A group of 3,000 fundamentalist Muslims attacked a church building in Elmarenab in the province of Aswan in Upper Egypt on Saturday, September 30. They set it on fire, while also looting and burning nearby homes and businesses belonging to Christians. The interior of the church and four private homes and businesses burned down, but no one was seriously injured.<\/p>\n
The attackers belong to so-called Salafist groups, people who seek to bring Islam back to the pure version of its earliest days. Since the Egyptian revolution in February, these groups have become increasingly organized and have been behind several attacks on Christians and their churches.<\/p>\n
The attack in Elmarenab comes after a period of rising tension that began in August when local Salafists expressed anger over renovation work on the local church. They forced Christians to comply with their demands by blocking the entrance to the church and threatening Copts on the streets. One of the demands was that the crosses placed on top of the church dome and elsewhere on the outside of the church had to be removed. The priests and other representatives of the congregation agreed. However, this was not enough. The Salafists now demanded that the dome of the church be demolished as well. This was refused by the church on the grounds that it would lead to the church collapsing. This caused the Salafists' anger to flare up, and during the afternoon prayer on September 30, the imams from the loudspeakers of more than 20 mosques in the area called on Muslims to attack and destroy the church and Christian properties.<\/p>\n
Coptic Christians are now accusing local authorities of not enforcing new laws that call for severe punishments for such attacks, which have become more frequent in the unstable situation that has characterized Egypt since January. New and more liberal rules have been introduced for church building permits, but the hardline Muslims have seen it as a provocation when a church is built or renovated. The church in Elmarenab was built with proper permission from the authorities, but the Salafists had questioned the permit.<\/p>\n
<\/i>Source: Compass Direct News Service<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fundamentalist Muslims burn church and destroy Christian homes<\/p>","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"gamle_kategorier":[],"land":[481],"class_list":["post-2411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ikke-kategoriseret","land-egypten","infinite-scroll-item","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n