This article contains graphic descriptions of the aftermath of a bombing.

March 2011 – It happened during the New Year’s Eve service at the Coptic Christian Church of the Saints in Alexandria, Egypt.

At midnight, two men parked a car outside the church and got out. For a moment or two, one of them talked on a cell phone, and then the men calmly walked away. On the back of the car was a bumper sticker with the words, “The rest is coming.”

After midnight, as the service was coming to a close, a bomb in the vehicle exploded. According to Mary Abdelmassih of the Assyrian International News Agency, Egyptian officials said later that the bomb had over 220 pounds of explosives mixed with nails, glass and iron balls. Abdelmassih said the bomb was powerful enough to make “body parts fly into the building’s fourth floor, and to the mosque facing the church.”

Body parts strewn all over the street were covered with newspapers by Christians because some of the Muslims who gathered after the blast started stepping on the remains and chanting “Allah Akbar!” (“Allah is great!”)

At least 21 Christians were killed by the blast and an additional 70 injured – but it could have been far worse. Almost 2,000 believers were in attendance, and had the service concluded a few minutes earlier, hundreds of Christians would have been out in the street when the bomb exploded.

Insurmountable obstacles
Like many other Christian communities in the Middle East, the Copts in Egypt trace their history back to the infancy of the Christian faith itself. They are the largest Christian minority in that part of the world, although they number more than 10% of Egypt’s 80 million people.

According to Robert Spencer, a scholar of Islamic history, theology and law and director of Jihad* Watch, most people in the world continue to ignore what’s happening to Christians in the Middle East.

“Predictably enough, this mass murder [in Egypt] has not resulted in any worldwide revulsion against Islamic jihadists, or general recognition of how Islamic supremacists and jihadists are persecuting Christians not only in Egypt, but in Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and elsewhere also,” he said.

While violence like the Alexandria church bombing is no doubt the most frightening aspect of this growing persecution, there has been tremendous pressure on Christians in Egypt for years. For example, believers there face almost insurmountable obstacles when wanting to build a new structure or even simply repair an existing church.

A perfect example of this denial of even basic religious freedom is the story of St. Mary’s Church in Talbiya, Egypt. The Copts tried for more than a decade to obtain permission from the Muslim government to build, and finally the Christians were given the go ahead.

According to Abdelmassih, however, on November 24, the Copts came to the work site only to find Egyptian security forces “bulldozing their equipment and wetting their cement sacks.”

Father Mina Zarif, a Coptic priest, told Hope-Sat TV, a Coptic channel in Egypt: “State security stole the church pews and the donation boxes.”

The Coptic Christians had had enough, and clashes broke out with Egyptian security forces. The police responded in force immediately. According to Aiden Clay of International Christian Concerns, “The security police actually opened fire on the protesters with live ammunition, killing at least two of the protesters.”

To add insult to injury, after the bloody clash, a house across the street was turned by government officials into a mosque – literally overnight – meaning no Coptic church could be built nearby.

Crosses burned
The suffering of the Coptic Christians and other religious minorities in Egypt seems to be ramping up. On November 15, 2010, for example, marauding Muslims in the village of Al-Nawahed torched 22 Coptic homes.

Following a police “investigation,” Egyptian authorities declared the fires “an act of fate” – even though no Muslim properties were burned.

According to AINA, the Egyptian official sent to investigate refused to listen to any of the Copts who had lost their homes, speak to witnesses or register the names of those Muslims accused of arson. Many of the Coptic victims were forced to sign papers agreeing that the fires had been an “act of fate.” Those who did not sign were beaten, or else their teenaged sons were threatened with indefinite detainment until the parents agreed.

That event followed two more instances of persecution in Egypt. In November 2009, 86 Coptic-owned properties were torched by Muslims in Farshout; and in Nag Hammadi in early January 2010 six Copts were killed and nine wounded following an attack after a church service. Forty-three homes and shops owned by Christians were also burned.

AINA reported, “Eyewitnesses said the perpetrators were chanting ‘Allah is Great’ and ‘No God except Allah’ while destroying, looting and torching Coptic property” in Nag Hammadi.

In Farshout, AINA reported that most of the Coptic businesses were looted and burned, seven Coptic women were abducted and Coptic priest Rev. Benjamin Noshi was attacked by a Muslim mob, leaving him hospitalized with a fractured skull. Some Coptic families were forcibly removed from their homes, which were then occupied by Muslims.

“We have never been so frightened and humiliated as Christians in all our lives. The mob made wooden crosses and burned them in the street,” according to one witness. “Our religion, and our Lord were openly insulted.”

‘Legitimate targets’
The Copts are not alone. According to Open Doors USA, “the most dangerous countries in which to practice Christianity are overwhelmingly Islamic ones.”

The organization issued its annual World Watch List, which tracks the conditions under which Christians are living in 77 countries and then ranks the top 50 most intolerant societies.

“Of the top 10 countries on the 2011 WWL, eight have Islamic majorities,” said an Open Doors press release. “Persecution has increased in seven of them.”

Those seven are Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Maldives, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

“The country that saw the greatest deterioration of Christian religious freedom in the reporting period … was Iraq, jumping from No. 17 to No. 8,” the group said. It added: “At least 90 Christians were martyred last year in Iraq while hundreds more were injured in bomb and gun attacks.”

Lord David Alton, a member of Parliament in the U.K., is more blunt about what is happening. Referring to the 2010 attacks in Iraq and the attacks in Egypt this year, Alton said he believed the violence reflected attempts “to systematically annihilate the ancient churches of the Middle East.”

Alton’s characterization may not apply everywhere in the Middle East, but it appears to be exactly what is happening in Iraq. Like the Coptic community in Egypt, many of the Christian communities in Iraq have been in existence since the early years of Christianity itself.

The persecution of Christians in Iraq has been taking its toll. Nina Shea, an international human-rights lawyer for 30 years and now director of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, said the unrelenting waves of bombings, murders, kidnappings, rapes and extortions “have triggered a mass exodus of Christians from Iraq over the past seven years. Since 2003, over half of the estimated 1.5 million Iraqi Chaldean Catholics, Assyrian, Syriac Orthodox and Armenian Christians, as well as some Protestants have fled to Syria, Jordan and farther flung places.”

Those who remain behind continue to experience suffering that is completely foreign to American Christians. In Iraq, priests have been abducted and murdered – some beheaded – and young Christian women are sometimes raped and killed for wearing blue jeans rather than garb approved by Muslim (Sharia) law.

Dr. Joseph Seferta, an Iraqi-born Chaldean Catholic living in Britain, where he is a member of the Commission for Inter-faith Dialogue of the Archdiocese of Birmingham, told AsiaNews that “Muslim fanatics … are bent on imposing Sharia and running Islamic states that have no place for Christians in them.”

One of the bloodiest attacks on Christians in Iraq occurred on October 31, when members of al-Qaida’s Iraqi affiliate rushed into the Chaldean Catholic Church of Our Lady of Salvation in Baghdad during a service. They held more than 100 Christians hostage until Iraqi security forces arrived.

In an article for AINA, Aaron Howard described how it all played out: “Blood and pieces of human flesh sprayed onto the church altar when gunmen began to shoot and blow up the hostages. They murdered 58 worshipers, including two priests.”

After the massacre, Howard said, the jihadists issued a statement that defined churches as “the dirty place belonging to the infidels that Iraqi Christians have long used as a base to fight Islam.” The group promised more attacks, declaring all Christians as “legitimate targets.”

In an article for the Weekly Standard, Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy said, “[Y]oung men and women [are] being stopped on the street [in Iraqi cities] and asked for their identity cards – and shot if their names reveal their Christian origins.”

One Christian priest told the London Telegraph: “They used to ask for money first,” but “now they just kill them right away.”

A grim situation
That’s not to say that Christians are suffering persecution in every Muslim country in the Middle East. Martin Chulov, Iraq correspondent for the Guardian, a London newspaper, said there were some relative bright spots in the region – Jordan, for example, and, surprisingly, Syria.

“In Jordan, Christians are free to profess their faith, build churches, schools, hospitals and universities. They attend mass and there are public celebrations of religious festivals and ceremonies. They experience less discrimination and more freedom than fellow believers in Egypt and Iraq,” he said. “There is a similar portrait of stability and freedom in Syria, where Christians comprise up to 10% of the population.”

Elsewhere in the Middle East, however, the situation for Christians is often grim.

In Saudi Arabia, for example, where there are roughly one million Catholics, there is no religious freedom as the West has come to know it.

“Christians worship [only] in private homes and there are bans on religious articles including Bibles, crucifixes, statues, carvings and items bearing religious symbols,” Chulov said. “The religious police bar the practice of any religion other than Islam.”

In Lebanon the situation is not nearly so clear cut. On the one hand, Chulov noted, Christians in that country make up nearly half the population and are free to practice their faith openly. They are also allowed to hold seats in the parliament.

On the other hand, even though Christians were once the majority faith, a brutal civil war and fears of jihadist violence – the terrorist group Hezbollah is based in Lebanon – have “whittled numbers away.”

Amin Gemayel, a former Lebanese president and now a voice for many of Lebanon’s remaining Christians, said if believers are forced out of his own country and the rest of the Middle East, even the moderate Muslims will lose.

“When the region is completely cleansed of other religions (apart from Islam) it will be a surrender to the fundamentalists,” he said.

There may be some encouraging signs that some moderate Muslims may be awakening to that very danger. Following the New Year’s Eve massacre of Copts in Alexandria this year, thousands of Muslims heroically offered their bodies as “human shields” at a subsequent Coptic church service, hoping to dissuade radicals from attacking again.

Yasmine El-Rashidi, who covers the Middle East for the Wall Street Journal, said many Muslims had made and kept “a promise of solidarity to the weary Coptic community” by showing up. They made “a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.”

“We either live together, or we die together,” insisted Mohamed El-Sawy, whom El-Rashidi identified as a Muslim arts tycoon and the first to broach the idea of Muslims forming a human shield for the Copts.

Even if such help becomes more common, Christians in the Middle East almost certainly know they will continue to face persecution from radical Muslim elements.

After the attacks on Christians in his country last December, Egyptian Catholic spokesman Fr. Rafic Greische told Vatican Radio that persecution made the Christmas season extremely difficult since their churches felt more like fortresses than places of worship. But he added that Christians also had a source of security that went beyond the church walls: It was “Jesus, who is with us [through] all these difficulties that we have.”

That’s been a strength upon which believers have relied for more than two thousand years.   

 *jihad – An Arabic word meaning ‘struggle.’ Muslims use ‘jihad’ to refer either to the internal struggle to please Allah or the literal struggle – holy war – that is to be fought against nonbelievers. A ‘jihadist’ is someone involved in the latter.

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Medical missionary calls for help
Dr. Charles Fielding lives with his family in the Middle East and works there as well as in parts of North Africa and Central Asia. He is a medical missionary to help the poor, encourage the church and evangelize the lost. In an email exchange with AFA Journal, Dr. Fielding shared his insights concerning the struggle of the church and the progress of the gospel in Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East. Here are some of his comments:

Ninety percent of my work is with the underground church, consisting of disciples who were once Muslims, and 10% is with those who were born to a Christian home in a Muslim nation.

In trying to reach Muslims, our biggest struggle is even finding a place where we can present the gospel. It is difficult for Muslims to come to faith in Christ because we cannot get them into a position to hear the gospel.

And, if they do hear the gospel and have some interest, it is very difficult for them to seek out answers. In almost every country, if they are just caught with a Bible, they are beaten and the Bible is taken away. So they hide their Bibles under their beds and they read in the middle of the night.

For a Muslim, standing up for Islam is admired and this would include treachery against those seeking Christianity. So one can make money by turning in a seeker to the police. This makes all seekers nervous and they do not know whom to trust.

Almost all Muslims that I know of who came to Christ have been forced out of their family. Most have been fired from their jobs. I know a handful who have been killed. I know about seven missionary friends who have been killed.

To be honest, we need an army of people to help us, but they need to be authentic disciples who have picked up their cross and will carry it anywhere that Jesus says to carry it – with a joyful attitude. These are tough pioneer places.

For more information or to help this effort, contact Medical Missions Response online or toll-free at 866-667-8996. Dr. Fielding has also written a book, Preach and Heal, about his experiences and strategies as a medical missionary over the last 15 years. It is available at online booksellers.