On Saturday night, August 31, 2024, a massive fire “broke out” in the Coptic Diocese of Beni Suef in Egypt, consuming all of the five-story Christian building’s contents—reception halls, offices, libraries, precious books, furniture, and computers—as well as more than 300 wooden benches belonging to the adjacent Church of the Virgin Mary, which were located in the diocese courtyard at the time.
At least ten people, including a clergyman and several staffers, were injured and hospitalized. Diocese spokesmen who were present said that it was only due to “Divine Providence” that a large number of children present in the building, which houses three children’s schools, were saved.
It took approximately five hours for firefighters to quench the blaze. Although initial reports stated that a full forensic investigation as to the cause of the fire would be underway, a security source was quick to announce that the fire was caused by “faulty electrical wires.”
This would be a reasonable conclusion if not for two inconvenient facts: First, Muslim arson attacks on Coptic churches in Egypt are very commonplace. According to researcher Magdi Khalil, “close to one thousand churches have been attacked or torched by mobs in the last five decades [since the 1970s] in Egypt.” Second, although Muslim hostility for churches has not abated or been “reformed,” in recent years, whenever Coptic churches and other Christian buildings burn, these fires are always presented as unfortunate byproducts of “faulty wires” and other “natural” causes.
There are many examples of this (here, here, here, here). In one month alone, August 2022, a full 11 churches “caught fire.” In one of these fires, 41 Christian worshippers, including many children, were killed in the conflagration.
Either the “radicals” have—possibly with “inside” help, including from sympathizers within state security—become more sophisticated and clandestine in their attacks on churches (one surveillance camera caught a votary candle suddenly and randomly exploding and creating a fire); or else Coptic Christians have, for some inexplicable reason, become the most careless and fire-prone people in the world, even though, in reality, they are much more careful with their churches than most Christians, precisely because their churches are so few and widely suppressed and under attack in Egypt.
Moreover, if it is true that faulty wires and other electrical problems are behind this upsurge in church fires, why are “accidental” fires in mosques—which outnumber churches in Egypt by a ratio of 40 to 1—completely unheard of? Are the wires and electrical circuits of Egypt also “radical” and biased against churches?
The bottom line is this: up until a few years ago, it was very common to hear of several Coptic churches being torched every year by rioting Muslims in Egypt; in the last few years, however, there have been virtually no such open attacks on churches—even as the same amount of churches continue to burn every year.
Is this sheer “coincidence” or business as usual—though under a new cover?