Christians in Egypt safe amid violent uprising

Monday, February 7, 2011

VERCİHAN ZİFLİOĞLU

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

After being a target of several deadly attacks in recent months, the Christian community in Egypt is feeling safe and reports no security problems during the popular uprising in the protest-ridden country, according to Christian clerics. Christians, meanwhile, held a mass and thousands of Muslims joined in on Sunday

Before mass demonstrations broke out in Egypt in late January, the country’s Christian community was angry and frightened. Twenty-one of their number had been killed in a suicide bombing of a church in Alexandria during a New Year’s service. But on Sunday, Muslim-Christian unity was one of the main themes in Tahrir Square.

But as the streets of Cairo and other cities filled with protesters, Christian clerics and community members in Egypt said they are safe – if nervous – and have experienced no threats to their security during the ongoing popular uprising.

“We have seen in the foreign media reports claiming Christian churches have been attacked by the protesters. These reports do not represent the truth at all,” priest Krikor Muratyan, the religious head of the Sourp Bedros Armenian Apostolic Church, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “As a man of God, I can confidently say there is no Christian-Muslim conflict in Egypt. We are all concerned about the clashes; that’s all.”

Christians held a mass Sunday in Cairo’s central Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the recent protests, in memory of the victims of the uprising, with Muslims standing alongside in solidarity. Some of the worshippers broke down and cried as the congregation sang, “Bless our country, listen to the screams of our hearts,” the Associated Press reported. “In the name of Jesus and Mohammed we unify our ranks,” Father Ihab al-Kharat said in his sermon. “We will keep protesting until the fall of the tyranny.”
Christian congregations at regular church services have been peaceful and relaxed during Sunday mass, said both Muratyan of the Armenian Apostolic Church and Andreas Andonidis, a representative of the Greek community in Cairo. He also agreed with the priest that Christians have been safe during the anti-regime protests shaking Egypt.

Still, Armenians living in the country are feeling tense and keeping a close eye on developments, Bishop Ashod Mnazsaganyan, the congregation head of the Armenian Apostolic Church of Egypt, told the Daily News “Some of them are even considering going to Armenia, but there has not yet been any assault on the holy shrines,” he said.

‘The public has had enough’

Zaven Lilozyan, the editor in chief of daily Housaper, an Armenian newspaper in Cairo, told the Daily News that he supported the protesters. “The people have been stampeded by the state’s pressure for decades and they finally said, ‘Enough is enough.’ Now they are claiming their rights,” he said.

Lilozyan added, however, that citizens had witnessed a great deal of plundering Friday and Saturday. Following the clashes in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, he said he was worried a civil war might break out, though he agreed with the clergy members that there had been no incident of violence targeting the country’s Christian communities.

“A few stores of Christians were plundered during the clashes at Tahrir Square, but not because they were owned by [Christians], just randomly as the protesters were raiding around,” he said. “Therefore we cannot really say that the attacks targeted the Christian population.”

The Christian community in Egypt is safe, according to Konstantin Katropoulous, a Turkish-Greek living in Cairo, who said he believed security within the country would soon be restored. “For now we are leaving the house only to shop for basic needs, due to safety concerns, but there is nothing particularly targeting us,” he said.

Christians in Egypt, who make up more than 10 percent of the country’s 80 million-strong population, have in the past been targets of sectarian attacks and have charged that authorities were not doing enough to protect them. Two week after the New Year’s bombing in Alexandria, Muslim gunmen shot dead six Coptic Christians in the nearby town of Nagaa Hammadi.

There are many churches around Tahrir Square, but none of them have been attacked despite the severe clashes in the vicinity, said Suren Bayramyan, who is of Armenian origin and based close to the square.

According to Bayramyan, both Muslim and Christian clergy made joint efforts to maintain peace between different religious groups in order to prevent conflicts. “They are making calls emphasizing the brotherhood of man. For now, everything is going well for us, the Christians, and I do not think that anything bad will happen later,” Bayramyan said.