The plight of the Copts:

...A non-Muslim man cannot marry a Muslim woman, although Muslim men frequently marry non-Muslim women...

...Hanna published a book entitled Copts, Yes but Egyptians which underlined many of the community's grievances...

...During the rule of Mohammed Ali, an Albanian Muslim of Christian ancestry, an increasing number of Christians were employed as civil servants, as they were generally better educated than their Muslim counterparts...

...Since then all Abuns have been Ethiopians and links with Alexandria have weakened...

...This is in addition to three hundred thousand Catholics converted by missionaries from Italy...

...President Sadat criticized the police for delaying and blamed "Communist" agitators for the disturb-ances, ignoring the fact that his own policies had allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to turn Cairo's slums into ripe recruiting grounds...

...Little did anyone expect the situation to change...

...On May 14 1980, Sadat accused Pope Shuenouda III and members of the Coptic clergy of involvement in a plot to partition the country and establish a Christian state based in Assyut...

...Their report claimed that in the Addis Ababa area alone the "Red Terror" claimed five-thousand lives...

...Ethiopia, however, retained ties with Alexandria and did not fall to Islam, but barriers of geography, politics, and race isolated it from the rest of Christendom...

...Despite assurances from the Sudanese government, many refugees feel that a sell-out is in store for them...

...Then in June 1981, Cairo's impoverished Zawia El Hamra district was torn with bloody clashes in which fourteen people died and scores of others were injured...

...Freedom of movement was limited and special taxes and clothing regulations (for Christians: dark blue clothes, a black turban, and a five-and-a-half pound wooden cross around the neck...

...A large majority of the executed were secondary school and university students...

...Two days later, the Egyptian government announced that it would gradually take over forty-thousand mosques, allow only approved clerics to conduct services, and prevent political statements from ap-pearing in sermons...

...The police responded slowly, but eventually moved in with tear gas and armored cars, seized seventy-seven firearms, and arrested two-hundred rioters...

...Of the retired bishops, four were reportedly imprisoned and one murdered...

...In 1950, Emperor Haile Selassie fulfilled one of his lifelong ambitions and changed the system, allowing for the election of an Ethiopian Abun...

...Exactly what the WCC considers systematic persecution beggars the imagination...

...The same dbcument concluded that there was no evidence of systematic persecu-tion of Ethiopian Christians...

...When Nimeiry seized power in a 1969 coup, he promised to end the fighting...

...Troubles in Ethiopia have caused a tremendous influx of refugees into the eastern provinces of the Sudan...

...This factionalism contributed to the instability which allowed Egypt to fall to the Muslim Arabs in 641...

...There are about one-hundred thousand Copts in the Sudan, served by twenty churches and two bishops...

...Indeed they are not...

...He notes the discrimination against Copts in poli-tics...

...Riots between Muslims and Christians erupted in April, 1980 in Alexandria, the seat of the Coptic pope, and in Upper Egypt, where many Copts live...

...With Islam as the state reli-gion, the Koran is the major source of Egyptian law...

...Other Christian groups and the Falashas or Ethiopian Jews have also suffered, particularly in Eritrea...

...However, in 1974 Haile Selassie was dethroned following strikes, student demonstrations, and finally an army mutiny...

...Christians are forbidden admission to medical college departments of gynecology and obstetrics, and the government has always refused to allow the establishment of a Christian university...

...Today about forty percent of the Ethiopian population are Copts...

...They are drafted into the armed forces in disproportionately high numbers...

...A campaign known as the "Red Terror" began early in 1977 with the arrest and imprisonment of thousands of intellectual, professional, and Christian dissenters (thirty-thousand at its peak in March 1978...

...Originally, the archbishop or Abun of the Ethiopian church was appointed in Alexandria and was never an Ethiopian citizen...

...Nevertheless, prudence dictates that the toler-ance of a poor nation should not be tested too far...

...Nevertheless, these churches have millions of adherents today, and Christianity is a subject of increasing controversy in Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Sudan...

...Sadat's successor, Hosni Mubarak has tried to calm the situation without altering the second-class status of the Copts...

...Muslims were encouraged to take "their proper place in their own country," and the Copts felt treated with disfavor and injustice, even after they were freed of some legal disabilities in 1884...

...Five percent of the Ethiopian population belong to other Christian churches, with the Catholics, Pentecostals, and Lutherans predominating...

...One of very few outspoken Copts is Milad Hanna, a profes-sor of architecture at Cairo University and an active cam-paigner for an Egypt bound together by national, rather than religious, patriotism...

...A junta under Haile Mariam Mengistu announced the beginning of a national revolution and sixty former officials were exe-cuted...

...BETWEEN EGYPT and Ethiopia lies Africa's largest nation, the Sudan...

...The Copts appear to be a respected and contented entrepreneurial group, even though Islam is the state religion and socialism is the government's goal...

...Professor Hanna asserted that Chris-tians have been completely deprived of any role in national or provincial politics...

...All Christian hospitals, schools, and lands have been con-fiscated without compensation...

...and for Jews: yellow clothing, a black turban, and a heavy ball round the neck) were applied to all religious minorities...

...No permit is granted if the site in question is near a mosque, bridge, canal, market, government agency,or the Nile...

...Copts are not allowed to form political parties and are barred from holding high offices in existing ones...

...The Coptic church has been badly shaken by events in Egypt and Ethiopia, and Christians throughout the region are in need of a center free of govern-ment interference and social antagonism...

...Mark the Evangelist who established the Egyptian (Coptic) church and by St...

...s was convened to investigate the riots and allegations of conspiracy...

...The Copts have no control over any segment of the mass media, and writings in opposition to their treatment are refused publication...

...Fighting died down, agreements were made, and devel-opmental schemes were instituted...

...Under Sadat, only two cabinet ministers out of fifty-five were Copts, only two of Egypt's one-hundred ambassadors were Copts, and there were no Copts in positions as provincial governors or municipal executives until the one Coptic general was designated governor of Sinai on its return to Egyptian administration...

...For the twenty million Christians of Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Sudan, a crisis is at hand...

...When the Roman Empire was partitioned after the death of Emperor Theodosius in 395 A.D., Egypt became part of the Byzantine Empire...

...Muslim/Christian tolerance is reaching new lows in northeast Africa, and a peaceful solution seems very remote...

...Their churches, books, and homes were burnt, their clergy imprisoned and sometimes murdered, and their services ban-ned throughout Egypt...

...The governor of the southern province of Gemu Gofa was reported to have said that the revolution could not be fully successful unless Christianity was annihi-lated...

...Follow-ing an uprising in 830, Christians were left in the minority...

...Amnesty International, the Swedish Foreign Ministry, the World Council of Churches, and other religious bodies called on the Mengistu government to respect its, citizens' human rights, but to no avail...

...at the Council of Chalcedon, the Egyptian church was split into two sects: the Monophysites who were the vast majority of believers and the Melkites who were a small but influential minority...

...A law which requires a presidential decree to build or repair a church has been retained since the days of the Ottoman Empire...

...Under Islamic rule, the Egyptian Christian community was persecuted from the ninth century until the nineteenth...

...However, the nation is now burdened with a heavy foreign debt, a faltering economy, and serious external problems...

...By the end of the week, 1,536 Muslim clerics, Coptic priests, journalists, politicians, lawyers, and professors were in prison...

...Philip who converted an Ethiopian eunuch on the road between Jerusalem and Gaza...

...However, their findings were inconclusive...

...all religions in northeast Africa...

...Amnesty International reported cases of torture and of dark, crowded, unhealthy prisons...

...However, Nimeiry's point of view can be easily understood...

...The riots began when a Copt and a Muslim quarreled over a piece of land on which the Copts had planned to build a church and also on which Mus-lims had made a point of having informal prayers and religious meetings...

...In one instance, one hundred and seventy Mekane Yesus members were detained with him...

...Opposition was brutally repressed, and the influence of the Coptic church was curtailed, in spite of the fact that Mengistu arid most leading members of the junta were naftagna or Coptic colonists who had settled in Oromo lands...

...The regime of Jaafar Mohammed Nimeiry has in the past supported Eritrean separatist movements, but talks between Nimeiry and Mengistu throughout 1980 normalized relations between the two countries...

...Yet few are officers and the military and police colleges restrict Christian admission to a tiny fraction...

...Fearing the rise of religious factionalism, Sadat deposed Pope Shuenouda on 5 September 1981...

...In their report of March 2, 1979, the WCC stated that in certain areas there had been "serious action" - including torture, imprisonment without trial, church closures, and the compulsory registration of Christians...

...The events of the last three years have borne evidence of Coptic dissatisfaction...

...OVER ONE-THOUSAND miles south of Alexandria is Ethiopia, where the largest number of Copts live...

...The Egyptian press repeatedly views all Christians as infidels who should be isolated or converted...

...A non-Muslim may not inherit from a Muslim even within the same family...

...The Monophysites were disestablished because their faith held there were not two natures, divine and human, in Jesus Christ but only one, divine...

...However, the Sadat government threw many more obstacles in the way of religious freedom...

...When news of the quarrel spread, Muslim toughs ran through the streets burning and looting shops...

...However, in 452 A.D...

...Some refugees have been settled in other countries, particularly Italy and the United States, but the Sudan still bears the greatest burden...

...Furthermore, he adds, under Nasser the Muslim courts were abolished and the powers of the Islamic University of Al Ahzar were curbed...

...Christianity flourished in North Africa and in Ethiopia, where it became the official religion in 330 A.D...

...Later he expelled Soviet advisors and instituted a system of federal government...

...In January 1979, thirteen new bishops were installed after their predecessors were compelled to retire...

...How-ever, the attitudes of the youth are changing, and the ugly signs of destabilizing fanaticism are beginning to show...

...When Britain oc-cupied Egypt in 1882, the Coptic population had been reduced to only a bit more than seven hundred thousand, or ten percent of the national population...

...Pastor Gudina Tumsa, secretary-general of the Mekane Yesus (Lutheran) church has been repeatedly detained and questioned by the police...

...not only is the Sudan surrounded by eight neighbors in varying degrees of instability, but the Sudan has had problems of religion in the past on numerous occasions...

...But finally the fanaticism that Sadat himself had helped to foster overcame the president and Anwar El Sadat was assassinated by Muslim extremists on October 6, 1981...

...For most of the 1960s, the three southern Sudanese pro-vinces were beset with guerrilla warfare between the Arab-Muslim-dominated central government and the pagan and Christian southern tribes...

...A special parliamentary committee of both Christian and Muslim M.P...

...Under the Ethiopian emperors, Coptic Christianity was a powerful, conservative, and sometimes oppressive, force in national life...

...However, Sadat used the full weight of Islamic law to oppress the Copts...

...or if the Muslim clergy or a neighbor objects...

...One can only compliment the Sudanese on the respect for human rights they have shown in recent years...

...TODAY THERE are over six million Copts in Egypt, al-though the official census recognizes only 2,315,360...

...A large portion of these exiles are Christians, and this is seen as another source of potential instability...

...The Grand Mufti (the highest jurist in Islamic law) has clearly stated time and again that "Muslims should never accept non-Muslims as full and equal partners in the nation...

...In judicial proceedings, a Christian's testimony against a Muslim cannot be accepted (infidels may not testify against believers...

...Successful land reform was instituted and a one-party state was established...

...The Wafd party in which many Copts were members was banned by President Sadat only two months after he had authorized its reestablishment in 1978...

...Other church groups have experienced similar actions, and the 1982 anti-guerrilla drive in Eritrea was also accompanied by gov-ernmental attempts to break the back of all Christian groups throughout the entire country...

...As a result of the Chalcedon decision, the Empress Pulcheria founded the Melkite or Imperial church as the offi-cial church of the realm and gave most churchlands to her followers in spite of the fact that most of the clergy remained Monophysite...

...Although human rights organizations are carefully watching this troubled area, greater action is sorely needed to insure peace and freedom for the believers of all religions in northeast Africa...