Imagine for a moment if there was a non-Christian nation with a long and well documented history of anti-Christian activity; and in this nation, the few churches that do exist, are regularly attacked, often by angry mobs, with almost a dozen torched every year.
Such hostility goes on year after year, until suddenly, one year, all of the attacks on churches cease. But then, just as suddenly, roughly the same amount of churches continue to burn—not, you are then told, due to any of that usual anti-Christian hostility, but rather due to random accidents—chief among them being that those silly Christians keep forgetting to put out their votary candles.
Would you believe it or would you think something nefarious is afoot?
As it happens, this situation is not hypothetical but rather very real; and the nation where this exact scenario has been unfolding in for some years now is Muslim majority Egypt, which holds a 12-15 percent Christian minority, the Copts.
Over the previous few decades, attacks on churches, from both terrorists, but mostly mobs, have been a common feature of Egypt. In the words of researcher Magdi Khalil, “close to one thousand churches have been attacked or torched by mobs in the last five decades [since the 1970s] in Egypt.” (This is to say nothing of the tens of thousands of churches that went up in flames from the seventh century Muslim conquest of Coptic Egypt, up until the twentieth century. Indeed, if the Muslim historian al-Maqrizi is to be believed, in just one year alone, 1009, thirty-thousand churches were torched in Egypt and Greater Syria.)
Since around 2021, however, attacks on churches in Egypt came to a sudden, and most welcome, stop. But then, almost immediately they picked up again—though now they are always presented as products of accidents, “faulty wires,” lit candles, and so on. Worse, it appears that more churches are “catching fire” nowadays compared to former years, when they were openly being fire bombed.
The most recent episode occurred a few days ago, on Friday, May 2, 2025: A massive fire “broke out” at the St. George Church in Qift, Qena governorate. The entire church and its contents were engulfed by the inferno. Although no casualties were reported, according to the report, St. George’s “is an ancient church with a historical character and deep religious symbolism for the people of Qena Governorate. It holds a special place in everyone’s hearts as a spiritual and cultural landmark that hosts numerous religious and social events annually.”
Two days later, on May 4, Egyptian officials announced that “the fire started when an incense burner with a lit candle inside was left in the prayer hall inside the church, after religious rituals had been completed and the church was closed.” Not only is such a thing unheard of—Coptic churches never place candles in incense holders—but one would think that the Christians would, at this point, be wary of leaving “lit candles” in their churches, seeing how many have burned in recent months and years from this supposed reason (or rather pretext).
Also left unsaid is the fact that the burning of St. George Church in Qift occurred on the same week when Muslim fanatics hysterically demonstrated and rioted on the (fake and absurd) accusation that an 80-year-old Christian man molested a Muslim 6-year-old child. Coincidence?
At any rate, a few weeks earlier, on March 17, 2025, another fire “broke out” in another Coptic church, St. Athanasius the Apostolic Church in the Qalyub al-Mahta district. Once again, authorities pointed to “natural causes,” ruling out arson.
A few weeks before that, on February 5, 2025, another fire broke out inside the Church of the Archangel Michael, in another village of Qena. Authorities again pointed to a supposed “lit candle” as the culprit.
There are many such examples; a few more follow:
- Aug. 31, 2024: A massive fire “broke out” in the Coptic Diocese of Beni Suef in Egypt, consuming all of the five-story Christian building’s contents.
- Mar. 24, 2024: A fire broke out in the Church of St. George in Akhmim, Sohag governorate.
- Feb. 20, 2023: A fire broke out on Sunday in the Church of the Virgin in the village of Asker, Al-Saff District, Giza Governorate, and devoured the contents of the church.
One can go on and on. In one month alone, August 2022, when this phenomenon of churches accidentally “catching fire” first began in earnest, a full 11 churches were torched. In one of these fires, 41 Christian worshippers, including many children, were burned alive in the inferno.
In every one of these cases, the authorities ruled out—sometimes rather quickly, before the flames had died out—arson.
So many “accidental” fires suggest one of two things: either the “radicals” have—possibly with insider help, including from sympathizers within state security—become more sophisticated and clandestine in their attacks on churches (in one instance, a surveillance camera caught a votary candle suddenly and randomly exploding and creating a fire); or else Coptic Christians, for some inexplicable reason, have become the most careless and fire-prone people in the entire world: more Coptic churches than any other kind seem to keep “catching fire.”
Considering that the Copts are much more careful with their churches than most Christians—precisely because their churches are so few and widely suppressed and under attack in Egypt—it would seem that the former explanation, that the radicals and their state abettors are the ones behind these constant “accidental” fires, is more logical.
Moreover, if it is true that lit candles, faulty wires, and other electrical problems are behind this upsurge in church fires, why are “accidental” fires in mosques and Muslim prayer halls—which outnumber churches in Egypt by a ratio of 60 to 1—completely unheard of?
Surely the candles, wires, and electrical circuits of Egypt are also not “radical” and biased against churches?
The bottom line is this: up until a few years ago, it was very common to hear of several Coptic churches being torched every year by rioting Muslims in Egypt; in the last few years, however, there have been virtually no such open attacks on churches—even as the same amount of if not more churches continue to burn every year.
Is this sheer “coincidence” or business as usual—though under a new cover?