Killing Christian coptic on christmas Eye

Father Athanioses Fahmy George
القمص اثناسيوس فهمى جورج
The Coptic Orthodox Church is the Christian Church of Egypt and the oldest Christian Church in the world. The word ‘Copt’ refers to ‘Christian Egyptian’, be it Orthodox, Catholic or Protestant. Since Egypt was converted to Islam by force in the 8th century, Copts have been living under ruthless persecution.
This persecution that began centuries ago continues today, the only difference being the use of modern weaponry instead of swords and daggers.
The Coptic Church celebrates Christmas on the 7th of January since it uses the Julian calendar. On Christmas Eve, the 6th of Jan 2010, while worshippers were leaving the Church of St George in Southern Egypt (Nag Hamadi), after the midnight Mass, three Muslim terrorists drove by and opened fire from machine guns. Six Copts, aged between 16 and 29, were killed instantly, and tens of others were seriously injured. The Egyptian police, unsurprisingly, did not respond until long after this massacre had left its young victims giving their last breaths in the arms of their shocked and heart-broken families and loved ones. The three perpetrators fled the scene unchallenged.
Furthermore, after the funeral Mass of the six slain victims, Muslims attacked, destroyed and set fire to shops, businesses and homes owned by Christians in the same village.
Subsequently the three murderers handed themselves in to the police and are now awaiting trial. The three of them are well-known “guns for hire”. No enquiry was launched to bring the real perpetrators, who hired them, to justice.... See More... See More
This latest massacre and savage attack on Christians brings to mind the New Year massacre in 2000 where twenty one Copts were killed on New Year’s Eve in the village of Kosheh, again for no other reason other than their religious beliefs, a basic right recognized by all civilized societies and nations. The perpetrators of that massacre were ‘acquitted’ by the legal system that continuously supports and indeed encourages such atrocities against Christians.
Copts have been through a long history of persecution and ethnic and religious discrimination which is recorded in the reports of the UN and many non-governmental and Human Rights organizations. To this day, Christians in Egypt are still persecuted. Some examples of this persecution include, but are not limited to:
• Physical and violent persecution ranging from inflicting bodily harm to brutal murder. This is the Egyptian form of Jihad against the ‘infidels’, i.e. Christians and indeed all non-Muslims.
• Ethnic cleansing where Muslims drive Christians out of villages and towns by attacking, destroying and setting fire to their homes and businesses.
• Ongoing kidnapping of young Christian girls and converting them to Islam by force. This is a rapidly growing phenomenon supported by the police. Never has any kidnapper been brought to justice or even arrested.
• Discrimination against Christians in public and private appointments. They are excluded from certain jobs and positions simply because they are Christians. It is not uncommon to hear Muslim employers saying to the job seekers, ‘sorry, we do not hire Christians’. All senior positions in sensitive government agencies such as the police, the army and so on are beyond the reach of Christians, regardless of their qualifications, experience or capabilities.
• Mental and psychological persecution where Christians are subjected to verbal abuse from even Muslim children. While Irish priests, and indeed Muslim Imam’s can walk freely in the streets of any Irish city or town, the Christian clergy in Egypt actually never walk in the street, never take a taxi or use public transport because of all the abuse they would suffer.
• Denying Christians their right to exercise their religious beliefs and to build churches for worship. It is extremely difficult to build new churches in Egypt. Furthermore, the rapidly growing phenomenon of setting churches on fire is anything but uncommon in Egypt.

The Egyptian State plays a major role in this systematic and continuous persecution of Christians in Egypt. As Christians have been excluded from senior positions in state agencies, and as the Islamic fundamentalism continues to flourish in Egypt, this has resulted in the much-feared Islamic fundamentalism infiltrating all the agencies and departments of the government in Egypt. In fact, ‘Islamic extremism’ is one of the main ‘exports’ of Egypt. If you take the time to look at the list of the most notorious leaders of Islamic terrorism worldwide, you will soon see that many of them are Egyptians, or were taught and led by Egyptian Muslims.
As the Egyptian State itself upholds, primarily, discriminatory beliefs and classifies Coptic Christians as ‘second class citizens’, it is not surprising to see the state actively inciting, encouraging, supporting and protecting religious and ethnic discriminatory activities and persecutory measures against Christians:
• Starting with children from a very young age, the curriculum taught in schools and colleges in Egypt explicitly and openly promotes hatred against Christians. Children are taught that Christians are ‘infidels’ and should be treated as such.

• The Egyptian government has always shown its unwillingness, on numerous occasions, to address the issue of the persecution of Coptic Christians, which is, in a way, understandable since it plays a major role in promoting it in the first place. It rarely happens that, when Christians are murdered, any one is even charged, not to mention sentenced.

• The Egyptian State-controlled media, actively promotes hatred and discrimination against Christians (as well as Western societies). There is a plethora of TV and radio programmes that incite hatred against Christians. Their message is open and clear: Christians are infidels, Jihad against them is the responsibility of every Muslim, and the ultimate goal is to cleanse Egypt of them.
The Egyptian government, and primarily the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has a supply of standard answers whenever asked about the Coptic situation. It claims that each of these incidents is separate and that they are not driven by hatred, racism or ethnic discrimination. It portrays an unfair and untrue view of reality in Egypt... the reality of Coptic blood shed on the steps of churches, of Coptic houses burnt down, of Coptic orphans crying for their massacred parents, of Coptic parents grieving over their young sons and daughters slain for no other reason but their religious beliefs and ethnic origin.
The above-mentioned facts are well documented, not only by modern Christian historians and reporters, but also by many international human rights organizations. In fact, many NGO’s, as well as countries, have been trying to put pressure on the Egyptian government to put an end to this methodical and organized discrimination and persecution.
While we live in Ireland in peace in a democratic society, we can but empathize with our persecuted families, friends and loved ones. We might not be Irish by birth, but we are certainly Irish by belonging. We call upon Ireland, our new homeland, upon you, and upon all those who believe in man’s basic rights to support the Copts and their cause, their right to exist, to believe, to worship and to be ordinary citizens in their home country.
Thank you in advance for your much-needed support.

Yours sincerely,

Irish Coptic communities in Ireland

Christian in Egypt: ‘They Try to Kill Us’

By-Dana Lewis

Egyptian Maher El-Gowhary and his 15 year old daughter Dina never pray twice at the same church, never stay longer than a month in any one apartment. They are constantly under threat, always on the run because they converted to Christianity in a largely Muslim country.

Maher and Dina nervously agreed to meet us at a Church in Cairo. The priest at the Church said he feared problems from the Egyptian authorities and while he agreed to have us watch his Sunday mass, the Priest declined to speak to us about what is happening in Egypt and to the El-Gowhary's.

They tell their story out of fear and desperation. Born Muslims they chose to convert to the Christian Church after both claim they had religious visions.

Now Maher says "Muslims try to kill us, and will kill us if they find us."

Several religious fatwas have been issued for "spilling his blood" after Maher asked an Egyptian Court to legally recognize his conversion, so he can one day be buried as a Christian and so his daughter won't be forced into a marriage by her Muslim mother.

The court ruled a legal conversion to Christianity would threaten public order. His lawyer told us it's a dangerous double standard because in Egypt a Christian can convert to the Muslim faith in a week, but a Muslim cannot convert to the Christian faith.

Ten percent of Egypt is Christian, largely the Coptic Christians who increasingly say they face daunting discrimination and even death.

We had to hide our camera as we followed the El-Gowhary's because we were told if the authorities discovered we were preparing our story we would be arrested.

Religious tensions are running high in Egypt.

On January 6th, the Coptic Christmas eve, three Muslim men sprayed gunfire at a Church in Upper Egypt killing six Christians and wounding up to a dozen more. Christians rioted the next day and the area is still closed to outsiders including the press.

Human rights activist Hussein Bahjet say's Egypt has the potential to become like Lebanon because of growing sectarian violence.

"Civil strife that could engulf the country" Bahjet says.

The U.S. State Department reports respect of religious freedom in Egypt is declining, Christians are denied Government jobs, Priests are threatened and harassed, Christians are increasingly attacks in what State describes as "a climate of impunity that encourages violence."

In some cases authorities turn a blind eye to attacks on Christians, in other cases there is evidence police sparked the attacks.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has been largely silent about the problem, but this week he spoke out saying Egyptians must up-root "fanaticism and sectarianism, which threatens the unit of our nation."

Dina has written a letter to President Obama which has been published on Christian websites. She has been pulled out of school. She has only a blue jean jacket to stay warm and little food to eat. Her letter was a desperate plea. "I wrote that we are a minority Christian Community treated very badly and I want to tell President Obama to tell the Egyptian Government to treat us well."

Her father Mayer says he can't stay in Egypt anymore. He and his daughter are in such grave danger we can't report where they are in Egypt now, or where they are planning on moving tomorrow.

In recent days the two met with the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in Cairo. They asked for refugee status to get out of Egypt.

A source at the Commission say's its a complicated matter because Dina has a Muslim mother and there are legal issues, but their request is being considered.

The Commission source also says because of religious discrimination in Egypt, last year the State Department down graded Egypt to being on a watch list. This year it could potentially be downgraded further to a Country of particular concern. That means the U.S. might even consider sanctions against a Country which receives some 2 billion dollars in U.S. aid every year.

thanks copts united

The damage of silence

By-Dominic Asquith British Ambassador to Egypt

Over the last days of 2009, the streets of Karachi, Muzaffarabad and Baghdad became the latest battle ground of suicide bombers blowing up other Muslims in the name of Islam. Al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula claimed as its own an attempt by a young, well educated, wealthy Nigerian to destroy the lives of nearly 300 passengers in the skies above the US at Christmas. The young Nigerian had earlier posted on his blog that he imagined how “the great jihad will take place, how the Muslims will win (Allah willing) and will rule the whole world and establish the greatest empire once again.”

The early days of 2010 have witnessed the murder of Christians in upper Egypt on the steps of their Church as they celebrated the birth of Christ – whether sectarian or not, the choice of targets and timing was clearly designed to create effect. Some used the Swiss referendum on minarets as “evidence” of an unchangeable “Islamophobia” in the West. In the same way, others are citing the recent attacks and their justification by those who carried them out as proof of an unbridgeable divide between Islam and non-Islam.
We have to prove both sets of people wrong. As in the Swiss context, the reaction from opinion formers is going to be decisive. The West suffers from acts carried out by people claiming to be Western but which the great majority would disown as unrepresentative. Denouncing these acts as wrong wherever they occur and credibly demonstrating that they are unrepresentative is a responsibility shared by all persons of reason.
The Head of the Civil Rights Congress in Kaduna (Nigeria) said that “for the past 30 years we have witnessed the rise of Islamic fundamentalism in this part of the country” with some groups funded by individuals and countries from the Middle East. Again in Nigeria, the secretary-general of the Islamic Network for Development said that for anyone to contemplate such an act was inhuman. The Muslim Public Affairs Centre based in Lagos said the attempted attack was a complete violation of the teachings of Islam.
What is essential is that those in positions of authority need to make the same points. The life of a Shia killed celebrating Ashoura or a Christian celebrating Christmas is just as valuable as that of a passenger on Northwest Airlines flight 253. There is no scope for saying one is more or less innocent.
If the reaction is silence (particularly when the choice of dates for committing the crimes is clearly purposeful), some will assume that the argument of the extremists is justified: that it is permissible to kill someone just because he or she is a “Westerner” (or indeed just happens to be in a Western location) or is from a different sect or a different religion. Since Muslim extremists are justifying their actions, the perception will be created that they speak for Islam – unless others contradict them, Muslim and non-Muslim. We all need to tell them – loudly: “You are wrong”.
The effect of such extremism, if left unopposed, is to create a vicious circle. Fear by non-Islam about Islam will mean less interaction, less understanding and greater prejudice – and greater fear … and so we go round again, but more destructively. We need to support each other in breaking this vicious circle.

Egypt's Copts fearful amid increasing tensions

Egypt's Copts fearful amid increasing tensions
As the majority Muslim nation turns more conservative, the Christian minority, which has lived in relative peace for centuries, faces an uncertain future. Recent killings and riots add to the fear.


Reporting from Cairo - Father Metyas Mankarios ministers to garbage men and runs a newspaper for Coptic Christians from an office crammed with brittle archives above vegetable sellers and fishmongers barking out prices along the muddy roads of a Cairo neighborhood.Few have it easy here. From dawn until deep into the night, there is the clatter of making a living, no matter how small. But these days, Mankarios, his face engulfed by a graying beard, worries more about the increasing discrimination and resentment from Muslims who attack monasteries and teach their children that Christians are infidels.

"It's dangerous today," he said. "Egypt is going in new directions that are starting to affect the harmony between religions. This attitude is evident not only among ordinary Muslims but among top government and Islamic officials."

Egypt's Copts and Muslims have co-existed for centuries, through spasms of bloodshed and recrimination but mostly in relative peace. In recent years, however, tolerance has ebbed and tensions have multiplied in a predominantly Muslim society that has grown more conservative and inclined to drawing religious distinctions in schools, public offices and in mixed neighborhoods.

The atmosphere was further agitated this month after a bishop received death threats and six Christians attending a Coptic Christmas Eve Mass north of Luxor were killed in a drive-by shooting. The Muslim assailants were reportedly seeking revenge for the alleged rape of a Muslim girl by a Copt.

The killings highlighted years of sectarian unease in the village of Nag Hammadi, where riots erupted immediately and shops and businesses were burned.

A human rights group accused a member of President Hosni Mubarak's ruling party of inciting the animosities through his connection to one of the attackers. The group, which filed a lawsuit, alleges that lawmaker Abdel Rahim el Ghoul intervened to have one of the gunmen released from prison days before the shooting. Ghoul has denied wrongdoing, and the prosecutor general's office announced that there was no larger conspiracy.

"We need a parliamentary investigation to find out who was really behind this massacre," said Ashraf Radhi, one of a number of Muslim political activists who condemned the deaths. "It is clear to all of us that the three criminals or mercenaries did not act alone. They were backed by someone with authority."

The shooting roiled deep-seated religious prejudices in a nation where Islamic clerics were outraged by a recent ban on minarets in Switzerland but have been less vigorous in speaking out against abuses or protecting the rights of Copts in their own country.

Nag Hammadi "was not an individual act. It is a political, religious, social and above all a governmental crime," wrote Mohamed Shabba in the independent Nahdet Masr newspaper.

"It is caused by the backwardness of education that is teeming with racism, extremism and contempt for the other. It is also an economic crime because it took place in Upper Egypt, the area that has suffered from government neglect for years."

Others cautioned that the incident should not be overblown and that the religious and clan tensions in Nag Hammadi are not representative of the national mood.

Mubarak was quoted in the state-owned Al Ahram newspaper as saying, "We are one people. We are not fanatics because we are all children of this land, and there is no difference between Egyptian Muslims, Christians and Jews."

Copt's make up about 10% of the nation's population of 82 million. Founded by St. Mark in the 1st century, the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt predates Islam by hundreds of years. But beyond pews and vestibules, the Christian imprint fades: Public schoolchildren of all denominations are taught to recite the Koran as part of Arabic language training, and Egypt's civil laws are based on Muslim Sharia tenets.

The Egyptian Constitution protects religious freedom, but some churches have been attacked, and others encountered years of land disputes and government scrutiny before they were built.

Courts make it virtually impossible for Muslims who convert to Christianity to change their religious identity on national ID cards. Death threats have forced some converts to go into hiding or leave the country.

Al Azhar University's Islamic Research Academy, a leading voice on Sunni Muslim thought, recently suspended publication of a book it had commissioned after Copts protested that the work described Christianity as a form of paganism.

Conservative Islam began arriving in Egypt in the 1970s with migrant workers returning from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. The tenor intensified through the 1990s, and today, even as voices in the media have grown more devout, the Egyptian government works to silence radical Islamic influences but not anger its Muslim population. Copts say this dilemma has left them vulnerable at a time of growing national economic and social pressures. The church leadership prefers diplomacy and has not publicly criticized the Mubarak government.

Awny Mikhail dodged talk of such volatile matters. A Copt, he owns a jewelry store in Cairo, where his customers are as likely to be Muslim women in veils as men with crosses tattooed on their wrists. Boys played marbles in the dirt outside; two police officers sat near another Coptic-owned jewelry shop that was shuttered after a 2008 machine-gun attack that left four Christian workers dead.

"I deal with Muslims every day," he said, while behind him Coptic Pope Shenouda III, whose seat is in Alexandria, was speaking on TV. "I just left my other shop to pick up something in this one. I have two Muslim customers waiting back there alone. They could steal whatever they liked if they wanted to. You have to have trust in people."

He leaned over his counter. "I don't want to see a chain reaction from the Nag Hammadi incident," he said. "The media will try to turn this into something more. Things aren't that bad. Muslims have become more conservative, yes, but I support the government in trying to stop Islamic extremism."

Minutes away, in a neighborhood populated by garbage men, Father Mankarios sat in his office, working on his newspaper, Tibian Battalion, named after a 3rd century band of Coptic soldiers who fought with the Roman army but were later executed for refusing to worship Roman idols. A woman handed him files.

He recalled his boyhood in the 1960s, when, like today, there were symbols of differences between Copts and Muslims: Copts bore the tattooed cross and Muslims a brownish callus on their foreheads, known as the raison, from years of prostrating in prayer. But mostly, he said, the faiths mingled with little anxiety because Copts were less demanding of their rights.

"When I was young, I didn't see all this tension coming," he said. "We got along with Muslims just fine. That's all changed.

"The Egyptian government is not worried about Coptic unrest. We don't have militias or a political party. Copts are no threat to the government. All we can do is shout."

jeffrey.fleishman @latimes.com

Amro Hassan of The Times Cairo Bureau contributed to this report.


تاريخ نشر الخبر : 07/02/2010

In Egypt, Religious Clashes Are Off the Record

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN, NY times

NAG HAMMADI, Egypt — State security agents wearing black uniforms and armed with automatic weapons stood guard at the entrance to this small city. Armored personnel carriers and rows of boxy troop carriers parked along the main road. Local police officers and the secret police patrolled nearly every block, on foot and in vans.

A damaged home in the village of Bahjora, near Luxor. Riots and clashes followed a church attack last month.


A police officer guarded a church in Nag Hammadi. Three weeks ago, a Muslim gunman opened fire on worshipers as they walked out of church, killing 7.
People were scared, and the police were edgy. “We want you to leave; you must have special permission to be here,” Gen. Mahmoud Gohar, head of security for the region, said as he slapped his hands together and demanded that reporters leave town, immediately.

A few weeks ago, on the day that Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas Eve, a Muslim gunman opened fire on worshipers as they walked out of church, killing 7, wounding 10 and leading to the worst sectarian violence between Muslims and Christians in Egypt in years. In the days that followed, there were riots and clashes. Stores were wrecked. Homes were burned.

The government responded by sending in heavily armed police officers, banning the news media and insisting that the Jan. 6 attack was retaliation for a rape.

“There are initial indications connecting this incident to the consequences of accusing a young Christian man of raping a Muslim girl in one of the governorate’s villages,” the Interior Ministry said after the attack.

The one thing the government would not do was admit the obvious: Egypt had experienced one of the most serious outbreaks of sectarian violence in years. Instead, it said talk of sectarian conflict amounted to sedition.

But the evidence, provided in newspapers, was irrefutable: 14 Muslims arrested, 28 Christians arrested, Christian shops burned, Muslim houses burned.

“We are now facing a sectarian society and street,” wrote Amr el-Shoubky, a political analyst and columnist, in an article under the headline “The New Sectarianism: The Alienation of Christians,” which appeared in the daily newspaper Al Masry al-Youm.

Egypt has experienced many clashes over the years between its Muslim majority and Christian minority, and has always insisted that the conflicts were driven by something — anything — else. A land dispute, a personal grudge, a crime for profit. The official narrative is that these are singular, unrelated crimes.

That is the case since the shooting. Three people were arrested for the attack, which killed six Christians as they left church (Coptic Christians celebrate Christmas on Jan. 7) and a Muslim guard.

“The crime of Nag Hammadi is just an individual crime with no religious motives, just like the crime of raping the girl,” Ahmed Fathi Sorour, the Parliament speaker, said in Al Ahram, a state-owned newspaper.

But local people, commentators, members of Parliament, Christian and Muslim alike, say that the government’s narrow view of the shooting ignores an underlying tension that is roiling society all across Egypt, where an estimated 10 percent of the population of about 80 million is Christian. No matter the gunman’s motive, the attack and subsequent clashes and riots have underscored the religious divide.

“Those calling it an individual crime were not able to explain until now why there was shooting on a group of people leaving church at the time of a big religious celebration, which left six Copts dead,” wrote Salama Ahmed Salama, who is in charge of the editorial board of Shorouk, a daily independent newspaper. “And what was the real motive, especially that the man who committed the crime is among the thugs and hit men, and not from the religiously extreme?”

Nag Hammadi is a city of about 50,000, 40 miles north of Luxor, site of the famed Valley of the Kings. It is a commercial center that hugs the Nile, where the river is wide and the horizon framed by sand-colored cliffs. The streets bustle with taxis, horse-drawn carriages and fruit peddlers. The skyline is pierced by minarets and church towers. About 10 percent of the city is Christian.

“Everyone is together here; we have no problems,” said Korashi Ali Mahran, 22, an employee of a pharmaceutical company with a warehouse on Central Street. He and 11 co-workers were taking a break outside one afternoon. Half were Muslim, half Coptic Christian. “I personally have Christian friends,” said Mr. Mahran, smiling at Sami Haroon, a Christian beside him. “I am not scared. I send him to get food, we eat together.”

All the men nodded and smiled.

What he meant was that lots of people are superstitious about eating with someone of another faith, as if it might lead them to convert. It is a rumor, spread with the utmost seriousness.

In daily life secular divisions can be subtle. People work together, study together, but then go their separate ways. The neighborhoods are integrated, but private lives are segregated. Tension grows as young men talk about cellphone videos showing Muslim girls with Christian boys, or as Christian parents complain that their children are forced to study the Koran in public schools.

The group outside the warehouse slowly acknowledged that there was little mingling in Nag Hammadi. “We are separated,” said Essam Atef, 32, a Christian who manages the pharmaceutical business. “If there is a wedding, you offer congratulations, and if there is someone sick, you might visit, but we are both on our own here.”

All the men agreed.

The shooting took place down the street from where the men work, an area now heavy with police officers, security agents and spotters with walkie-talkies.

Many political analysts and commentators and local people say that this approach — treating all crises as a security problem — tends to aggravate tensions. A group of Christians and Muslims agreed to speak with a reporter about life here, about interfaith relations and about their government. But they wanted to meet at a private compound outside the city limits.

There were five Christians and three Muslims. Everyone agreed that interfaith relations were fine on a daily basis. A Christian lawyer, Tharwat Shaker, said his clients were mostly Muslim. A Christian businessman, Maged Tobya, said most of his employees were Muslim. A Muslim woman, Wafaa Rashad, said one of her best friends was Christian.

But they also said that there was interfaith tension, especially among the young people, and they called on the government to deal with it.

“The government bodies should not say a Christian raped a Muslim, they should say a man raped a woman,” said Ms. Rashad, a social worker who runs a women’s organization in town.

“Religion in Egypt,” she concluded, “is not like before. It used to be a unifying element.”

A barometer of religious intolerance

Written by Benjamin Balint, Haaretz
Friday, 05 February 2010
By Benjamin Balint, Haaretz

"Egypt resembles an iceberg," the late Coptic-Egyptian writer Louis Awad once wrote. "One-eighth is above sea level. Seven-eighths are submerged in the depths. One-eighth of our lives takes place in the light of the 20th century, seven-eighths in medieval darkness."

There is no surer measure of Egypt's transforming identity over the last half century than its treatment of its Coptic Christian minority, which comprises about 10 percent of the country's 80 million citizens. As Egypt becomes less Arab and more Islamic, removing itself ever farther from former president Gamal Abdel Nasser's brand of left-leaning secular nationalism (not to speak of the liberal cosmopolitanism that prevailed from the 1920s through the revolution of 1952), the latest signs from the banks of the Nile are anything but auspicious.


In November, a report by Christian Solidarity International and the Coptic Foundation for Human Rights documented 25 cases of alleged forced conversion to Islam. Last May, the Egyptian government pointlessly slaughtered thousands of pigs belonging to the Coptic Christian minority because of fears relating to the swine flu.



As recently as January 15, at least 20 leading bloggers and democracy activists were arrested and held for one day by Egyptian authorities, reportedly charged with "illegal assembling and causing unrest." The group of Coptic Christian and Muslim activists had traveled to the southern Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi to pay their condolences to the families of six Coptic teenage worshipers gunned down as they left midnight mass on January 7, Coptic Christmas. This is the same town where a priceless collection of 46 fourth-century treatises ("The Gnostic Gospels"), written in Coptic - an idiom descended directly from the language of the pharaohs - was discovered in an earthenware jar in 1945.

Such arrests are not unprecedented. Kareem Amer has been held in Borg El Arab prison since November 2006, charged among other crimes with "incitement to hate Muslims" for writing about Muslim-Christian tensions in Alexandria and criticizing President Hosni Mubarak on his blog.

Although Egypt's constitution provides for equal rights without regard to religion, discrimination against its Christian community - through both acts of omission and commission - persists. Even after the killings last month sparked widespread riots, the government declined to address the underlying tensions.

"The Egyptian authorities should be focusing on the causes of the tragic shooting of six Coptic Christians," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Instead, they're arresting activists whose efforts to express their condolences are an important step toward healing sectarian fractures."

Both the violence and the official response are part of a pattern of escalating tensions between Muslims and Copts, who are increasingly marginalized, persecuted and vilified as outsiders. Indeed, January's violence has decades of tragic precedents, reaching back to June 1981, when 22 Coptic citizens were burned inside their homes during riots in the village of El-Zawia El-Hamra.

And yet Egyptian authorities have consistently refused to act. In 1994, Egyptian sociologist and rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim proposed an international conference in Cairo on minorities in the Middle East. But his insistence on including the treatment of Egypt's Copts on the agenda raised such protests in the government-controlled press that the conference was forced to move to Limassol, Cyprus.

Although no community can claim to be more native or authentically "Egyptian" than the Copts, whose culture dates back to antiquity, in moments of crisis, it seems, the country's Muslims instinctively turn on the Copts - even when the crisis has little to do with that Arabic-speaking Christian community. In 1952, for example, demonstrators against the British occupation of the Canal Zone in Suez massacred a number of Copts. Just before the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous slogan could be heard in Cairo: "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people."

Finally, during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when news arrived in Cairo that Israeli forces had crossed the canal, a rumor ascribed the Egyptian forces' failure to the treachery of a Coptic officer. To this day, every so often, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition Islamist movement, seeks to bar Copts from senior army, police and government positions, on the grounds that they represent a fifth column. (The Brotherhood, which won 20 percent of the 454 parliamentary seats in the last election in 2005, has just chosen a new, hard-line leader, Mohammed Badie.)

The latest sectarian violence, then, has deep roots. Intolerance of non-Muslim minorities is the best barometer - though not the only one - of a society increasingly conscious of its Muslim identity and aspirations, as Egypt is today. The role of religion in the country's identity is still too fluid to permit us to know what shape those aspirations will take, but we can by all means forecast that Egypt's Islamic revival today will be Israel's dilemma tomorrow.

Benjamin Balint, a writer living in Jerusalem, is a fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Comparison between Muhammad and Jesus

Comparison between Muhammad and Jesus (Isa) Jesus (Isa) Muhammad Yahweh told us; "Thus saith the LORD the King of Israel, and his redeemer the LORD of hosts; I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God" Isaiah 44:6 Nowhere in the Bible is the name "Allah". Muhammad managed to get billions of people to blindly misdirect their sweet prayers & hatreds to this old pagan tribal moon god of his own family. This intolerant Islamic Allah was never there. Jesus is God (John 1, Col. 1) and here. Jesus forgave sins and dispelled demons in His own name. He said "I and the Father are one". Muhammad admitted he is only a man (Surah 18:110) Jesus raised Himself from the dead (Matthew 28:6) and rose into heaven in front of many witnesses. Muhammad remains dead His Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection was foretold by numerous prophets. Nothing predicted about Muhammad. The "Comforter" was the Holy Spirit Jesus promised the apostles. Jesus lived a sinless life (2 Corinthians 5:21). Allah himself refers to Muhammad as sinful (Surah 40:55, 48:1-2). Jesus did numerous miracles to prove His divinity, including raising the dead and command over nature (All Gospel writers and Josephus). While teaching his apostles Jesus said; "Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves" (John 14:11 and Matthew 9:2-7) On two occasions in the Qur'an Muhammad admitted he could do no miracles to show any sort of divinity or divine calling (Surah 17:90-95; 3:183, also see: 29:50-51) Jesus cared for His enemies (Matthew 5:43-44). Jesus promised to save those who believe and trust in Him. Killed his enemies and anyone who disagreed with him (Surah 9:5) Held a high view of marriage and hated divorce - as God the Father does (Matthew 19:7-8). Muhammad commanded his adopted son to divorce his wife so that she would become his (Surah 33:36-38) Accurately prophesied many verifiable events that took place after His time (Matthew 24). Delivered only one -questionable- guess/prophecy about the Romans winning a future battle. No date or place given. (Surah 30:1-4) Jesus gave his disciples authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness (Matthew 10:1; Mark 6:12-13) Muhammad gave his followers the authority to wage war on unbelievers. Muhammad is Allah's apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless to unbelievers. (Surah 48:29) Jesus told his disciples not to ask for money, and not to carry money with them. (Matthew 10:8-9, Luke 10:7) Muhammad instructed his followers on how to divide booty they seized from unbelievers. He insisted on 20% for himself. Jesus said to his followers that if anyone will not welcome you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. (Matthew 10:14-15, 23) Muhammad ordered Muslims to attack any city that rejected Islam. Jesus told his followers to get ready, because unbelievers would flog them, arrest them, and put them on trial (Matthew 10:16-19) Muhammad told his followers to fight (militarily) hard against unbelievers. "Kill the Mushrikun (unbelievers) wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and lie in wait for them in each and every ambush..." Surah 9:5. Also see Surah 9:29. Jesus washed his disciples' feet. He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. John 13:4-5, 12-17 One day after battle, Muhammad came back home and said to his daughter Fatima, "Wash the blood from this sword and I swear in the name of Allah this sword was obeying me all the time." Muhammad then took the swords of his friend Ali ibn Abu Talib and washed them for him. Jesus never took up a sword or encouraged anyone else to do so. Once a close follower took it upon himself to take up a sword. Jesus soundly reprimanded him. Jesus warned; "all who take the sword will perish by the sword" (Matthew 26:52) According to Muslim scholar Pickthal, "the number of campaigns (military) he (Muhammad) led in person during the last ten years of his life is twenty-seven, in nine of which there was hard fighting. The number of expeditions which he planned and sent out under other leaders is thirty-eight" (n.d., pg. xxvi) Jesus said: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same? (Matthew 5:44-46) Surah 9:29: PICKTHAL: "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture (Christians & Jews) as believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, and forbid not that which Allah hath forbidden by His messenger, and follow not the Religion of Truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low." Jesus's last message to his followers about himself and his mission: Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. Luke 24:46-47 Muhammad's last speech to his followers on Mt Arafat: ....."I descended by Allah with the sword in my hand, and my wealth will come from the shadow of my sword. And the one who will disagree with me will be humiliated and persecuted."