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Date: April 14, 2006 at 21:29:35
From: They were born muslim, [c-67-174-63-63.hsd1.ca.comcast.net]
Subject: Re: Believe It or Not: You were Born Muslim!


Hamas and Islamic Jihad representatives met with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Hizbullah members in Teheran on Friday in a conference aimed at raising funds for the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.

ALEXANDRIA, Egypt (AFP) - Three knife-wielding Muslims attacked worshippers at Coptic churches in Egypt's second city of Alexandria, killing one and wounding at least 12.

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The assailants, each armed with two knives, mounted almost simultaneous attacks on churchgoers in three separate neighbourhoods and were later arrested, a police official said on condition of anonymity.

"The attacker stormed the church armed with a knife and shouted 'There is no God but Allah' and 'Allah is the greatest' before stabbing the worshippers," one of the Mar Girgis church employees told an AFP reporter on the scene.

"We closed the doors of the church as soon as he started attacking the worshippers and we fought back with sticks but he tried to flee through one of the church's underground passages," said the witness, who asked to be named only as Ibrahim.

An hour after the incident, a mass was being held to appease the neighbourhood's shocked Coptic worshippers. Security forces sealed off the areas where the attacks took place and set up checkpoints across the Mediterranean city.

The simultaneous attacks on Egypt's minority Coptic Christian community marred the run-up to the Orthodox Easter celebrations starting in a week's time and were the worst outbreak of sectarian violence in Egypt in six months.

Friday's victim, Noshi Atta Girgis, died of his wounds in hospital, a medical source said. He was among at least three people attacked at the Al-Quidissin church east of Alexandria.

The other assault took place at the Al-Adra church in the eastern suburb of Abu Kir. At least three people were said to have sustained serious injuries.

In front of the Mar Girgis church, a distressed woman called for the attacks to be avenged.

"They will see. Do they think we're cowards? They will see that we have the means to defend ourselves," she shouted, as several other worshippers were in a state of hysteria.

"We cannot enter their mosques and kill them, yet they can come to our churches and kill us without any problem. Where are the police and the government? Do they think our blood is cheaper than theirs?," cried another woman, Nadia Lofti.

"The people who do this want us all to convert to Islam. We are a minority and the government should give us more protection," she added.

Egyptian Copts in the overwhelmingly Muslim country typically attend weekly mass on Friday, which is also the Muslim holy day and marks the beginning of the weekend.

They make up an estimated 10 percent of Egypt's population of 73 million and complain of discrimination by the regime.

Coptic faithful, religious leaders and intellectuals expressed fear of further harassment following the spectacular surge of the country's leading Islamist opposition party in November-December parliamentary elections.

The deadliest recent clashes occurred in October 2005 when Muslim protestors attacked a church in Alexandria which they accused of having hosted a play they deemed offensive to Islam and killed three people.

A 19-year-old Muslim who stabbed a nun during the rioting was sentenced to three years in jail in February.

A string of lesser incidents have been reported in different parts of the country in recent months, fuelling fears of growing sectarian strife.

In January, a Coptic Christian was badly wounded when Muslims tried to torch a house that Copts were using as a church without approval from the authorities. He later died of his wounds.



Opening the conference, Ahmadinejad fired a series of verbal shots at Israel, saying it was a “permanent threat” to the Middle East that will “soon” be liberated, and questioning the validity of the Nazi Holocaust against Jews in World War II.

“Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihiliation,” Ahmadinejad said. “The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm,” he said.

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