Free Republic

What do Muslim Brotherhood members do when Egyptian Security Forces launch a forewarned operation to clear them from Cairo tent cities? Attack Christians. That's right.Morsi supporters responded with a monumental attack--unprecedented in modern times--on churches throughout Egypt. The torching and destruction of churches occured within six hours of the start of the military crackdown. Many Muslims opposed the violent response against Christians. Some Salafists urged the Brotherhood to halt the attacks, and even some Muslims in Upper Egypt reportedly helped Christians defend churches.One destroyed church in Upper Egypt was built in the fourth century.Here's the list of burned churches and...

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood attend a protest in support of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, in Cairo, Egypt, 12 August 2013. EPA/KHALED ELFIQIChurches burned across Egypt following the security crackdown on pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators. Online reports suggest up to 17 churches were burned across Egypt, along with other Christian-owned businesses and schools.    Coptic witnesses and religious leaders said the attacks were carried out by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in areas without police protection. In some areas, the attacks reportedly came amid ongoing fighting between security forces and supporters of the Muslim...

Days ago, al-Qaeda’s Egyptian leader, Ayman Zawahiri, portrayed the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood as a “Crusader” campaign led by Coptic Pope Tawadros II who, according to Zawahiri and other terrorists, is trying to create a Coptic state in Egypt. Since then, not only are Egypt’s Christians and churches now being attacked in ways unprecedented in the modern era, but new reports indicate that al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised on some of them, specifically St. George Church in Sohag. Considering that it was al-Qaeda linked terrorists who initiated one of the bloodiest church attacks in recent history,...

Amidst continuing unrest in Egypt, the country's Coptic Christian minority is facing an alarming campaign of violence at the hands of Islamist extremists. In the most recent case, the decapitated body of 60 year old Magdy Habashi was found early Thursday in a cemetery in the town of Sheikh Zweid, in northern Sinai, after being abducted last Saturday by suspected Islamist radicals. He was the second Christian to be killed in northern Sinai in less than a week, following the assassination of Coptic Christian priest Mena Aboud Sharoben in the coastal city of Arish by suspected Islamist gunmen last Saturday....

Fears have been raised over the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, after a series of attacks—including the assassination of a priest and an arson attack against a church—following the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President, Mohammed Morsi. According to Al Masri al-Youm, 39 year-old Mena Aboud Sharoben was gunned down in the coastal city of Arish on Saturday, by unknown gunmen riding a motorcycle. Sharoben was a local Coptic priest, and his murder was one of several attacks by suspected Islamist terrorists over the past few days, who also targeted at least three military checkpoints and El Arish Internation Airport...

Giorgio Bernardelli Vatican Insider Roma 6 July 2013 http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/nel-mo...to-egypt-26268/ [Machine translation of the Italian; no English version yet available] A Coptic priest was killed this morning in Egypt in an ambush in all probability due to the situation created in the country after the overthrow of President Islamist Mohammed Morsi. The murder took place in the town of El Arish in northern Sinai. The victim's father called Mina, was 39 years old and was the secretary of the Coptic bishop of El Arish Kosman. The cleric was shot while he was in the car with his wife, who would be...

28 June 2013 TO ALL THE FAITHFUL OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA: Archbishop Mouneer Anis has been a friend of the Anglican Church in North America from our beginning, and before. He is a Global Trustee of the Anglican Relief and Development Fund. The situation in Egypt is "on the edge." Please pray for Archbishop Mouneer, his family, his clergy, his people, for Pope Tawadros II, for the Coptic Church and for Egypt. Ask the Lord to intervene. (He has a history of intervening in Egypt!) Thank you for your charity and your faithfulness in responding to this...

(CNSNews.com) – Seven years after Sunni Islam’s foremost institution severed dialogue with the Vatican over remarks by Pope Benedict XVI, the Cairo-based Al-Azhar wants the new pontiff to open the door to resuming interfaith discourse by declaring Islam to be a peaceful religion. The proposal that Pope Francis make such a public declaration prompted Coptic Christian advocates to suggest that Al-Azhar’s grand imam instead denounce Muslim violence against Copts in Egypt. Established in the 10th century, Al-Azhar is regarded as the top seat of learning in Sunni Islam. The suggestion for a papal gesture came from grand imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb’s...

Attacks on Christian children, both boys and girls, are on the rise in Egypt. Last week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy named Cyril Yusuf Sa‘ad was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid off the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, he still killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy’s “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy,...

We are witnesses to murder,and our governments are accomplices. The relentless destruction of the last remnants of the Middle East’s Judeo-Christian civilization is well under way. And we are silent. Captives of political correctness,our governments cater to radical immigrant tantrums as our leaders contort the truth to deny the existence of Islamist terrorism. Meanwhile,our Middle Eastern “allies” and foes alike eradicate thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage. Our diplomats treat the persecution as a minor embarrassment,best ignored. The banishments and butchery aren’t new, but the breakdown of the last rotting order in the wake of the “Arab Spring”...

ASSIUT, Egypt — An Egyptian court has convicted a Coptic Christian lawyer in the southern province of Assiut on charges of blasphemy and sentenced him to one year in prison with hard labor. The verdict against Roman Murad Saad was handed down on Saturday. It’s the latest in a surge of blasphemy cases following Egypt’s 2011 uprising. ... Court officials say Saad was found guilty of ridiculing Islam’s holy book, the Quran, at a lawyers’ union library. No further details were immediately available in the case.

Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria, patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, talks with Pope Francis during a private audience in the pontiff's library at the Vatican May 10. (CNS photo) Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II and Pope Francis fraternally addressed one another in an historic meeting, Friday, at the Vatican. May 10, 2013 marked the fortieth anniversary of a meeting between their predecessors, Pope Paul VI and Pope Shenouda III. This is the first time since that meeting that the Coptic Orthodox Patriarch has visited the Vatican. Blessed John Paul II also visited Pope Shenouda III in Egypt, February...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Two popes prayed together Friday at the Vatican, one Catholic and one Orthodox, in a sign of improving ties following the election of new leaders for both churches. Pope Francis welcomed the head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt, Pope Tawadros II, in the first such meeting at the Vatican in 40 years, saying his visit "strengthens the bonds of friendship and brotherhood" between the two churches. The Coptic and Catholic churches split in the fifth century over theocratic differences. Christians comprise about 10 percent of Egypt's population. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt counts...

Vatican City, May 10, 2013 / 07:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt met with Pope Francis at the Vatican and spoke about the urgent need for unity among Christians in the Middle East. “We must prepare our people for this very real and needed unity that we know and live, we must work quickly and seriously,” said Pope Tawadros II in May 10 remarks provided to CNA by his office. His visit to the Vatican is significant because he leades Egypt’s largest Christian Church with ten million members, as well as historic,...

Authorities in New Jersey allege a Muslim man beheaded two Coptic Christians, burying their bodies and heads and hands in separate graves near Philadelphia, bringing the horror of the persecution of Christians in Islamic nations to the United States. According to New York’s WABC-TV, the Muslim was identified as Yusuf Ibrahim, 28. He was taken into custody after the bodies were found. The report said investigators alleged Ibrahim killed the victims then severed their heads and hands, and buried the remains in the back yard of a home in Buena Vista, N.J. The report said the victims were from the...

A New York Times blogger became ensnared in controversy yesterday after asking a Weekly Standard author whether he was a Coptic Christian and if this played a factor in his reporting on anti-American and anti-Semitic activist Samira Ibrahim. Weekly Standard writer Samuel Tadros broke the story of Ibrahim’s support for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Bulgarian bus bombing attack of 2012, resulting in the State Department’s decision to “defer” its plan to honor Ibrahim with a women’s courage award. But Times reporter Robert Mackey speculated on Twitter that Tadros’s religious background, which Mackey believed was Coptic Christian, might...

JERSEY CITY - There's a gruesome double murder mystery in New Jersey. Police say who did it's not a mystery because someone is under arrest but the mystery is why the accused killer cut of two men's heads and hands. The victims are reportedly from Jersey City, but their remains were found buried in a town southwest of Philadelphia. ... police announced an arrest. 28-year-old Yusuf Ibrahim is in custody. Investigators say Ibrahim shot and killed the victims, severed their heads and hands, and buried the remains at a Buena Vista house. Back in Jersey City, friends of the victims...

Archaeologists have discovered the ruins of a buried Christian empire in the highlands of Yemen, leading to theories that there may have once been a church in Mecca. A stone carving of a Christian figure was found in Zafar, some 581 miles south of Mecca, and is thought to have been made in the era of the Prophet Muhammad. Paul Yule, an archaeologist from Heidelberg in Germany, has dated the 5feet 7inch tall relief which shows a man with chains of jewellery, curls and spherical eyes to around 530AD. ... The figure is barefoot, which was typical of Coptic saints....

Coptic Church 1251. I have read recently that the Abyssinians belonged to the Coptic faith, the earliest sect of the Christian denominations, to which all the Christian world adhered until the rise of the Church of Rome. It is true that the Abyssinians belonged to the Coptic Church. But the rest of the statement is erroneous. Firstly, a sect is a group of dissentient people who abandon a previous position in order to set up a new form of Church. If the Coptic Church were the original Church to which the whole Christian world adhered, then it is not a...

Bishop Tawadros will be officially enthroned as Pope Tawadros II, on November 18. The announcement comes amid increased persecution, kidnappings of women and children, harassment of Christians, imprisonment, and killings that the Church has been suffering since the Muslim Brotherhood has come to power. According to Christian Post Africa, it has become increasingly difficult to get permits to build Churches or to repair old ones. Lord David Alton, co-founder of the human rights organization Jubilee Campaign told CBN that “the exodus,” of the Christian community in Egypt has been unprecedented during the past 12 months. Lord Alton went on to...