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.

The bible tells us many stories about great people who made great mistakes like Esau sold his glory, his honor and his place with a lentil plate, and afterward he had a desperate life. It told us about Samson who lost his power and place among his people because he loved a strange woman. Another great man who was supposed to have a place among the noble apostles and men of God who will condemn the tribes of the twelve sons of Israel, but sold his master with money, it is Judas Iscariot. The lust for eating, the emotional relationship, and the money are three weapons of Satan to remove our names from the Book of Life and write it in the Book of Death. A priest told me about a girl who wanted to leave Christianity and get married to a Muslim man. The priest went to police station to try to change her mind, but she insulted him severely and so did the policemen. He went to the church and complained to St. Mary about the lost girl and the insults he received. Soon, he knew that the girl had an accident and died. He was so sad that she lost everything for nothing.

Some people began issuing strange statements in an attempt to escape the crisis of Copts right to pray in Upper Egypt. They accused Bishop Makarios of being responsible for the crisis since he defends his children as if he should have encouraged his children to accept persecution and discrimination no matter what happens! In fact, those people should have called instead to apply the law by officials. 50 years ago, there were only few Christian families in small villages. Yet, those small villages now have hundreds of Christians who need to pray. Those have agreed with Muslims to pray in a house or a hall every week and preventing them was the odd action. Now, with the new law of building houses of worship, it is almost impossible for them to get licensed churches as most of the lands are owned by the state.

St. Peter in (Acts 3: 6) told a lame man who was born like this: I dont have money, but I give you what I have : stand up and walk. This happened after the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples. In a short period of time, the man was expecting some food or material, but this response was conclusive and practical. St. Peter gave him what was greater than the material gifts, which is healing. The lame man entered into the temple and was seen by everybody making them wonder what happened! the people asked St. Peter how did they heal him? Its the power of Jesus Christ, he answered.

While I’m trying to think how poor people could afford the high cost of their medicine and because I have a little experience in how other countries run health care system I wanted to set some facts and Ideas and the same time. First fact, I want to tell all Egyptian that a lot of people around the world lack of health care and can’t afford their medicine even in the countries that we call them “developed countries”. Recently I have read a report about health care in one of the developed country shows that Millions of people in this country can’t afford to buy their medicine.

Peace and building of the Church of the One God, the Holy Apostolic one, is granted by Jesus Christ. Its history tells the story of God s work and grants its bright future. The Church owner has promised he will not leave us orphans as the holy spirit will take care of it through its servants. Our Coptic Orthodox Church has many great saints including our fathers the saints Mark, Antony, Makarios, Arsanios, Didymus the blind, Demetrios, Athanasius, Cyril pillar of religion, Cyril IV father of reform, Pope Cyril VI and Pope Shenouda III. Our history is full of them and the holy spirit is working in his church to the end of days.

When Egypt was thinking too much how to deal with Qatar and Turkey, which were hostile to Egypt and supporters of terrorism by all means, Egypt was also thinking about the friendly countries of Qatar and Turkey like Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries. This was the position of the Egyptian state which was announced by its foreign ministry. Yet, the Gulf countries didn t accept that Egypt mentioned the involvement of Qatar in on e of the terrorist attacks that targeted a Church in Cairo. Now, as the Gulf countries cut relations with Qatar, Egypt has comfortably withdrawn the ambassador and cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. It s sad that we care for countries that didn t care for us, and it is even sadder that Qatar cares about nothing and decided to return its ambassador to Iran cutting the way before all attempts to reconcile with the Gulf countries that replaced their 13 demands to be only six, but who cares! Qatar could only see its benefits and interests.

Under the huge economic and political challenges in Egypt, it is fighting corruption and striving to reform education. It also tries to fix healthcare and cultural ideology. Hard working also reach raising the standards of living, especially for the underprivileged and to do the best to attract investment and bring in job opportunities. Among that hassle, a number of MPs declare they intend to demand an amendment to the Constitution so as to extend the presidential term from four to six years. They can t see we have much important work to do and we don t have the luxury to do so. It should be known that the 2014 Constitution was written after Egypt got rid of the Muslim Brotherhood regime. the constitution was written by faithful Egyptian people to established the mainstays of a modern civil State. The new Constitution clearly separates between State authorities, and meticulously defines their prerogatives and roles, with the aim of protecting democracy and securing peaceful rotation of power. Furthermore, we don t have the luxury to demonstrate in the streets and change the constitution whenever we don t like the performance of the government.

Archdeacon Habib Girgis is a well known name in the Coptic Orthodox Church for his great influence and he led educational renaissance in the Coptic Orthodox Church and worked hard for the ministry and offered his life for the church of God. Habib Girgis lived according the gospel of Lord Jesus Christ and his life was model for Christians in his era and till today. He was dean of the center of theology and founder of Sunday School. He also led consecration, teaching and writing in the Coptic church proving the important role of laity in the ministry.

Recently, the US congress announced decreasing in the aid introduced to Egypt, and they have used the human rights situation as main reason to reduce this aid. I m not writing this article to attack the US decision but to clarify many facts to this aid. The first fact I Want to clarify that many writers and politicians in Egypt trying to attack us as because of this decision but I want to remind them with this famous proverb that says” beggars can t choose”, and I m sorry to choose that word “ beggars”, I just used it to clarify my point but didn t mean Egypt at all.

As Egypt is looking for better future hoping that the best is yet to come, some senior officials insist on keeping retardation as pure Egyptian slogan. Governor of Minya supported the prevention of Copts in Forn village from praying claiming that the majority of Muslims refuse it! This governor indeed doesn t realize he lives in the year 2017 where his statements were published minutes later before the whole world. Such statements can have very bad impact on the image of Egypt abroad and on tourism industry as well. This reminded me of The Little Prince, Frank Vercauteren, the Belgian football manager who agreed to train the famous Egyptian team Zamalek, but declined in the last minute after hearing horrible stories about prosecution of Copts in Egypt according to the president of Zamalek Mortada Mansour.

Sectarian discrimination is one of the greatest threats in Egypt, especially in Upper Egypt where it is supported by germs of discrimination and religious arrogance of extremists. Graduates of Al-Azhar in Egypt share such ideology with ISIS and Wahbbism as well. Those extremists are teaching the simple people how to hate Christians and to refuse to allow them pray! Of course they don t care the Copts are praying for Egypt, its people, police, army and prosperity. They only care that those simple will be transferred into community of Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (and prayers of the Copts)!

The Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-century Maritime Silk Road, also known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a development strategy proposed by China s paramount leader Xi Jinping that focuses on connectivity and Cooperation between Eurasian countries, primarily the People s Republic of China (PRC), the land-based Silk Road Economic Belt (SREB) and the oceangoing Maritime Silk Road (MSR). The strategy underlines China s push to take a larger role in global affairs, and the desire to coordinate manufacturing capacity with other countries in areas such as steel manufacturing. Ashraf Naguib, CEO of the Asian-Egyptian Association, said that the Silk Road Economic Belt will bring investments to Egypt worth a trillion dollars in ten years, about $ 40 billion annually.

Al-Azhar has issued a statement to reject the Tunisian President call to give equal inheritance and rights for women against the Islamic Shari that oppress women in the matter of inheritance and getting married to non-Muslim men. This statement was no different from other statement of ISIS that calls to apply Islamic Sharia against human rights and even by killing innocent people. It was also very similar to the prevention of Copts from praying claiming they have not obtained the due permits, which can be classified as oppression and a included under the category of crimes against humanity (in accordance with article 7 of the ICC Statute).

Lately, I have read many news about Invitations to amend the constitution and especially amending the period of the president in the constitution to be six years each period instead of four and to allow him to candidate himself three times instead of two. As always and because of the current situation which is the media that support the president dominates the scene, No one can object that danger step from happening. When I say danger step I m not proclaiming that because of the 2 years more that will be in each period but because I m sure that this amendment will be just the beginning of many amendments in the future.

Last week I talked about the International media reporting the visit of the reality star Kourtney Kardashian to Egypt, and today I want to put a spot light on the promising numbers of the Egyptian economy published on Tuesday by the American financial company Bloomberg. The report said that Egypt’s tourism revenues rose to $1.5 billion in the fourth quarter of 2017, up from $510 million in the same period a year ago. It added that full-year receipts rose 16 percent to $4.4 billion. Remittances grew 9 percent to $4.8 billion in the fourth quarter, and rose two percent to $17.4 billion for the year.

The terrorist attacks in Europe reached 124 attacks from 2014 to 2017, which led to the death and injury of 211 people. This raises questions about the power and influence of terrorist organizations and especially ISIS in Europe where the most powerful security agencies are working. Do we deal with a situation of security or civilization? Last Wednesday, six French soldiers have been injured after a car slammed into them before speeding off in a suspected terror attack in Paris. This came days after a failure stab to kill attempt in France as well as several terrorist attacks in France killing dozens of people including children.

Bread, Freedom and Social justice was the slogan of the revolution of January 25. The people demanded their basic needs as human being which sounded fair and square at that time. However, the revolutionists didn’t realize at that time that governors of Egypt have spread false religious appearance. All those regimes since 1952 and until the regime of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2013 used religion to eliminate their political opposition not knowing that this brought criminals as the new leaders of absent minded herds. Since President Nasser decided to change the destiny of Al-Azhar from a central religious place to an inclusive university that discriminates against non-Muslims by preventing them from enrolling in it. Sadat took this discrimination to the next level by supporting the fanatic groups that killed him at the end.

It may be understood to have foreign plans to kill Egyptian people by terrorists who hate Egypt and the Egyptians. However, it is very hard to understand how negligence and corruption are more lethal to the Egyptians than terrorism. The Egyptian blood has been shed on the railroad tracks for a long time, and the officials are playing the blame game with their predecessors. The minister of transportation says that developing the railway will cost 2.5 billion dollars, which is less than any of our brilliant mega projects that is being carried out by the government.

After the train accident that happened in Alexandria yesterday, there is no doubt that Egypt has to review its plan to prevent the shedding of blood on our roads. Recent statistics show that Egypt has the most road accidents in the world. Egyptians have been dying every day on the road. Even more so than Sinai, that has terrorist attacks. This is proof of the severity of the situation Egypt faces now.

International media has reported the visit of the 38-year-old reality star Kourtney Kardashian to Egypt invited by her Algerian friend Younes Bendjima. She arrived in Cairo with a group of her friends and visited historic sites like the Pyramids of Giza. They rode camels, smoke hookah, and also enjoyed the north coast’s Hacienda Bay and the beaches. Kardashian’s vacation in Egypt comes to join her other lavish vacations around the world and proves once again that Egypt is both safe and fun to visit. Moreover, her visit comes at an important time for Egypt that depends on tourism as one of its main sources of income.