One of 21 churches in Egypt’s southern rural Minya governorate was given permission to restore, expand and rebuild after receiving approval from the Minya governor on 17 November.
Governor Essam al-Bedeiwi approved the 21 applications over the last six months. Some of the churches had been waiting for more than 20 years for a permit to come through. An evangelical church in Tama, Sohag gov-ernorate, was the latest to receive its permit.
Reformation influence
Some analysts note that the approvals have preceded several visits by international evangelical delegations to Cairo. Leaders from evangelical churches around the world met Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo, as part of the celebrations marking 500 years since the Reformation. This followed a visit in early November by a delegation of Christian evangelicals from the US to meet evangelical leaders in Egypt. Egypt’s President is keen to ‘show the US that Egypt is standing with the Christians and that there is no persecution in Minya governorate’.
Brothers in Adam
Meanwhile the Coptic community in Minya has seen many of its churches forcibly closed or set on fire. Some of them have been reopened but others are still waiting for a permit.
The Coptic churches around the country rang their bells on 25 November in solidarity with the victims of the North Sinai mosque attack which killed at least 309 people and injured 128. In a statement, the church ‘offered its sincere condolences’ to the bereaved families, adding that its members were ‘praying for a speedy recovery of the wounded’, the Egypt Independent reported.
A local IS affiliate known as Sinai Province has attempted to impose its hardline interpretation of Islam on Egypt’s North Sinai population around El-Arish, Sinai’s largest city, approximately 80km east of Bir al-Abed, where the attack took place. Hundreds of Christians fled the area and relocated to Port Said in late February and March, after Islamists posted videos and leaflets telling Copts to leave the area or be killed.
A TV talk-show host was temporarily dismissed after she questioned why Muslims were the target of Friday’s attack, saying: ‘We have heard about … attacks against Copts and their churches, and we considered it directed at non-Muslims, the followers of another religion and seen as their [IS affiliate] enemies. But [now they attack] Muslims! How could they?!’
Submit or die
Islamic State (IS)-affiliated Wafa Media Foundation (WMF) incited further massacres against Egyptian Christians, referring to them as ‘infidel fighters’ on 10 November. The WMF, a propaganda body, stated that, because Christians continue to build churches and have media networks to promote Christianity, they do not accept the condition of submission (dhimmi) imposed on Christians in Islamic societies. Therefore, they must be killed, and their churches attacked.
