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04/17/2006 American Coptic Union
Muslims Attacked Three Coptic Churches In Alexandria Simultaneously An Elder Copt Killed, 10 Others Wounded On
Friday April 13, 2006, different Muslim groups organized a planed
assault against three different Coptic Churches in Alexandria in Mar
Gurgis , Al-Hadarrah, Church of Saints, Siddy Bishr, and Virgin Mary ,
Janachles Church. As a result of these attacks a Coptic person, 78 years
old killed, and 10 other worshippers wounded. The attack took place at
8:30 AM during the prayers. According to our correspondent , terrorists
were carrying swords, and fire weapon. Alexandria Archdiocese belongs to
Pope Shenouda III. This organized attacks has come after 6 months, when
Muslims raided Christian Coptic neighborhoods in Alexandria on October
21, 2005. Ironically, the Governor of Alexandria
claimed that the attacks have been committed by
one person who is mentally sick.
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Muslim Egyptians kill Copts inside their
churches By
Morris Sadek_ President of Coptic American Assembly On September 11, 2001, Egyptian Muslim individuals attacked United State of America and killed about three thousands innocent individuals. The perpetrators, Ayman el zawahry, Muhammed Atta, and Omar Abd-el Rahman are believers of Islam. On Friday April 14, 2006, another three individuals who also believe in Islam attacked innocent Christians while they were praying inside their churches. That attack came under eyes of the Egyptian security authorities. In Alexandria, Egypt, Three Coptic churches came under attack from knife-wielding assailants during Mass Friday. The officials said Mahmoud Abdul Galil, a former government employee killed a 67-year-old Christian individual at Saint George Church in the Hadra area of Alexandria and wounded three other Copts. Another individual called Mohammed Salah Eddin, attacked another church wounded ten Christians in the Saints Church in the Sidi Bishr area of Alexandria and an unknown man attacked Christian prayers in the Virgin Mary Church in the Fleming area wounded another three Christian individuals. 
 National
American Coptic Assembly in U.S.A. denies such cowardly acts against the
Copts in Egypt who are the original residents of the country. Also, the
organization says that these types of attacks are a result of the
strategy of the Egyptian government against the Christians. Moreover,
Copts are feeling that they are under attack from the government itself
and from the Muslim community.
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Egypt - Friday March 31, 2006COPT FINDS MISSING SISTER IN MUSLIM HOMEVeiled except for eyes, young Christian woman says she converted to Islam.
March 31 (Compass Direct) – Following a three-month search, an Egyptian Christian has discovered his missing sister living with a Muslim family near her home town and professing faith in Islam. Spurred by a brief telephone message from Theresa Ghattass Kamal saying that she was being held against her will and forced to convert to Islam, Sa’eed Ghattass Kamal last week tracked his sister’s suspected captors to the Bedouin desert area of El-Ga’ar, near his home in Wadi El-Natroun, 50 miles northwest of Cairo. Mo’atazz Mohammad Sa’eed at first refused to let Kamal see his sister when the Christian arrived at his home on March 23. He later relented after Kamal insisted that he only wanted to make sure his sister was safe. With only her eyes showing through her veil and flanked by Sa’eed, his two brothers and his father, Theresa Kamal sat with her brother for 90 minutes but only spoke once, Kamal said. “I have converted to Islam. I have found the right path,” she reportedly told her brother in a trembling voice. But according to Kamal and his lawyer, Athanasius William, the Christian woman’s conversion still has not been registered at Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic Center. Egyptian law requires that all conversions be registered at Al-Azhar and then validated with the security police, the State Security Investigation (SSI). William told Compass that Theresa Kamal, 19, had not fulfilled the legal prerequisite of meeting with a Coptic priest at least once before converting to Islam. “If she really chose to convert to Islam, why did she not participate in the required counseling session?” the lawyer asked. The attorney said that if Theresa Kamal’s “kidnappers” attempted to register her conversion, he would contest the move on legal grounds. But in the meantime he said that “the collusion of the security authorities” was making it impossible to even verify whether the Christian woman dropped out of school at Cairo’s Secretarial Academy of her own free will in order to live with the Sa’eed family. Authorities Refuse to Help Despite irregularities in Theresa Kamal’s reported conversion, the SSI consistently refused to help Kamal find his sister after she went missing on January 3. Police finally promised the Kamal family a meeting with their daughter, but only after Copts in Wadi El-Natroun staged a three-day peaceful protest outside local police headquarters in mid-January. But at a January 17 meeting with the SSI in the provincial capital of Demnhoor, SSI officer Tarek Haykal cursed Kamal and kicked him out of his office, refusing to let the Christian see his sister. Haykal told two accompanying priests that Theresa Kamal had converted freely and would meet with a priest shortly for her pre-conversion counseling session. According to Kamal and William, that promise has yet to be fulfilled. The Kamal family renewed their search for Theresa Kamal after she managed to briefly telephone her aunt on January 24. The young woman said she was being held against her will but that she had not yet succumbed to her captors’ demands that she convert to Islam. Kamal notified authorities that he had traced the origin of his sister’s phone call to an apartment in Cairo’s Shubra district. Local SSI officials refused to meet the Christian in person but told him over the phone that Theresa Kamal was not at the Shubra residence. Kamal eventually followed his sister’s trail back to the Sa’eed family in Wadi El-Natroun. The wadi, a desert depression 25 meters below sea level and 50 kilometers long, is heavily populated by Copts and is home to four Coptic monasteries. According to Kamal, when he first visited the Sa’eed family on the evening of March 23, Sa’eed’s father told him, “Your sister is officially becoming a Muslim and so she is no longer a Christian and no longer your sister as well.” Sa’eed reportedly added, “You’ve notified the police often, but no one has taken action nor will any one take action about the issue of your sister.” “She will always be my sister, even if she changed religions,” Kamal responded. “What I really care about is her safety.” The Sa’eed family softened at this response and allowed him to see his sister, Kamal told Compass. The Christian said that during the next hour and a half his sister only spoke once from under her veil, to say that she had converted to Islam. Doubting the sincerity of his sister’s conversion and hoping to leave the door open for her return, Kamal told his sister before he left, “I am your brother; I will always be. If you need anything, come to my home where you are most welcome.” ‘Kidnap Conversions’ Reports of kidnappings and the forced conversion of Christian girls are common among Egypt’s Coptic community. Some Christian girls romanced by young Muslim men voluntarily leave their families and convert to Islam in order to escape poverty and unhappy family situations. But “there have been credible reports that government authorities have failed to sufficiently cooperate with Christian families seeking to regain custody of their daughters,” the U.S. State Department said in its latest annual International Religious Freedom Report on Egypt. Without police cooperation, families find it difficult to verify the motives for a conversion. Unless the convert is under 18, the legal age for conversion, police often refuse to recover the missing woman by claiming that she does not want to see her family. In recent years both Muslim and Christian families in rural Upper Egypt have abused and at times killed daughters – in the name of “honor” – if they believed that the young women had been sexually compromised. Coptic Christians make up at least 10 percent of the Egyptian population. While it is illegal for Egypt’s Muslims to convert to Christianity, “kidnap conversions” to Islam have long been the subject of debate in the country.
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Another Crime by the SSI Abducting Theresa Kamel Kidnapped Christian refutes police claims that she ran away to convert to Islam.
Compass Direct - Egypt - Thursday February 23, 2006 Theresa Ghattass Kamal
Last seen in the village of El-Saff 30 miles south of Cairo on January 3, Theresa Ghattass Kamal briefly contacted her aunt on January 24. She told her aunt that she had not yet succumbed to her unknown captors’ demands that she become a Muslim, her brother Sa’eed Ghattass Kamal told Compass.
Her phone call contradicted earlier police statements that she had converted to Islam voluntarily and did not want to see her family again. Police made the claims last month in the wake of a three-day protest by clergy and lay members of the Coptic Orthodox church.
Further investigation by Sa’eed Kamal revealed that no official records of his sister’s conversion existed at Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic center. Egyptian law requires that all conversions be registered at Al-Azhar and then validated with the security police, the State Security Investigation (SSI).
The Kamal family traced the origination point of the 19-year-old woman’s call to an apartment in Cairo’s Shubra district owned by Muslim Mostafa Mahmood Ali.
A local priest who asked not to be named for security reasons characterized Ali’s house as “a dangerous place, full of fundamentalists.”
Sa’eed Kamal and a Shubra diocesan lawyer immediately reported Ali to the Shubra branch of the SSI. When the Christian returned on January 30, police told him over a waiting room telephone that they had interrogated Ali and that he did not have the Christian woman. Police refused to meet with Sa’eed Kamal in person.
Disappearance
Originally from Wadi El-Natroun 50 miles northwest of Cairo, Theresa Kamal, 19, was living in a church-owned apartment for women in Giza and taking courses at the Secretarial Academy in old Cairo. Theresa’s father converted to Islam in 1995, and her mother died in 2003, leaving her and her four adult siblings on their own.
On January 3, she visited Coptic Orthodox priest Bavley William in the village of El-Saff and asked for his help in renewing her national and student identity cards. She had lost the documents while riding on a public bus.
William encouraged the Christian woman to return to Wadi El-Natroun to apply for her ID and gave her some money to help cover the expense. Theresa Kamal then called her brother and told him she would return home no later than the morning of January 5.
When his sister had not returned home by January 6, Sa’eed Kamal traveled to Giza and El-Saff to find her. Police in both cities refused to file a missing person report, telling him to return to Wadi El-Natroun to report his sister’s disappearance.
In a January 10 report of the Christian woman’s disappearance, Wadi El-Natroun police stated that they would first “request a report from the Bureau of Investigation about this event.”
Fearing continued government inaction, 150 Christians, including three Coptic Orthodox priests, began a three-day, peaceful protest on January 11 outside the village police station. Led by priest Yahnoss Kama, parish priest Botross of Wadi El-Natroun, and parish priest Bavley of Khatatba City, the local Orthodox congregation demanded the return of Theresa Kamal.
On the third day, SSI officer Tarek Haykal promised the protestors that Kamal would be returned to her family, and that they could meet her at his office in Demnhoor, the provincial capital of Buhayrah, on January 17. Claiming to speak on orders from Hassan Abdul Rahman, the head of the SSI in Cairo, Haykal also threatened to arrest the three priests if they did not disperse immediately.
But according to Sa’eed Kamal, at the January 17 meeting officer Haykal cursed and insulted him and then kicked him out of the office. Haykal then told the two Demnhoor parish priests accompanying the Christian man that Theresa had converted to Islam on the day of her disappearance and that she refused to return to her family.
Haykal said he would schedule a meeting between Theresa Kamal and a priest, a mandatory prerequisite for legal conversion in Egypt.
Upon checking conversion records at all Al-Azhar Islamic center and at Cairo and Giza security directorates, Sa’eed Kamal discovered that his sister’s supposed conversion had never taken place.
Police Complicity
Reports of kidnappings and the forced conversion of Christian girls are common among Egypt’s Coptic community. Some Christian girls romanced by young Muslim men voluntarily leave their families and convert to Islam in order to escape poverty and unhappy family situations.
But “there have been credible reports that government authorities have failed to sufficiently cooperate with Christian families seeking to regain custody of their daughters,” the U.S. State Department said in its latest annual International Religious Freedom Report on Egypt.
Without police cooperation, families find it difficult to verify the motives for each conversion. Unless the convert is under 18, the legal age for conversion, police can refuse to recover the missing woman by claiming that she does not want to see her family.
Kamal’s situation is unusual in that she was able to contact her family and deny reports of willful conversion. It has been easier than usual to see police complicity in this case, “because Theresa was able to tell her aunt that she is in the place where she was phoning from,” one Cairo-based lawyer commented. “But all that the officers did in response was to inform her brother that she was not there.”
Coptic Christians make up at least 10 percent of the Egyptian population. While it is illegal for Egypt’s Muslims to convert to Christianity, "kidnap conversions" to Islam have long been the subject of debate in the country. In December 2004, thousands of Coptic Christians in Cairo protested when Wafaa Constantin, the wife of an Orthodox priest in Bahayrah province, supposedly converted to Islam and eloped with a Muslim man. Constantin was returned to church custody by Egyptian security forces.
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9/16/2005 We
often hear about the kidnapping of young Christian women by Muslim men
in Egypt. Women, who are drugged, raped
and forced to convert to Islam. We
also hear that the police and government officials often aid the
miscreants Yet pope Shenouda and most of his clergy continue to
cheerlead Egypt's recently re-elected president, Hosni Mubarak, who is
at least partially responsible for these acts. The Pope and most of his
clergy have never once issued a public statement pressuring Mubarak to
do something to stop this. The Pope and most of his clergy continue to
silence their congregations and remain frightened men instead, as more
and more women are taken away. Coptic congregants help this inaction by
silencing opposing voices within their congregations saying the Pope
always knows what is best. But in the face of continued abductions the
records prove that he doesn't always know what is best and therefore we
must ask the Pope and his followers: Is it truly a "spiritual"
act to remain silent in the face of such tragedy? The
stark truth is that the dhimmified position of most of the Coptic clergy
does nothing to prevent these atrocities from happening. Most
Copts are so brainwashed into compliance by their clergy that they have
lost their ability to do anything significant at all. Last
February, I interviewed a Coptic Bishop in New Jersey on the persecution
of Christians in Egypt. He told me there wasn't any. A
few months ago, I sent out a confession by a former Muslim who belonged
to an Islamic proselytizing organization in Egypt.
He went into detail on how he and others seduced, drugged and
raped young Coptic women. Yet despite this, and continued reports of
female abduction, the Copts and most of their clergy still remain
silent. Their silence is deafening. Maria
Sliwa Egyptian
Police Obstruct Search for Missing Christian Woman September
13, 2005 Attallah
said his daughter, Marianna Rezk Shafik Attallah, left work May 30 at
the Al-Raay medical laboratory in El-Fayoum, 60 miles south of Cairo, to
pick up a patient’s blood sample from a residential address. Neither
her family nor her fiancé have heard from her since. When
she failed to return home, her fiancé, Bishoy Hosni, went searching for
her at her workplace. Mohammed Salah Noman, owner of the Noman Computer
Center neighboring the Al-Raay lab, told him that a Muslim employee of
his, Ali Mahmoud Abdel Rasoul, had kidnapped the young woman. Reportedly
Rasoul, who had been maintaining the Al-Raay laboratory computers, had
previously been fired from the police force for bad behavior. Police Obstruction
After
hearing this, Attallah filed a report with the police on the day of his
daughters disappearance, naming Rasoul as her suspected kidnapper. But
the officials on duty refused to give him the case number. At
the same time, a State Security Investigation (SSI) officer declared
that Rasoul had packed up his household goods and moved 250 miles
further south to Sohag, taking Attallahs daughter with him. But he
warned the young womans father and fiancé to stop looking for her,
declaring she had left of her own free will. The
woman’s fiancé remained skeptical. If she went of her own free will,
Hosni told Compass, then why didn’t she come to say that [to us]? Soon
afterwards, rumors spread in their district of El-Fayoum that Marianna
Attallah had left her Christian faith and converted to Islam. But Hosni
dismissed the claims, saying that during their courtship, it had been
her close relationship with God and active involvement in the church
that had helped bring him to a deeper understanding of his Christian
faith. Employer
Involvement in Abduction
It also became evident to him that Marianna Attallah’s employer, a
Coptic woman named Ivon Asaad was involved somehow in the young
woman’s disappearance. But
the young woman’s parents realized that something at work was
disturbing her, causing her to spend long hours alone crying. So despite
their financial straits to provide for her and her four siblings, they
encouraged Marianna Attallah to quit her job. Relieved, she resigned on
May 28. The next day Asa’ad visited her at the family’s house,
offering to more than double her salary if she would return. The
offer was too good to turn down, and she returned to the lab on May 30.
But when Hosni later telephoned Asa’ad, questioning the circumstances
of his fiancé's errand and disappearance, within an hour police
summoned him and the young woman’s father. Cruel
Joke on Desperate Father The
SSI has continued to stonewall the Attallah family’s attempts to
recover their daughter. On August 11, a security officer called the
father, suggesting that he buy a cell phone so that the police could
contact him whenever they learned his daughter’s whereabouts. Burning
with hope, the father traveled the 200 miles north to Alexandria, where
the officer called him again. Your daughter is across the street from
you he was told. Although
Attallah sent faxed petitions about his daughter’s case to the
interior minister, SSI headquarters in El-Fayoum and Coptic Orthodox
Pope Shenoudah III, he has received no reply. Hundreds
of young Coptic women disappear and are reported kidnapped each year in
Egypt, but their families claims are difficult to prove. At
the same time, security officials frequently prevent Christian parents
from having contact or private access to their daughters once they have
been located, instead leaving them in the custody of the Muslim
protector who abducted them.
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February 23
(Compass) – Missing for over a month, a young Christian woman has
telephoned her relatives and reported being imprisoned in a Cairo
apartment while facing pressure to convert to Islam.