Exhortation

On New Year’s Eve, an Egyptian Muslim blew himself up outside a Coptic church in Alexandria, killing 25 Christians and injuring 90 others. At the end of January this year, eleven Christians were killed in a massacre in the village of Sharona. These were only two of many attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt during the past year.

Copts make up about 10% of the Egyptian population, though that percentage has been cut in half over the last century. They are the largest Christian population in the Middle East. During the thirty years of Hosni Mubarak’s regime, they have suffered petty discrimination and overt, and increasingly intense, violence.

Mubarak’s government has either turned a blind eye or actively participated in persecution. When Copts try to protect themselves, police have taken the side of the persecutors. Egyptian courts have refused to punish Muslims who murder Christians.

What does this have to do with us? For starters, these are brothers and sisters in Christ, and their suffering is the suffering of Christ’s body. Keep them in your prayers. There is a domestic political angle too: Mubarak could not have lasted as long as he has without billions and billions of dollars in military and economic aid that the US pours into Egypt. We have propped up a regime with Christian blood on its hands.

We should also discern God’s hand in the recent tumult in Egypt. God is not mocked. The blood of martyrs cries out from the ground, and the Lord hears and acts.