Egyptian Mosque Turned into Torture House for Christians

Fox News:

Islamic hard-liners stormed a mosque in suburban Cairo, turning it into  torture chamber for Christians who had been demonstrating against the ruling  Muslim Brotherhood in the latest case of violent persecution that experts fear  will only get worse.

Such stories have become increasingly common as tensions between Egypt’s  Muslims and Copts mount, but in the latest case, mosque officials corroborated  much of the account and even filed a police report. Demonstrators, some of whom  were Muslim, say they were taken from the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters in  suburban Cairo to a nearby mosque on Friday and tortured for hours by hard-line  militia members.

“There is no longer anything to hold them back. The floodgates are  open.” – Shaul Gabbay, University of Denver professor on Egypt’s Muslim  Brotherhood.

“They accompanied me to one of the mosques in the area and I discovered the  mosque was being used to imprison demonstrators and torture them,” Amir Ayad, a  Coptic who has been a vocal protester against the regime, told MidEast Christian News from a  hospital bed.

Ayad said he was beaten for hours with sticks before being left for dead on a  roadside. Amir’s brother, Ezzat Ayad, said he received an anonymous phone call  at 3 a.m. Saturday, with the caller saying his brother had been found near death  and had been taken to the ambulance.

“He underwent radiation treatment that proved that he suffered a fracture in  the bottom of his skull, a fracture in his left arm, a bleeding in the right  eye, and birdshot injuries,” Ezzat Ayad said.

Officials at the Bilal ibn Rabah Mosque said radical militias stormed the  building, in the Cairo suburb of Moqattam, after Friday prayers.

“[We] deeply regret what has happened and apologize to the people of  Moqattam,” mosque officials said in a statement,  adding that “they had lost control over the mosque at the time.” …

 

You Are Not Allowed To Do This…

But the results are spectacular.

These photographs capture the views from the  top of one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

A group of Russian tourists waited until  official visiting hours were over at Egypt’s famous Giza Necropolis, before  scaling the enormous Great Pyramid as the sun began to set.

The Russians managed to escape the attention  of security guards at the ancient site, allowing photographer Vitaliy Raskalov  to snap pictures of the surrounding desert and the majestic Sphinx from the top  of the 455ft structure…

Rest here.

 

Oldest Known Depiction of Pharaoh Found

Discovery News:

The oldest known representation of a pharaoh has been found carved on rocks at a desert site in southern Egypt, according to new research into long forgotten engravings.

Found on vertical rocks at Nag el-Hamdulab, four miles north of the Aswan Dam, the images depict a pharaoh riding boats with attendant prisoners and animals in what is thought to be a tax-collecting tour.

“We don’t know with certainty who the king represented at Hamdulab is. We can guess on paleographic and iconographic grounds,” Maria Carmela Gatto, associate research scholar in Egyptology at Yale University and co-director of  thee Aswan-Kom Ombo archaeological project in Egypt, told Discovery News.

Indeed, the style of the carvings suggests that the images were made at a late Dynasty date, around 3200-3100 B.C. This would have been the reign of Narmer, the first king to unify northern and southern Egypt, thus regarded by many scholars as Egypt’s founding pharaoh.

Dating back more than 5,000 years, the rock drawings appear to feature the earliest known depiction of a pharaoh…

More here.

 

New Coptic Pope to be Named on 4th November

The spokesman of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church, Bishop Paul, has announced that the new Coptic Orthodox Patriarch will be chosen on 4 November.

Three out of the current list of five candidates will be selected on 29 October, and their names will be put into the altar lottery, which will take place on 4 November.

The current final candidates were announced earlier this week.

The lottery will determine the successor to Pope Shenouda, who held the apostolic throne from 1971 until his death last March.

Source

 

Coptic Orthodox Church Reveals 17 Candidates for Papal Seat

Lest we forget… Down to 17 candidates for the position of Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy See of Saint Mark. Ultimately though, it’ll fall to lots to decide who will get to lead the estimated 12 – 18 million adherents of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.

The Church has unveiled its longlist of bishops and monks competing to succeed Pope Shenouda III later this year .

The acting head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church has released details of the 17 candidates in the running to become the next pope, according to a report on Ahram’s Arabic-language news website.

Bishop Bakhomious has been head of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria since the death of Pope Shenouda III in March. The election of the next pope is due to take place in autumn.

Seven of the the candidates named by the Church are bishops and 10 are monks.

According to church rules, the list will be whittled down from 17 to 7 from which the boards of the church’s city councils will vote to pick three. The final choice will be made by a young child picking a name from a box.

Ahram lists the candidates as follows, with limited biographical details:

1. Bishop Bishoy: Secretary of the Holy Synod and the metropolitan of Damietta, Kafr El Sheikh, Babrary and the monastery of Saint Demiana

Born in 1942, Bishoy studied engineering before joining the monastic order. Ordained as a Bishop in 1972, he was elevated to the rank of Metropolitan in 1990.

2. Bishop Youannes: Former secretary of the late Pope Shenouda III and responsible for social services

A former student of medicine at the University of Assiut, Youannes was ordained as a Bishop in June 1993.

3. Bishop Boutros: General Bishop and Pope Shenouda III’s personal secretary

Born in Sharqiya governorate in 1949, he has a degree in agricultural sciences and was ordained as a bishop in June 1985.

4. Bishop Tawadros: General Bishop of El Beheira

Born in 1952, he studied pharmacy at the University of Alexandria and was ordained in June 1997. Tawadros is a member of the Holy Synod.

5. Bishop Raphael: Auxiliary Bishop of Central Cairo and Heliopolis as well a former aide tolate Pope Shenouda III and member of the Holy Synod.

Born in Cairo in 1954 and a graduate from Ain Shams University’s medical faculty, Raphael was ordained as a bishop in June 1997.

6. Bishop Bavnotius: Bishop of Samallout and Taha El Aaameda

Born in Cairo in 1948 and a member of the Holy Synod, this medical graduate was ordained as a bishop in June 1976.

7. Bishop Kyrillos: Bishop of Milan

Born in 1952 in Sohag governorate and a former engineering graduate, he was ordained in June 1986 before becoming Bishop of Milan in June 1996.

8. Father Anstasy El-Samuely

A monk at the monastery of St. Samuel in Minya. Born in 1939, he has a degree in commerce.

9. Father Maximos Anthony

Born in Alexandria in 1954, he serves at the monastery of St. Anthony in the Red Sea governorate. Holding a degreee in agriculture, he also has a diploma in icon restoration from the University of Moscow as well as one in museum administration from the United States.

10. Father Raphael Ava Mina

A monk at the monastery of Mar Mina in Alexandria, he was born in 1924 in Cairo and graduated in law from the University of Ain Shams.

11. Father Begul Anba Bishoy

A monk at the monastery of St. Bishoy in Wadi Natrun, he was born in 1951 and has a degree in mechanical engineering.

12. Father Shenouda Anba Bishoy

Also serving at St. Bishoy in Wadi Natrun, Shenouda was born in 1943 in Minya and holds a degree in religious studies.

13. Father Bishoy St. Paul

A monk at the monastery of St. Paul in Egypt’s Red Sea governorate, he was born in 1964 in Mansoura. He holds a degree in agriculture from the University of Alexandria.

14. Father Sawiris St. Paul

Also at St. Paul’s, Sawiris was born in Sharqiya governorate in 1959 and has a degree in religious studies.

15. Father Bakhomious El-Sorian

A monk at the monastery of Virgin Mary in Wadi Natrun. Father Bakhomious was born in Aswan in 1963 and has a joint-degree in science and education.

16. Father Daniel El-Sorian

Also at the monastery of Virgin Mary, he was born in Qena governorate in 1962 and holds degrees in science, education and Coptic studies from the University of Lyon.

17. Father Serafeem El-Sorian

The third contender from the Virgin Mary monastery, he was born in 1959 in Cairo and has a science degree from the University of Ain Shams.

 

Jesus of Nazareth, but Egypt First

Crisis Magazine:

Out of Egypt I called My son – Hosea 11:1

In the Gospel of Matthew, the advent of the Messiah is followed by an abrupt departure.

Almost immediately after the Magi visit them, the Holy Family takes off for Egypt, Joseph having been warned in a dream that King Herod would kill his Son. The narrative then fast forwards through three and a half years of exile, terminated by yet another angel in a dream.

But what Scripture leaves blank, Coptic Christian tradition fills in.

Alongside the familiar stories of the annunciation, the shepherds in the field, and the baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, the Copts have other stories—of the infant Jesus who held up his hand to stop a stone from falling on Mary, of idols that fell down before the Incarnate God, and of miraculous trees and spontaneous springs that sheltered and nurtured the Holy Family.

“It is something to be proud of—that they visited our places,” said Maryhan Nagy, a first-year university student whom I interviewed last summer at the Hanging Church in the Coptic quarter of Cairo. “It is a very great blessing to visit a place in which the Christ visited.”

In fact, several of them were within a short walk of the church.

The nearby Church of St. Sergius, for example, was built over a cave which, according to tradition, was a hiding place for the Holy Family. A chapel in the adjoining Greek Cemetery still has the well from which they drank two millennia ago. And one woman I met at the Hanging Church—so called because it is built over a Roman water gate—even claimed that the Holy Family had eaten the fruit from two palm trees in the outside courtyard.

No doubt, while some stories are more credible than others, the idea that Egypt has a special role to play in salvation history is affirmed throughout Scripture—not only in Matthew but also throughout the Old Testament, most notably Isaiah 19

Behold the Lord will ascend upon a swift cloud, and will enter into Egypt, and the idols of Egypt shall be moved at His presence, and the heart of Egypt shall melt in the midst thereof. … In that day there shall be an altar of the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a monument of the Lord at the borders thereof.

The heritage the Coptic Church has bequeathed to us lives up to this special calling. It is, after all, the church that gave us St. Athanasius—the first church father to develop a list of New Testament books and a reputed author of the Nicene Creed. It is also the home of Christian monasticism which St. Anthony and the other ‘Desert Fathers’ pioneered in the 3rd century.

It is this deeply felt connection to Scriptural prophecy and the Holy Family that perhaps explains the survival of the Coptic Church through nineteen centuries of history—most of it under Muslim rule. Today, the Coptic Church remains a small but vibrant minority in a country that is 90 percent Muslim.

The Coptic Church—along with the Ethiopian Orthodox—are part of the Oriental Orthodox communion that separated from the rest of Christendom after the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. The council had held that Christ had two natures, such that he was fully man and fully God. The dissenters also insisted he was both man and God, but they believed those two natures were fused into one in the person of Christ.

When I sat in on the Divine Liturgy at the Hanging Church, I found a congregation willing to embrace other Christians with a degree of hospitality and openness that initially bordered on the scandalous. After the end of an elaborate, hours-long service, I withdrew inconspicuously to the back of the church to watch everyone else file out.

It didn’t work. Before long, a father and son approached me. Neither of them spoke any English, as far as I can remember. Instead, the son extended his arm to me. In his hand, he was holding a piece of bread. When I didn’t take it, he pulled back, then thrust it out again.

As a Catholic, I was quite taken aback by the encounter. Given that the Divine Liturgy had just ended, I concluded that this had to be Eucharistic bread. The idea of a child—anyone—sauntering out of church with the Eucharist in hand was, to understate it, quite a surprise.

Later during my trip, I found out that there are, in fact, two kinds of bread dispensed at the Coptic liturgy. The first kind does indeed become the Body of Jesus. But there is a second bread, called the loma baraka in Arabic, or, ‘The Bread of the Blessing,’ which was not Eucharistic, according to Marian Magdy, another college-age woman I met at the Hanging Church. This second bread, she said, was meant to be shared with the ‘people’—presumably including guests and strangers such as myself.

In retrospect, the boy’s offer of bread was a touching act of Christian charity—an extension of fellowship that left a lasting impression.

Perhaps, after all these centuries, the Coptic Church still has something to teach us.

By Stephen Beale

HT

 

Pope Shenouda III Dies

The 117th Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of All Africa on the Holy Apostolic See of Saint Mark the Evangelist of The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Memory Eternal.

Egypt’s Coptic Christian Pope Shenouda III has died at the age of 88, state television has announced.

The leader of the Middle East’s largest Christian minority was reported to suffer from cancer that had spread to several organs.

Coptic Christians make up 10% of Egypt’s population of 80 million.

After attacks on Coptic Christians in recent years, Pope Shenouda urged officials to do more to address the community’s concerns.

Pope Shenouda led the church, one of the oldest Christian communities in the world, for four decades.

His political adviser Hany Aziz told Reuters news agency that Shenouda “died from complications in health and from old age”.

He had returned recently to Egypt after seeking treatment abroad.

Pope Shenouda was born Nazeer Gayed into a devout Christian family on 3 August 1923 in Asyut, Upper Egypt, and became a monk in 1954, taking the name Shenouda.

After Pope Cyril died in 1971, Shenouda was enthroned as Pope of Alexandria.

He fell out with President Anwar Sadat, who in 1981 sent him into internal exile. He was allowed back to Cairo by President Hosni Mubarak four years later.

The BBC’s Jon Leyne in Cairo says Pope Shenouda sought to protect his Christian community amid a Muslim population by striking a conservative tone and lending tacit to President Mubarak’s rule.

Whoever succeeds him now faces the task of reassuring the Coptic community as the Islamists of the Muslim Brotherhood look on the verge of sharing power in Egypt for the first time, our correspondent says.

Many younger Copts will now be looking for a leader who can help redefine their community’s role in a rapidly changing post-Mubarak Egypt, our correspondent adds.

The BBC also has his obituary here.

 

10 Die in Egypt while Digging for Ancient Treasures

AFP:

CAIRO — Ten people were killed when the soil caved in on them as they were illegally digging for ancient treasures under a house in a central Egyptian village, police officials told AFP on Monday.

The 10, including four brothers, were buried alive when the walls of the dig collapsed in the village of Arab al-Manasra, north of the historic city of Luxor.

Rescue services were working to recover the bodies, the official said, adding that two people were also injured in the incident.

Ambitions of making money quickly have incited many to turn to illegal archaeological digging, particularly in antiquities-rich locations such as Luxor, Aswan and Cairo.

“We have to work on many levels to stop these get-rich-quick schemes, where people are digging for an illusion,” Mansur Boreik, head of the Luxor antiquities department told AFP.

 

Muslim Council in Egypt Evicts 8 Christian Families, Seizes their Property

AINA reports:

National and international rights groups have consistently criticized the recourse to the so-called “reconciliation meetings” — dubbed “Bedouin sittings” — that take place between Copts and Muslim assailant after every attack on Copts. The meetings are conducted under the auspices of state security. Last week a series of meetings were held by radical Muslims to decide on the fate of the Copts in a village in Alexandria, and Muslims insisted that the whole Coptic population of 62 families must be deported because of an unsubstantiated accusation levied against one Coptic man.

Copts in the village of Kobry-el-Sharbat (El-Ameriya), Alexandria, were attacked on January 27 by a mob of 3000 Muslims led by Salafi leaders, who looted and torched homes and shops belonging to Copts. The violence was prompted by allegations made by a Muslim barber named Toemah that a 34-year-old Coptic tailor, Mourad Samy Guirgis, had on his mobile phone illicit photos of a Muslim woman. Mourad denied the accusation and surrendered to the police for fear for his life. Muslims looted and torched his workshop and home after he surrendered to the police, and his entire family, including his parents and his married brother Romany, were evicted from the village. He is still in police detention. (AINA 1-28-2012).

Three “reconciliation meetings” were held at the El-Ameriya village police headquarters. They were attended by Salafi and Muslim Brotherhood representatives from neighboring villages, as well as church representative. Muslims demanded the eviction of all Coptic inhabitants from the village because “Muslim honour had been damaged.”

Many believe that the mobile phone story was fabricated as an excuse to start violence against the Copts. According to the police, the woman in question denied the story and no photos were found on Mourad’s mobile phone, according to Ihab Aziz, a Coptic-American activist who is presently in Egypt.

During the first reconciliation meeting it was agreed that only Copts who were directly involved with the Mourad incident would be evicted, and the church demanded compensation of two million pounds for the innocent Copts whose homes and businesses were torched on January 27. Muslims, especially Salafis from the neighboring villages, refused any kind of compensation and insisted on the eviction of all Copts.

On January 30 a Muslim mob attacked Copts in Kobry-el-Sharbat for the second time, and torched three Coptic homes in the presence of the security forces, “which took the role of an onlooker and made no effort to stop the violence,” according to Joseph Malak, lawyer for the Coptic church in Alexandria. “This proves that the assailants were not afraid of the security forces or the law.”

Muslim representatives demanded the eviction of the wealthy Coptic merchant Abeskhayroun Soliman, together with his four married sons and their families, accusing them of causing sedition by shooting in the air when Muslims broke into and torched their home while the family was inside. “No one was wounded due to the alleged shootings, which the family says never took place. The police authorities issued an arrest warrant for two of the Soliman sons,” said Ihab Aziz…

Continue reading here.

A hat tip to Sandra for pointing this thuggery out via e-mail.

We simply must continue to pray for our persecuted brethren in Egypt!

 

Thousands Attack Christian Homes, Shops in Egyptian Village

A crowd of 3,000 Muslims burned and looted some Christian homes and shops in an Egyptian village after a rumor spread that a Coptic Christian man had a photograph of a Muslim village girl on his cell phone.

“We contacted security forces, but they arrived very, very late,” said Father Boktor Nashed, a Coptic priest. The priest said that the attackers were local villagers, not radicals from elsewhere: “maybe because of lack of security, they think that they can do as they please.”

Source