Showing posts with label Coptic Christians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Coptic Christians. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2016
Inside Story - Are Christians Being Targeted in Egypt?
Monday, February 16, 2015
ISIS Sets Its Sights on Europe in Latest Beheading Video
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| Relatives of Egyptian Coptic Christians purportedly murdered by Islamic State (IS) group militants in Libya react after hearing the news on February 16, 2015 in the village of Al-Awar in Egypt's southern province of Minya. |
The executioner speaks in English and points his knife toward the Mediterranean. “We will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission,” he says.
The video released by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Sunday showing the killings of 21 Egyptian Christian workers, appeared to be directed at the Christian world, the continent of Europe and gloried in its brutality.
It was filmed in Libya on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea. The video made no reference to the other powers in Libya’s civil war, in which both of the country’s rival governments claim to be combating ISIS. » | Jared Malsin | Cairo | Monday, February 16, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
Islamic State: Egyptian Christians Held in Libya 'Killed'
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| Egyptians had protested earlier this week calling for the return of the kidnapped Copts |
The footage shows a group wearing orange overalls, being forced to the ground and then decapitated.
It was posted online by Libyan jihadists who say they are allied with IS.
Egypt's president had earlier this week offered to airlift Egyptian expatriates out of Libyan territory.
The kidnapped Egyptian workers, all Coptic Christians, were seized from the coastal town of Sirte in eastern Libya, now under the control of Islamist groups. » | Sunday, February 15, 2015
Monday, August 05, 2013
Religious Rage: Will Egypt's Muslims & Copts Live in Peace? – Documentary
Sunday, September 23, 2012
CANADIAN BROADCASTING CORPORATION: Coptic Christian Nader Fawzy denies involvement, worries about his family's safety
A Coptic Christian activist say he fears for his family's safety after being accused of playing a role in the notorious anti-Islam film that has sparked violence throughout the Muslim world.
Nader Fawzy, speaking at a news conference in Toronto on Saturday, said he has been the target of threats emanating from Egypt over the Innocence of Muslims trailer released on the internet over the summer.
Fawzy has long been an activist for Egypt's Coptic Christian community, which makes up one-tenth of that country's population.
Fawzy said his name appeared in a published list of people involved in the film, an action he says amounts to a fatwa, or religious edict.
He told reporters on Saturday he believes the Egyptian government put his name on the list out of revenge for his work as a Coptic activist who has campaigned for better treatment of Egypt's minority Christian population.
"Once there is a fatwa, you don’t know who is coming to kill you, to shoot you," he said. "It's not just about the Egyptian government anymore. There is no safety at all. Once the fatwa is published, anyone can come to kill me or my kids or my family in Egypt." » | CBC News | Saturday, September 22, 2012
Sunday, May 23, 2010
THE NEW YORK SUN: The leaders of Coptic Christians, whose community is facing growing persecution in Egypt, say they have been unsuccessful in efforts to gain a hearing from the White House or other parts of the Obama administration.
Heightened persecution of Egypt’s 12 million Christians coupled with growing power and prestige of their Coptic Diaspora in America and Australia is leading to new political efforts here. Educated and skilled Egyptian Copts who migrated in large numbers in recent decades are talking to Congress, organizing lobbies, and making other efforts to be heard.
They say they are frustrated by the current administration in Washington, particularly after President Obama’s overture to the Muslim world via a speech at Cairo. In the speech Mr. Obama President apologized for America’s misdeeds to Muslims, stating that he came “to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world.” Coptic leaders say that even while reaching out to Muslims the administration has turned a deaf ear to the pleas Arab Christian minority in the very country where he delivered his apology to Muslims.
“The Obama administration’s benign neglect of Arab Christians, is putting freedoms and human rights in the whole Middle East at risk,” is the way it was put in an interview with the Sun by the president of the U.S. Copts Association, Michael Meunier, who is headquartered in Washington “Friendships with Muslims has been the Obama Administration’s opening theme from his first day in office and in that famed Cairo speech in which he extended a hand to all Muslims in partnership.”
Mr. Meunier added that that the president’s failure to speak as extensively about the persecution of Arab Christians was a departure from American policy and a grave error. “We have no problems with American friendships with Islam and Muslims, but it cannot be accomplished at the expense of our rights as Egyptian Christians and Arab Christians, and as the very lives of our people there are endangered,” Mr. Meunier told the Sun.
One area of complaint by the Copt community is a law banning the repair or construction of churches without a “presidential decree.” The measure, known as the Hamayuni Law, is based on an 1856 Ottoman decree but was rarely enforced in Egypt under the monarchial dynasty overthrown by army officers in 1952.
Indeed, until the coup that put Gamal Abdel Nasser in power in 1952, Christian communities in Egypt — including Catholics, Protestants, Armenians, Greeks and Italians in addition to the Copts — enjoyed a climate of moderate Islam as the country westernized itself. Because Christianity in Egypt is so ancient, preceding Islam by seven centuries, … >>> Yousseff Ibrahim, Special to the Sun | Saturday, May 22, 2010
Saturday, January 16, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: Europe and the Islamic world are at war. It's a proxy conflict, fought in European capitals and on the Arab streets. But people are being killed.
Earlier this month, Islamic gunmen slaughtered six Christians as they left church in southern Egypt on Coptic Christmas Eve, setting off a week of retributive violence. This was just the latest incident in a cascading series of repressive and violent acts against Christians living in numerous Arab states, including the Palestinian territories, Iraq and Morocco, among other places.
Meantime, across Europe, government leaders are contemplating or enacting ever-more repressive rules on Muslim residents and citizens, who are carrying their lifestyles and grievances into unforgiving societies.
The most famous example: The Swiss electorate voted last month to ban the construction of new minarets. Then, early this month, a fiery Islamic cleric in England announced that he would organize a large protest march through the streets of a town near London that regularly honors passing hearses carrying British soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "personally appalled," and then on Tuesday Britain banned the group.
In both worlds, the conflicts result from misunderstanding and outright intolerance, fanned oftentimes by extremists**, like Geert Wilders, a Dutch member of parliament. He travels the Western world preaching an anti-Islamic screed. Wilders has hit a chord, and the transcript of one speech he gave in New York last year has gone viral, landing in millions of e-mail in-boxes and watched on YouTube nearly 1 million times.
Wilders likes to note that "it is not a coincidence that every terrorist act is based on this fascist book the Quran, this wrong ideology, and unfortunately has been done by people from the Islamic world. I don't believe that cultures are equal. I believe that our culture is much better than the retarded Islamic culture."
In England, meanwhile, Anjem Choudary, leader of the banned Islamic group, posted his view on his organization's Web site recently, saying the march (now canceled) would be in honor of "the real war dead who have been shunned by the Western media and general public as they were, and continue to be, horrifically murdered in the name of democracy and freedom: the innocent Muslim man, women and children."
An estimated 20 million Muslims now live in Europe. Many emigrated to take menial jobs that Europeans were no longer willing to do. The problem for Europeans is that these immigrants tend not to assimilate. They live in their own communities where some of their leaders enforce elements of Shariah law. >>> Joel Brinkley* | Saturday, January 16, 2010
*Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.
**Joel Brinkley’s viewpoint.
Friday, January 08, 2010
THE GUARDIAN: Churchgoers targeted after Coptic Christmas Eve mass in apparent payback for alleged rape of Muslim girl by Christian
Clashes between thousands of protesters and riot police shook Egypt today after six Coptic Christians were murdered, prompting some of the worst sectarian violence the country has seen.
The victims were gunned down in a drive-by shooting as they emerged from church in the early hours of this morning following a Coptic Christmas Eve mass. Egypt's interior ministry said it believed the attack, in the southern town of Naga Hammadi, 40 miles north of Luxor, was in revenge for the alleged rape of a 12-year-old Muslim girl by a Christian man last year. A Muslim security guard was also killed.
"It is all religious now," said the church's Bishop Kirollos. "This is a religious war, about how they can finish off the Christians in Egypt." >>> Jack Shenker in Cairo | Thursday, January 07, 2010
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