By Hanan Fekry – Watani –
Does a person need permission from his neighbor to say, “Oh Lord”?
Has the right to kneel before God been confiscated and turned into a crime? Has standing before God become a sin deserving of siege and stoning by those who appoint themselves guardians of both God and society? What gives them the confidence to usurp the role of the Almighty Himself, judging His servants for the beliefs rooted in their hearts?
These are questions that demand answers from the reasonable voices of Egypt after what recently took place in one of Minya’s villages.
Freedom of belief and the right to practice one’s religion are not privileges granted by a neighbor, nor favors bestowed by a majority upon a minority. They are fundamental human rights, explicitly guaranteed by Egypt’s Constitution. Yet when people are prevented from praying simply because some of their neighbors have appointed themselves judges of what lies within others’ hearts, disaster inevitably follows.
That is precisely what happened in the village of Tal al-Qibliya in Minya Governorate.
A group of villagers attacked and surrounded the local church, openly disregarding the law. They trapped Coptic worshippers inside, preventing them from leaving. Their violence did not stop there. They smashed the parish priest’s car and cut off electricity to both the church and the worshippers, in open defiance of state authorities and of the official decision—approved by Governor Imad Kadwany—to legalize the status of church buildings under the government’s church legalization process.
Bishop Macarius of Minya quickly posted an appeal on the social media platform X, hoping it might prove faster than official security procedures. In a heartfelt cry for help, supported by photographs and video footage, he described events that clearly demonstrated the violence was not spontaneous. Rather, it was the culmination of repeated harassment and attacks that had previously been reported to the authorities, without any decisive intervention to prevent the crisis from eventually erupting.
Although several individuals visible in the videos were arrested, a closer look reveals that they are merely the immediate perpetrators—not the true culprits.
The scene was unmistakably sectarian, yet profoundly tragic.
Many of those throwing stones at the church and the worshippers were women—mothers—standing in the front rows, hurling rocks at their Coptic neighbors. Behind them stood their young children doing exactly the same thing, chanting slogans dripping with hatred and religious condemnation. Those scenes offer a disturbing glimpse into the kind of adults these children may become and the psychological, ideological, and sectarian mindset they are being taught to embrace.
What we are witnessing is the inheritance of hatred.
It is the deliberate cultivation of future violence, the transmission of extremism and terrorism from one generation to the next.
Unless Egypt undertakes serious, long-term cultural and educational initiatives throughout its villages and rural communities, the consequences for future generations will be disastrous. Security measures alone cannot undo beliefs that have been planted over decades, during which extremists gained control over people’s minds.
Women and children have repeatedly been used as a calculated sectarian tactic—placed deliberately at the front of confrontations so that adult men avoid legal responsibility, while the crime itself is carried out by children who scarcely understand what they are doing.
Is this not a crime against the nation itself?
What we are witnessing is the systematic breeding of a new generation of extremists.
How can Egypt aspire to build a society based on equal citizenship while mothers teach their children that their Christian neighbor is an infidel who deserves to be stoned?
This terrorist ideology, planted over decades by religious fanatics, has instilled the belief that anyone who is different deserves punishment, and that preventing another person from praying is a religious duty—a form of sacred jihad.
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