Since the revolution, the situation for Christians in Egypt has in some ways slightly improved, in other ways worsened. They themselves feel that they have more freedom to express their faith in public, but on the other hand, there have been so many attacks on Christians and their churches where the army has not intervened in time to prevent the attacks. It's as if the message from the army, which is currently in power in the country, is: "We will protect you, but you must know your place." The army rebuilt a destroyed church in a village in record time, but soon after allowed another church in Cairo to be burned, even though they had the manpower and mandate to intervene. In other words, Christians are not safe and many are very worried about the future.
Egypt's new constitution does not include any change to the crucial article that cites Islamic law as the main source of the country's legislation, and there are no guarantees that getting permission to build and repair church buildings will be easier in the future than it was before, when simply repairing a toilet in a church building basically required presidential permission.
In the wake of the revolution, a number of prisons were stormed and many criminals and terror convicts were released. Young Christian girls in particular have been abducted in greater numbers than before. There are stories that some criminal taxi drivers have created a system that allows them to lock all the car doors from the inside, without the passenger in the back seat being able to open the door and escape when they realize that the driver has no intention of driving to the desired destination.
Christians are seeing more and more signs that Egypt will fall under Islamist rule, and many Christians want to leave the country for a life in the West. However, church leaders in the country are not encouraging this, as they do not want to see the number of Christians in the country dwindle as much as it has in the Holy Land, for example.
Some Christians point out that the Islamists have made such clumsy and bombastic statements that they are losing support from a large part of the population. For example, in early June, leading Islamists stated that Christians are "kafara", i.e. infidels, and that Western tourists are also "kafara" and therefore unwanted. Since the tourism industry is vital to Egypt's economy, and since most Egyptians understand this, they will not be inclined to vote for the Islamists in the upcoming elections. Most Egyptians, especially those who first took to the streets to demonstrate for freedom on January 25th, support the slogan "one hand" as an expression of Egypt's Christians and Muslims standing together. Hopefully, the majority of Egyptians will reject the stigmatizing term "kafara" and recognize that Egypt's Christians are the descendants of the Egyptians of the Pharaonic era and thus have as much right to be there as the Muslims.
