Pope Tawadros II, the 118th Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the See of St. Mark, leader of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt. Photo by Wolters M., CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0
On March 27, 2026, a woman accompanied by armed, masked men attempted to seize approximately 2,000 square meters of state-owned archaeological land adjacent to the Monastery of St. Bishoy in Wadi El Natrun, a desert valley approximately 100 kilometers northwest of Cairo.
The Monastery of St. Bishoy is a Coptic Orthodox monastery founded in the 4th century and one of the oldest in the world. The land targeted contains a buried monastery, recently discovered and dated by the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the Faculty of Archaeology at Cairo University to between the 4th and 6th centuries AD.
The Monastery of Saint Bishoy in Wadi El Natrun (the Nitrian Desert), Beheira Governorate, Egypt, is the most famous Coptic Orthodox monastery named after Saint Pishoy and the easternmost monastery in the region. Source: Orthodox Wiki.
The intruders attempted to establish false ownership by planting trees as a sign of possession. When monks and workers confronted them, the intruders assaulted them, leaving some injured. The monks held their ground and prevented the seizure while others alerted security authorities, who arrived, apprehended the intruders, and forwarded them to the prosecution. It was the third such attempt on the same site. The first encroachment was reported on October 13, 2025, with a second attempt on approximately March 17.
Egypt is home to the largest Christian community in the Middle East. The Coptic Orthodox Church claims 15 million Christians in the country. The highest share recorded in any census was 8.3% in 1927, declining in each subsequent census. Egypt stopped publishing religious data after 1996. Pew Research estimates the number as low as 5.7% of the population, which would be about 6 million, given Egypt’s population of approximately 106 million.
Approximately 90% of Egyptian Christians belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox church. The remainder includes a number of small Eastern Rite Catholic churches in full communion with Rome, including the Coptic Catholic Church, Melkites, Maronites, Syriac Catholics, Armenian Catholics, and Chaldean Catholics. There is also a small Protestant minority comprising the Evangelical Church of Egypt (Synod of the Nile), Pentecostals, and Anglicans.
Despite the population dispute, Egypt holds more Christians in raw numbers than any other Middle Eastern country, including Lebanon. Lebanon’s Christians represent approximately 40% of its population, predominantly Maronite, but the country’s small overall population means Egypt leads in absolute numbers.
Conditions for Egyptian Christians have improved under President el-Sisi since 2014, with fewer large-casualty terrorist attacks on churches and greater tolerance for church construction and public Christian celebrations. Egypt dropped from 25th to 40th place on the Open Doors World Watch List between 2013 and 2025. Low-level anti-Christian hostility, however, persists below the headline threshold.
Mob attacks follow a recurring pattern: a rumor, typically involving an interfaith relationship or a blasphemy allegation, spreads; a mob forms; Christian property is attacked; and authorities respond belatedly. Church construction or repairs alone can trigger violence, with authorities sometimes ordering Christians to halt construction rather than protecting them. Police in rural and southern Egypt largely fail to act, and perpetrators are rarely prosecuted.
On October 23, 2025, mob violence broke out in the village of Nazlet Jelf in Minya Province. Eyewitnesses described villagers surrounding Coptic homes, throwing stones, breaking windows, and setting fire to Christian-owned farmland. Those with no connection to the alleged incident, a rumored relationship between a Coptic man and a Muslim woman, were attacked alongside those accused.
Historical data suggest Egyptian Christians have been overrepresented in the country’s middle and upper-middle classes. In the mid-20th century, Christians were estimated to represent 45% of Egypt’s medical doctors and 60% of its pharmacists. In 1961, Coptic Christians owned 51% of Egyptian banks. Scholars argue that Copts hold relatively higher educational attainment and wealth index, with some attributing this to Coptic Christianity’s historical emphasis on literacy.
At the state level, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom’s 2026 Annual Report, published March 4, 2026, recommended Egypt for placement on the U.S. Special Watch List, alongside Algeria, Azerbaijan, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Malaysia, Qatar, Turkey, and Uzbekistan. USCIRF reiterated this call in January 2026, citing an Egyptian court’s sentencing of Christian man Augustin Samaan to five years’ imprisonment for “contempt of religion” under Egypt’s blasphemy law.
In 2021, Egyptian authorities arrested Abdulbaqi Saeed Abdo, a Yemeni-born Christian convert, for his involvement in a private Facebook group supporting Muslims who had converted to Christianity. Officials charged him with joining a terrorist group and contempt of religion. He was held for over three years, moved between detention and terrorism centers, and repeatedly denied access to his legal team. He was released in January 2025 following advocacy by ADF International, which raised his case before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.
The commission reported that dozens of Christians and nonbelievers were detained in the past year under similar charges, with social media activity, personal disagreements, and routine religious practice triggering criminal cases. Among those highlighted were Christian convert Said Abdelrazeq, nonbelievers Maged Zakaria Abdel Rahman and Sherif Gaber, and 14 members of the Ahmadi religious minority detained since March 2025 and pressured by state-backed Al-Azhar clerics to renounce their faith.
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