On a recent Sunday in southern Egypt, dozens of Coptic Christians gathered for mass next to the charred remains of a wooden structure they once used as a chapel.
A priest and five white-clad deacons began chanting around a simple wooden altar as the sun beat down on the remains of the makeshift chapel, which was torched two months ago.
A blackened wood cross lay amid the rubble, a testament to a string of clashes in southern villages this month that has highlighted sectarian tensions in Egypt.
Further down the road in the village of Ismailiya, a building the congregation wanted to use for their church is closed for lack of a permit.
Egypt’s Copts, the Middle East’s largest Christian minority, have long struggled to obtain official permission to build churches.
They are now hoping a new law on building houses of worship — both mosques and churches — will curb discrimination against them.
However, in the rural southern province of Minya, even the rumor of Christians building a church can spark mob violence.
Copts have faced growing violence in recent years. Dozens have been killed in sectarian attacks across the country.
“My simplest right as an Egyptian should be to pray in a church, not the street,” said Nashat Saed, 31, who attended the service with his wife and three children.
“I feel oppression every time I come here to pray,” he said as sweat trickled down his face.
“I dream that we open a church where we can bring the women and children to pray, instead of the street,” he said.
Egypt’s authorities often refuse to give Christians building permits for churches on the grounds that doing so would disturb the peace with their Muslim neighbors.
Ishak Ibrahim, a researcher with the rights group Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said current laws are biased against Christians.
“There is discrimination in handling Muslim and Christian rights in building houses of worship. The conditions for building churches are a hindrance,” he said.
Egypt had 2,869 churches in 2011.
Nadia Henry, a member of parliament for the Free Egyptians Party, said a new law could dampen sectarian tensions.
“Regulating church construction will bring down the number of sectarian clashes in Egypt,” she said.
However, the Copts, who make up about 10 percent of Egypt’s 90 million people, are going through some of their darkest times in recent memory.
Copts have long been the target of sectarian attacks, but they surged under during the three-decade rule of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
A month before Mubarak was overthrown in a popular uprising in February 2011, a suicide bomber killed more than 20 churchgoers in the coastal city of Alexandria.
The violence multiplied after Mubarak’s ouster, with sectarian clashes in Cairo killing more than a dozen people.
Then in October that year, Copts who had been protesting a church arson clashed with the military outside state television headquarters.
More than 20 protesters were killed, some run over by armored vehicles.
One year later, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was elected president.
His rule was marred by clashes between Christians and police following the funerals of victims of a sectarian clash. Police fired tear gas at the mourners outside the headquarters of the Coptic pope in Cairo.
When massive protests swamped Cairo’s streets demanding Morsi’s resignation in July 2013, leading to his overthrow by the military, his supporters singled out Christians for blame.
Leading Muslim clerics, as well as much of the secular opposition and the Coptic Orthodox Church, supported his ouster.
The authorities have promised to clamp down on sectarianism.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the former army chief who ousted Morsi, has said there would be no discrimination against any Egyptian.
However, that has not stopped the violence.
In May, a Muslim mob stripped an elderly woman of her clothes and attacked her house in a southern village after rumors that her son was dating a Muslim woman.
Coptic farmer Amir Mikhail, who hosts religious services in his small home in Ismailiya, said the government was not doing enough to protect Christians.
“The official message is great, but on the ground, nothing is implemented,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia