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Ancient Coptic Church Torched in Egypt. Yet another Coptic Christian church has been consumed by flames (images follow). On Mar. 29, 2023, a massive fire broke out in the Church of the Virgin, Archangel Michael, Abu Sefein and Saint Anba Karas in Assyut, Egypt. Sections of it were reportedly “ancient.” According to a statement from the diocese, “The fire occurred around 4 a.m. and completely consumed the church and its appurtenances, as it was built of wood, as well as the ancient church, which consists of walls and a wooden ceiling.” Fortunately, no lives were lost in the conflagration. According...

Last week the Egyptian court system denied justice to Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Christian minority by again postponing judgment on two notorious cases that have been at court for years. The first concerns Soa‘d Thabet, a 70-year-old Coptic grandmother. On May 20, 2016, a mob of some 300 Muslim men descended on her home, stripped her completely naked, beat, spit on, and paraded her in the streets of al-Karm village (in Minya governorate) to jeers, whistles, and triumphant shouts of “Allahu Akbar.” Earlier that day she and her husband had gone to local police and complained that they were being harassed...

John Anton – OCP News Service – 12/1017 +Memory Eternal+ Cairo-Egypt: A Coptic Orthodox Christian priest was murdered and another was injured in a knife attack this morning in the Capital city of Cairo. Father ‘Samaan Shihata’ (Fr Simon) from Bani Suief, Upper Egypt, was on a visit to Cairo with another priest. They were attacked by some unknown person who killed Fr Simon. Local media reported that police have arrested the culprit and he is currently under investigation. The ancient Coptic orthodox christian community in Egypt face various persecution from religious fanatics . May be the memory of the...

Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Patriarch Tawadros II has assured people that the persecuted and displaced Christians of the Sinai Peninsula can soon return to their homes, saying the Islamic State's attacks were isolated incidents in the country.In an interview broadcast by CBC satellite channel on March 27, Pope Tawadros talked about the string of ISIS attacks targeting Christians in North Sinai last month. He said the jihadist attacks affected not only Egypt’s Christians, but also its police, army, and judiciary, the Independent Catholic News relays. Hundreds of Coptic Christian families left Sinai after seven believers were murdered from Jan. 30 to...

Eyewitnesses have given a harrowing account of the murder in Cairo of a young Coptic Christian woman, hauled out of her car and beaten and stabbed to death by a Muslim mob, apparently targeted because of a cross hanging from her rear-view mirror. The incident occurred in the Cairo suburb of Ain Shams after mosque prayer services on Friday, ... 25-year-old Mary Sameh George was attacked in her car near a church, where she planned to deliver medicine to an ill and elderly woman. Protestors climbed onto her car, collapsing the roof, then hauled her from the vehicle, beating and...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The anti-Muslim film implicated in mob protests against U.S. diplomatic missions in the Mideast received logistical help from a man once convicted of financial crimes and featured actors who complained that their inflammatory dialogue was dubbed in after filming.

(AINA) -- In mid-October Egyptian media published news of an altercation between Muslim and Christian students over a classroom seat at a school in Mallawi, Minya province. The altercation lead to the murder of a Christian student. The media portrayed the incident as non-sectarian. However, Copts Without Borders, a Coptic news website, refuted this version and was first to report that the Christian student was murdered because he was wearing a crucifix. "We wanted to believe the official version," said activist Mark Ebeid, "because the Coptic version was a catastrophe, as it would take persecution of Christians also to schools."...

At least 65 Christians have been killed in attacks across the Muslim world in recent months, sparking sharp criticism from human rights groups that charge the U.S. government and media aren’t doing nearly enough to speak out against the violence. A shooting in Egypt last month that killed a Christian man and injured five Christian women was just the latest in the series of attacks, several of which occurred around the holiday season: A New Year’s bombing at a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, killed 23 people and injured more than 100; Christmas Eve blasts in Nigeria killed at...

Forgotten in all the excitement over the revolution in Egypt has been the precarious situation of Coptic Christians there. Yet just weeks ago, Copts in Egypt experienced an unprecedented reign of terror. An Islamic jihad-martyrdom suicide bomber murdered twenty-two people and wounded eighty more at the Coptic Christian Church of the Saints in Alexandria, Egypt on New Year’s Eve. Just days later, as Christmas (which Copts celebrate on January 7) 2011 approached, an Islamic website carried this ominous exhortation: “Blow up the churches while they are celebrating Christmas or any other time when the churches are packed.” And if the...

Radical Muslims detonated a car bomb outside a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria, Egypt, on Saturday, killing 21 and wounding many others. The White House condemned the attack as a "barbaric and heinous act" but - true to form - remained silent on the jihadist motives of its perpetrators. The car bombing marked an escalation in an ongoing siege against Egypt's oldest indigenous religious community, which previously had been subjected primarily to shootings and vandalism. The White House admitted the bombing targeted Christian worshippers, and if something similar took place in this country it would be called a hate crime,...

Christian critical of Islamization of society, Orthodox church jailed without charges. A Coptic Christian blogger in Egypt entering his second year of prison without charge is being pressured to convert to Islam in exchange for his freedom... On Oct. 3, 2008, Hani Nazeer, a 28-year-old high school social worker from Qena, Egypt and author of the blog “Karz El Hob” (“Love Cherries”), was arrested by Egypt’s State Security Investigations (SSI) and sent to Burj Al-Arab prison. Although police never charged him with any crime, Nazeer has been detained for more than a year under Egypt’s administrative imprisonment law. Gamel Eid,...

A YouTube video clip showing pigs being culled in Egypt as part of swine flu measures has caused outrage at the apparent barbarity of the method of slaughtering the animals. The clip posted by independent newspaper Al-Masri Al-Yom includes gory images of pigs being beaten with iron bars, piglets being stabbed and animals being kicked alive into bulldozer buckets. Since going on line on YouTube this weekend, the clip has sparked horrified reactions from Muslims and from the Christian Copt community, who are the main rearers of pigs in Egypt as Muslims do not eat pork. Although no case of...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...

A human rights organization given special consultative status by the United Nations wants a U.S. judge to make an order halting a Christian man's deportation to Egypt permanent – because of the likelihood he would be tortured. The request comes in the form of a court pleading from the Washington-based American Center for Law and Justice, whose European affiliate, the European Centre for Law and Justice in Strasbourg, France, has been given "special consultative status" from the United Nations. The groups are asking a federal court in Pennsylvania to protect the human rights of Coptic Christian Sameh Khouzam, 38,...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- One person is dead and more than a dozen others wounded in attacks on worshipers today at three Coptic Christian churches in Egypt. The simultaneous assaults in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria were carried out during Friday Mass by knife-wielding assailants. Police have set up checkpoints but the attackers got away. At least two of 17 people hurt are in serious condition.

JERSEY CITY, N.J. — Two people have been arrested in the murder of an Egyptian Christian family, authorities said Friday. The suspects were to be arraigned Friday afternoon in state Superior Court. The Hudson County prosecutor's office would not release the identities of those arrested or the charges they face until they appear in court.

By WAYNE PARRY The Associated Press JERSEY CITY, N.J. - The upstairs neighbor of an Egyptian Christian family found slain in their home in January was charged Friday, along with another man, in the murders. Edward McDonald, 25, who rented a second-floor apartment above Hossam Armanious and his family, pleaded not guilty to four counts of felony murder. Hamilton Sanchez, 30, faces the same charges and also pleaded not guilty. Sanchez during a court hearing began crying as he stood before a judge, his hands cuffed behind his back. "I didn't kill nobody. I didn't kill nobody, man. I didn't...

WASHINGTON -- Relatives of a slain New Jersey family of four were slated to meet with FBI officials and federal lawmakers Tuesday and planned to speak for the first time about the crimes.Hossam Armanious, 47, his 37-year-old wife Amal Garas, and their daughters, Sylvia, 15, and Monica, 8, all had puncture wounds to their throats. Their bodies were found bound and gagged in separate rooms of their Jersey City home on Jan. 14, a day before the family planned to throw Sylvia a Sweet 16 party. The family, Coptic Christians, came to the United States in 1997 from their native...

CAIRO, Egypt -- An estimated 100,000 chanting protesters crammed Cairo's main stadium Thursday in Egypt's largest demonstration against the U.S. threats of war against Iraq. "We came here because we cannot watch our sisters and brothers being killed in Palestine and about to be killed in Iraq and remain silent," said Safeya Mohamed a 20-year-old student from the Suez Canal city of Ismailia. Rally protesters began arriving at the stadium early Thursday from across the country, yelling chants such as "down with America," waving Iraqi and Palestinian flags and kicking effigies of President Bush.