Copts, and scores injured. Appalling was the manner of the violence—video shows an armored personnel carrier running people down. There could not have been a more callous expression of the disregard by the Egyptian armed forces for the lives of Egyptian Christians.