“War on terror” shuts down churches and prayer

Imagine walking through your village to church to pray during the final days of fasting for the Feast of Assumption. You find police barricades blocking all roads to the sanctuary. At a check point you see your priest petitioning the heavens. State police forbid your entrance and give the same reasons they always do – excuses well known to Christian Copts. You have no permit to pray and you must stop irritating Muslims with whom you share your village.

You are accustomed to it. You’ve always been told on the slightest whim that you need a government permit to pray in the church and even inside your home in the village of Al-Furn, and that goes for all other towns across Egypt. Yet no actual law or code exists requiring anyone anywhere in Egypt to have a permit for prayer. Meanwhile, Christians in this little town of four hundred Coptic families live with the familiar weekly scene of neighboring Muslims praying in the street — blocking public transportation and ceasing passage. Complaints are never lodged against them demanding the nebulous “permit.” They are free to do so.

It is not the only village to be targeted by the Sisi regime’s state police in the Upper Egypt area of the country which is heavily inhabited by Christian Copts. There was Ezbet Nakhla in Abu Qarqas, Qum Al-Loufi village in Basmalut and Taft Al-Kharsa at Al-Fashn Center in Beni Suef.  All received their share of obstruction to worship. Furthermore, when police take illegal actions to harass Christians and halt worship, Copts begin to fear it gives license to Muslim mobs.

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