U.S. Copts Association

Seven bishops to hold funeral service at site following attack in Upper Egypt.

January 20 (Compass) - One Christian has died and at least 11 Egyptians were reportedly injured yesterday morning when Muslims clashed with security police and set fire to a Christian community center in Upper Egypt.Coptic Christian Kamaal Shaker died of injuries he received when a group of Muslims set fire to an Orthodox-owned building in the town of el-Udaysaat, near the city of Luxor, said Youssef Sidhom, editor of the Egyptian weekly Watani.

Muslims who heard prayers from the all-night service in the community center threw torches into the building at 4 a.m. Thursday, Egyptian daily Al-Akhbar reported today. According to the newspaper, all those injured, including security guards Ahmad Hosni and Yasser Mahmood, were taken to Luxor International Hospital for treatment. Hosni was admitted to the intensive care unit for suffocation-related injuries.

Local sources told Compass that the center had been banned from holding religious services in 1971, when authorities told the congregation to apply for registration. Recently the community began to remodel the building and had planned to inaugurate it for use conducting prayer services.
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At least 12 people were injured in clashes in Upper Egypt when a group of Muslims attempted to stop Christians converting a house into a church.
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By David F. Dawes

THE DEPORTATION of 20 Egyptians from Canada has begun, and advocates for the group insist that they will be placed in severe danger if they are returned to Egypt.

The deportees, all of whom are Coptic Christians affiliated with the Church of Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius in Mississauga, tried unsuccessfully to obtain refugee status in this country.

Meanwhile, some Canadians have taken up their cause. They insist that the claimants will be subjected to discrimination by Egyptian authorities, and will be targeted by some of the country’s Islamic extremists.

The case has drawn some prominent media coverage. According to the January 4 National Post, the claimants maintain they are facing a perilous future: “Mina, a refused claimant who asked that his real name not be used, said he was stabbed multiple times in a 1998 confrontation with a group who later burned his welding shop in Alexandria.”

A group of Muslims, Mina told the Post, “called me at home, and they said: ‘We’re going to kill you.’” Further, “[They] told my brother-in-law, ‘We know he’s coming back soon, and we’re ready for him.’ I don’t know what’s going to happen to me, but I know I’m not going back to my home.’”
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Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald surveys the effects of the Islamic presence in Africa:

Islam has had its effect on Africa, all right. In the north, the thriving agriculture, and flourishing civilization of migrants and Phoenician traders and Jews and christianized Berbers, the Other Shore of Mediterranean civilization, from where among others Tertullian and Augustine of Hippo came, was destroyed by the Arab Muslim invaders, with the consequences for North Africa that we can all see. It was only in the period of French rule in Algeria, from 1830 to 1962, that agriculture was revived (including that of the vineyards), that the desertification that Arab non-methods of cultivation brought everywhere they conquered was reversed, and where universities, museums, and other outward and visible signs of civilization were established and maintained. For that moment, Algeria again possessed something like civilization — and now it has relapsed, as of course it could have been predicted that it would, into a scarcely endurable and violent place, where the only hope is to get, as those chanting crowds repeated when they came out to “greet” a visiting Jacques Chirac a year or two ago: “Visa, Visa!”

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By Spengler

Islam is the unexploded bomb of global politics. US foreign policy - the only foreign policy there is, for the United States is the only superpower - proceeds from the hope that a modern and democratic Islam will emerge from the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Through democratic institutions, Washington believes, the long-marginalized Shi’ites will adapt to religious pluralism. Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani’s Islam, fixed in amber since the High Middle Ages, will metamorphose into something like American mainline Protestantism.

Alas, the available facts suggest that the opposite result will ensue: more freedom equals more fundamentalism. Not the secular Shi’ite parties but the pro-Iranian religious parties dominate the Iraqi polls. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood quadrupled its vote despite heavy-handed measures to intimidate its supporters; Hamas threatens to displace Fatah in the Palestinian elections this month; Hezbollah has become the strongest electoral as well as military force in Lebanon; and, most important of all, Mahmud Ahmadinejad crushed a more pragmatic opponent in last June’s Iranian presidential elections.
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An Egyptian church leader answers questions about the situation faced by the 10-12 million Christians in Egypt today.

Q. Many people are surprised to learn that there is a Church in Egypt. How long have there been Christians in your country?

The Church in Egypt has existed for almost two thousand years, and throughout most of that time Christians have faced problems of many kinds.

Q. But some people say that Egyptian Christians do not face any difficulties or violence. They even quote some senior Egyptian church leaders to support these statements.

Many Egyptian church leaders are not able to make these problems public because they are afraid of what the secret police would do to them. They also know that the government is opposed to making the problems known and so they dare not speak freely and openly. Privately, speaking to those they trust, they will admit what is happening.

Q. We hear stories of Christian girls being kidnapped and raped. Can this really be true?

There are a growing number of attacks on Christian girls and young women. So many nowadays are being kidnapped and raped. The aim is to force them to convert to Islam and to humiliate the Christian community as a whole. Rape is being used as a weapon against Christians. Even the Arab media have begun discussing the issue, though they always say that each incident is the fault of the Christian.

I myself have met many of these girls and young women personally and I have heard them tell their stories. I know that it is true.

Q. What is the situation of Christians who have come from a Muslim background?

Converts from Islam have enormous problems. They often face threats and violence from their families. The authorities find any pretext to arrest and torture them and put them in prison. Sometimes they are put in high-security psychiatric hospitals on the grounds that they must be crazy.

Anyone who changes from Christian to Muslim can get a new ID card with their new religion on it quickly and easily, but those who convert from Muslim to Christian can never get their ID card changed. They are officially considered Muslims for ever, which causes huge problems for them. It is difficult for them to go to church, for female converts to marry a Christian man, to be buried as a Christian or to leave their property to Christian heirs. Anyone caught baptising a convert from Islam to Christianity would probably go to jail.
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Cairo (dap) - Egypt’s first Christian provincial governor in three decades was sworn in Monday, the first working day of the country’s new government.

Egyptian President Hosny Mubarak had on Sunday appointed Magdy Ayoub Iskandar as governor of Qena, a province nearly 1,000 kilometres south of Cairo with a sizeable Christian population. Iskandar was among 26 provincial governors who took their oaths of office on Monday.

Iskander is the first Coptic Christian to become governor since former president Anwar al-Sadat appointed Coptic war veteran Fouad Aziz Ghali as governor of South Sinai province after the 1973 war.

The Egyptian constitution does not require officials in top government posts to have a certain religious affiliation. However, some positions, such as the head of intelligence and university deans, have in the past been held only by Moslems.

In his address before the new governors, President Mubarak urged them to guard the social fabric of Egyptian society, with its Moslems and Copts, in dealing with their problems, especially those related to building places of worship.
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