The Muslim world often gets away with things that would send shockwaves through the international community if anyone else did them.
On May 29, reports surfaced that Egypt was preparing to seize and potentially shut down the Greek Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine — the oldest continuously functioning Christian monastery in the world, nestled right at the foot of Mt. Sinai. Built by Emperor Justinian I around 550 AD on Mount Sinai, it has stood for nearly 1,500 years—making it centuries older than Islam.
According to the Church Times, a recent Egyptian court ruling “could result in the confiscation of the property and the eviction of its monks,” with rumored plans to convert parts of the monastery into a museum.
Even for a Muslim-majority country, this is a startling move. Adel Guindy, Egyptian historian and cofounder of Coptic Solidarity, explained:
According to the law [of Egypt], if someone occupies a desert plot and cultivates and develops it for a certain period (15 years?), they are legally entitled to own it, and thus have the right to sell it, pass it on, etc. The state cannot simply come years later and tell them — on a whim — that they were merely “beneficiaries” of the land and then seize it or force them to pay (a ransom?). So, what about this monastery, which has been continuously inhabited, developed, and cultivated for more than 1,450 years?!
What, indeed? Christian monks have been living in this monastery since before Muhammad was born.
Sacred Site
As such, St. Catherine’s is not just some monastery or church that Muslim Egypt is appropriating for its own uses, as it has to thousands of churches over the centuries. It is a UNESCO-protected site, which by definition means that the UN recognizes it for having “outstanding universal value to humanity”; it is, therefore, “protected under international conventions to ensure its preservation for future generations.”
In a May 29 statement, Ieronymos, the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, condemned the “scandalous decision involving the violent violation of human — and specifically religious — freedoms by the Egyptian judicial system,” adding “the Egyptian government has effectively chosen to dismantle every notion of justice and, with a single stroke, attempt to erase the very existence of the Monastery — abolishing its religious, spiritual, and cultural function. The Monastery’s property is being seized and expropriated.”
After calling on the international community to act, the archbishop closed by writing, “I do not want to believe — I cannot believe — that today Hellenism and Orthodoxy are experiencing yet another historical fall.”
“Today”? Yet another historical fall”? While many failed to understand his reference, he was clearly alluding to the fact that May 29 is the date on which Muslims conquered another ancient Greek Orthodox church also built by Justinian I: the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, another UNESCO-heritage site. In 2022, the Turkish government transformed it into yet another mosque — even though Istanbul already has over 3,000 mosques.
Egyptian Hypocrisy
In other words, the archbishop’s warning that the Egyptian court aims to “erase the very existence of the Monastery, abolishing its religious, spiritual, and cultural function” is what Islam has always done and continues to do — despite trying to be, and enjoying the benefits of being, a “standing member of the world community.” (As with Turkey, which really wants to be a member of the European Union).
Indeed, to show you Egypt’s sheer hypocrisy (if not stupidity), this latest court ruling blatantly disregarding UNESCO resolutions comes while Egypt is fervently campaigning for an Egyptian candidate to be the next Director-General of UNESCO! Look it up; his name is Khaled al-Enany.
Alright, let’s take a step back: To underscore how Muslim nations like Egypt and Turkey are spitting in the eye of the world, especially its Christians, it’s always best to consider how this would look if the West did something like this to Islam.
Of course, one cannot come up with any examples of Christians seizing mosques that were “always” Muslim. It’s quite the opposite. Almost all the land that now constitutes the “Muslim world” was taken by conquest and bloodshed — jihad — and mostly from Christians (all of North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia Minor), as well as from Persians, Hindus, and peoples further east.
Even during the crusades and Reconquista, when Christians transformed a few mosques into churches, they did so knowing full well that such mosques had once been churches. A notable example occurred during the Seventh Crusade, after King Louis IX put the Muslims of Egypt to flight following the June 6 battle of Damietta in 1249. That city’s massive mosque — once a church — was reconsecrated as a church, and Louis gave thanks to God for his victory in it. In the words of Louis’s mother, Blanche, “the site of the mosque, which some time ago — when the city was previously captured [by Muslims in the seventh century] — was the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was reconciled and thanks were given there to God Most High.”
Nor were the crusaders (unlike their modern descendants) oblivious to the fact that all of the Near East and North Africa — not just Jerusalem — were originally part of Christendom. Thus, Louis’s foundation charter for the reconsecration of the church-turned-mosque-turned-church again, dated November 1249, says things like: “after this country [Egypt] is liberated from the hands of the infidels” and “when this land is liberated.”
The New Kid on the Block
At any rate, the point here is that one cannot find identical examples of Christians, seizing the pre-existing mosques and Islamic holy sites. The reason for that is because Islam is some 600 years newer than Christianity, and, as such, it is the one that seized Christian buildings, sites, and entire nations, not vice versa. The same, incidentally, goes for Islam vis-à-vis all other civilizations and religions: it conquered and appropriated the sites and temples of Jews, Persians, Hindus, Buddhists, et. al. — not the other way around.
In other words, to underscore what Egypt is doing, we have to resort to our imaginations. Imagine, for a moment that there was an ancient Native American temple in North America, one that preceded European settlement by centuries — one that is of course a UNESCO site, and one to which thousands of Native Americans pilgrimage annually.
And now imagine the American government announcing that it is going to seize it and kick out its indigenous inhabitants and turn it into yet another church.
How do you think world media, the loud-mouth Left, and international wokery would react?
No such reaction was evident concerning Egypt’s recent ruling against St. Catherine.
Greece, on the other hand, was vocal enough to pressure Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, into issuing a vague reassurance about “preserving the sacred status” of the monastery. But the same statement claimed that the court ruling actually enhances that status — a bit of Orwellian gaslighting that fooled no one.
Pluralism
The truth is, Egypt has been menacing St. Catherine’s for years. In 2018, I documented how authorities shut down the monastery before Christmas services, seemingly to block Christian worship. And it’s not just the state — Bedouins, terrorists, and looters have long targeted the monastery, which lies in the volatile Sinai Peninsula.
In A Sword Over the Nile, a book that traces the plight of Egypt’s indigenous Christians under Islamic rule from the seventh century to the present, Guindy writes:
This historic monastery and its monks have suffered greatly through the ages, yet it has never faced such an existential threat — not under the Umayyads, the Abbasids, the Ayyubids, the Fatimids, the Mamluks, the Ottomans, the Muhammad Ali dynasty, or even the post-1952 July Officers’ regime, all the way through to 2012. Isn’t it astonishing that the current (“Neo-Ikhwan”?) Egyptian regime is now engaging in such deeply concerning actions?
Indeed it is. And it reveals something deeper: that subtle, legalistic forms of Islamic repression — couched in bureaucracy and judicial rulings — can be even more dangerous than overt violence. They occur quietly, without gunshots or explosions, and they’re easier for a distracted, naïve West to ignore.
Meanwhile, Western nations that have inherited historic Islamic sites treat them with reverence. Spain, for example, spends tens of millions of Euros annually — €28 million in 2022 alone — to preserve the Alhambra, a 14th-century Muslim palace built on previously Christian land. That’s what preservation and “pluralism” look like.
If only Egypt — and the rest of the Muslim world — offered the same.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.