Tag: Islamic State

Sinai: eighth El-Arish Copt killed in targeted attack

May 8, 2017 Egypt Copts, Helwan, Islamic State, Port Said, Sinai

Nabil Saber Ayoub Mansour became the eighth Egyptian Coptic Christian to be murdered in El-Arish, northern Sinai, this year in what appear to be linked killings. He was shot dead by four masked men on 6 May. Mansour, 40, was in El-Arish for a brief visit (contrary to media reports that said he had returned . . . Read More

How do Christians respond to persecution?

April 26, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Iraq, Islamic State, Pakistan, Syria, USA

Christians choose to respond to religious persecution by adopting “survival strategies” that require a lot of “creativity, determination and courage".

A report looking into the ways Christians respond to persecution has found that their “survival strategies” require a lot of “creativity, determination and courage”, while violence is seldom used. “Christians are the most widely targeted religious community, suffering terrible persecution globally,” according to the University of Notre Dame’s report, In . . . Read More

Egypt: Sinai monastery attacker wore suicide belt

April 25, 2017 Egypt Copts, Islamic State, Sinai

One of the gunmen involved in the 18 April attack at a checkpoint close to St Catherine’s monastery, Mount Sinai, was wearing a belt of explosives that failed to detonate, reports Coptic news site Watani. The man – named by Egypt’s Interior Ministry as Abu-Faris al-Maghrabi – was shot dead . . . Read More

Government silence on IS’s genocide ’empowers oppressors’

April 24, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Genocide, Islamic State, UK

Desecrated church I in Qaraqosh, Iraq. (Photo: World Watch Monitor)

A British Member of Parliament has criticised the UK government for failing to declare the actions of Islamic State against Christians, Yazidis and others “genocide”, suggesting that this omission enables oppressors to act with impunity. Conservative MP Fiona Bruce, who proposed a motion in parliament exactly one year ago that . . . Read More

Coptic boy, 16, ‘murdered by Islamic extremists seeking to scare Christians’

April 20, 2017 Egypt Copts, El-Arish, Islamic State, Minya, Palm Sunday, Sinai, Upper Egypt

An Egyptian Christian boy murdered on Holy Thursday (13 April) was killed by Islamic extremists hoping to further intimidate Christians in the run up to Easter, say his family. Allam Bashay Gabriel found his 16-year-old son, Gamal, with his throat slit and lying in a pool of blood, in Qai . . . Read More

Pakistan prevents another Easter attack on its Christians

April 18, 2017 Pakistan Easter, Islamic State, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, Lahore, Peshawar, Taliban, Youhanabad

Pakistan’s security forces say they prevented a “major” terror attack on Christians in Lahore over the Easter weekend. The city of Lahore, in Pakistan’s Punjab province, was the scene of a deadly suicide bomb attack on Easter Day last year, when 75 people were killed and 340 injured. A splinter . . . Read More

Between limbo and hope: celebrating Easter with the exiles of northern Iraq

April 13, 2017 Iraq Ankawa, IDPs, Islamic State, Karamles, Palm Sunday

Members of Karamles' Chaldean church clear up debris left after IS damaged their building, ahead of Palm Sunday 2017.

For the Christians of northern Iraq, this Easter is their third separated from their homes. But for some, it could mark the beginning of the end of their displacement, following military victories against Islamic State that have won back much of the territory the jihadists seized three years ago. “Next . . . Read More

Persecution of Christians ‘still not taken seriously’

April 12, 2017 Global News -- No Particular Country Batnaya, Boko Haram, Egypt, Hindu nationalism, Iraq, Islamic State, Middle East, Nigeria, North Africa, Syria

Christians are the “most harassed religious minority in the world” but their oppression is largely under-reported in the West.

Following the Palm Sunday bomb attacks on two Egyptian churches, Ewelina Ochab, writing for Forbes, suggests that it’s time to be more proactive in response to the persecution of Christians – “the most persecuted religious group in the world”. “The situation [for Christians] has not improved [in] recent years,” she writes. . . . Read More

Muslims in Egypt speak out against Palm Sunday attacks

April 12, 2017 Egypt Copts, Islamic extremism, Islamic State, Tanta

More than 20 people lost their lives in the Palm Sunday attack on the St George Cathedral in Tanta, Egypt.

As Egypt’s Coptic Church lays to rest the victims of the Palm Sunday bomb attacks on two churches, voices from the Muslim community in the country have condemned the attacks and Muslim citizens have lined up to donate blood for the injured. Writing a blog for the website Patheos, Khwaia . . . Read More

Egypt’s Christians mourn 49 killed in Palm Sunday church bombings

April 10, 2017 Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Bishop Angaelos, Copts, Egypt, Islamic State, Palm Sunday, Pope Tawadros II, Tanta

Chaos in St George's cathedral, Tanta, after a suicide bomber blew himself up during the Palm Sunday liturgy

Egypt’s Christians are in mourning and profound shock after yesterday’s twin suicide bombing attacks on churches packed for Palm Sunday, which left at least 49 people dead and more than 110 injured. The Coptic Pope, Tawadros II, narrowly escaped injury, having just celebrated Mass in one of the cathedrals that . . . Read More

Catching Our Eye