Lately the church announced to cancel all trips and visits to monasteries due to security reason as mention in the brief statement released by the church lately. What clear is for me that Copts pay the price of their belief in the peaceful time and in the time that the country suffers from political tension.

On June 12th, the Copts celebrated the feast of the holy apostles. This feast commemorates the martyrdom of St. Paul and St. Peter. It is a liturgical feast in honor of their martyrdom in Rome at the end of the first century. Ever since the Christians have been suffering and murdered in the name of Jesus Christ and the Coptic Christians have been no exception. For 20 centuries, the Copts have suffering from intermittent waves of persecution by the Roman and Muslim rulers. Moreover, they were recently called (the primary target and favorite prey) by ISIS. This explains several terrorist attacks against the Copts most of which ISIS has claimed responsibility of. The group also called on its supporters to continue targeting the Copts.

It was very painful to hear about the 17 years old Algerian student Fatima Gholam who was killed in car accident in her way to participate in the reading competition organized by UAE. The poor girl had spent 18 hours in her way to the Algerian capital but she died before she achieves her goal. Fatima Gholam will be the name called on 10 libraries in the UAE to remember the girl that can be called martyr of the books. Sheikh Mohamed Bin Rashid, governor of Dubai, expressed his great sorrow for such loss. However, I salute the UAE and its government for giving great concern to reading and culture, not only through competition, but rather by honoring its martyrs.

The terrorist groups backed by the intelligence of Arab, regional and international countries are fighting a war to make Egypt fail by military confrontations with the armed forces, especially in North Sinai, successive assassinations of soldiers and police officers, systematic targeting of Egyptian Christian citizens. Not to mention the attempts to create chaos and incite sedition through the fifth column of militants and the remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood. The question is whether terrorism targets the Copts mainly for their national positions concerning June 30 revolution or for their religious identity. I don t believe there is much of separation between nationality and faith. The Egyptian churches were named Coptic before they carried the name of its denomination. However, the successive terrorist attacks against Copts revealed they are targeted for their faith. Governor of Minya said the terrorists tried to make the Copts declare they believe in Islam before they were shot dead after they refused to convert into Islam. Copts between national and church deprivation, this was the title of a research published 25 years ago. It tells how Egyptian Copts struggled for the homeland, but got no rights in return. This happened through all political revolutions in Egypt starting with 1804 to the revolution of June 30, 2013.

Hamas claims that its members love and appreciate the suit of the Egyptian army. Therefore, they wear it and keep it in their lockers. this should have nothing to do with the murders of our soldiers and officers who are killed in Sinai every now and then. Yes, they offered us their condolonces that we didn t accept as we don t believe their intentions even if claimed to be good. Their terrorism activities can t be denied in Egypt after several terrorist attacks against the Copts since the overthrown of the Muslim Brotherhood supported by Qatar.

After the government raised recently the prices of the gas and the electricity, the only thing everyone ask who should take care of the poor people in Egypt? Everyone understand that Egypt face a tremendous Economic problems but at the same time there are many direction the political regime take to improve the poor people life not to increase the burden and increase the poverty of Egyptian. We can see president Sisi impose only one policy to improve the Egyptian economic which is lifting the subsidies on everything which could be a step from many to improve the economy.

Gas prices went up this week in Egypt along with the temperature, and led the suffering of the citizens to increase as well. The new raise in gas prices led all prices to increase and the Egyptians just accepted this and continued their lives. I was surprised to hear a poor Egyptian citizen praising the recent decisions considering them helpful to the poor. I dont understand how raising the prices of everything including electricity bills and imposing new taxes may help the poor. Moreover, I dont understand how can the poor think this positive way and ignore their suffering!

The Egyptian elite and some misguided TV presenters along with some of Egyptian youth became mad at the government after the recent economic reform measures on the eve of the fourth anniversary of what I believe the greatest revolution in history. They forgot that this revolution brought President Sisi to take over the responsibility and confront the conspiracy and destruction against our country. He started by working on several security issues and developed the Egyptian armed forces. Now, after Egypt succeeded in solving many security problems, it started to work on fixing the economy that has been destroyed since 1952 when the government with poor resources provided free services and material in addition to subsidies for food and fuel.

The Church is not a political institution, and will never be. It is the kingdom of God and its righteousness and salvation in peoples. It works to start the Kingdom of heaven on earth. God is its ruler and owner, which is more important than any Caesar on earth. Yet, may God be obeyed above all men and let him be honest and every man a liar. As we are celibate citizens invited to live according to the Gospel of Christ, we share the concerns of this world and work for its peace and progress without isolation. We shouldn’t be enslaved to the world, but we give what is Caesar’s to Caesar; and what is God’s is God. Christ invited us to be patriot for our homeland since it doesn’t contradict with our faith. Therefore, the mission of the church through history has been to declare the truth, but such declaration can’t be declared without involvement of Christians in their community. Christianity has not formed a state yet, since Christ’s kingdom is not from this world. However, he ordered Christians to be honest, righteous, and do good to all. It is a message of goodness to all those who love His appearance.

While we are close to June 30th, we still have the same argument about this date and if it was revolution or military coup and because I don’t want to go further in this argument I want to focus in more deep thoughts related to both terms. For those who consider it as revolution, I want to ask them many question, are we better than before? Is our economic, social and political life is better than before, Did Egyptian get what they demonstrate against?, did we achieve any progress during 3 years from June 30th until now?

For years, prices in Egypt are going up and never stop increasing. This is indeed very hard if you think about it. But the real problem is that about 30 percent of Egypt’s population lives below the poverty line and the increasing prices make them suffer more and more. Yesterday, the government announced that there is no intention to raise the prices of gasoline, diesel and butane gas. Yet, today the Council of Ministers of Egypt approved petrol new price list imposed on gasoline, diesel and butane gas.

God has never said that faith will be easy, but he has mentioned the difficult conditions and expensive costs to follow him. He also invited us to calculate the maintenance. To be both believer and patriot, this has its impact on the relation between the Coptic church and nation. At the events of Omrania in 2010, the Cairo police assaulted peaceful protesters who were seeking to protect a church under construction, and killed two of the protesters. Demonstrations erupted in front of the administrative building and 154 Coptic Christian citizens were arrested. At that moment, the Coptic youth went out of the churches for the first time in modern history. After the church of the saints were bombed in 2011, demonstrations erupted against Mubarak and his government. On January 25, the first Coptic man who was injured was called Mina Nagy and the first Coptic martyrs in January 28th, Mina Daniel, even before the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood joined the revolution against Mubarak’s regime.

The Egyptian parliament has a great history, with many politicians leading it since the 19th century. It has always respected freedom of speech and reason. Members of the Egyptian parliament have always used a decent language to express the harmony of the political life in this great country. I say this as I am full of sorrow feelings and frustration for what our parliament reached nowadays. In fact, I tried many times to avoid writing about the performance of this parliament, but I couldn’t stop myself upon watching the final discussion of the Convention on the demarcation of the border between Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Reforms in General shouldn’t take one shape. Reforms shouldn’t be only by increasing the prices especially on the poor classes. It’s very understandable that any reform will affect without any doubt the poor class but if we didn’t work in lighten these affects that might lead to social tension and may be troubles in the short and long term. One of the main problem that face Egypt right now that the political regime doesn’t even talk to the people or tell Egyptian what are they willing to do and why, on contrary they deal with the Egyptian as sub-ordinate. Egyptian should be Number one in any decision made by the government or the president, however, this is not the case and it seems that Sisi didn’t learn from the previous lessons. In conclusion I want to assure that any reforms will not be effective unless the society and community accept it and feel that they are part of the process not objectives.

London has recently witnessed several terrorist attacks, most of which ISIS has claimed responsibility for, but this week there was another attack against the Muslim community in London as man rams car into crowd killing one and injuring 12 Muslims as they were leaving a mosque after performing special prayers during the holy month of Ramadan. The victims were innocent people as always, but this time, the terrorist attack targeted Mulim people coming out of a mosque. Indeed, the Muslim community was shocked to have its share of the terrorist attacks in London. The horrible incident reminds us of several attacks against Copts in Egypt; Nag Hamadi, Warraq and the Saints Church in Alexandria to name a few, but the reaction of the Muslim majority in Egypt was a little bit different from the one of the Muslim minority in London though the attacks are similar.

In January 1977, Ahmed Bahaa Eddin wrote an Arab editorial about the critical situation after the glorious victory of October 1973. He warned against several threats that he saw a revolution at hand. The regime clashed with the people and Sadat had to visit Jerusalem following the American Administration to become a basis in our foreign policy and democracy became a fake play in our country. On the other hand, Saddam Hussein led the Arabs to fight against Iran and then occupied Kuwait to face his destiny and get his army destroyed and his country divided. Iraq ever since became a land for civil war and destruction. Then we had our war against terrorism after the Muslim Brotherhood took office in Egypt. The revolution of June 30 came to remove them from power and to demand the Minister of Defense Abdul Fattah al-Sisi to run for presidency and fix the situation.

When we hear the word Copts, we think of Egypt. Copts have a long history plagued by blood and oppression after they embraced Christianity in Egypt. The Christians in Egypt were called Copts as they belong to the land of Egypt as the word Copts means the people of Egypt. With the entry of Islam in Egypt, Christians were called Copts against Muslims. Now, they represent the largest minority in the Middle East and the largest Christian community in the region. Copts are estimated at 8 million Copts in Egypt and about 2 million Copts all over the world (most of them live in the United States). Copts had their own language which is one of the oldest.

During King Salman s important visit to Cairo on April 7, 2016, which lasted for five days, ten agreements were signed which will bring about radical changes in the region, such as the construction of a bridge between the Kingdom and Egypt to link the two continents of Asia and Africa and bring billions of dollars to Egypt. The Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi signed the bridge agreement based on the republican decree signed by Mohamed Hosni Mubarak in 1990 that admits the two islands belong to the Saudi Arabia. This decision came after consulting the specialized committees headed by the Supreme National Committee for the Sea. However, many countries and organizations conspired against Egypt and the Saudi Arabia leading to sedition, but the two big sisters overcame such evil plans of division in the Middle East.