First, according to the New York Times the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is reporting that "as many as 36 American Muslims who were prisoners have moved to Yemen in recent months, ostensibly to study Arabic, and that several of them have "dropped off the radar" and may have connected to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula."

The Times acknowledges that "experts on terrorism" have been warning for a long time that "American prisons could become an incubator for radical Islam" and that "a few Muslim prison chaplains in United States prisons have been accused of having extremist views." Not to worry, though, the Times tells us, "To date, only a handful of alleged terrorist plots, none of them successful, have involved American Muslims who are former prisoners."

The second story involves the January 6 massacre of Coptic Christians in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. The massacre was prompted by accusations that a Coptic youth had violated a Muslim girl.According to Australian scholar Mark Durie, "What is striking about the circumstances of this attack and the allegation associated with it, is the mismatch between the collective character and the individual nature of the alleged transgression. An individual is said to have crossed the line, but the whole community was attacked."

According to Durie, "The line alleged to have been crossed in this case is of the many boundary markers which constitute an age-old institution in Sharia law, the dhimma pact: Christian males are not supposed to have any relations - let alone criminal ones - with Muslim women." In his book The Third Choice: Islam, dhimmitude and freedom Durie notes that the concept of collective guilt and retribution upon a who non-Muslim community for the sins of the individual is one of the principles of the dhimma.

This persecution of Christians is not limited to Egypt massacre of Copts in Egypt, however. At National Review Clifford May asks us to connect these dots:

In Nigeria this week, Muslim youths set fire to a church, killing more than two dozen Christian worshippers. In Egypt, Coptic Christians have been suffering increased persecution including, this month, a drive-by shooting outside a church in which seven people were murdered. In Pakistan, Christian churches were bombed over Christmas. In Turkey, authorities have been closing Christian churches, monasteries, and schools, and seizing Christian properties. Recently, churches in Malaysia have been attacked, too, provoked by this grievance: Christians inside the churches were referring to God as "Allah." How dare infidels use the same name for the Almighty as do Muslims!

Durie has connected the dots. He says, "The sense that individual ‘transgressions' of non-Muslims legitimates a communal reprisal remains an enduring issue in Muslim communities."

Perhaps President Obama should bring this up on his next visit to Cairo.