Middle East

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday, February 18, asked the militant group Hamas to form the next Palestinian government but warned he would not accept attacks against the Christian minority.

Lebanon’s Interior Minister resigned late Sunday, February 5, after an estimated 20,000 angry Muslims not only torched the Danish Embassy but also attacked the Christian community in the capital Beirut over published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.

Two young Coptic Christian women whose father had converted to Islam when they were infants have won a court battle in Egypt to retain their official religious identity as Christians.

Armed Islamic groups angered by cartoon drawings depicting the Prophet Muhammad in European media, threatened to attack churches and closed down the European Union Commission office in Gaza Thursday, February 2, as anger over the published caricatures spread across the Muslim world.

Iraqi Christians have urged Westerners to be carefull with public comments on Iraq after three people were killed in apparently coordinated bomb attacks against churches over the weekend, a major religious rights group said Tuesday, January 31.

Funeral preparations were underway Friday, January 20, where at least one Christian and a dozen others were injured when Muslim militants set fire to a Christian community center in Upper Egypt, church sources and news reports said.

Iranian Christians are mourning the death of Ghorban Dordi Tourani, an Iranian believer assassinated two weeks ago by an unnamed group of fanatical Muslims and the first Turkmen in Iran known to have been martyred for his Christian faith.

Egypt’s Protestant Christian community remained on edge Sunday, December 4, amid reports that one of its pastors, Ezzat Habib, was killed after he was run down by a taxi in Cairo following threats from the country’s feared security police.

A U.S. Christian faces one year in prison after a trial in which he was accused of raping and beating Magda Refaat Gayed at his Cairo shelter for troubled women.

The entire lay leadership of Iraq’s main Anglican Church was presumed dead Thursday, September 29, amid reports they were attacked while returning from a conference in neighboring Jordan.