Egypt: Mob violence against Christians in Minya governate

As reported by Christian Daily on 26 April 2024, Christians in the village of Al-Fawakher (in southern Minya governorate) were beaten and several houses set on fire on 23 April 2024, following a rumor that a church would be built in the village. A similar incident happened on 25 April 2024 in the village of Al-Kom Al-Ahmar, where Christians were attacked by a mob of Muslim villagers after the evangelical church reportedly received an official building permit. These reports involving Muslim mob violence are part of a long string of incidents, which have occurred multiple times each year for the past decade.

World Watch Research analyst Michael Bosch comments: “Although there were complaints that the security forces arrived late on the scene, perpetrators were arrested and calm was restored. Nonetheless, the incidents underline the vulnerability of Christians in Egypt, with only rumors being enough to expose them to severe mob violence. Such violence is nothing new in Egypt, especially in Upper Egypt: Activist group Coptic Solidarity reported on 26 April 2024 that three similar attacks by Muslim mobs had taken place between September 2023 and January 2024, all preventing the construction of a legally permitted church building.” 

Michael Bosch continues: “According to the most recent figures available, at least 3,100 church buildings have now been legalized following the issuing of the 2016 Church Construction Law (State Information Service, 8 January 2024). Although this is certainly a positive step, the incidents show that the local Muslim population is regularly able to act against the law and prevent Christians from actually constructing or using church buildings. This comes on top of the existing discrimination compared to the construction of mosques which rarely face any interference from the authorities. Little has changed since Human Rights Watch reported the following on the 2016 Church Construction Law on 15 September 2016: 

[The 2016 Law] requires the size of a church to be ‘commensurate with’ the number of Christians in the area. Since the government has never released statistics about Egypt’s Christian minority, viewing the number as a national security issue, determining the size of local Christian communities is difficult and most likely arbitrary. The parliamentary memo accompanying the law states that governors should take into account ‘security and public safety’ when deciding on church-building applications, effectively allowing mob violence to dictate whether church construction is authorized.”