On the morning of Sunday, 26 April, hundreds of Egyptian State Security officers demolished a service building belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church.  When news of the attack was disseminated to local Christians, people gathered at the scene to prevent further damage, but then the officers turned on them as well.  Coptic priests were assaulted; men and women were tied up and beaten.

In a phone call with the Middle East Christian Association, a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Marsah Matrouh confirmed the news that the State Security forces attacked and demolished the services building of the Coptic Orthodox Church there.

“They have also assaulted the Coptic priest, Father Matta Zakaria, who tried to defend the demolition of the services building, as well as those present in the building”, added the Church member.

Thirteen Security lorries with a 700-man force of the State Security went into the one storey services building, attacked a homeless Coptic family who was sheltering there, and whose head was assigned to guard the building. They tied up the screaming women to chairs after beating them, until the full demolition of the building was undertaken. The family men, including the guard who were outside the building were beaten, tied and then loaded unto the State Security lorries.

The matter deteriorated further when the Christians knew of the news, and flocked to the place, in order to prevent the demolition work. They clashed with the Government forces; the forces have beaten them with sticks, and the people retaliated in self-defense.

The local council says it has no knowledge of a demolition order.  It would then appear that a high-ranking state security official took it upon himself to order a 700-man crew with trucks and bulldozers to destroy a privately owned building without warning and without authorisation.

It’s hard to reconcile this and many other incidents of official persecution with the recent claim by President Hosni Mubarak that all Egyptian citizens enjoy equal civil rights.

Photo from Middle East Christian Association.

In last week’s letter, Mubarak referred to himself as president of all Egyptians and stated that, while religion is a personal matter, the state governs all equally.

My question would be, is Mr. Mubarak using “Taquiah” when he is addressing Copts and non Arabic Muslim states? The reason of my question is based to certain facts occurred in Egypt. The facts reported here represent a very small part of the Copts’ daily dilemma.

Less than ten months ago a barbaric attacked [sic] by Arab Muslims took place in an ancient Coptic monastery, Abu-Fana. The Egyptian government did nothing to protect the unarmed monks or the valuable and historic building. Three monks along with a farmer who was working at the monastery were kidnapped. The monks were released after twelve hours of torture but no word has come out about the farmer.

The important thing is no official statement was released to condemn such a barbaric action.

Girls were kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert with the blessing of Mr. Mubarak’s law enforcement. In these four months of 2009, nine Coptics girls were kidnapped.

More examples follow of persecution and discrimination of Copts that are either ignored or even abetted by Egyptian authorities. These examples are “typical in the daily life of the country”, but it is also important to remember that Copts have been oppressed since the armies of Islam conquered Egypt 1400 years ago.

Another piece recently posted at Voice of the Copts points out that Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution, naming Islam the religion of the state and Islamic jurisprudence the principal source of legislation, was only added in 1980, during the presidency of Anwar Sadat. How can Christians be treated equally, as Mubarak claims, when the constitution grants Islam state privileges?

Voice of the Copts is joining the freedom lovers in Egypt and demanding the removal of the second article of the Egyptian constitution.
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Few days ago, in a letter sent to Copts in the Diaspora, Mubarak indicates that “all citizens enjoy their civil rights and an individual’s faith is a personnel [sic] matter; the country is for all.” I wonder how a citizen could enjoy his civil rights and his personal faith when the constitution indicates the opposite.

Thus, Hosni Mubarak is accused of Taquiah.

ANHRI also alleges that the arrest “occurred with the collaboration of the Church in [his hometown of] Naga Hammadi”.

The controversy began on October 1st 2008, when some young Muslims were browsing Hani’s blog and found a link to another site containing an electronic novel called “Azazil’s Goat in Mecca” which included an attack on Islam. This work was written by an anonymous author under the name of “Father Utah.” The novel came in response to Yusuf Zidane’s famous novel “Azazil,” which was considered by some conservatives as offensive to Christianity.

Some young people in Hani’s village became very angry and thought he was the author of the story. Security Forces took this opportunity to arrest Hani Nazeer in order to get rid of the problems raised by his blog because of his strong opposition to both Muslim and Christian hardliners.
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The crime against Hani was further agravated [sic] by Anba Cyrilus, Bishop of Naga Hammadi, when he asked the family to keep silent in order not to upset the state security.

Since Mr Nazeer’s arrest, “Father Utah” has continued to post at other Christian blogs. Nazeer’s own blog has been emptied of content.

Nazeer is an inmate at Burj Al Arab prison, where at least two other bloggers are currently imprisoned.

h/t: Religious Intelligence

What’s more, the police carried out the arrest even though they don’t have a copy of the marriage contract.

Christian convert Raheal Henen Mussa and her Coptic husband are hiding from police and her Muslim family for violating an article of Islamic law (sharia) that doesn’t exist in the Egyptian penal code.

Police arrested Mussa, 22, on April 13 for marrying Sarwat George Ryiad in a customary marriage (zawag al ‘urfi), an unregistered form of matrimony in Egypt made without witnesses. It has gained popularity among Egyptian youth but is not sanctioned by most Islamic scholars.

The two signed a marriage contract between themselves. Only Ryiad and their attorney have a copy. Police have not obtained a copy of the contract, but they used its existence as a pretext for arresting Mussa.

So, under Egyptian law, no crime was committed, and Islamic scholars don’t even recognise the marriage. Why exactly was Raheal Henen Mussa arrested?

This is the latest in a long series of incidents of official persecution of Christian converts by Egyptian authorities.

Ex-Muslim Martha Samuel was arrested in December as she was about to leave Egypt with her family. She was reportedly raped and tortured while in custody. In January, she was granted bail by a judge who told a lawyer he wanted to kill her.

In November, a Coptic priest was sentenced to five years for marrying a Christian man and a woman who had converted from Islam to Christianity. In March 2008, a Christian husband and his wife were sentenced to ten years for getting married. She was a convert from Islam.

Exactly what law did these people violate?

Maher al-Gohari, who is seeking to change his religion on his official documents from Muslim to Christian was asked by a court to provide a conversion certificate from the Egyptian church.
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It is only the second time that such a request has been formally made in a country where converting to Christianity, while not illegal, is practically impossible.
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Highlighting the sensitivity of the topic, the church would not comment on Gohari’s case specifically.

“In general, the church cannot turn away anyone who reaches out to it, otherwise it would be abandoning one its role as a church.”

In other Muslim-majority countries, churches are reluctant to acknowledge Muslim conversions to Christianity for fear of reprisals from Islamic militants.  In some places, Christians risk their lives for publicly confessing Jesus.

The first effort by a Muslim-born Egyptian officially to change his religious affiliation to Christianity ended in failure in January 2008 when a court refused to rule on Mohammed Hegazy’s petition.

Last week in court, according to Mr Athanasius’ lawyers, state attorneys demeaned Christians and Christianity and insisted that Islam is a superior religion.

“In their contempt of Christianity they argued that Islam is the ‘better’ religion and therefore, it is better not to move from Islam to Christianity for the sake of public interest. The true religion for Allah is Islam”, commented [attorney Howaida] ElOmda.

One of the plaintiff’s attorney team objected to the judge by saying: “I am an Egyptian citizen and a lawyer like him, stand beside him in the street and in the Bar Association and also here in court; he wants to make me feel I am inferior to him, just because I follow an ‘inferior’ faith to his, according to his thinking. Why is he demeaning me and my religion?

Despite the fact that several death threats have been made against Mr Athanasius, presiding judge Hamdi Yassin ordered him to appear in court in person.  At one point in the session, he declared: “I am a Christian, my brothers, and you could also kill me!”

Peter Athanasius is 56 years old, has been a Christian for almost 35 years, and raised his daughter in the Christian faith.

One of the plaintiff’s attorneys says that the outcome of the case is eagerly awaited by “thousands of Muslim-born Egyptians who have converted to Christianity” and want to have their religious affiliation officially changed.

A ruling is expected within two months.

The forgery accusation arises from the fact that Mrs Abdo foolishly converted to Islam in 1994 following a marital dispute. The two children continued to live with their Christian father, and she returned to her husband and Christianity in 2001. During the separation, the religious affiliation of the children was surreptitiously changed on official documents.

[T]he big surprise came when her children went to get their national identification number document after reaching the age of 16 years!!!

In 2006 when they applied to get copies of their birth certificate which are necessary for the issuance of the new national identification number, they found out that they were registered as Muslims under the new names of Rami and Refka Hussein Elsayed, although their father’s name is Emil Asaad.
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Surprisingly, when the mother converted into Islam her documents showed that she was the only one in the family who changed her name, in addition, a letter sent in 2006 from the Cairo State Security to the Director of Administrative Affairs stating that the children did not convert into Islam.

The arrest of the children’s mother appears to be an attempt to cover up the underhanded alteration of official documents and to intimidate the family into dropping their fraud suit against the Civil Registry.

When Azazeel was first published, Coptic Christians denounced it as the Arabic version of The DaVinci Code and an attempt to discredit Christian doctrine. Those criticisms were repeated in the wake of the prize.

[Coptic apologist] Father Bassiet said the novel ‘Azazeel’ is an insult to the history and the symbols of the Coptic Church, as it says that the Church has darkened the world, and that its priests took all the food and filled life with ugliness. It also says they were snakes that killed in the name of the Lord anyone who was not Christian.

Bishop Bishoi, Secretary of the Holy Synod and Bishop of Damietta, said:

“This confirms intolerance of Christians. The administration of the award should have more consideration for the Coptic Church, as we stood against any scorns of Islam. We also condemned the cartoons that scorned the prophet.”

Blogging at Babylon and Beyond for the Los Angeles Times, Noah El-Hennawy has more about Mr Ziedan’s motivation in writing the controversial novel:

Ziedan, in an interview in Alexandria, said in a defiant tone that his work aimed at challenging the monopoly claimed by different religious institutions over the truth of faith and history. “I don’t deconstruct the text, but I reexamine the religious institution and religious heritage,” said Ziedan. “I analyze religious knowledge and consciousness.”

Yet, this is not the crux of Ziedan’s views. His critique goes beyond the role of religious institutions to the essence of monotheistic religions: “The substance is the same; it is based on the superiority of oneself over others under the pretext of possessing a god who owns the truth. This element of superiority is the same in all three religions, which gives rise to violence. As long as religions last, violence will persist. ”

So, Ziedan says he wants to challenge “the essence of monotheistic religions”, and which specific religion does he take on? Not the one followed by 90 percent of his countrymen, and the one he follows himself—Islam. He’s seen what radical Muslims can do when someone challenges Islam. Islamists commit mayhem and murder over that kind of thing,

No, best to take on the peaceable Christians. That way he can offend believers while avoiding death threats from religious leaders. A very courageous writer, that Youssef Ziedan.

During yesterday’s first session in the trial of the Aswan murderer Ahmed Abu-elroos, he shouted from inside his cage “Get the Infidels Out of the Courtroom, they are looking at me”

The defendant meant the victim’s father Radi and brother Mina, who were present at court. The killer’s brother Gaber, also shouted calling for the ‘Infidels’ to be thrown out of court, and threatened the Copts!!

Mr Abu-elroos has pleaded guilty to stabbing Romani Radi six times in the back and slitting his throat last 3 November. The murderer is known to have had two accomplices but he refused to name them, and apparently no effort has been made to identify them.

The judge has placed the confessed killer under psychiatric observation for 45 days.

Police Investigations confirmed that the victim was lured to his death by a Muslim girl. The heinous crime was committed by a Muslim killer who posed as a police officer, deluded his partners in crime under the pretext that his sister was harassed by the Coptic victim.
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Police investigations tracked the victim’s phone, which was stolen, to a mobile phone dealer in Cairo, who admitted that he bought it from a police officer.

Descriptions were identical with one of the ‘friends’ of the victim “Basem A.” -31 years – a former airline steward and presently supermarket owner in the town of Benha.

The police raided the supermarket were they found belongings of the Coptic victim.Police arrested “Ahmed. A.” -16 years – and “Sami. M” -51 years – who worked for the friend of the victim.

The accused admitted that the supermarket owner told them he was police officer. After police intensive interrogation they confessed that they imprisoned the victim and tortured him as “courtesy” to the police officer, who convinced them that the Coptic victim had a relationship with his sister against her will.

Police have arrested a total of eight people who are believed to have participated in the kidnapping and murder.

The incident occurred in a village adjacent to Domas, where a Muslim was arrested earlier this week on suspicion of murdering a 60-year-old Coptic Christian over a rumoured affair between the dead man’s son and a Muslim woman.

A 60-year-old Christian man has been stabbed to death in an Egyptian village following a week of sectarian tension surrounding an illicit love affair, local Christian church sources reported on Friday. Police in the province of Qalubiya, north of Cairo, arrested a 24- year-old Muslim man, Yasser Ahmed Qassem, on suspicion of stabbing to death the father of a Christian man believed to have been having an affair with Qassem’s sister.

Qassem is believed to have stabbed the man after a fight in which the clothes of the elder man’s son were set on fire.

The incident occurred in the town of Domas, north of Cairo.

Kirollos Refat Ibrahim, 14-year-old Coptic boy, was returned after being kidnapped for nine months. He was forcible [sic] detained by two Imams (Muslim spiritual leaders) on the roof top of a mosque, in Manshiet Nasr, Cairo.

During that period he was forced to learn to recite the Koran.

Human rights activist Magdy Ramzy, together with the head of Criminal Investigations in Gamalia Police Station, Mofid Mohamed Mofid, were able today to free 14-year-old Kirollos.

This crime is so heinous that Egyptian authorities are taking it very seriously. The Gamalia Prosecutor has ordered the arrest of the two imams.

Because the girl’s change of religion was recognised on official documents, her mother has sued the Minister of the Interior to have the conversion nullified because she was a minor child at the time and, therefore, still in the legal custody of her parents.

The girl’s mother “N.M.” had to resort to the judiciary after all other means failed to bring her daughter back. She filed a lawsuit, the first of its kind, before the of [sic] Administrative Judiciary Court of the State Council, protesting the invalidity of her daughter’s conversion into Islam, due to being a minor.
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According to the mother, the daughter’s husband forced her to convert to Islam and changed her name, which is forgery of official documents, since the law states that the child can only be attributed to its natural parents.

The mother also points out that persuading a minor child to change religion is contrary to Islamic teaching.

Gebrael cited the example of Victoria Square in Cairo’s densely populated Coptic area called Shubra whose name was changed to Nasr al-Islam or the victory of Islam, the name of a fundamentalist association that offers charity services in the area.

“This is an attempt at Islamizing the districts of Cairo,” Gebrael told AlArabiya.net. “These decisions infuriate Copts and prove there is a plan by the government to Islamize Egypt.”

Dr Gabrael emphasizes that Copts have no objection to Islamic names as such, only to jeopardising religious tolerance and erasing the history of Egypt.

Mustafa Khalil, spokesman for the governor, says it’s all a big misunderstanding.

A governorate spokesman said he had received several inquiries about the issue and denied changing the names of places of historic importance, particularly Victoria Square.
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“Changing names of streets or districts is done on historical and geographical basis,” Khalil told AlArabiya.net. “Names are only changed when they don’t reflect the historical background of the place, when they are repeated, or when they sound funny.”

“Nasr al-Islam” sounds funny to me.

Khalil said that the governorate will remove the sign of Nasr al-Islam from Victoria Square.

Wait a minute: If the name of Victoria Square hasn’t been changed, who authorised the Nasr al-Islam sign?

h/t: Voice of the Copts

In a closed court session last Saturday, “heated” and “emotionally charged” discussions took place about the applicability of Egypt’s Apostasy Law.  Mr Mu’Tasim’s lawyers insisted that the Sharia-based law is contrary to Egypt’s constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion.

A state lawyer then provided some unintentional comic relief.

Lawyer Hamid Sadiq, argued that Christianity have a Law governing Apostasy, which requires the killing of Christians who convert!!!! an argument which drew laughter from all those present.

We’ll come back to that in a moment.

The judge’s order that Mr Mu’Tasim produce a baptism certificate and “an official certificate confirming his affiliation to a Christian denomination” presented some problems.

Commenting on the judge’s demands, convert Maher Mu’Tasim said, “It is impossible to present a religious affiliation or a baptism certificate signed by any priest, as this will mean placing the priest or the Church on the targeting list of the state security, as well as the fanatics.”

Mu’Tasim’s claim is not reported to have elicited laughter or any other expression of disbelief.  (And, just to be clear, I’m sure everyone is aware that he’s referring to Muslim “fanatics”.)

To summarise: A claim that Christianity mandates death for apostates is so ridiculous that the courtroom erupts in laughter, while a claim that priests and congregations suspected of ministering to ex-Muslim Christians risk persecution from government agents and Islamic fanatics provokes no dissension.

That says it all.

The proceeding is scheduled to resume on 21 February.

This third physical assault occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning, 28 January, at her family home in the village of Mentot, in Upper Egypt. Upon opening the door, she was surprised by the two lawyers attacking her. One of them hit her several times in the face, while the other was beating her with a stick. They fled before being caught.

One of the lawyers was, Omar Mohammad Omar, heads of the Commission on Islamic Sharia law, in Abu-Korkas, while the second was Emad Gamal, director of the Department of Criminal Court. She filed a complaint against them with the general counsel, and has been seen by Forensic Medicine, to determine the nature of her injuries and submit a medical report.

Ms Ragy was assaulted twice on 22 January, once in the morning and again in the evening as she was on her way to speak to prosecutors about the morning attack.  The second attack was so severe that she required hospitalisation.

Police have thus far failed to act on her complaints, so she has sent letters to President Hosni Mubarak and several cabinet ministers.

Attorney Nadia Tawfiq said Judge Abdelaa Hashem questioned Makkar extensively about her Christian faith during the hearing. Makkar, charged with forging identification documents, explained her reasons for her conversion, avowing her Christian faith and repudiating the judge’s claims that converting from Islam to Christianity was impossible.

“Then he said, ‘I want to talk with Martha alone,’ so we all left the room, and he said to her, ‘Nobody changes from Muslim to Christian – you are a Muslim,’” Tawfiq said. “And she said, ‘No, I am a Christian.’ He told her, ‘If I had a knife now, I would kill you.’ [Makkar] came out crying and depressed, but at least he gave the decision to let her go free.”

Martha Samuel has frequently been harassed and threatened since she became a Christian five years ago. She and her husband finally decided to flee to Russia with their two children to escape further persecution. Authorities apprehended the family at Cairo Airport last month and charged her with forging documents. (Her passport carries her Christian name, which is not officially recognised.)

An earlier report said that she was raped and beaten while in custody.  Now she has been granted bail by a judge who apparently wants her dead.

An Arabic newspaper has named him Islam’s Public Enemy #1 and radical Islamists have placed a bounty on his head, but he refuses to be deterred in spreading the good news of Jesus in hostile lands.

Fr Botros is World magazine’s Daniel of the Year for 2008.

Botros has been hosting Truth Talk since 2003. The weekly show grew out of an internet chat room attended by thousands where the Coptic priest engaged Muslims on the inherent contradictions of their own religion and found that he was leading many to faith in Jesus Christ. As the geographic scope of the show has grown, so has its reach into the lives of Muslims. It is broadcast in Arabic, and this year began also to be translated for Turkish audiences and into Farsi to be aired in Iran.

Father Zakaria, as he is known to millions, has won his enormous following not by borrowing from the toolbox of the televangelist. For someone whose ecclesiastical tradition began in a.d. 100, his tools are decidedly 21st century: satellite uplinks, Wi-Fi connectivity, a late-edition Vaio laptop that is with him at all times, and a trusted reference tool he refers to as “St. Google.” He can spend 14-hour days on research for each show, and for this episode emailed the final script to producers at 4:30 a.m.

The result is less a preaching ministry and more like battlefield strategy. It’s the late-in-life culmination of a conscious decision, Botros says, to move away from apologetics and toward what he calls polemics: “My program is to attack Islam, not to attack Muslims but to save them because they are deceived. As I love Muslims, I hate Islam.”

Such conviction earns Botros a heady following—and serious enemies. Jihadist groups have reportedly posted a death threat worth $60 million against him. This year his name and photo appeared on an al-Qaeda website, seeking retribution for his teachings, which often depict Muhammad as less of a prophet and more of a womanizer. For his fearless determination in the face of his enemies, for his willingness to label Islam a false religion in a year when many Christian leaders have overreached in their quest for common ground with its worshippers, Zakaria Botros is WORLD’s 2008 Daniel of the Year.

Fr Botros has guts: “As I love Muslims, I hate Islam.” Anyone saying that in Canada risks public humiliation by our doyens of political correctness, if not a “human rights” complaint. That’s bad, but not nearly as bad as a bounty on your life.

Read the whole thing.

Click here for Father Zakaria’s website.

Egypt’s constitution pays lip service to freedom of religion but, in actuality, only Muslims enjoy this freedom.

This verdict against a priest is the first in the history of the Church and the first in the history of justice in Egypt, The verdict holds him guilty of marrying a Muslim girl to a Christian man. Criminal law specialists see it as a flagrant miscarriage of justice based on wrong conclusions reached by depending only on investigations carried out by a police officer. Human Rights activists see this verdict as an attack against Freedom of Religion which is guaranteed by Article 46 of the Egyptian Constitution and against the Human Rights declarations and treaties to which Egypt is a signatory. Freedom of Religion in Egypt is still a one-sided freedom,” Islam”, as no one dares to announce his conversion to Christianity, while the contrary is allowed and cheered. The attorney representing the priest, Dr. Naguib Gibraeel, President of the “Egyptian Union for Human Rights Organization”, has presented his appeal against this unjust verdict. Meanwhile, Father Metta’os is serving his sentence in a high security prison, while the newly weds have left the country for fear of death.

On 12th October 2008, Giza criminal court, Cairo sentenced Fr. Metta’os Wahba, a Coptic priest to 5 years imprisonment with ‘forced labour’ for “forging official document”. Fr. Metta’os Wahba had earlier, conducted the marriage of a Christian man to a woman who converted from Islam. The priest believed, since he had no way of knowing that the documents presented to him were forged, that the girl was a Christian.

Earlier this year, an Egyptian husband and wife were both sentenced to ten years just for getting married. The wife is an ex-Muslim Christian convert and the husband is Christian.

Egyptian law makes no provision for official recognition of conversions from Islam to Christianity, and Egyptian courts have refused to rule on the legality of such conversions.

h/t: US Copts Association

Through his website and television broadcasts, Fr Boutros is reaching Muslims with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that’s why the Saudis want him dead.

“We know people are leaving Islam because of what I say and they know people are leaving Islam because of what I say,” he explains. A long pause, then: “People in the West simply don’t understand the significance of this in a world that has not and probably will not embrace pluralism. The Islamic response is not to argue with me but to try to kill me.”

The bounty on Father Boutros is but one example of systemic persecution of Christians in Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other Muslim nations.

Church desecration is common, as are public burnings of Bibles and Christian literature. There are also documented cases of Christians being ritually crucified, the rape of Christian girls and the prolonged beating of children, some of them babies. These are not isolated incidents condemned by the state, but part of a reoccurring pattern often ignored and, in some regions, actively encouraged by police and militia.

Muslim-majority countries routinely, and often brutally, deny religious freedom—yet, with rare exceptions, Western news media are silent.