Egypt’s Ministry of Endowments just announced a new record: in the last six months, yet another 964 mosques were opened.
Moreover, since Abdel Fateh al-Sisi became president in 2014, the total number of mosques that have been opened, repaired, or replaced—costing Egypt more than 21 billion pounds—is 13,045. On average, this comes out to over 1,000 additional mosques per year.
(One can almost hear the triumphant “Allahu akbars!”)
Indeed, according to Egypt’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPAMS), the total number of mosques in the country has now reached 151,194*. As such, in 2023, the Minister of Endowment proudly proclaimed that, although Egypt used to be known as “the country of one thousand minarets,” it has now become “the country of 150,000 mosques.”
Nor do these gargantuan figures include the ubiquitous “prayer halls.” Virtually every single governmental office, school, university, sports club or factory contains a hall or room dedicated to Islamic prayers. Thus, if there are more than 150,000 mosques in Egypt, the total number of prayer halls is easily tenfold that number—meaning almost 1.5 million.
Then there are Egypt’s apartment buildings, the ground floors of which are typically transformed into a prayer hall, duly equipped with loudspeakers. Not only do they, added to mosques and prayer halls, raise the number of places for Muslims to worship to an astronomical level; but they are notorious for intentionally annoying neighbors (including, if not especially, Christians) with their mega decibel loudspeakers that blast the call to prayer five times a day—including predawn—with zero consideration for neighbors, including the sick and elderly.
Here one may inquire: what about the religious places of worship that, for centuries before Egypt’s conquest by Muslim Arabs, once littered that nation’s landscape—namely, Christian churches? How do they fare?
The total number of churches and monasteries for all Christian denominations in Egypt, including those “licensed” since the issuance of the 2016 Law for Building and Restoring Churches, is currently estimated to be about 5800* (half of them belong to the Coptic Orthodox, who represent some 85% of Egypt’s Christians).
The disparity is staggering; it alone should underscore the extreme discrimination Christians—whom Sisi regularly presents as “our beloved and equal brothers”—face in Egypt. Considering that Christians of all denominations make up, at the very least, 12 percent of Egypt’s population of 114 million, based on some conservative number crunching, there is one mosque or prayer hall for every 40 or so Muslims, but only one church or monastery for every 2,400 Christians.
That’s a 1:60 ratio of blatant discrimination.
Along with the ease Egypt grants to the building of mosques, often overlooked is the fact that the government also completely subsidizes a great many, if not most, of Egypt’s mosques. As seen, over 21 billion pounds were spent in just the last decade building and renovating mosques. Moreover, 22 billion Egyptian pounds are annually paid to Al Azhar, which has a parallel educational system, or madrasa, from KG to university, with over 2.8 million pupils and students.)
Conversely, not only does Egypt make it immensely hard for Christians to open or maintain churches, but the government does not contribute a single penny to their survival. Churches are even required to pay their utility bills, which no mosque in Egypt does, as the government happily picks up their bill.
In short, along with all the other things one can point to as proof that Egypt’s Coptic Christians are persecuted—most recently, Coptic Solidarity published a 53-page report on “the Epidemic of Abductions and Forced Disappearance of Coptic Women and Girls”—here is concrete, objective proof based on numbers alone, which never lie.
(*) Figures provided by Coptic Solidarity’s Adel Guindy.