Al-Azhar, the highest religious institution in the Sunni Muslim world, said it had agreed with Egyptian churches to maintain Egypt’s identity as an Islamic state as part of ongoing amendments to the Egyptian constitution, according to a statement released late Saturday.

The Muslim Brotherhood and its allies have exerted huge efforts for two tumultuous months to overturn what they describe as a "military coup" in Egypt. Not only have they failed to achieve their goal, they have suffered a comprehensive security crackdown that seems to threaten their very existence.

Egypt’s hardline Salafist Nour Party recently decided to join the 50-member committee selected to propose amendments to the 2012 constitution, which was suspended after the removal Islamist president Mohamed Morsi on 3 July.

Egypt's newly formed constitutional committee marginalises the Islamic current, the Nour Party has complained.

Former President Mohamed Morsi was detained for four days pending interrogation on charges of insulting the judiciary. The detention decision was taken by the investigative body assigned to interrogate Morsi on Saturday morning, state-owned news agency MENA reports.

Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader Amr Darrag condemned an assassination attempt on Egyptian Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim on Thursday.

Abdel Raouf Mohamed, a leader of the Islamic party affiliated with Islamic Jihad, has said that the bombing that took place in Nasr City On Thursday was “unacceptable.”

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy has denounced Israeli authorities' storming Al-Aqsa mosque, claiming the move could stoke religious tensions in the region.

Gaza's Hamas prime minister on Thursday played down tensions between the Islamist movement and Egypt that have developed between the two sides followed the ouster of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi.

A National Alliance to Support Legitimacy leader accused Egyptian authorities of fabricating the assassination attempt of Interior Minister Mohamed Ibrahim on Thursday.

Pope Francis asked for a big turnout at a Vatican vigil on Saturday for peace in Syria and thanked the world’s faithful and non-believers for their support.

A 50-member committee entrusted with writing the final draft of Egypt's new constitution will plunge into business 8 September. Representatives of political, social and religious institutions forming the committee have begun obtaining their membership cards. By the end of Wednesday, almost half number the committee's members had done that. The single representative of the ultraconservative Salafist El-Nour Party was not one of them.

Two weeks after the churches he used to pray in were ransacked and burned to the ground in the Egyptian port city of Suez, Istafanos Youssif sat "searching for God" in a Cairo convent.

Senior Muslim Brotherhood leader, Mohamed El-Beltagy, denied on Wednesday that any torture took place during the six-week Rabaa Al-Adawiya sit-in, Ahram's Arabic website reported.

President of the Arab Parliament Ali Mohammed Al Jarwan has praised Al Azhar Grand Imam Ahmed Al-Tayeb for his role in resolving the recent political crisis in Egypt.

Egypt’s Minister of Interior Mohamed Ibrahim ordered on Wednesday the removal of General Mostafa El-Baz from his post as head of the Prisons Authority.

Egypt's army-backed government intensified its crackdown on the Islamist opposition, sentencing 52 Muslim Brotherhood members to prison and banning TV channels with perceived Islamist sympathies.

An Egyptian military court sentenced 11 supporters of deposed Islamist President Mohamed Mursi to life imprisonment on Tuesday on charges of attacking the army, a military source said.

On Tuesday an Egyptian military court dealt a life sentence to a Muslim Brotherhood member for violence against the army. The verdict was handed down over the 14 August attacks by supporters of deposed president Mohamed Morsi that targeted the armed forces, churches and civilians in the port city of Suez.

Not only are the churches, monasteries, and institutions of Egypt’s Christians under attack by the Muslim Brotherhood and its supporters—nearly 100 now have been torched, destroyed, ransacked, etc.—but Christians themselves are under attack all throughout Egypt, with practically zero coverage in Western media.

"No one can justify military intervention in the Middle East under the pretext of defending the Christians. This is now valid in Syria. But even in the dramatic moment experienced by Egypt, the exploitation of those asking the international community to intervene under the guise of protecting the Christians, affected by the sectarian fanaticism must be rejected." This is what was said to Fides Agency by Fr. Hani Bakhoum, secretary of the patriarchate of Alexandria of the Catholic Copts.