In Troubled Egypt, Copts Turn to Beloved Saint
ICC Note:
“Oh Lord, for the sake of all the saints of the church, raise high the banner of the cross and vanquish our enemies, the enemies of the church,” read a note left by a Coptic Christian at the Mar Girgis monastery in Egypt. “Make our enemies realize their weakness, foil their actions against us, bring joy to our hearts, increase our profit and make us victorious.” The prayers follow escalating attacks on Egypt’s Christian community from Salafis, a group that adheres to the radical Wahhabi doctrines of Islam found in Saudi Arabia. On November 5, for example, Salafis stormed a church in the Shubra district of Cairo and illegally “occupied” the land. And in late October a Christian concert was prevented from taking place because Salafis called it an evangelistic event.
Reports indicate that more than 100,000 Christians have fled Egypt following President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster from power and the political rise of Islamists.
By HAMZA HENDAWI
11/16/2012 Egypt (ABC News)- There was no mention of churches torched or Christians killed, but the prayer neatly written on a tiny piece of paper and placed atop an icon of St. George in the chapel of a desert monastery left no doubt about the growing fear and despair of Egypt’s Coptic Christians.
“Oh Lord, for the sake of all the saints of the church, raise high the banner of the cross and vanquish our enemies, the enemies of the church,” it read. “Make our enemies realize their weakness, foil their actions against us, bring joy to our hearts, increase our profit and make us victorious.”
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The past week, hundreds of thousands of Copts from across the country flocked to the monastery of Mar Girgis, as St. George is known in Arabic, in one of the biggest and most exuberant events of the year for Egypt’s Christians. The annual pilgrimage at the walled monastery in the deserts of southern Egypt overlooking the Nile is a festival of faith, a time to pay homage to the 3rd Century saint who is one of the most revered figures of Christianity’s oldest Church.
It is also an opportunity for Christians to exult in their identity in an atmosphere away from the daily discrimination — large and small, subtle and blatant — that they say they increasingly face in this nation where the Muslim majority has been growing more conservative for decades.
At this year’s pilgrimage, Christians’ sense of siege is stronger than ever, after Muslim hardliners gained political dominance, vowing to rule Egypt by Islamic law. Many Christians are convinced they are enduring the worst sectarian persecution any of them can remember. Some even speak of an imminent second “age of martyrdom,” recalling the era of persecution of Christians under Roman rule that remains burned into Copts’ historic memory nearly 2,000 years later.
“Without a divine intervention that is both visible and strong, I think we are moving toward a confrontation that will have grave ramifications for Egypt,” said Bishop Bieman, a charismatic church leader in the southern province of Qena. “I am not worried about us Christians on the long term, but I am seriously concerned about what happens to us on the short term. Efforts to impose a religious state are accelerating.”
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Over the past 20 months, dozens of Christians have been killed, churches torched or vandalized, and Christian-owned stores trashed and looted. In several villages, Christian families were driven out of their homes after personal disputes turned into anti-Christian riots. Ultraconservative Muslim clerics preach that Muslims cannot be friends with Christians or frown on overt shows of Christianity, an attitude that soaks down to villages and towns where Christians live. In recent weeks, there have been several cases of Muslim women forcibly cutting the hair of Christian girls, who unlike almost all Egyptian Muslim women don’t wear headscarves.
“We are like gold, we must be burned so we can become purer,” said Romani Abdullah Fakhouri, a 47-year-old math teacher who has been volunteering to help at the pilgrimage since he was 11.
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But Bishop Bieman said the youth in his diocese of Negada and Qos in Qena province were showing signs of dissent, growing more assertive in their demands for Christian equality. They say the church has been too pacifist, he said. “We urge them to join political parties, trade unions and student bodies, to fully interact with society” to seek their demands, the bishop said.
“The danger facing our people is that their ceiling of expectations has been significantly raised since the revolution toppled Mubarak’s regime and the freedoms that followed,” he said. “But, instead, we are suffering now more than we did under Mubarak.”
Egypt’s new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, has done little more than pay lip service to Christian rights, many Christians say.
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“Why can’t the president be decisive and delve into the case file of the Christians? Are Christians a part of the fabric of this nation or not?”
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