U.S. Copts Association

A leading German Muslim official today lashed out at efforts to force the integration of Germany’s 3.5 million Muslims.

Chairman of Annemarie Schimmel Forum Mohammad Aman H. Hobohm said during his opening address at the “Religion and Integration” conference in Berlin, “You can’t demand integration, and it cannot be imposed by the state. The readiness for integration must come from within Muslims.” He added that “the willingness of Muslims to hold a dialogue is often marred by public accusations.”
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Abd-al-Karim Suleiman was an Egyptian blogger - he put his material on the web under the name “Karim Amer”.
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Believers forced to declare they set their own homes on fire.

ISTANBUL, February 22 (Compass Direct News) - Police detained Christian families in Upper Egypt and forced them to deny arson attacks on their homes during a spate of anti-Christian violence last week, the families said. Two Coptic Orthodox families said police detained them for 36 hours when they attempted to report a February 13 assault on their homes in Armant, 600 kilometers (373 miles) south of Cairo. The fires came five days after Muslim groups set four Christian-owned shops alight on February 9. International media reported that rumors of a love affair between a Christian man and Muslim woman sparked the violence, but local papers said hostilities began over accusations that Christians were blackmailing Muslim women to convert. Authorities detained the Christians when they tried to report the February 13 arson attack on their homes. “Police asked them to sign statements that they had attempted to set their own homes on fire to claim that they were being attacked by Muslims and to demand police protection,” one source told Compass.

Christians report shelling of churches, deaths and disappearance of priests.

DUBLIN, February 20 (Compass Direct News) - Following a renewed outbreak of civil war between the Sri Lankan government and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, churches in the northeast are fast becoming another war casualty. Since hostilities resumed in earnest last year, churches on the Jaffna Peninsula have provided shelter to hundreds of internally displaced people (IDPs), prompting retaliatory raids by the Sri Lankan army. “One wonders if the attacks on churches are just a coincidence, or an attempt by the government to warn the clergy not to give protection to these defenseless people,” one source, who preferred to remain anonymous, told Compass. The same source said those speaking out for IDPs were often silenced by intimidation or “elimination,” often in the form of unexplained disappearances.

Two Saudi clerics issued a fatwa forbidding women from accessing the Internet without the presence of a male guide.

Source: Al-Qabas, Kuwait, February 16, 2007

CAIRO (Reuters) - Groups of Egyptian Muslims set fire to Christian-owned shops in southern Egypt after hearing rumours of a love affair between a Muslim woman and a Coptic Christian man, security sources and a witness said on Tuesday.

Eight Muslim men were arrested in the town of Armant, around 600 km (375 miles) south of Cairo, on suspicion of taking part in arson attacks on four stores and a mini-van owned by Coptic Christians, the security sources said.
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CAIRO, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Groups of Egyptian Muslims set fire to Christian-owned shops in southern Egypt after hearing rumours of a love affair between a Muslim woman and a Coptic Christian man, security sources and a witness said on Tuesday.

Eight Muslim men were arrested in the town of Armant, around 600 km (375 miles) south of Cairo, on suspicion of taking part in arson attacks on four stores and a mini-van owned by Coptic Christians, the security sources said.
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INDIA - On Saturday, February 10, a 58-year-old Christian, S. Stanley, was stabbed and killed by rioting youth in front of his house in Pavaloor, Kerala State, India.

According to contacts working with The Voice of The Martyrs, youths assembled in front of Stanley’s house shouting blasphemous abuses against Christians. “Stanley and his wife came out of their home and asked the youths to leave. This angered them further and they began stoning the house and tried violently to force themselves through Stanley’s gate,” VOM contacts said.
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CAIRO, Egypt (WOMENSENEWS)–In the past few years, young women from the minority Coptic community here–about 8 million in the predominantly Muslim population of 70 million–have left home under mysterious circumstances.

Police and media have reported scores of missing women over the past few years and many quickly return to their families without much explanation.

Some Coptic families have alleged that the women were kidnapped by Muslim men and forced to undergo conversion to Islam.

But some women’s rights advocates here argue that these are not kidnappings. More often, they see these cases as cries for help by young women in the socially conservative Coptic community, which traces its church to the first century when, by traditional belief, the apostle Mark founded it in Egypt as the first Christian church in history.
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