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As more and more details emerge concerning Friday’s Ramadan attack on a busload of Christians on pilgrimage, the more it becomes evident that these 29 martyrs died solely because they were Christians. Survivors of the attack said that the ten masked Islamic State militants did not merely open fire on the bus full of Christian pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of Saint Samuel the Confesor, but that the victims were made to descend from the bus and asked one by one whether they were Christians before being shot by the assailants. According to one of the chaplains of...

Ten masked gunmen, who used machine guns, opened fire at two buses carrying Egyptian Coptic Christians to a monastery south of Cairo on Friday, killing 26 including children and injuring 26 others, Al Arabiya News Channel reported. The Christian group was travelling in two buses and a truck through the province, which is home to a sizeable Christian minority, the governor of Egypt’s Minya province, Essam al-Bedaiwy, said. The health ministry said there were between eight and 10 attackers dressed in military uniforms, according to witnesses. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which came on the eve of...

Thousands of Christians have gathered in Jerusalem for an ancient fire ceremony that celebrates Jesus' resurrection. In a ritual dating back at least 1,200 years, they crowded Saturday into the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Christian tradition holds that Jesus was crucified, buried and resurrected. During the annual ceremony, top Eastern Orthodox clerics enter the Edicule, the small chamber marking the site of Jesus' tomb. They then emerge to reveal candles said to be miraculously lit with "holy fire" as a message to the faithful from heaven. The details of the flame's source are a closely guarded secret. Roman...

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Palm Sunday, celebrated the day before yesterday by the Churches that follow the Julian calendar, saw an exponential increase of Egyptian Coptic pilgrims who have come to celebrate the rites of Holy Week in Jerusalem. According to the Egyptian media, in the current year already at least 5,700 Coptic Orthodox Christians have reached the Holy City, an increase of more than a thousand units compared to the Coptic pilgrims who had carried out a pilgrimage to the Holy Places of Jerusalem in 2015. The growing presence of the Egyptian Coptic Orthodox in the Holy City marks...

Around 6,000 Egyptians, almost all of them Coptic Christians, have entered Israel to attend the annual Holy Fire ceremony at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre on Saturday. There has been a sharp rise recently in pilgrimages to Jerusalem by Egyptian Copts, after the Coptic patriarch, Pope Tawadros II, in effect rolled back a ban imposed by a predecessor in 1980, in the wake of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Tawadros himself visited Israel in November for the funeral of Archbishop Anba Abraham, the Coptic Orthodox Metropolitan Archbishop of Jerusalem and the Near East.
The accession of President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi in June 2014...

The comfortable, suburban Christians who are sitting in their armchairs and tut-tutting at us for being so uncharitable as to hold a Muhammad cartoon contest should take careful note of this. Islamic law asserts authority over non-Muslims. To send the signal that we will submit to Sharia blasphemy laws regarding drawing Muhammad, even if we are doing so out of a misguided sense of “respect,” will only embolden Islamic supremacists to make more demands. The endpoint of these demands is shown in this incident in Egypt. These comfortable, suburban Christians in the West are ensuring a future of harassment, persecution,...

The recent beheading of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christian workers in Libya by Islamic State (IS) affiliates prompted a conversation with Joseph Hakim, President of the International Christian Union (ICU), an umbrella organization that seeks to secure the wellbeing and survival of Middle Eastern Christians. Hakim is a Lebanese-born Orthodox Christian and a proud American.

Egypt Roars for Its Christians: ‘They Have a Shield’ Egyptian society and its government have rallied in defense of the Copts, but the White House has declined to support Egypt’s military actions in defense of its citizens. http://m.ncregister.com/daily-news/egypt-roars-for-its-christians-they-have-a-shield/#.VOgHo4Y8Kc0

The 21 Egyptian men who were kidnapped and eventually beheaded on a beach in Libya knew they were living in danger. But they felt they had little choice other than to sojourn in the tumultuous country in order to send money home to their impoverished families. Many went with a sense that God would look over them. Now, their families are in greater poverty, knowing the men will never come home. The World Post’s Middle East correspondent Sophia Jones visited grieving families in the village of Al Aour, about three hours south of Cairo, where 13 of the men...

Call this a contrast of leadership. In a meeting today with a delegation from the Church of Scotland, who traveled to the Vatican on an ecumenical visit, Pope Francis decried the slaughter of 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt by Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). Speaking in his native Spanish, the pontiff used the ecumenical audience of Presbyterians to declare that the Copts were martyred for their faith — the faith of all Christians. They died “only because they confessed Christ,” Pope Francis emphasized, and their “testimony cries out to be heard”: I would now like to turn to...

MOSCOW, (Sputnik) – Russia is ready to closely cooperate with Egypt in the fight against terrorism, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a letter to his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah Sisi Monday. The Russian leader offered his condolences over the recent execution of 21 Egyptian Christian Copts by Islamic State (IS) militants. The video of the beheading was published Sunday. “The president of Russia reiterated that the Russian side is ready for closest cooperation possible in the fight against all aspects of the terrorism threat,” the Kremlin press service said in a statement

Egypt says it has bombed Islamic State targets in Libya, hours after the group published video showing the apparent beheadings of 21 Egyptian Christians. State TV said the dawn strikes had targeted camps, training sites and weapons storage areas. Earlier, President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said Egypt had the "right to respond" against IS. A video emerged on Sunday showing a group wearing orange overalls being forced to the ground and decapitated. IS militants claim to have carried out several attacks in Libya, which is in effect without a government. "Egypt reserves the right to respond at the proper time and...

Just breaking now, the 21 Christians taken hostage by Isis have apparently all been beheaded. Follow up to this story: Egypt poised for Libya evacuations as Isis hostage photos emerge (21 Christians in orange jumpsuits) http://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3257475/posts

The horror show into which the Middle East has transformed over the last four years continues — and expands. ISIS released a videotape today showing not one beheading of a hostage, but the simultaneous beheadings of 21 Christian hostages. The beheadings took place not in Syria or Iraq, but in Libya: The terrorists known as ISIS released a video on Sunday that seems to show the militant group beheading 21 Egyptian Christians kidnapped in Libya.The Egyptians, dressed in orange jump suits, were beheaded after being forced down on the ground on a beach. An early caption in the video says...

CNN) - In a new propaganda video released Sunday by ISIS, the group claims to have beheaded over a dozen members of Egypt's Coptic Christian minority on a Libyan beach. The video shows an apparent mass execution with jihadists in black standing behind each of the victims, who are all are dressed in orange jumpsuits with their hands cuffed behind them. The five-minute video, released by the terror group's propaganda wing al-Hayat Media, includes a masked English-speaking jihadi who says, "The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden's body in, we swear to Allah, we will mix it with...

Egyptian Christians have seen notable gains under the government of President Abd al-Sisi, the spokesman for the country’s bishops tells the AsiaNews service. Father Rafic Greiche pointed to three new building permits for Catholic churches. He reported that permits for Christian churches were never granted during the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, nor under the government that followed him, which was dominated by Islamic fundamentalists. Some applications for permits to build churches date back more than a decade, Father Greiche said.

Just heard on the blaze on Glenn Beck's TV show from a Coptic Priest who keeps in contact with the Coptic Pope in Egypt, the US embassies are turning away Copts. Sounds a hell of a LOT like when FDR was turning away Jewish refugees from Europe.

A group of Egyptians protested in front of the White House Thursday afternoon to “expose” what they say is “the clear bias of the Obama administration and the American media in support of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist ideology.”Hundreds of Egyptians, who travelled to Washington, D.C. from around the United States, gathered in front of the White House before marching to the offices of the Washington Post, news network CNN, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group that protestors called the Brotherhood’s “embassy.”Protest organizers called on “all Egyptians” living in the U.S. to join...

Alarmed at the fresh targeting of Egyptian Christians since the military takeover, 16 human rights groups on Wednesday condemned both sides in the continuing standoff—Islamists for inciting violence against the religious minority and the state for not providing adequate protection. … As Egyptian Muslims prepared to mark the end-of-Ramadan Eid holiday on Thursday, their Orthodox Coptic compatriots have little to celebrate. Attacks against Christians have increased over the past month, with churches, homes and stores targeted, a Coptic priest shot dead, and several other Christians killed—including a shopkeeper in the Sinai who was kidnapped and beheaded. Last weekend in a...

The slaughter of Christians by Morsi supporters is sanctioned under Islamic law. Pro-Morsi Muslims have blamed the Christians for the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood government (even though the Muslim Brotherhood kept Christians away from voting during the election by threatening to shoot them. The MB have been viciously attacking and murdering Christians. Obama must stop advocating for them and insisting that they be part of the poltical process. "Egypt's Christians face backlash for Morsi ouster" Hamza Hendawi, Associated Press, July 10, 2013 (thanks to TROP) CAIRO (AP) -- With a mob of Muslim extremists on their tail, the Christian...