{"id":120,"date":"2005-01-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-01-14T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2010-10-01T20:26:49","modified_gmt":"2010-10-01T20:26:49","slug":"egyptian-president-reassures-christians-after-clashes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/egyptian-president-reassures-christians-after-clashes\/","title":{"rendered":"Egyptian President Reassures Christians After Clashes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><BR><br \/>\n<P dir=rtl style=\"DIRECTION: rtl; LINE-HEIGHT: 13pt; unicode-bidi: embed; TEXT-ALIGN: left; mso-line-height-rule: exactly\"><br \/>\n<span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 10.0pt; color: #4900C8; font-family: Arial\"><br \/>\nCairo- Kenneth Chan<\/span><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\n<\/SPAN><\/p>\n<p><SPAN lang=EN-GB style=\"FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: black; FONT-FAMILY: Arial; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB\"><\/p>\n<p>Egypt&#8217;s President reassured followers of the Coptic Church that they were full members of Egyptian society after recent clashes between Christians and Muslims, sources reported earlier this week. <BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In practice, we are a single people, we must stay bound by ties of affection at all times,&#8221; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday in a speech broadcast on state television. <BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Christians are not a minority in Egypt, they are Egyptian by origin and birth.&#8221;<br \/>\nAccording to MiddleEastOnline, Mubarak played down clashes between Christians and Muslims in the run-up to last Friday&#8217;s Coptic Christmas, saying that such unrest &#8220;happens all over the world.&#8221; <BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n<p>Last month, hundreds of Coptic Christians&#8211;Egypt&#8217;s largest Christian denomination&#8211; staged protests in Cairo and in the west delta province of Beheira following the alleged abduction and forced conversion of Wefaa Constantine&#8211;the wife of a Coptic priest&#8211;to Islam. <BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n<p>Although the alleged abduction and forced conversion of Constantine sparked the protests, sources say the protest was also a response to the Egyptian government&#8217;s sanction of anti-Coptic hate crimes such as arson, torture, murder, and the abduction, rape, and forced conversion of young Coptic women. <BR><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n<p>The round-the-clock sit-ins at the Coptic Orthodox cathedral in Egypt&#8217;s capital continued until the confrontation reached its climax Dec. 9 when church authorities instructed demonstrators to disperse after receiving assurances that Constantine had been handed over to a church council.<br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\n<BR><br \/>\nHowever, by then at least 60 police were wounded in ensuing clashes and 34 demonstrators were arrested.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><BR><br \/>\n<P class=MsoNormal style=\"MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: left\" align=left><br \/>\n<span lang=\"EN-GB\" style=\"font-size: 8pt; font-family: Arial; color: black\"><br \/>\n14-1-2005 <\/SPAN><BR><br \/>\n<SPAN style=\"FONT-SIZE: 11pt; COLOR: #4900dc; FONT-FAMILY: 'Estrangelo Edessa'\">&#1826;&#1815;&#1834;&#1821;&#1808; <\/SPAN><\/P><br \/>\n<BR><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cairo- Kenneth Chan Egypt&#8217;s President reassured followers of the Coptic Church that they were full members of Egyptian society after recent clashes between Christians and Muslims, sources reported earlier this week. &#8220;In practice, we are a single people, we must stay bound by ties of affection at all times,&#8221; Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said Sunday &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","","category-assyrian-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ado-world.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}