Attackers armed with bombs and guns opened fire at church services at a Nigerian university on Sunday, killing around 20 people as worshippers tried to flee, witnesses and officials said. Explosions and gunfire rocked Bayero University in the northern city of Kano, with witnesses reporting that two church services were targeted as they were being held on campus.
The first recorded martyrdom of a churchman was of a priest named Stephanos from Upper Egypt, whose death caused a painful setback for the church, and led to the dispersal of its members. However, the dispersal led Christian preachers to travel to distant places and spread their faith.
The Salafist Scholar Shura Council met on Saturday with current Islamist presidential hopefuls to discuss their programmes and decide accordingly whom to back in forthcoming elections. This is the third of such meetings the council has conducted.
Divisions have surfaced among Egyptian Salafis over whom to back in the upcoming presidential elections, scheduled to take place on 23 and 24 May.
Thousands of Alexandrians turned out on Monday evening to support Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohamed Mursi in Egypt's coastal second city.
The young members of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the “Brotherhood Cry” group, have launched an initiative to reach a national consensus over a single presidential candidate.
Masses to mark 40 days since the death of Pope Shenouda III will take place Wednesday at Cairo's Abbassiya Cathedral and the St Bishoy Monastery in Wadi El-Natroun where the pope is buried. The cathedral hosted a memorial service for the pope on Tuesday attended by political leaders, members of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), MPs, and heads of political parties.
Sectarian tensions can explode triggered by one of two things: a relationship between a Copt and a Muslim, or building a Church. Journalist and writer Karima Kamal's new book, Copts’ Personal Status Law (Al-Ahwal Al-Shakhseya lil Akbat), explores many of the hidden stories behind sectarian tensions, tackling both solutions and challenges.
The Muslim Brotherhood has announced that Mohamed Morsy, chairman of its Freedom and Justice Party, will replace former deputy Supreme Guide Khairat al-Shater as its candidate for the presidential election slated for May.
A leader from the Salafi-oriented Nour Party on Tuesday criticized a gathering organized by supporters of disqualified presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu Ismail, who are protesting the decision to exclude him from the race.
After the exclusion of Hazem Abu-Ismail and Khairat El-Shater, two strong Islamist candidates, from the first presidential elections after the January 25 Revolution set for May, the Supreme Presidential Electoral Committee has now rejected the candidates’ petition against their exclusion from the race, leaving the race for the powerful Islamist vote in Egypt wide open.
Islamist activists, especially from the Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, said Saturday that they are stepping up contacts with counterparts from the liberal political camp to agree on a unified plan of action expressing outrage at the candidacy of Omar Suleiman, vice president and right-hand man under ousted president Hosni Mubarak, in the upcoming presidential elections.
Hundreds of thousands of mostly Islamist protesters have congregated in Tahrir Square on Friday to show their opposition to remnants of the former regime, in a protest that was jointly called for by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafist Front.
The Muslim Brotherhood's presidential candidate will not use the group's long-standing slogan, "Islam is the solution," for the upcoming election.
A Coptic Christian group called Coptic 38, established in 2011 to campaign for changes to the Church's divorce laws, held a press conference at the Journalists' Syndicate Monday to call for the re-implementation of 1938 bylaws that permitted Coptic Christians to obtain a divorce under nine conditions.
The Muslim Brotherhood announced on its official website Monday it will return to Cairo's Tahrir Square for the third Friday in a row to participate in "Saving the Revolution" million man protest on 27 April, joining many political forces, parties and coalitions.
A number of Nour Party members resigned from the party, protesting "the party's failure to manage political issues, and not expressing the concerns of the street."
Members of Parliament’s Health Committee, who belong to the Islamist Freedom and Justice and Nour parties, have denounced certain hospitals and nursing schools for banning nurses from wearing the niqab.
The Muslim Brotherhood group has renewed its commitment to running in the presidential election, and rejected a proposal by the Salafi-led Nour Party to agree on one Islamist candidate and support him for the presidency.
Others
The Light of the Desert-Documentary on St Macarius Monastery, Egypt