Egypt: The coming persecution

Makram Diab, an Egyptian Coptic Christian, was sentenced to six years in prison by a court in the province of Assiut on charges of “insulting the Prophet.” But the trial took place with a crowd of two or three thousand Muslims outside the courthouse demanding the death penalty. Eyewitnesses said that many protesters were armed with knives, and that the police barely managed to prevent them from breaking into the courtroom and lynching the accused.

Diab’s lawyer, a Muslim called Ahmad Sayed Gabali, said he had never seen anything like it in 18 years of practicing law. “More than 80 Islamic lawyers representing the plaintiffs filled the courtroom. They locked the door from the inside, preventing the judge from leaving and preventing me from entering the courtroom to defend my client.”

Read the rest here.

About that liberal revolution in Egypt...

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood beat a Coptic Christian

Source

Gunmen kill Christian Pakistan government minister

ISLAMABAD – Assailants purportedly sent by al-Qaida and the Taliban killed the only Christian member of Pakistan's federal Cabinet Wednesday, spraying his car with bullets outside his mother's home. It was the second assassination in two months of a high-profile opponent of blasphemy laws that impose the death penalty for insulting Islam.

Shahbaz Bhatti, a 42-year-old Roman Catholic, had been aware of the danger, saying in a video-taped message meant for broadcast in the event of his death that he was being threatened by the Taliban and al-Qaida. The threats would not deter him from speaking for persecuted Christians and other minorities, he said. "I will die to defend their rights," he said on the tape released Wednesday.

His assassination further undermines Pakistan's shaky image as a moderate Islamic state and could deepen the political turmoil in this nuclear-armed, U.S.-allied state where militants frequently stage suicide attacks. The Vatican said the slaying shows that the pope's warnings about the danger to Christians in the region are fully justified.

Despite the threats, Bhatti, who had been assigned bodyguards, was without protection when he visited his mother in the capital of Islamabad on Wednesday afternoon, police said. The politician had just pulled out of the driveway of the house, where he frequently stayed, when three men standing nearby opened fire, said Gulam Rahim, a witness.

Read the rest here.

Egyptian Armed Forces Demolish Fences Guarding Coptic Monasteries

(AINA) -- Egyptian armed forces this week demolished fences surrounding ancient Coptic monasteries, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by armed Arabs, robbers and escaped prisoners, who have seized the opportunity of the state of diminished protection by the authorities in Egypt to carry out assaults and thefts.

"Three monasteries have been attacked by outlaws and have asked for protection from the armed forces, but were told to defend themselves." said activist Mark Ebeid. "When the terrified monks built fences to protect themselves, armed forces appeared only then with bulldozers to demolish the fences. It is worth noting that these monasteries are among the most ancient in Egypt, with valuable Coptic icons and manuscripts among others, which are of tremendous value to collectors."

On Sunday February 20, armed forced stormed the 4th century old monastery of St. Boula in the Red Sea area, assaulted three monks and then demolished a small fence supporting a gate leading to the fenceless monastery. "The idea of the erection of the gate was prompted after being attacked at midnight on February 13 by five prisoners who broke out from their prisons," said Father Botros Anba Boula, "and were armed with a pistol and batons. The monks ran after them but they fled to the surrounding mountains except for one who stumbled and was apprehended and held by the monks until the police picked him up three days later."

Father Botros said after this incident they thought the best solution to secure the monastery was to erect a gate with a small fence of 40 meters long at the entrance of a long wiry road leading to the monastery, which would be guarded day and night by the monks, and advised the army of their plan. According to Father Boulos, the army came with armored vehicles to demolish the gate, but it was agreed the monastery itself would undertake the demolition of the gate in stages as army protection is reinstated. "We told the Colonel it would look ugly to the outside world if Egyptian army is demolishing a gate erected for the protection of the unarmed monks under the present absence of security forces. We gave them full hospitality but we had a feeling that they wanted to demolish the gate in a 'devious' way."

On Saturday morning, seeing that only three old monks were guarding the gate, the army returned. "When the army found that very few monks were present the soldiers, who were hiding in military vans, came out," said Father Botros, "bound the three monks, threw them to the ground and confiscated their mobile phones so as not to photograph the incident."

The monks were set free after the gate and the 40 meter fence were demolished." Only four soldiers were left to guard the huge monastery.

Read the rest here.

See also this related story and video at Byzantine Texas.

Last Christians Ponder Leaving a Hometown in Iraq

HABBANIYA CECE, Iraq — The last Christian man in town goes to church each morning to clean the building and to remember the past. Romel Hawal, 48, was born in this town in Anbar Province back when most of the population was Christian. Now, he said, his 11-year-old son knows no other Christians and has no memory of attending a church service.

“When my son swears, it is on the Koran, not the Bible,” Mr. Hawal lamented.

His wife wants to leave town or leave the country, joining what is becoming an exodus of Christians from Iraq and throughout the Middle East. But Mr. Hawal said he felt an obligation to stay. And he found support from an unlikely source.

“What gives me courage,” he said, “is that my Muslim brothers say, ‘Don’t leave.’ ”

Here in Habbaniya Cece, residents talk about their town as an oasis of ethnic and religious harmony, where Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites all lived together for decades without friction. On one short stretch of rutted road near Mr. Hawal’s church, Mary Queen of Peace, are an Assyrian church, a Sunni mosque, a Shiite mosque and another, older, Sunni mosque.

“This is the best place you will find in Iraq, because we have Christians and Muslims together,” said the mayor, Sabah Fawzi, a Muslim, who stopped by the church to look in on Mr. Hawal. “When my wife and daughters want something, sometimes they come to the church to ask God for it.”

Read the rest here.

When do we start calling this ethnic (or religious) cleansing?

Egypt's Coptic Pope cancels mass over security fears

CAIRO, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church cancelled celebrations for the Feast of Epiphany on Tuesday over concerns for the safety of the country's Christians after a New Year's Day bombing that killed 23 people.

Officials suspect an al Qaeda-inspired bomber was behind the New Year's blast outside a church in the port city of Alexandria. Islamist websites had carried repeated threats to attack churches and have since carried threats to strike again.

Pope Shenouda, who led mass on Coptic Christmas on Jan. 6, in a tense but incident-free service, will hold a small and closed celebration on Tuesday instead of the larger mass that had been planned, the pope's legal adviser said.

"Masses of Copts had decided to join the Pope in celebration, which caused fear for the lives of those people in the light of al Qaeda's threats and the tense environment after Alexandria's events," Naguib Gabriel said.

Read the rest here.

Egypt recalls its ambassador from the Vatican

Egypt has recalled its Vatican ambassador for consultations after Pope Benedict XVI demanded that governments do more to protect Christian minorities in predominantly Muslim countries.

Citing recent attacks on churches that have killed dozens of Christians, Pope Benedict on January 10 singled out Egypt, Nigeria, and Iraq as countries that need to adopt measures to protect religious minorities.

The pope also called on Pakistan to repeal its anti-blasphemy law, saying the legislation serves as a pretext for violence against non-Muslims.

An Egyptian Foreign Ministry statement described Benedict's remarks as "interference" in the internal affairs of other countries.

Meanwhile, reports say one Egyptian Christian has been shot dead on a train and at least three others injured. It was not immediately clear if the incident was religiously motivated.

Source

Egypt: Some encouraging news

Egypt’s majority Muslim population stuck to its word Thursday night. What had been a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community, was honoured, when thousands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular Muslim televangelist and preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly Street. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

Read the rest here.

I find this news encouraging. Perhaps there is some hope that the vast majority of Muslims have had enough of the murderous extremists who have turned the very name of their religion into a synonym for terrorism.

Egypt begins to acknowledge they have a problem

CAIRO — A deadly suicide bomb attack outside a Christian church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve has forced the government and religious leaders here to acknowledge that Egypt is increasingly plagued by a sectarian divide that could undermine the stability that has been a hallmark of President Hosni Mubarak’s nearly three decades in power.

As Egypt’s Christians headed to church under heavy security Thursday night to observe Coptic Christmas Eve, the nation was struggling to come to terms with a blast that killed at least 21 people, highlighted a long list of public grievances with the government and prompted concerns that national cohesion was being threatened by the spread of religious extremism among Muslims and Christians.

“I have heard this a lot, that this type of incident might be the first in a series, turning Egypt into another Iraq — that is the fear now,” said Ibrahim Negm, the chief spokesman for Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, the nation’s highest religious official. “There is a paradigm shift here that says we have to do something about the sectarian issue.”

Read the rest here.

"...religious extremism among Muslims and Christians."

Can they not shelve their politically correct blinders for even a minute? Where is the Christian religious extremism in Egypt or anywhere in the Islamic world? When was the last time (or anytime) that a Christian set off a bomb in a mosque? This is not just idiocy. It is insulting idiocy.

Al-Qaida threat on Iraq Christians linked to Egypt

CAIRO (AP) — The wives of two Egyptian Coptic priests, forbidden by the Church from divorcing their abusive husbands, desperately sought another way out by converting to Islam. When their intentions were discovered, police handed them over to the Church and their whereabouts since have been unknown.

The cases caused a furor at home that spilled over the borders and turned deadly when al-Qaida in Iraq cited the women as the reason behind the bloodiest attack ever on Christians in Iraq — a five-hour siege of a church in October that left 68 people dead.

It was a stark example of the schism between Christians and Muslims that runs through the Middle East and periodically erupts into violence.

Read the rest here.

With New Violence, More Christians Are Fleeing Iraq

QOSH, Iraq — A new wave of Iraqi Christians has fled to northern Iraq or abroad amid a campaign of violence against them and growing fear that the country’s security forces are unable or, more ominously, unwilling to protect them.

The flight — involving thousands of residents from Baghdad and Mosul, in particular — followed an Oct. 31 siege at a church in Baghdad that killed 51 worshipers and 2 priests and a subsequent series of bombings and assassinations singling out Christians. This new exodus, which is not the first, highlights the continuing displacement of Iraqis despite improved security over all and the near-resolution of the political impasse that gripped the country after elections in March.

It threatens to reduce further what Archdeacon Emanuel Youkhana of the Assyrian Church of the East called “a community whose roots were in Iraq even before Christ.”

Those who fled the latest violence — many of them in a panicked rush, with only the possessions they could pack in cars — warned that the new violence presages the demise of the faith in Iraq. Several evoked the mass departure of Iraq’s Jews after the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.

“It’s exactly what happened to the Jews,” said Nassir Sharhoom, 47, who fled last month to the Kurdish capital, Erbil, with his family from Dora, a once mixed neighborhood in Baghdad. “They want us all to go.”

Red the rest here.

Saudi Arabia: Police raid "secret" Catholic Mass and arrest Filipinos

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Saudi police raided a secret Catholic mass in Riyadh last week and arrested a dozen Filipinos and a Catholic priest, charging them with prosyletising, a local daily reported on Wednesday.

The raid took place as some 150 Filipinos were attending the mass in a Riyadh rest house on Friday, the second day of the weekend in Saudi Arabia, Arab News said.

The twelve Filipino men and the priest, whose nationality was not specified, were "charged with prosyletising," the daily quoted an official from the Philippine embassy in Riyadh as saying.

They were all released Sunday on guarantees by sponsors or embassies, the report said.

Saudi Arabia bans the practice of any religion aside from Islam. However, small, low-key prayer services inside expatriate compounds and in Filipino gatherings are tolerated by officials.

With more than one million workers in Saudi Arabia, Filipinos comprise the bulk of the Christian community inside the kingdom.

Filipino activists confirmed the arrests to Agence France-Presse, saying they had been released, but could not confirm the arrest of a priest.

Source.

A brief history of the Islamic persecution of the Coptic Church of Egypt

At 11:30 p.m. on January 6, the Orthodox Christmas for millions of Egyptian Christians, gunshots rang from a drive-by car, killing 7 parishioners exiting evening mass. The Nagaa Hamadi Church Massacre, as it became known, left 26 seriously injured in the small southern town.

During the funerals, greater mayhem erupted. In surrounding towns and villages some 3,000 Muslims broke into Coptic properties, agricultural plots, and businesses, looting and setting fires to shops. Across the country churches were burned. It took Egypt’s police three days to show up and six weeks to arrest a single culprit.

As it has become customary, the government described the attack as ‘’an individual incident’’, another dispute among villagers. The phrase has become so habitual in describing attacks on Christians over the past 40 years, it is used as a practical joke.

In reality The Nagaa Hamadi Church Massacre was the latest spike in a 40-year-long campaign of killing and violence against of Egypt’s estimated 12 million Christians, known as Copts It’s a campaign that is all the more ghastly for the fact that it has been largely ignored by the world of elite opinion. Yet in the past 40 years, the numbers of victims has soared to well more than 20,000, if the count includes those killed, wounded, dispossessed, or otherwise harmed, according to human rights groups.

Read the rest here.

'Obliterating' Iraq's Christians

What is most startling about the report of the heartless double bus bombings on May 2 that targeted and injured 80 Christian students traveling to northern Iraq's Mosul University was that the young Christians there attend university at all. Since the U.S. invasion, Iraq's Christians have been mostly driven out of the country by violence directed against them for their religion. Their communities are shattered. That these young people continued to dream of preparing themselves to serve their country signals that community's deep commitment to Iraq and a modicum of hope they still harbor for its future.

Unless the Obama administration acts fast to develop policies to help them, though, their hope will likely be in vain.

Relentless waves of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, extortions and rapes have triggered a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq over the past seven years. Since 2003, over half of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian, Syriac Orthodox, and Armenian Christians, as well as some Protestants have fled to Syria, Jordan and farther flung places. While only 3 or 4 percent of Iraq's pre-2003 population, they account for 40 percent of its refugees, the UN reported.

Read the rest here.

European Union Directives have Christians in the cross hairs

Further evidence that we are living in a post-Christian world...

Proposals contained in the EU's draft discrimination directive could lead to churches being sued if they refuse to give communion, baptism or membership to non-Christians trying to get their children into a church school, experts said.

The Church of England said last night that it would raise concerns with the Government over the draft directive.

It fears that if the proposals are approved in their current form, religious bodies would lose an exemption they enjoy under current UK law to discriminate on grounds of conscience.

Religious groups warned that the anti-discrimination measures could also lead to gay marriage and homosexuals demanding wedding services in church.

The draft discrimination directive would make it illegal to offer goods and services only to particular sections of society.

It would apply to all organisations offering a service to the public, including hospitals, charities, businesses and prisons, as well as churches.

Faith-based welfare projects could be outlawed if they failed to comply with the EU rules...

Read the rest here.

Hat tip: T-19

The New Exodus

And the roll call of the martyrs continues to grow. Islam has replaced Communism as the newest creation of martyrs. And yet we continue to welcome almost unrestricted Islamic immigration into the Christian West. When will we wake up? From the July 23rd issue of Newsweek:

He refused to leave Baghdad, even after the day last year when masked Sunni gunmen forced him and eight co-workers to line up against a wall and said, "Say your prayers." An Assyrian Christian, Rayid Albert closed his eyes and prayed to Jesus as the killers opened fire. He alone survived, shot seven times. But a month ago a note was left at his front door, warning, "You have three choices: change your religion, leave or pay the jeziya"—a tax on Christians levied by ancient Islamic rulers. It was signed "The Islamic Emirate of Iraq," a Qaeda pseudonym. That was the day Albert decided to get out immediately. He and the other 10 members of his household are now living as refugees in Kurdistan.

Across the lands of the Bible, Christians like Albert and his family are abandoning their homes. According to the World Council of Churches, the region's Christian population has plunged from 12 million to 2 million in the past 10 years. Lebanon, until recently a majority Christian country—the only one in the Mideast—has become two-thirds Muslim. The Greek Orthodox archbishop in Jerusalem, where only 12,000 Christians remain, is pleading with his followers not to leave. "We have to persevere," says Theodosios Atallah Hanna. "How can the land of Jesus Christ stay without Christians?" The proportion of Christians in Bethlehem, once 85 percent, is now 20 percent. Egypt's Coptic Christians, who trace the roots of their faith back to Saint Mark's preaching in the first century, used to account for 10 percent of their country's population. Now they've dwindled to an estimated 6 percent. "The flight of Christians out of these areas is similar to the hunt for Jews," says Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-Italian author and expert on Islam, himself a Muslim. "There is no better example of what will happen if this human tragedy in the Arab-Muslim world is allowed to continue."

This is very grim reading. Read the rest here