In Coptic tradition, the Coptic Orthodox Church is the Church of Martyrs. The Book of Synaxarium, which narrates the lives of the Church’s saints, recounts that the Coptic Church exists today as a result of its martyrs’ blood. Today, one can see that the annual Coptic calendar is named after those who, according to Coptic belief, sacrificed their lives to keep their faith and to preserve the Christian doctrine.

After what many analysts have seen as a trouncing in the polls, the Salafist Nour party chairman Younes Makhion took to Facebook Wednesday evening to blast the parliamentary elections as the “worst in the history of the Egyptian Parliament.”

Egyptian security forces carried out raids in Arish, Rafah and Sheikh Zuwaid that left 20 "terrorists" dead, 12 wounded and 78 suspects arrested, the armed forces said in a statement Thursday.

Endowments Ministry Undersecretary Mohamed Abdel Razek said the ministry will not allow celebrations for the Shi'ite Day of Ashura, during the Hijri month of Muharram, to be held in mosques.

The pontiff of the Middle East's largest Christian denomination visited the High Desert on Tuesday. On a three-week U.S. visit from Egypt, Coptic Pope Tawadros II spoke at a local congregation where hundreds of the faithful heard a message of hope and met the spiritual leader up close.

The websites of the Egyptian Cabinet and The Information and Decision Support Center (IDSC) were hacked Thursday, Youm7 reported.

Yemen: Mohsen Saleh al-Muradi does not just want to drive the Shi’ite Houthi fighters out of Yemen’s capital 130 km (80 miles) from his home town, he wants to hunt them down and stamp them out.

Semi-official results from the first stage of Egypt's parliamentary elections show that the "For the Love of Egypt" electoral coalition has emerged victorious, with the ultraconservative Salafist Nour Party, the only Islamist force contesting in the polls, facing a big defeat.

One police officer and ten other conscripts were wounded in North Sinai’s city of Arish when a roadside bomb exploded in their armoured vehicle during a survey mission.

A man was killed in confrontations with the police in Asyut Wednesday; he tried to escape once he saw security forces and began shooting, a security source told Youm7.

The Ministry of Interior said Wednesday that a “Muslim Brotherhood member” who was arrested on charges of sabotaging the elections through threatening judges is a court employee.

Twelve percent of voters from the governorates involved in the first phase of the parliamentary elections, which ended on Monday, are aware that Muslim Brotherhood members are running under other lists, according to research center Baseera.

A terrorism tribunal in Saudi Arabia, which was elected to the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2013, has sentenced two political activists to decade-long prison terms for establishing a rights organization, Amnesty International said on Monday.

Russian air strikes in Syria's Latakia province killed a top rebel commander from a group armed by President Bashar al-Assad's foreign enemies, a monitoring group said on Tuesday.

“No to Religious Party” and “Expose Them” signed a cooperation protocol in an attempt to coordinate their strategies. The two groups, which have popular mobilisation agendas against the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist political parties, met on Saturday and issued their first joint statement.

The Ohio mosque at the center of a recent media love fest has been accused of having previous ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S. The Noor Islamic Cultural Center in Dublin, Ohio, welcomed a woman holding an anti-Islam sign into its mosque last week, when she showed up to protest outside of the facility. As the cameras rolled, a Muslim woman approached her and hugged her.

The Egyptian Salafists’ political arm of al-Nour party has suffered a crushing defeat in their strongholds of Alexandria, Marsa Matrouh, and Beheira in the first round of the 2015 parliament elections, according to the initial results of two-day voting.

British Prime Minister David Cameron unveiled a new strategy on Monday to combat extremism, saying the battle was "perhaps the "defining one of this century", but his proposals were condemned by Muslims as demonising their communities and set to fail.

As the parliamentary elections begin, at least 12 preachers in Alexandria were referred to investigations for preaching without permission and using mosques for election publicity, the Ministry of Religious Endowments said in a statement Saturday.

Without much fanfare and publicity, another pope has arrived in the United States for a three-week visit. Following the footsteps of Pope Francis who made a six-day visit to the US last month, Egypt's Coptic Pope Tawadros II arrived in Atlanta on Oct. 7, his first official visit to the US since his papacy began in 2012, reports said.

Tens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters and members of the National Alliance for Legitimacy took to the streets Friday morning in Alexandria, tearing down the campaign banners of parliamentary hopefuls running in the upcoming elections.