One week ago Compass Direct News reported that villagers in the Egyptian village of Ezbet Basillious in Minya suspected local police in Egypt of corruption and collusion. The charge came in the wake of an arson attack on a church, presumably by Islamic adherents who reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” as they entered the church.
Following the attack, two Coptic Christians were arrested for the arson attack on their own church.
Other Coptic Christians pointed to the unsubstantiated arrests of the Copts, and that police guards who were stationed outside the church had left their posts to drink tea at a local cafe, while the church burned. Those two facts, said local Copts, indicated police collusion in the attack on the church.
Witnesses reported to Compass News Direct that one of the guards was heard telling people, “Say Reda [Gamal] set fire to the church.” Reda Gamal was one of the Copts later arrested on suspicion of having set the church on fire.
This event is all the more intriguing because it offers a glimpse into the incredible tenacity of the formidable opposition remaining against any visible demonstration of Christianity in Egypt, and particularly in Minya. This opposition continues to effectively prevent new churches from being constructed despite strides made in eliminating long-standing previous legal obstacles to church construction and repair in Egypt.
The Egyptian government requires religious adherents to petition for governmental approval to use a building for religious gatherings. Typically churches have had an extremely difficult time securing this permission, as well as gaining official approval to repair churches or construct new ones. In the recent past, the Egyptian government responded to international criticism in this area by streamlining the approval process. In this latest church attack in Egypt, this church was a house church that had been promised a prayer license on July 3rd. This permission followed a 30-year struggle, so far unsuccessful, for this church to construct a new worship facility. After finally achieving one small step in the dream of having a suitable place to worship, Islamists responded by burning the church. Adding insult to injury, the Christians were themselves charged with arson.
This kind of police collusion was seen, at one time, in Southern communities in the United States where I spent my childhood. It took a great struggle to finally break through this horrible problem and restore dignity to a suffering African-American population.
However, the U.S. did have much better laws protecting religious expression than Egypt has had. Although the country’s constitution gives lip service to protecting religious freedom, Egypt’s citizenry has lived for three decades under an official state of emergency, which has suspended constitutional protections. As a result, these laws are only enforced at the whim of local officials.
This places the onus of ensuring religious freedom on the arbitrary decisions of local Egyptian police – a most unsatisfactory arrangement for the nation’s millions of Christians and other religious minorities. Such a state of affairs is a perfect breeding ground for smoldering anger, which erupts periodically, tragically inciting injury and death to Egyptians as sectarianists rise up against their own countrymen.
There is hope, however, in native religious minority presses that are issuing appeals to the nation’s conscience. These presses publish Christian and secular articles and are operated at great risk and sacrifice by the same kind of pioneers who once pamphleteered against an oppressive government ruling over colonies that later became the United States of America.
If you would like to help further this collective voice of conscience for this historically great nation of Egypt, please visit our website.