WATANI International
26 July 2009
For the third time in four weeks, a place for conducting prayers for Copts has been attacked by Muslims, and the homes and property of Copts torched and looted in villages or hamlets in al-Fashn and Biba in Beni-Sweif some 100km south of Cairo. On Friday 17 July some 2000 Muslims from the village of al-Faqaai in Biba, Beni-Sweif, attacked a 100-sq-m building used for the past 20 years as a place of worship for Copts, under the name of the Church of Anba Karras, and broke into two neighbouring houses owned by Copts, robbing and looting them. “The previous Wednesday,” Father Gabrail of Anba Karras’s told Watani, we held Holy Mass and later a small celebration to honour the students in our congregation who had passed their exams with excellent grades. Since the church serves 35 families in three neighbouring villages, some arrived in private cars to attend the celebration. Once it was over we were informed by the security authorities that our celebration had produced ‘security turbulence’ in the village. Detectives and security staff spread in the village to monitor affairs but, following Muslim prayers on Friday, we were stunned to see the worshipers leave the mosque in angry crowds shouting slogans of Islamic jihad and insulting Christianity and Christians. They began to throw stones and rocks at the church and the houses of Copts.”
A Coptic villager who asked to remain anonymous said that the Copts, terrified, locked themselves into their homes. The Coptic-owned houses which had wooden doors were easily attacked and broken into—as in the case of the house of the Ghattas family where, among the looted items were the gold jewellery of Soheir Adly, the mother—but the houses with iron doors remained safe. A ‘reconciliation’ was later engineered by the local security authorities and politicians, where the Muslim elders pledged an end to hostilities. None of the church officials attended the reconciliation; in all cases Anba Karras’s was closed. “What can 35 Coptic families do against some 8000 Muslims in the village?” the villager bitterly said.
Fr Gabrail insists that the Faqaai incident was the normal aftermath of similar attacks against Copts the previous two weeks in the hamlets of Ezbet Bushra and Ezbet Girgis. In both cases buildings used by Copts for prayers were attacked, as were Coptic-owned property, and in both cases the prayer houses were closed and the Copts pressured into ‘reconciliation’, meaning they gave up their legal rights. No culprit was caught, let alone penalised.