How the West Enables the Persecution of Egypt’s Copts
29th January 2026
by Islam in the seventh century, it was a majority-Christian nation that was mostly inhabited by its indigenous people, the Copts.
Coptic Christians are deeply rooted in ancient Egyptian traditions through language, liturgical music, and ritual symbolism. They have preserved a cultural identity that long predates the Islamic conquest of Egypt.
Copts were some of the earliest followers of Christianity due to St. Mark bringing the Gospel to Egypt. Since then, Egypt has been home to many of the greatest Christian theologians, including Athanasius, Anthony (of the desert), and Cyril the Great.
As descendants of the ancient Egyptians, Copts have lived in their homeland for several millennia. They have survived persecution since the first Arab Muslim invasion in the seventh century as well as the subsequent invasions of the Mamluks and Ottoman Turks.
There are currently around 15,000,000 Copts in Egypt, making them both the largest Christian and the largest non-Muslim community in the Middle East and North Africa.
Egypt’s Copts are today amongst the most severely persecuted communities in the world. They live as second-class citizens in their ancestral homeland, marginalized both institutionally and socially.
They face abduction, forced disappearance, unlawful arrests, torture, rape, pressure to convert to Islam, mob attacks, and discrimination. But as Caroline Doss, president of the organization Coptic Solidarity, notes, in the face of these human rights violations, “the response of the Egyptian government is often slow, weak, or completely absent.” Violence against Coptic Christians is rarely punished. This increases their exposure to repeated attacks and extends impunity to their attackers.
I am told that it is commonplace for Coptic female children to have a cross tattooed on their hands in order to prevent them being abducted, forcibly ‘converted’ to Islam, and married off to middle-aged Muslim men.