As the Coptic Orthodox Church is celebrating the Holy Week reaching Easter on Sunday, many people wonder why the church is late celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus Christ since the Catholic Church usually celebrate Easter 13 days earlier. There are mainly two reasons behind such difference. The first reason is the calendar since the Christian Orthodox Church continues to follow the Julian calendar when calculating the date of Easter, while the rest of Christianity uses the Gregorian calendar and the difference comes here since the Julian calendar is 13 days behind the Gregorian.

On daily basis, Copts united publishes news about inauguration of new churches and the ordination of new priests, monks and deacons in Egypt and abroad. This shows us that the Coptic Orthodox Church is growing in numbers not only in Egypt but also all over the world. The quality of faith appears when Coptic simple people decided to face death instead of abandoning their faith. Those were filmed while being beheaded and confessing their Christian belief.

Father Botros Botros Bastawrous, deputy of Kafr El-Sheikh diocese, said in a public conference in support of al-Sisi in the governorate of Kafr El-Sheikh that we have to respect the Divine Will for al-Sisi s re-election. For a long time, people in Egypt tended to mix religion with politics leading both to a catastrophic situation. Many clergy and other people trading on religion have used it to achieve their own benefits by supporting the regime. Moreover, politicians have been using clergy to support their regimes using their effective methods on the simple people. However, after the Muslim Brotherhood had taken power in Egypt, people hated such mix between religion and politics, and demonstrated against the autocratic regime of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was accompanied by a large wave of atheism, which was estimated in 2013 that up to 3 million (3.57%) Egyptians were atheists.

The holy bible says: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ (Leviticus 19:18) which is a great rule to deal with one another. If you think about the majority of our problems with other people, you will find out that it is derived by selfishness and greed. We want to have everything and don’t care about the others.

It is interesting to hear news about the establishment of new Coptic churches around the world, which is usually welcomed by officials and public figures and is never refused by fanatics unlike what happens in Egypt. This week, Abba Antonius Morkos, Bishop of African Affairs, laid the foundation stone for the first Coptic church in the state of Malawi. The celebration was attended by a number of Malawian officials and representatives of Christian denominations, and it was widely covered by local media. Representative of the president of Malawi said that his country is honored to have a church that extends back to the first century and was blessed by the visit of the holy family to its land. Egypt is such a big country with great heritage that faced waves of extremism. These waves made many Egyptians unproud they have such heritage! It is amazing that a man can despise what others envy him for.

At the time many extremists think that religion aims mainly at ruining others lives in order to force them to embrace their extremists ideas, some people call to develop the understanding of religion, which may be called renewal of religious discourse as well. Those developers may do so thinking religion aims basically at offering a better life for human beings and following the rule: Islam is the Religion of Ease. One of those developers is Sheikh Mostafa Rashid, Mufti of Australia and New Zealand, president of the World Union of Islamic Scholars for Peace, who issued a new book entitled (a correction to the old jurisprudence), which was presented at the Cairo International Book Fair. In the book he explained that many ideas embraced by Muslims around the world are not true including Hijab and niqab.

As the presidential race has started in Egypt, it became clear that President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi will win another round in the presidency of Egypt. This raises questions about challenges he will face in the second round. The list is too long, but the economic situation and financial difficulties comes above all right next to fighting terrorism and security situation. Many projects have been carried out in Egypt, but the citizens are suffering under high inflation rates and increasing prices.

The Egyptian state is not able to defend the Copts, a message meant to be sent by unmasked elements of ISIS terrorist group in Al-Arish. The message was not written on papers, but on the dead body of Bassem Shehata Haraz, a 27-year-old Copt from Al-Arish, who was shot dead on January 13rd in his hometown.

It was a nice video report about an Islamic school in the United States to teach the children how to be the Islamic icon in the West. The school manager pointed out that students should learn how to be good representatives of Islam and to teach the west that terrorists know nothing about Islam. In fact, most of our Muslim friends in Egypt do hate violence, refuse attacks on Coptic Christians, are keen to congratulate them on their feasts and willing to share moments of both joy and grief with them. However, the real problem is the broad base of fanatics that live in simple and rural areas. The majority of them have received low level of education and are struggling with poverty. Those are the main tool of fanaticism in Egypt.

In what became more of a fanatic ritual, terrorists replaced congratulating Copts on their feast by attacking the places where they celebrate the feasts. This has became a ritual for years, starting with the big hit in New Year s Eve of 2010 where the Saints church in Alexandria was bombed killing dozens of Copts. This has became more of a ritual since nobody was punished for such attacks, even those who proved to be responsible for some attacks, and recently the attacks extended to reach mosques where Muslims are performing their prayers, and yet nobody is being punished including those who incite hatred in the society!

Egyptian medical researchers affiliated to the Nile Delta s Mansoura University recently developed a new way of targeting breast cancer cells using silver nano-particles. This came in newspapers days after Eng. Ibrahim Mahlab, Assistant to the Egyptian President for National and Strategic Projects, announced the invention of a new Egyptian technology for water treatment, which was reached by the Egyptian scientist Dr. Nabil Al Maraghi. Reading the news, I resorted back to Sustainable Development Strategy book: Egypt s vision 2030 And Planning Reform wrote by Nihal El-Megharbel, PhD Deputy to the Minister of Planning, Monitoring and Administrative Reform full of positive thoughts. The book mentions that Egypt targets to be among the top 40 countries of quality of scientific research institutions by 2030. Will such inventions be taking Egypt towards fulfilling this dream in 12 years to come? In fact, scientific research is the way to the future and having real development.

Once again, the Copts decided to waiver their rights and chose to accept a customary reconciliation session instead of law enforcement in Koum Loufy village where their houses were set on fire. By doing so, some people said they took an initiative to show love and make peace, but the truth is they did so to protect their children since they are treated as weak minority that police won t be able to protect in case those who are attacked them are held accountable.

Great people are those who leave great impact at the end of their journey. Three important people left this week. One died, the other was killed and the third just left her office. A female manager in a news television left her office after taking her position for one year. She made an incredible change in the form and content which was assured and agreed upon by most of the people who loved or hated her. Many people didn t like her for being rude and aggressive many times, but those people agreed she was good at what she does and she left a good impact.

In the past I used to ask myself how the terrorist think. I tried sometime to imagine why they hate Christians and how they feel when they kill other people for just having a different faith. However, this question changed a little after the recent attack against Al-Rawda mosque in Arish in which more than 310 Muslims were killed by Muslim terrorists as they performed their prayers! I remembered that Pope Shenouda II, former Coptic Pope, used to say those who attack Copts will not stop there and will target Muslims later. This is now clear as terrorists are now attacking mosques just like they attack churches.

Every now and then, fanatic voices appear in media to call Christians infidels and cause tension as well as religious dispute. People s reactions vary between supporting and denouncing, but both parties usually reach nothing at the end but tired throats. Soon, the dispute comes to an end, even with some casualties, before it rises later by another fanatic. However, fanatics learned recently to use the brand new slogan: Christians are partners in the homeland. They do this right before they start cursing those partners and inciting against them. They realize that calling someone an infidel is a permission to many simple people with no or low education to attack those enemies of God. They also know that Egypt is full of those simple people including more than 14 million illiterate Egyptians.

In fairy tales we usually hear about good or bad people. However, it became really hard to make such differentiation or classification in the real life because good people do bad things and bad people do good things. People are not angels or devils, as they are simply human being. This fact forces us sometime to revise all the facts that we take for granted and to reconsider all the people and things in our safe zone.

I have just returned from a 3 weeks journey to the Netherlands; this wonderful country where you can smell the aroma of freedom and system. However, I saw it by my Egyptian eye that sought all potential opportunities to dream for a better future for the homeland. I saw a system that respects everyone and policemen whom you don’t feel their presence until the system or the rules are broken. They respect bicycles and bicyclist above all, and I found this one of the decent means of transportation that saves both money and health! Yet, bicycles enjoy special routes and laws in order to protect the bicyclist from cars and encourage the people to ride them.

A new Coptic Christian man was killed today to join the martyrs of the Coptic Church. This time he is a Coptic priest called Father Samaan Shehata, priest of St. Julius Al-Akfahsi Church in Baba Al-Fashn diocese. As the officials started to give their usual description to the murderer as mentally retarded, I searched the dictionary to find out more about that disease that gives professional murderers such motivation to commit their crimes. A mentally retarded person is partly outdated and often no longer considered polite) intellectually disabled, medically defined as having an IQ (intelligence quotient) below 70 in addition to deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors (which means having problems with basic functional skills that affect every day, general living.

The Rohingya Muslims have often been called the most persecuted minority in the world. They have no state and are unwanted by Myanmar government. Some people believe they are Arab merchants whose ship has demolished near that land and they were to be killed, but started shouting Rahma, which means mercy in Arab language. Whether the story is true or not, mercy should be used in our world more than this. People should have the right to live without giving consideration to their religion. The Rohingya story reminds me of the Coptic Christians in Egypt whom some fanatics refuse to allow them to pray and persecute them for their Christian belief. Here we hear about Muslims persecute and other Muslims being persecuted.

As Egypt is looking for better future hoping that the best is yet to come, some senior officials insist on keeping retardation as pure Egyptian slogan. Governor of Minya supported the prevention of Copts in Forn village from praying claiming that the majority of Muslims refuse it! This governor indeed doesn t realize he lives in the year 2017 where his statements were published minutes later before the whole world. Such statements can have very bad impact on the image of Egypt abroad and on tourism industry as well. This reminded me of The Little Prince, Frank Vercauteren, the Belgian football manager who agreed to train the famous Egyptian team Zamalek, but declined in the last minute after hearing horrible stories about prosecution of Copts in Egypt according to the president of Zamalek Mortada Mansour.

Last week I talked about the International media reporting the visit of the reality star Kourtney Kardashian to Egypt, and today I want to put a spot light on the promising numbers of the Egyptian economy published on Tuesday by the American financial company Bloomberg. The report said that Egypt’s tourism revenues rose to $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, up from $510 million in the same period a year ago. It added that full-year receipts rose 16 percent to $4.4 billion. Remittances grew 9 percent to $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, and rose two percent to $17.4 billion for the year.