Open season on Christians in Egypt

Egypt is one of the places in the world where it is not safe to pronounce yourself a follower of Jesus Christ. Raymond Ibrahim reports that

This anti-Christian fury is far from sated and has taken on genocidal proportions.

Days after the overthrow of Morsi, the supreme leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badie, was first to attack by name Coptic Pope Tawadros for supporting the popular June 30 Revolution, which saw tens of millions of Egyptians take to the streets. After Badie’s demonization of the Copts, assaults on Christians began in earnest. Many churches were attacked and burned and several Christians were murdered in Upper Egypt; over in the Sinai, a young Coptic priest was shot dead, while the body of Magdy Lam‘i Habib, a Christian, was found mutilated and beheaded. Due to the many death threats to Pope Tawadros, he has left the papal residence at the St. Mark Cathedral—which was earlier savagely attacked, when Morsi was still president.

All throughout Upper Egypt—in Minya, Asyut, Sohag—Christians and their churches are under attack; dozens of Coptic homes and businesses have been set on fire. Due to the risk to Christian lives, many churches are no longer holding regular worship services.

The situation has gotten so dire that Ibrahim Eissa, a popular Egyptian journalist and TV personality, apparently unable to keep silent over the plight of the Copts, recently said on live TV: “The Christians have suffered in Egypt, over the course of 2 ½ years. Their churches have been burned, their children killed. The Maspero Massacre occurred, where several Copts were slain. Catastrophic fatwas appeared, calling them infidels and inciting against them…. No one has suffered as much as they. Today, if any Christian attempts to join a protest, he does so at the risk of defying dozens of fatwas calling for his death and decapitation and the burning of churches, especially in Upper Egypt.”