In Egypt, Christians Flee Town After Militant Threats
By MAGGIE MICHAEL, Associated Press
September 28, 201
Muslim Brotherhood's President Morsi glorifies martydom
Egyptian Coptic Christians protest attacks on Christians and churches,
in front of the state television building in Cairo. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra)
CAIRO (AP) - Coptic Christian families have fled their homes in a town
in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, fearing for their lives after receiving death
threats from suspected Islamic militants, a local priest said Thursday.
Father Youssef Sobhi said that Islamic militants dropped leaflets on the
doorsteps of shops owned by Copts in the city of Rafah near the border with
Gaza and Israel, ordering them to leave town within 48 hours and making an
implicit warning of violence if they failed to do so. Two days later, masked
militants on a motorcycle opened fire
on one of the shops before speeding off, Sobhi said. No one was hurt in the
shooting.
When Christians met Tuesday with the province's top government official,
who was recently appointed by Egypt's new Islamist president, Mohammed Morsi,
the governor promised to facilitate the Copts' move to the nearby city of
el-Arish but did not offer to protect the community to ensure that it stayed in
Rafah, according to the priest.
"I was shocked at the governor's response," Sobhi said.
"This is simply displacement by the government's consent."
An Egyptian intelligence official confirmed that a number of
Coptic families had fled Rafah because of a militant threat. Another security
official denied the reports and said that no Christians were forced to leave.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized
to brief the media.
It was not exactly clear how many Christians have left the town, but
Sobhi said that the number of Copts in Rafah had dwindled from 14 families to
two since the uprising that pushed longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak from power
in February 2011.
A first wave left Rafah after the only church in the town, The Holy
Family Church, was looted, torched and destroyed in several militant attacks
over the past year. The church is built on the site where Christians believe
the Holy Family first stopped to rest after crossing into Egypt.
Sobhi was in the first group of Christians to flee, although he returns
frequently to Rafah check on
his parish.
Mamdouh Nasef, the Coptic shop owner who recently came under attack,
said that his Muslim neighbors are urging him to stay and pledging to protect
him.
"They can't guard me 24 hours a day, and I fear for my
children," Nasef said by telephone. "My children were born here and
Muslims here are like my brothers."
Nasef is still in Rafah, but plans to
return to his hometown in southern Egypt.
There have been incidents of sectarian violence in Egypt in the past. In
July, in the village of Dahshour south of Cairo a Muslim mob torched Christian
homes and shops and damaged the local church, forcing many Coptic families to
flee the village. The violence was sparked when a personal dispute swelled into
violence and a Muslim man died.
In Sinai, the threats against the Christians, who are estimated at
around 10 percent of Egypt's population of 85 million, are a symptom of the
broader lawlessness that has hit the peninsula since the popular uprising
ousted Mubarak. Since then, security has deteriorated across Egypt,
particularly in Sinai where heavily armed Islamic groups have exploited the
security vacuum to wage attacks on police stations and call for the
establishment of an Islamic state.
Militants from Rafah, along with those from the neighboring Gaza Strip
who cross into Sinai through an elaborate network of underground tunnels, have
also waged cross border attacks into Israel. In one of their most recent
strikes, masked militants killed 16 Egyptian soldiers near the border in early
August.
Under Mubarak, Christians complained of discrimination from the
government, which did little to prevent attacks on the community by hardline
Muslims. Many Christians fled to the United States and other Western countries,
and tensions have risen since Mubarak's police state has given way to a state
of lawlessness.
With the election of the country's first Islamist president, Mohammed
Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood, many Christians have grown increasingly
concerned about their place in Egypt.
Those worries only deepened after Egyptian Coptic Christians in the
United States posted a 14-minute clip entitled "Innocence of
Muslims," which denigrates Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, portraying him
as a womanizer, a fraud and a child molester. The film has sparked angry
protests across the Muslim world as well as attacks on U.S. embassies,
including one in Libya that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other
Americans. The wave of protests began in Cairo, where demonstrators breached
the walls of the U.S. Embassy.
Also Thursday, an Egyptian court has upheld a six-year jail sentence for
a Coptic Christian school teacher convicted of insulting Islam and the
country's Islamist president in postings on Facebook.
Egypt's MENA state news agency says a court in the southern province of
Sohag agreed with a lower court ruling that found Michelle Bishoy, also known
as Bishoy el-Behiri, guilty of blasphemy after posting pictures that were
deemed offensive to Islam's Prophet Muhammad. The court also upheld Bishoy's
conviction on charges of insulting Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.
Thursday's ruling can be appealed.
The case is the second this month in which a Coptic Christian has been
detained for posting material considered anti-Islamic on social networking
sites.
