U.S. Copts Association

By MICHAEL FREUND

Saudi officials have arrested a man in Mecca for being a Christian, saying that the city, which Muslims consider to be holy, is off-limits to non-Muslims.

Nirosh Kamanda, a Sri Lankan Christian, was detained by the Saudi Expatriates Monitoring Committee last week after he started to sell goods outside Mecca’s Great Mosque.

After running his fingerprints through a new security system, Saudi police discovered that he was a Christian who had arrived in the country six months earlier to take a job as a truck driver in the city of Dammam. Kamanda had subsequently left his place of work and moved to Mecca.
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Cairo - Egypt on Wednesday protested an International Labour Organisation (ILO) report accusing the Muslim-dominated state of discriminating against the Coptic Christian labour force (Copts), newspaper reports said.
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Written by Elizabeth Kendal, World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (WEA RLC), ANS  

Security increasingly tenuous for Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christians

AUSTRALIA (ANS) – On 11 May, Muslims in the village of Bimha (or Bamha) in Ayat district (around 70 kilometres south Cairo) left their mosques after Friday prayers, armed and zealous for jihad against the indigenous Coptic Christian community and their solitary, partially built church.

The violent Muslim pogrom in Bimha bears the same features of other anti-Christian pogroms of the past decade. These familiar elements indicate that the security situation for Egypt’s indigenous Copts (who are Christian) is growing increasingly tenuous. For every time violence is rewarded with impunity it is emboldened.
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By BosNewsLife News Center

CAIRO, EGYPT (BosNewsLife) — Hundreds of indigenous missionaries and other believers in North Africa’s expanding underground churches are “constantly in danger of persecution, imprisonment, and death,” amid Muslim extremism in the region, a mission group said Friday, May 25.

Christian Aid Mission (CAM), which supports indigenous missionaries in the region, made the announcement after learning that a woman, identified as Fatima, was nearly killed by her husband, Salam, after he discovered she was a Christian.

“Fatima refused his demands to renounce Christ and follow Islamic rituals of praying and fasting. Salam stabbed her in the chest, and if neighbors had not intervened, he would have cut her hand off,” CAM told BosNewsLife in a statement.
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By Tarek Heggy

If I were a Copt I would have split the skies of Egypt and the world with the sound of my voice decrying the oppressive climate in which Egypt’s Copts are living today.
 If I were a Copt I would have let the world know of the inequity that has plagued the lives of many Copts since 1952 and kept them from occupying the political and senior administrative posts they deserve.
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By Dan Wooding
Founder of ASSIST Ministries
CAIRO, EGYPT (ANS) – A global coalition of Coptic Christians is calling on governments of the world to demand that Egypt stop religious persecution of Coptic Christians and guarantee religious freedom and justice for all citizens.

For nearly four decades, the Coptic Christians in Egypt have been targeted by a wave of brutal attacks on their persons, churches, homes and businesses, the Catholic News Agency reports.

The Ibn Khaldoun Research Center has documented over 120 major attacks on the Copts during this period,” said the Catholic News Agency story. “Another study estimated that over 4,000 Copts were killed or injured in this period. They have also suffered material losses in the tens of millions of dollars.

“The researchers noted that many of these attacks took place on Fridays, after the Muslim prayers in mosques. As well, the vast majority of these attacks were not committed by organized terrorist groups, but by ordinary people from the neighborhood.”
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Members of Congress, and good afternoon. My name is Michael Meunier, and I am pleased to testify on behalf of the U.S. Copts Association regarding human rights and religious freedom abuses against Egypt’s Coptic and other minorities. I will begin with a review of some recent human and civil rights abuses against Copts and Bahai’s, and move on to offer some policy recommendations for U.S. lawmakers.

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Nina Shea, Vice Chair of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has recently presented a Briefing on “Religious Freedom in Egypt: Recent Developments” before the Task Force on Religious Freedom Of the United States House of Representatives. The Commission’s Annual Report was published on 2 May 2007. The section on Egypt is on pages 203-211 of the report. The testimony was presented by Ms. Shea on 23 May 2007.

As the briefing went into great details in describing the violations of religious freedoms of the various minorities in Egypt, and because of the known focus of this blog, this post will point mainly to the sections of the briefing where it mentioned the crisis currently facing the Baha’is of Egypt.

In the introductory paragraphs it states: “…These violations include continued prosecution in state security courts and imprisonment of those accused of “unorthodox” Islamic religious beliefs or practices, including those who are not militants; discrimination against, restrictions on, interference with, and harassment and surveillance of members of non-Muslim religious minorities, particularly Christians and Baha’is, by the Egyptian state security services….”
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PRESS RELEASE                                       

   Contact: copts@copts.com

 Washington, D.C. (05/22/07)- As part of its continuous efforts to realize change on behalf of the Copts of Egypt, U.S. Copts Association president, Michael Meunier, will testify in the congressional briefing held by the Congressional Human Rights Caucus and its Task Force for International Religious Freedom. Mr. Meunier is expected to address recent religious freedom developments in Egypt and its implications as well as offer recommendations for U.S. foreign policy.                  
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By Nader Shukry

Following the Uleiqat incident, Watani talked to Anba Pimen, bishop of Naqada and Quos.

Watani: To begin with, how many Copts are there in Naj al-Uleiqat?
Anba Pimen: Uleiqat is home to 100 Coptic families, [families in rural Egypt are extended ones; a family may compromise some 20 or 30 members] and there are some 30 other families who live in nearby hamlets and whom we serve along with those of Uleiqat. This makes the total number of families 130. There is no church, only a small mud brick house or guest house in which gatherings and celebrations are held. Holy Mass is conducted using a mobile altar, and Sunday schools are held every week.
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By Michelle Vu Christian Post Reporter

ALEXANDRIA, Va. - Persecuted Christians and other religious minorities gathered for an intimate coalition meeting on Saturday to share their people’s current suffering and formulate strategies to combat religious intolerance around the world.

Egyptian, Iraqi, and Lebanese Christian activists and scholars were among the speakers of the Coalition for the Defense of Human Rights (CDHR) meeting. They shared about the injustice and violence against Christians in their homeland where Islam is the dominant religion.
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Testimony of Michael Meunier

Thanks, Father. I will cut it down to 10 min. Basically, I just changed my speech too because Father Roderick had asked me to look at the challenges facing the Copts now and try to come up with some action items and some proposals for future activism and future work to do. Quickly, I’m going to go through a few points as far as the challenges that we are aware of with what has happened.

As you know, in Egypt, Copts are severely discriminated and excluded from public life and as others spoke this situation needs collaboration. Most of the challenges I see to today are coming from the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise to power and the closing out of the Egyptian government. Unfortunately, members of the Congress are now days are meeting with the Brotherhood. The ideologies that the Brotherhood propagates today are the ideologies that the Copts suffer from everywhere. There isn’t a fanatic or moderate in Egypt any longer because it seems that the ideologies has propagated throughout the country, and you can feel it with children, you can feel it with elders, it is the culture of intolerance in Egypt. As such, with the Brotherhood now occupying 88 seats in the Parliament and moving forward, they have stalled legislations and actively tried to institute legislations that try to and even make it harder for freedom to continue in Egypt, to make it harder for Copts today. They can worship freely, they cannot build churches freely, they can go in and out of the church, but even that may not be the case moving forward.Â
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Manar Ammar - AHN

Cairo, Egypt (AHN) - Fifty Muslim sheikhs from the Ministry of Religious Affairs shook hands and smiled at 50 Coptic priests Wednesday in Ayat, about 30 minutes south of Cairo. The village witnessed tension and riots between Muslims and Copts last week, leaving behind burned houses and damaged shops.

Six sheikhs from the Muslim side and six Coptic figures headed the reconciliation committee. The committee estimated the losses from the week’s events and ordered payment from the village’s Muslim elders for any destruction.

Security forces were heavily present at the session.
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Religious identity and the Bahá’í community of Egypt

Overview

Recent court rulings in Egypt have highlighted the dire human rights situation facing the Bahá’í community there. The rulings in turn have touched off a significant debate between human rights organizations and major Islamic groups about freedom of religion and belief.

Deprived of all rights as an organized religious community since 1960, Egyptian Bahá’ís are facing an immediate crisis over government efforts to deny them all-important identification cards. The ID cards are required by law and are essential for access to employment, education, and medical and financial services, as well as freedom of movement and security of property.
(View August 2005 Report by the Bahá’í International Community)

At the heart of the current situation is a government policy that forces Bahá’ís to either lie about their religion and illegally falsify their religious affiliation-or go without ID cards, which currently require that a person choose either Islam, Christianity, or Judaism, which are the three officially recognized religions in Egypt.
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CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian security forces arrested 59 Muslims on Saturday accused of setting fire to Christian homes and shops in clashes over church construction that underlined lingering sectarian tensions, security sources said.
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