Faiyum / Egypt

A village in al-Fayyūm governorate experienced sectarian sedition when Coptic villagers tried to rebuild an Evangelical church and its wall that were destroyed during an earthquake which hit Egypt in 1992.

A defrocked pastor and his son pass themselves off as Evangelical pastors and issue distorted conversion and marriage documents.

The author comments on the recent Shūrá

Council’s mid-term elections. He believes that the coverage of the election was mediocre, and that poor press coverage

of events is helping to further distance the concept of citizenship.

Victor Wahīb Fām was the only Coptic

candidate who ran for the Shūrá Council elections of al-Fayyūm governorate, but security pressure

forced him to concede his candidacy in favor of the National Democratic Party candidate Hānī Sayf al-Naṣr.

A Copt was forced to withdraw from the Shūrá Council elections in the interest of the nominee of the ruling National Democratic Party. While the church urges Coptic youth to lead a positive role in public life and calls to establish a Muslim-Christian committee for this aim, many Coptic thinkers criticized the church’s initiative, saying that it was a part of the church plans to dominate the Copts’ political orientations.

Days before the Shūrá Council elections, the electoral campaigns have witnessed heated battles between the candidates of the Muslim Brotherhood and the ruling National Democratic Party. Both struggling blocks have accused each other of violating the law and showing religious references on their electoral posters.

Sectarian strife in Egypt has been a hot topic of contention in the media. The following article presents a synopsis of incidents that have occurred in Egypt in the recent years. The author considers the reasons behind these attacks, the similar situations that they share, that is attacks that have occurred on Fridays, and the media coverage of these incidents.

Two young women, Maryān Mīlād and Teresa ‘Ayyād, were last Monday returned to their families by the police after a reported conversion to Islam followed by three days of demonstrations by the Coptic youth community at the Mar Girgis Church, in denunciation of what the protesters described as the forced conversion of Coptic women to Islam.

Egyptian authorities recently managed to avoid a new clash with the Copts by handing over two young ladies to the Fayyoum Church after seriously considering their conversion to Islam. Demonstrations in front of the church occurred after rumors had spread. The rumors were that local authorities refused to hand over the two girls to their families for advice sessions before officially declaring their conversion to Islam.

A group of Coptic Orthodox clergymen launch a big campaign against the “autocracy” of Bishop Bīshūy, general secretary of the Holy Synod. The report made accusations against Bishop Bīshūy and severely criticized his policy and questioned the legitimacy of his ordination.