In April 2013, the Cathedral of St. Mark in Abbasiya was attacked and 3 Copts were killed and 84 were injured. The perpetrators were likely searching for weapons in the church or Coptic women who have converted into Islam and are still trapped in the church according to many stories spread by fanatics. They were likely searching for a reason to justify their attacks on Christian houses and churches. Ever since, the fascist regime was collapsing and this attack was a step towards overthrowing the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood. During the transitional period from July 2013 to June 2014, Copts were subject to many sectarian attacks as a price to pay by the Copts for supporting President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, and they are still supporting him.

Nowadays, if you asked anyone working in the media what they do for a living, their answer would be without a doubt, that their job is to support the current political regime and any regime to come. An example of these people is Mostafa Bakry, Ahmad Moussa, Khaled Salah, to name a few. When you ask any of them why the do what they do, they will convince you that they are defending Egypt against the huge conspiracy theory that nobody else sees except them and the regime they support.

Neom is the chosen name for a planned 26,500 sq km transnational city and economic zone to be constructed in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Egypt. This city is a Saudi dream that will take 1000 km of the precious Egyptian land, namely in Sinai, to fulfill this grand project, which will cost 500 billion US dollars. An Investment Fund of $16 billion was founded aiming to develop Sinai and prevent terrorism from taking it over. Greetings to the Egyptian and the Saudi parties for their efforts and we wish the best for them both.

Political opposition in any society is a manifestation of political pluralism. The presence of such opposition is a sign of institutional health and a meter of its success or failure. However, many people decided to fight the presence of the opposition and demonize everything that is opposed to the current regime s policies. Thus, members of the opposition are defamed and called betrayals. This is very dangerous for our homeland as the presence of opposition is crucial to building the country for the benefit of the citizens. Many people were misguided by such ideas that they believe now that disagreement is no longer a right. They prefer to silence other voices instead of listening to them. This fanatic reaction led many people who disagree with the Muslim Brotherhood to use their TV channels where they are allowed to speak unlike other Egyptian channels. Moreover, the bad treatment to foreign media reporters became the worse advertising for Egypt abroad.

Spiritual insensitivity may affect many believers and perhaps servants who are linked to the church. Thus, we may need to take care of our Spiritual vigilance in order not to lose our eternal life. Abba Pachomious, former acting Patirarch, talked in his article entitle Spiritual vigilance about losing such vigilance. The first reason is the constant preoccupation with work, media, and problems. The various social networking sites may add to addiction or preoccupation with friends without spending with God in prayer and service.

I received a link of a song that is supposed to belong to an Egyptian singer, but the link brought me to a lot of recklessness far from belonging to this nation. It is only a mockery of a homeland and a great army and policemen! The heroic Egyptian armed forces is working on the comprehensive operation Sinai 2018 with the help of the police aiming at eliminating the terrorists from Sinai and to rid Egypt of terrorism. Thus, it is an operation of liberation and victory.

Judging others is one of the most horrible things anyone can do in this life. However, in the Arab World and in general, we see a lot of people judging others and, in most cases, we are happy to observe or participate rather than condemn it. Recently, the Emirates singer Ahlam, discouraged people from saying, “God have mercy” for the famous Indian actress Sridevi who died last week in the Emirates. Ahlam distastefully proclaimed that according to the Quran, she shouldn’t ask for mercy for non-Muslims.

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.

All men are in dire need to the active word of God that enlightens the way and brings peace for our souls For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. This word of God is the only way to get rid of sin and to hear the voice of God. Abba Moussa, Bishop of the youth, said in his article entitled The Bible and contemporary man that the Bible meets the needs of contemporary man of knowledge, reference, salvation and immortality since man needs to know how to live in fear of God and distinguish between the light and darkness, and between right and wrong. Your word I have hidden in my heart That I might not sin against You. (Psalm 119)

In the midst of several recent bombings in our Egyptian churches, I was happy as a Coptic Christian citizen to see the religious discourse of the Coptic church focusing on the beauty of life and its value after it used to focus on the other life. Abba Raphael, secretary of the Holy Synod, sent three messages in a sermon he delivered at one of these funerals. First, we believe in the heavenly justice, second, we love our country; third, we won t abandon our faith. The fathers of the Egyptian Church told us that martyrdom in the Arabic language means being killed for the sake of God. It simply means being summoned for witness on one s faith. Our martyrs sacrificed their souls as they declared their faith before extremist murderers.

If anybody has been turning on the TV and watching sports, they would have noticed the Olympics that have been going on in South Korea these past two weeks. First let s state the obvious, yes, these are the winter Olympics. But even so, that didn t prevent a lot of Californians and Europeans from competing in these games. So, I will not penalize the Egyptians because we do live in a desert after all! But you know when I think about the Summer Olympics, where were the Egyptians?

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.

An old Egyptian custom we inherited from our ancestors, the ancient Egyptians, is that we don t remember the important people in our lives until they depart by death and be buried in great pyramids in our memories. The Egyptian idiom says: Remember the good deed of the dead people. Thus, we only remember the good people after they die, but I decided to break that rule and remember some good people in my life as they are still among us. Abba Makarios, Bishop of Minya, is an old style monk who loves everybody; even those who hate him. I learned love, modesty and forgiveness from him.

She is an Indonesian economist who has been Minister of Finance of Indonesia since 2016. She was named best minister in the world in a conference attended by ministers from all over the world. When you see what she did in her country, you feel she deserves such prize. In fact, she cut her government’s debt by half, increased foreign reserves to $ 50 billion, reduced the large disparities between incomes and encouraged an ambitious microcredit program, creating jobs in numbers that were not created by another Indonesian minister.

People may suffer from despair and frustration that leads them to surrender. This could be because of unachieved goals in our lives. However, God will not leave us alone, but will grant us supernatural blessings to help us in the way. Father Peyman El Tahawy, priest of the Church of St. George in Minya, wrote in his article ‘Surrender and Acceptance of Reality’, assured that a person who is full of the grace of our Lord does not know the spirit of failure and surrender, no matter how difficult his life may be. Faithful people start over and never stop by their temporary failure. We remember the prophet Elijah when he felt a great sense of frustration and despair did not see the benefit of continuing his efforts to return the people to the Lord. He was full of negative thoughts, but God didn’t leave him alone.

Recently, the Interior Ministry arrested Abdel Menaam Abou El-Fotuh, a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, also the leader and President of the Masr Al-Qawyia Party. Before that the army also arrested Samy Anan, the ex-chief of the military when the military council governing Egypt was forced to retire in 2013, when the Brotherhood was in power. Actually, most of what we call “Liberal Parties” announced its support for Sisi for a second term. They were adamant that this stage in the country requires a strong man like Sisi. It appears they forgot all the principles that the Constitution is built on, such as every party has the right to be in power.

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.

Terrorism is like a virus that spreads everywhere, and there is constant injection of it by all evil forces that supports terrorism. No doubt that intellectual people and supporters of culture and enlightenment are at the forefront target of the extremists who claim they protect religion, but they spread myths among the simple people. I believe that our cultural and educational institutions have a great deal of work to consolidate illuminating human thought and to create better reality in Egypt supported by war waged by Egyptian army against terrorism. Therefore, we have to define sources of terrorism and extremism that are supported by ignorance what should be faced by culture and a plan of renewal of religious discourse.

The operations that the Egyptian Army announced yesterday, is not that from Turkey. The time and amount of soldiers taking part in this military operation puts forth many questions. Lately, we have all come to know that the Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs had mentioned that Turkey will search for gas and oil on the Egyptian Mediterranean border, claiming that they have the right to that area.