How Egypt’s Coptic Christians put down roots around the world, but remained grounded in their culture

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Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi joins Coptic Pope Tawadros II during a Christmas Eve Mass at the Nativity of Christ Cathedral outside Cairo. (AFP)
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Updated 02 June 2022
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How Egypt’s Coptic Christians put down roots around the world, but remained grounded in their culture

  • After decades of oppression and adversity, Copts — the ‘original Egyptians’ — are finding hope in Egypt’s ‘new republic’
  • Those raised overseas, like British-born Egyptian artist and iconographer Fadi Mikhail, have remained true to their roots

LONDON: Coptic Christians in Egypt and in scattered migrant communities across the world celebrated on Wednesday the "Entry of the Lord into Egypt,” an annual feast day. That celebration is followed by The Holy Feast of Ascension, commemorating the Christian belief in Christ’s bodily ascension into heaven.

In a sense, the two consecutive feast days bookend the Coptic experience. The one marks their deep-rooted pride in an Egyptian heritage that predates the arrival of Islam, while the other celebrates the spiritual value of self-sacrifice, which would come to define the experience of a church forged in martyrdom soon after Christ’s death on the cross.




Interior details of Saint George Church in Coptic Cairo, Egypt. (Shutterstock)

Back in April, Egypt’s Christians celebrated two other consecutive special days.

Orthodox Easter fell on April 24, a date set by the Julian calendar under which the Church of Alexandria operates, rather than the Gregorian calendar used by the rest of Christianity, with which the Copts parted ways over theological differences in the fifth century.

But the following day, together with Egyptians of all faiths, Copts celebrated the national holiday of Sham Ennessim. The origins of this festival of spring date back millennia to the days of the pharaohs and, like the Copts themselves, survived the Arabization of Egypt in the seventh century to become an integral part of Egyptian society.

Around the world are many Copts, some now second or even third generation, who were born on foreign soil after their parents emigrated in search of a better life, yet who also remain rooted in Egypt and its culture.

The life and work of Fadi Mikhail, a successful artist in the UK, symbolizes the generations who were born overseas to immigrant parents, but maintain strong ties to their Egyptian and Coptic heritage.

Mikhail’s parents, Hany and Salwa, emigrated from Egypt in the late 1970s, his father pursuing his career as a doctor in the UK. “The promise of higher pay and a better life called to him,” said Mikhail.




 British-born Coptic artist Fadi Mikhail trained in Los Angeles under the renowned Egyptian iconographer Isaac Fanous. (Supplied)

Born in Harlow, England, in 1984, Mikhail studied in Los Angeles under the renowned Egyptian iconographer Isaac Fanous before graduating from the Slade School of Fine Art in London.

Today, he produces icons for Coptic churches around the world, but his art is a visual bridge between East and West — he has a parallel career as a painter in the Western tradition, working in oils to produce landscapes, or drawing inspiration from books he enjoyed as a child.

His work is showcased by British galleries and has led to commissions for notable patrons, including the Prince of Wales.

Mikhail and his wife return to Egypt only for the occasional annual vacation. But, like most Copts scattered around the world, he says that “through the church I do still feel strongly connected to the Coptic faith and, by extension, Egypt.”

His interest in iconography “certainly began as a religious connection but has more recently become equally a part of my identity as an Egyptian.”




One of Fadi Mikhail’s oil paintings, ‘The Swallows Chasing the Amazons.’ (Supplied)

His parents’ generation, he said, “were particularly strong as a community, having banded together as recent immigrants, wanting to retain as much Egyptian culture as possible. Faith was an intrinsic part of this.”

He concedes that, “now in our second and third generation, the Coptic community in the UK is certainly experiencing some challenges of identity and the struggle to feel or appear as unwavering in our ‘Egyptianness’ as our parents.

“Practising one’s faith in a church in the West, where Western thought is certainly more liberal, while remaining in communion with the Eastern church, which is considerably more conservative, is difficult.

“However, I believe we have been very lucky with the wisdom of our leadership here in the UK, and to date I believe the waters have been wisely and deftly navigated.”




The Glaubenskirche in Berlin, Germany, a former Lutheran church, has been owned since 1998 by the Coptic Church, and it is being developed into a Coptic bishop's residence. (Shutterstock)

Wherever emigrating Copts have put down roots, their communities and their church have flourished. In addition to the estimated 15 million Copts in Egypt — some 10 percent of the population — there are now thought to be more than 2 million living abroad, chiefly in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe, where they make up mainly a wealthy and educated immigrant class of professionals, such as doctors or engineers.

The first Coptic parish in North America, St. Mark’s, was established in Toronto in 1964. It was followed shortly afterwards by the parish of St. Mark’s in New Jersey, which was founded in the late 1960s and saw the building of the first Coptic church in the West.

But one of the oldest Coptic communities abroad was founded in the 1950s in the UK, where the first Coptic liturgy in Europe was conducted in London on Aug. 10, 1954. The community was founded largely by Copts who studied medicine and moved to Britain to pursue their careers free of the glass ceilings that held them back in Egypt.




Queen Elizabeth II meets Pope Tawadros II and Bishop Angaelos of the Coptic Church during a private audience at Windsor Castle on May 9, 2017 in Windsor, UK. (Getty Images)

In 1978, the Coptic pope, Shenouda III, traveled from Egypt to the UK to consecrate St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church in Kensington, London, the first Coptic Orthodox Church in Europe.

Since then, the church in the UK has gone from strength, with in excess of 20,000 faithful across 32 parishes. In 2002 Shenouda returned to lay the foundation stone for the Cathedral of St. George, which was inaugurated in the Hertfordshire town of Stevenage, England, in 2006.

The head of the church in the UK is Archbishop Anba Angaelos, whose personal story of migration in many ways echoes that of so many Copts.

Born in Cairo in 1967, as a child he emigrated with his family to Australia. There he obtained a degree in political science, philosophy and sociology and, after postgraduate studies in law, returned to Egypt in 1990, where he became a monk and joined the historic monastery of St. Bishoy in Wadi El-Natrun. 




A view of Egypt's historic monastery of Saint Bishoy in Wadi El-Natrun, Cairo. (Shutterstock)

In 1995, he was sent to the UK as a parish priest. Four years later, he was made a general bishop of the Coptic Orthodox Church and on Nov. 18, 2017 was enthroned as the first Coptic Orthodox archbishop of London.

Icons in St. George Cathedral were painted by Fadi Mikhail in the modern Coptic style championed by his teacher Isaac Fanous.

The Copts who live abroad, said Angaelos, “don’t look at ourselves as a diaspora community, one that has faced persecution and has dispersed. We are a migrant community, people who have gone to find a better life for themselves and for their children and who still maintain links with Egypt.”




Coptic Orthodox Pope Tawadros II (L) leads the Easter mass at St. Mark's Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt on April 11, 2015. (Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Egypt’s Coptic Christians can justifiably claim to be the original Egyptians, guardians of a language once spoken by the pharaohs and keepers of a faith forged in adversity.

“We are an indigenous people,” said Angaelos. “I can trace my heritage as a Christian back to St. Mark, who established Christianity in Egypt, and even further back to my ancient Egyptian roots.”

According to scripture, Mary and Joseph sought refuge in Egypt with the infant Jesus to escape the massacre of all male children aged 2 or under in Bethlehem ordered by King Herod.

A generation later, it was in the ancient Egyptian city of Alexandria that Mark the Evangelist founded the church that would become one of the five great episcopal sees of early Christendom, alongside Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem and Rome.




Coptic patriarch and priests celebrate mass on Orthodox Good Friday, in the Holy Sepulchre church of Jerusalem Old City, on April 30, 2021. (Shutterstock)

Copts have not always felt welcome in Egypt. Under Roman rule, Christians throughout the empire suffered persecution for centuries. St. Mark himself was murdered and martyred by a pagan mob in the streets of Alexandria in A.D. 68, and hundreds of Christians died in Egypt during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian.

Such was the impact of what became known as the Diocletianic persecution that the years of the liturgical calendar used by the Coptic Orthodox Church are counted from A.D. 284, the beginning of Diocletian’s reign. For the Copts, years are labelled not A.D. (Anno Domini, “the year of our Lord”), but A.M. — Anno Martyrum, “Year of the Martyrs.”

With the rise of Islam in the seventh century, the Copts faced new challenges to their faith and their ancient language, a direct linguistical descendant from the ancient Egyptian tongue. As many Copts converted to Islam, in part to avoid the increasingly onerous taxes imposed on non-Muslims, use of the language was steadily eroded and now survives only in the monasteries and liturgies of the Coptic Church.




Muslim cleric Sheikh Mohamed Goma (C-L) congratulates Pope Tawadros II during his enthronement ceremony as leader of Egypt's Coptic Christian church in Cairo on Nov. 18, 2012. Christians and Muslims lived side by side in harmony in Egypt through times of great unrest and periods. (AFP)

All these obstacles the Copts navigated stoically for many centuries, through times of great unrest and periods during which Christians and Muslims lived side by side in harmony in Egypt.

In the 20th century, however, a series of social, economic and political upheavals — aggravated by Britain’s divide-and-rule policies in Egypt and leading ultimately to the “Free Officers” coup of 1952 and President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arab reforms — saw the start of a steady trickle of Copts emigrating in the hope of finding a better life in the West.

Even before the revolution, “Copts were being slowly pushed out of Egyptian politics,” said Michael Akladios, founder and director of Egypt Migrations, a Coptic cultural and archival project set up in Canada in 2016 to preserve the stories of Egypt’s migrants.

“Immediately following the revolution, graduate Copts began to emigrate, going to the UK, Canada and the US, because they were hitting ceilings within the schools and professions.”




A view of Saint Simon the Tanner Monastery, an old Coptic church in Cairo, Egypt. (Shutterstock)

Akladios said it was a mistake to characterize all Coptic emigration from Egypt as the product of fear or persecution. His own family emigrated to Canada when he was 8, joining his father’s siblings who had already settled in Toronto, and the move was “economically motivated.”

“Yes, persecution is an element,” he said. “But the Copts are more than their churches; they’re also human beings with needs and families, and they make decisions as pragmatic migrants just like anybody else.”

For Copts in Egypt today, said Archbishop Angaelos, “there are still challenges. But one of the most important things for Copts, in Egypt and abroad, is that over the past decade we have seen a much greater, harmonious existence between Christians and Muslims.”

One man is the flag-bearer for the new spirit of interfaith harmony abroad in Egypt – Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who was elected president in 2014 and has been responsible for a series of gestures of inclusive non-sectarianism.




Daesh terrorists lead blindfolded Egyptian Coptic Christians, wearing orange jumpsuits, to be beheaded on a seashore in the Libyan capital of Tripoli in 2015. (AFP file photo)

When 20 migrant Coptic Egyptian workers and a Ghanaian colleague were beheaded on a beach in Libya by terrorists in February 2015, it was El-Sisi who sent the Egyptian Air Force to exact revenge on Daesh.

When a series of attacks against Copts and Coptic churches was unleashed in 2017, claiming dozens of lives, the wave of terror was crushed by an overwhelming response by the Egyptian army.

In 2018, El-Sisi’s government paved the way for the return of the Libyan martyrs’ bodies to Egypt. In the village of Al-Aour in Upper Egypt, where many of the men had lived, they were laid to rest in the newly built Church of the Martyrs of Faith and Homeland, the construction of which had been funded by the Egyptian government.

And Copts everywhere were delighted when El-Sisi joined Coptic Pope Tawadros for Christmas Mass in the Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital on Jan. 6 this year. In a speech, El-Sisi spoke of a “new republic” in Egypt “that accommodates everyone without discrimination.”




Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi (R) speaking alongside Pope Tawadros II of Alexandria during a Coptic Orthodox Christmas Eve mass at the Nativity of Christ Cathedral near Cairo on January 6, 2022. (AFP)

As if to underline the point, just over a month later the first Coptic Christian was appointed head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, the highest judicial authority in the country.

For Michael Akladios, and for the Coptic community in Egypt and the wider world, the appointment of Judge Boulos Fahmy Eskandar on Feb. 9, 2022, was “a promising step on the road to greater Coptic inclusion and representation in Egypt’s public sphere.”

Although it was “still too early to judge what ramifications this appointment will have for Coptic communities in Egypt and across its diasporas,” it was nevertheless “symbolic of the state’s continued big gestures for cementing national unity as a prevailing feature of the character of the nation.”

 

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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

Updated 18 February 2025
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Tens of thousands of Palestinians flee West Bank refugee camps

  • The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups

JERUSALEM: Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in the occupied West Bank have left their homes as a weeks-long Israeli offensive has demolished houses and torn up vital infrastructure in the heavily built up townships, Palestinian authorities said.
Israeli forces began their operation in the refugee camp in the northern West Bank city of Jenin on Jan. 21, deploying hundreds of troops and bulldozers that demolished houses and dug up roads, driving almost all of the camp’s residents out.
“We don’t know what’s going on in the camp but there is continuous demolition and roads being dug up,” said Mohammed Al-Sabbagh, head of the Jenin camp services committee.

An Israeli army excavator demolishes a residential building in the Tulkarem camp for Palestinian refugees during an ongoing Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank on February 18, 2025. (AFP)

The operation, which Israel says is aimed at thwarting Iranian-backed militant groups in the West Bank, has since been extended to other camps, notably the Tulkarm refugee camp and the nearby Nur Shams camp, both of which have also been devastated. The camps, built for descendants of Palestinian refugees who fled or were driven from their homes in the 1948 war around the creation of the state of Israel, have long been major centers for armed militant groups. They have been raided repeatedly by the Israeli military but the current operation, which began as a ceasefire was agreed in Gaza, has been on an unusually large scale. According to figures from the Palestinian Authority, around 17,000 people have now left Jenin refugee camp, leaving the site almost completely deserted, while in Nur Shams 6,000 people, or about two thirds of the total, have left, with another 10,000 leaving from Tulkarm camp.
“The ones who are left are trapped,” said Nihad Al-Shawish, head of the Nur Shams camp services committee. “The Civil Defense, the Red Crescent and the Palestinian security forces brought them some food yesterday but the army is still bulldozing and destroying the camp.” The Israeli raids have demolished dozens of houses and torn up large stretches of roadway as well as cutting off water and power, but the military has denied forcing residents to leave their homes.
“People obviously have the possibility to move or go where they want, if they will. But if they don’t, they’re allowed to stay,” Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani told reporters.
The operation began as Israel moved to banish the main UN Palestinian relief organization UNRWA from its headquarters in East Jerusalem and cut it off from any contact with Israeli officials.
The ban, which took effect at the end of January, has hit UNRWA’s work in the West Bank and Gaza, where it provides aid for millions of Palestinians in the refugee camps.
Israel has accused UNRWA of cooperating with Hamas and said some UNRWA workers even took part in the Hamas-led attack on communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023 that set off the 15-month war in Gaza.

 


More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

People walk past shops in Homs on February 10, 2025. (AFP)
Updated 19 February 2025
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More than one million Syrians return to their homes: UN

  • “Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees

GENEVA: More than one million people have returned to their homes in Syria after the overthrow of Bashar Assad, including 280,000 refugees who came back from abroad, the UN said on Tuesday.
Assad was toppled in December in a rebel offensive, putting an end to his family’s decades-long grip on power in the Middle Eastern country and bookmarking a civil war that broke out in 2011, with the brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions from their homes.
The Islamist-led rebels whose offensive ousted Assad have sought to assure the international community that they have broken with their past and will respect the rights of minorities.
“Since the fall of the regime in Syria we estimate that 280,000 Syrian refugees and more than 800,000 people displaced inside the country have returned to their homes,” Filippo Grandi, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, wrote on the X social media platform.
“Early recovery efforts must be bolder and faster, though, otherwise people will leave again: this is now urgent!” he said.
At a meeting in Paris in mid-February, some 20 countries, including Arab nations, Turkiye, Britain, France, Germany, Canada and Japan agreed at the close of a conference in Paris to “work together to ensure the success of the transition in a process led by Syria.”
The meeting’s final statement also pledged support for Syria’s new authorities in the fight against “all forms of terrorism and extremism.”
 

 


Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

Updated 19 February 2025
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Israeli military says it struck weapons belonging to former Syrian administration in southern Syria

CAIRO: The Israeli military said on Tuesday that it struck weapons which it said belonged to the former Syrian administration in southern Syria.

 


Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

Updated 18 February 2025
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Algiers slams French minister’s visit to W. Sahara

  • France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco

ALGIERS: Algeria on Tuesday denounced a visit by French Culture Minister Rachida Dati to Western Sahara, after Paris recognized Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed territory, as “objectionable on multiple levels.”
The vast desert territory is a former Spanish colony largely controlled by Morocco but claimed for decades by the Algeria-backed Polisario Front.
Dati, who described her visit as “historic,” launched with Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid a French cultural mission in the territory’s main city, Laayoune.
An Algerian foreign ministry statement posted on social media Tuesday said the visit “reflects blatant disregard for international legality by a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”
“This visit reinforces Morocco’s fait accompli in Western Sahara, a territory where the decolonization process remains incomplete and the right to self-determination unfulfilled,” it said.
Dati’s trip, a first for a French official, “reflects the detestable image of a former colonial power in solidarity with a new one,” the statement added.
The United Nations considers Western Sahara to be a “non-self-governing territory” and has had a peacekeeping mission there since 1991, whose stated aim is to organize a referendum on the territory’s future.
But Rabat has repeatedly rejected any vote in which independence is an option, instead proposing autonomy under Morocco.
France’s stance on Western Sahara has been ambiguous in recent years, often straining its ties with Morocco.
But in July, French President Emmanuel Macron said Rabat’s autonomy plan was the “only basis” to resolve the Western Sahara dispute.
Algeria has backed the separatist Polisario Front and cut diplomatic relations with Rabat in 2021 — the year after Morocco normalized ties with Israel under a deal that awarded it US recognition of its annexation of the Western Sahara.
In October, the UN Security Council called for parties to “resume negotiations” to reach a “lasting and mutually acceptable solution” to the Western Sahara dispute.
In November 2020, the Polisario Front said it was ending a 29-year ceasefire with Morocco after Moroccan troops were deployed to the far south of the territory to remove independence supporters blocking the only road to Mauritania.
The Polisario Front claims the route is illegal, arguing that it did not exist when the ceasefire was established in 1991.
 

 


Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

Updated 18 February 2025
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Kurdistan region’s pipeline restart ready to go, foreign minister says

  • Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently

BAGHDAD: A major pipeline connecting Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region to Turkiye is ready to reopen and resume exports, the Kurdish foreign minister said on Tuesday, potentially ending a dispute between Baghdad and Irbil that led to the closure of the pipeline in 2023.
Foreign Minister Safeen Dizayee declined to say when the pipeline would reopen but said it would mark a turning point in relations between Kurdistan and Baghdad.
Iraq’s oil minister said on Monday the Iraq-Turkiye pipeline (ITP) will resume next week.
“All arrangements that were set on the table have been agreed to, with the aim to prepare for re-exports. There shouldn’t be any hiccups. The legal aspects have been met, the technical aspects are in place,” Dizayee told Reuters by phone. “The button just has to be pushed to increase production and then re-export.”
The oil flows were halted by Turkiye in March 2023 after the International Chamber of Commerce ordered Ankara to pay Baghdad damages of $1.5 billion for unauthorized pipeline exports by the Kurdistan Regional Government between 2014 and 2018.
Negotiations to restart the pipeline have been ongoing, with US officials participating in some of the talks.
Resuming oil exports will boost the Kurdistan region’s budget, Dizayee said.
“This means Kurdistan will benefit from the federal budget and hopefully this will end the saga of (civil servants’) salaries coming or not coming, received in dribs and drabs,” Dizayee said.
Baghdad has periodically withheld the Kurdistan region’s share of the federal budget to try to stop it from exporting oil independently.
Oil producers in the Kurdistan region have had to wind down production without an export route. It will likely take some time for them to restart their oil wells and for the pipeline to use its full capacity. Before it was shut down, it transported around 450,000 barrels per day.
“They’ve invested a lot. It was a risk they took and it must pay off. They [the companies] need assurances that their investment will not be down the drain,” Dizayee said. “Compensation is something that needs to be discussed.”
An international consultancy will be brought in to do an assessment of the cost of production, expenses, cost recovery and the production sharing agreements, he said.