Egypt: Christians, Revolution and Persecution

On New Year's Eve in the city of Alexandria in Egypt, Coptic Christians were celebrating New Year Mass at the al-Qiddissin (Saints) Church. As the service drew to a close, a bomb outside went off in the street outside. A video of the reaction of church congregants can be seen here. The priest tried to calm those inside, with little success. 21 people were killed, and 43 people were injured. Initially it was assumed that the blast was produced by a car bomb, though Egypt's Interior ministry later claimed that it was the work of a suicide bomber.

The Muslim Brotherhood condemned the crime and President Obama also condemned the attack, though the president erroneously suggested that Muslims had been killed in the blast (some were injured).

When Obama made his famous speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, where he praised the tolerance of Islam, he made only a fleeting mention of Copts. Before the speech at Cairo University, American Copts had urged him to mention the plight of the Copts in Egypt. Obama devoted only half a sentence to their situation, concentrating instead on painting Islam in terms that were designed to please a Muslim audience. He stated:

"The richness of religious diversity must be upheld -- whether it is for Maronites in Lebanon or the Copts in Egypt."

Perhaps he should have been more forceful in stressing that need for diversity. Copts are make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population of 80 million, but they were denied basic rights under the regime of Hosni Mubarak (an ally of America). If the Muslim Brotherhood gains power in Egypt, Muslims cannot expect to see much improvement in their situation.

Sobhi Saleh is a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer from Alexandria. The New York Times recently described him as "immediately engaging, the kind of person you shake hands with at a conference then find yourself telling people, "He's such a nice guy," without really knowing why."

Saleh was on the eight-man constitutional reform panel, which was convened to ensure that the formerly banned Muslim Brotherhood had rights to partake in elections. Last week, Saleh told the BBC (at 6.25 of the video here) that he does not want a Christian or a woman to run Egypt. He said:

"They should not occupy the highest post – the presidency… We are the majority. We represent 95 percent of the population."

Muslim Brotherhood members had been invited to attend President Obama's June 2009 Cairo speech. The Copts were obviously not high on the agenda of the U.S. administration's advisers. In November 2009, Obama was petitioned by an Egyptian father and his 15-year old daughter who had been living under extreme persecution. 57-year-old Maher el-Gowhary had converted to Christianity more than three decades earlier, but continued to receive threats. Egyptian authorities refused the pair permission to leave Egypt. Dina el-Gowahry wrote:

"Mr. President Obama, we are a minority in Egypt. We are treated very badly. You said that the Muslim minority in America are treated very well, so why are we not treated here likewise? We are imprisoned in our own home because Muslim clerics called for the murder of my father, and now the Government has set for us a new prison; we are imprisoned in our own country… I am 15 years old but I still have hope that my message will reach President Obama."

Dina and Maher el-Gowahry wanted to emigrate to the United States, but the administration failed to help them, perhaps fearful of enraging the Muslims they were trying to appease through "outreach" work. The Obama administration's refusal to consider the human rights of Christians in Egypt had catastrophic results for the father and daughter. In April 2010, Dina el-Gowrahy was subjected to an acid attack, and on July 5, 2010, Maher el-Gowrahy was stabbed in the neck.

Despite wallowing in money from America, Mubarak had made no attempt to improve the plight of Egypt's Christians. As noted by Raymond Ibrahim, in November 2010, Egyptian security forces opened fire upon Christians who had not followed discriminatory building regulations. The Copts had constructed the St. Mary and St. Michael churches in the district of Giza. Three unarmed Christians died from gunfire, and a small girl was suffocated by tear gas. Wounded demonstrators were handcuffed to hospital beds before being sent to detention camps.

A "confidential" American diplomatic document, sent to Wikileaks, described one incident of Muslim against Christian violence. The report stated that on January 7, 2010, gunmen with automatic weapons opened fire on Copts leaving church after celebrating Christmas Mass at Nag Hammadi. The place where the attack took place is famous as the place where Christian scriptures were discovered, almost 1700 years after they had been written. Six Copts were killed in the attack, along with a Muslim policeman who was guarding the church. Muslims then attacked Christian homes, and one 70-year old Christian woman died when her house was set on fire. The report stated:

The attack on Coptic church-goers in Naga Hamadi is the worst incident of sectarian violence since January 2000, when attacks on Coptic homes and farms near Kosheh, another small city in Upper Egypt, resulted in the deaths of 20 Copts and one Muslim. Egypt's MoI and some local commentators described the Naga Hamadi attack as criminal in nature, attempted to link it to the November rape of a Muslim girl by a Copt, and emphasized Upper Egypt's culture of revenge and vendetta. Despite this characterization, an attack on church-goers on one of the most significant days on the Coptic calendar is clearly sectarian. Copts have complained bitterly in recent years about the GoE's failure to use the criminal justice system to deal with sectarian attacks - including the Kosheh incident, which resulted in no convictions...

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Egypt: Christians, Revolution and Persecution