After the July overthrow of President Morsi, and the subsequent murder of hundreds of his supporters, many hard-line Islamists claimed the Christians were partially behind the coup d’etat.
More than 40 churches were subsequently attacked, including five in Delga of which at least three were burned.
Delga is in the province of Minya. Its Christians have been subject to beatings, murder and extortion, and have had their homes looted. The venerated 1,600-year-old monastery of the Virgin Mary and St Abraam was severely damaged.
Eyewitnesses suggest many local Muslims tried to help their neighbours, and some imams called for calm. However, others openly called for “jihad,” and such was the ferocity of the armed mobs that the local police fled.
The governor of the province has said that 10 other towns have been experiencing religious violence and that the police have been unable to maintain order.
Egypt’s National Council for Human Rights said in a statement on Monday it “noticed with deep concern the escalating attacks targeting Christians in Minya specifically.” It said Christians were systematically targeted, forcibly displaced, and had their homes, shops and places of worship attacked.
Delga’s Christians lived in a state of fear until this week when the Egyptian army stormed the town, secured the various districts, and imposed a curfew.
Egypt’s eight million or so Christians have suffered discrimination and violence for centuries, but the upheavals of the past few years have given cover to the most extreme elements in the country.
The army is now struggling to contain a low level insurgency in the Sinai and increasingly frequent terror attacks in Cairo. If the violence spreads to the rest of the country, the army will be so stretched it will be unable to protect Christians who will be caught in the whirlwind. It took weeks before they could be rescued in Delga.
The Muslim Brotherhood has denied any involvement in the Delga violence.
A statement on the Ikwhan (*) website condemned attacks on places of worship but also condemned “indiscriminate attacks on the innocent civilians in Delga by the military junta”.
It goes on: “This is part of the Military Junta’s propaganda to push for sectarian strife and justify their atrocities against the innocent people of Delga for their fierce opposition of the military coup.”
Delga’s Christians, confronted by howling mobs armed with guns, machetes and clubs, did not see it that way.
Unless the authorities, both political and religious, can contain the vicious prejudice of sections of Egyptian society, the Christian population may suffer the fate of Egypt’s Jews in the 1950s, driven from the land by a series of pogroms.
Both minorities had been in Egypt long before the arrival of the Muslims. The Jews have gone; many of the Christians are going.
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Tim Marshall is Foreign Affairs Editor, SkyNews
(*) CS Editor’s note: The Ikhwan statement in English is contradicted by another one, in Arabic, (http://fj-p.com/article.php?id=85093) where it accused the town’s Christians of “spreading false rumors about burnt churches in order (..) to justify a massacre against the twon’s peaceful (Muslim) inhabitants.”