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Islamists in Minya, Egypt held Muslim prayers inside three destroyed Coptic Churches after they were destroyed this week. Copts pray inside the Church of St. Moses (Moussa), destroyed by Muslim rioters in Minya, Egypt, Aug. 14-15, 2013. (Rotati Caeli) Islamists prayed in three Coptic Churches in Minya on Saturday.The Muslims believe that any place in which they pray has to be turned into a mosque.Wataninet reported: In the ruins of three of the churches the Islamists had attacked and burned in the Minya region in Upper Egypt, the Islamists yesterday gathered and held Muslim prayers. The three churches are...

Over 60 churches across Egypt have been targeted by Muslim Brotherhood sympathizers as conflict rages across the country. Nonetheless, Coptic Christians are now returning to their church in Minya, which was burned by raging Islamists. “This will learn us to be better Christians” said Pastor Sameh Ibrahim. Fourteen churches in the area were burned in the past few days. In Minya, Christian churches have been slathered with black Xs to mark them for violence by Islamists.

History of the Coptic Christians

Since ex-president Morsy's ouster on July 3, attacks on Egyptian Christians by members of the Muslim Brotherhood have taken place in most governorates across Egypt. These attacks have escalated since security forces ended the pro-Morsy protests in central Cairo on August 14th. During their 6-weeks of protests, Muslim Brotherhood leaders explicitly threatened to harm the Copts should they be forced to end their protests, which they vowed to prolong until Morsy is restored to power. "Over the past weeks we have witnessed an increasing trend of anti-Christian rhetoric calling for 'the attack upon and eradication of Christians and churches' in...

Amid escalating violence against Egypt’s Copts, churches in Minya, located in upper Egypt, cancelled Sunday Mass for the first time in 1,600 years. Other churches in Minya also didn’t hold prayer services. "We did not hold prayers in the monastery on Sunday for the first time in 1,600 years,” Priest Selwanes Lotfy of the Virgin Mary and Priest Ibram Monastery in Degla, just south of Minya, told the al-Masry al-Youm daily. He said supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi destroyed the monastery, which includes three churches, one of which is an archaeological site. “One of the extremists wrote on the...

The Muslim Broterhood has cut a swath of violence and destruction across Egpyt:

Mideast: Christians in Egypt are again the target of Islamist Muslim Brotherhood supporters using the new violence as a cover for ongoing persecution. If Christians were burning mosques, the world would be outraged. Amid the raging violence in Egypt, a less-publicized war is being waged against Egypt's long-persecuted Coptic Christians, this time using the excuse that they were somehow involved in the military's ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohammed Morsi from power. Coptic Christians comprise up to 10% of Egypt's 84 million people. Ishaq Ibrahim from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights group has documented as many as 39 incidents...

Violence in Egypt has taken a dark turn for sectarianism as more than 45 churches and Coptic institutions were torched or stormed across the country. The wave of attacks against Copts and their houses of worship, businesses, schools and homes came as Egypt’s security forces dispersed two large pro-Morsi sit-ins in Cairo. In cities across Egypt, from Sohag and Minya to Cairo and Assiut, Islamists took to the streets attacking churches. In one case in Minya, a Coptic man and his wife were detained before being killed by armed individuals. In one incident, Islamists torched parts of one of Egypt’s...

The Muslim Brotherhood has persecuted Coptic Christians, burned their churches, (both before and after the military crackdown), caused tens of thousands of Coptic Christians to flee the country and even went so far as to institute apartheid-like, segregated, Muslim-only zones in Egypt before the military intervened to try and restore freedom. Where is the equal outrage by Obama over this? Where are McCain and Lindsey Graham on this? Did McCain get any photo-ops with Coptic Christians in Egypt when he was over in the region visiting Syria a little while back? Didn't they both travel to the region together recently?...

What do Muslim Brotherhood members do when Egyptian Security Forces launch a forewarned operation to clear them from Cairo tent cities? Attack Christians. That's right.Morsi supporters responded with a monumental attack--unprecedented in modern times--on churches throughout Egypt. The torching and destruction of churches occured within six hours of the start of the military crackdown. Many Muslims opposed the violent response against Christians. Some Salafists urged the Brotherhood to halt the attacks, and even some Muslims in Upper Egypt reportedly helped Christians defend churches.One destroyed church in Upper Egypt was built in the fourth century.Here's the list of burned churches and...

Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood attend a protest in support of ousted Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, in Cairo, Egypt, 12 August 2013. EPA/KHALED ELFIQIChurches burned across Egypt following the security crackdown on pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators. Online reports suggest up to 17 churches were burned across Egypt, along with other Christian-owned businesses and schools.    Coptic witnesses and religious leaders said the attacks were carried out by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in areas without police protection. In some areas, the attacks reportedly came amid ongoing fighting between security forces and supporters of the Muslim...

Days ago, al-Qaeda’s Egyptian leader, Ayman Zawahiri, portrayed the overthrow of Muhammad Morsi and the Brotherhood as a “Crusader” campaign led by Coptic Pope Tawadros II who, according to Zawahiri and other terrorists, is trying to create a Coptic state in Egypt. Since then, not only are Egypt’s Christians and churches now being attacked in ways unprecedented in the modern era, but new reports indicate that al-Qaeda’s black flag has been raised on some of them, specifically St. George Church in Sohag. Considering that it was al-Qaeda linked terrorists who initiated one of the bloodiest church attacks in recent history,...

Amidst continuing unrest in Egypt, the country's Coptic Christian minority is facing an alarming campaign of violence at the hands of Islamist extremists. In the most recent case, the decapitated body of 60 year old Magdy Habashi was found early Thursday in a cemetery in the town of Sheikh Zweid, in northern Sinai, after being abducted last Saturday by suspected Islamist radicals. He was the second Christian to be killed in northern Sinai in less than a week, following the assassination of Coptic Christian priest Mena Aboud Sharoben in the coastal city of Arish by suspected Islamist gunmen last Saturday....

Fears have been raised over the plight of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community, after a series of attacks—including the assassination of a priest and an arson attack against a church—following the ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President, Mohammed Morsi. According to Al Masri al-Youm, 39 year-old Mena Aboud Sharoben was gunned down in the coastal city of Arish on Saturday, by unknown gunmen riding a motorcycle. Sharoben was a local Coptic priest, and his murder was one of several attacks by suspected Islamist terrorists over the past few days, who also targeted at least three military checkpoints and El Arish Internation Airport...

Giorgio Bernardelli Vatican Insider Roma 6 July 2013 http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/nel-mo...to-egypt-26268/ [Machine translation of the Italian; no English version yet available] A Coptic priest was killed this morning in Egypt in an ambush in all probability due to the situation created in the country after the overthrow of President Islamist Mohammed Morsi. The murder took place in the town of El Arish in northern Sinai. The victim's father called Mina, was 39 years old and was the secretary of the Coptic bishop of El Arish Kosman. The cleric was shot while he was in the car with his wife, who would be...

28 June 2013 TO ALL THE FAITHFUL OF THE ANGLICAN CHURCH IN NORTH AMERICA: Archbishop Mouneer Anis has been a friend of the Anglican Church in North America from our beginning, and before. He is a Global Trustee of the Anglican Relief and Development Fund. The situation in Egypt is "on the edge." Please pray for Archbishop Mouneer, his family, his clergy, his people, for Pope Tawadros II, for the Coptic Church and for Egypt. Ask the Lord to intervene. (He has a history of intervening in Egypt!) Thank you for your charity and your faithfulness in responding to this...

(CNSNews.com) – Seven years after Sunni Islam’s foremost institution severed dialogue with the Vatican over remarks by Pope Benedict XVI, the Cairo-based Al-Azhar wants the new pontiff to open the door to resuming interfaith discourse by declaring Islam to be a peaceful religion. The proposal that Pope Francis make such a public declaration prompted Coptic Christian advocates to suggest that Al-Azhar’s grand imam instead denounce Muslim violence against Copts in Egypt. Established in the 10th century, Al-Azhar is regarded as the top seat of learning in Sunni Islam. The suggestion for a papal gesture came from grand imam Ahmed al-Tayyeb’s...

Attacks on Christian children, both boys and girls, are on the rise in Egypt. Last week, a six-year-old Coptic Christian boy named Cyril Yusuf Sa‘ad was abducted and held for ransom. After his family paid off the Muslim kidnapper, Ahmed Abdel Moneim Abdel-Salam, he still killed the child and threw his body in the sewer of his house. In the words of the Arabic report, the boy’s “family is in tatters after paying 30,000 pounds to the abductor, who still killed the innocent child and threw his body into the toilet of his home, where the body, swollen and moldy,...

We are witnesses to murder,and our governments are accomplices. The relentless destruction of the last remnants of the Middle East’s Judeo-Christian civilization is well under way. And we are silent. Captives of political correctness,our governments cater to radical immigrant tantrums as our leaders contort the truth to deny the existence of Islamist terrorism. Meanwhile,our Middle Eastern “allies” and foes alike eradicate thousands of years of Jewish and Christian heritage. Our diplomats treat the persecution as a minor embarrassment,best ignored. The banishments and butchery aren’t new, but the breakdown of the last rotting order in the wake of the “Arab Spring”...

ASSIUT, Egypt — An Egyptian court has convicted a Coptic Christian lawyer in the southern province of Assiut on charges of blasphemy and sentenced him to one year in prison with hard labor. The verdict against Roman Murad Saad was handed down on Saturday. It’s the latest in a surge of blasphemy cases following Egypt’s 2011 uprising. ... Court officials say Saad was found guilty of ridiculing Islam’s holy book, the Quran, at a lawyers’ union library. No further details were immediately available in the case.