Police in Egypt are boosting security around churches as Coptic Christians prepare to celebrate Orthodox Christmas on Sunday after a year of deadly jihadist attacks targeting the ancient community
Xmas in January
The Copts, like many Orthodox Christians around the world, celebrate Christmas on January 7 every year. This is because many Orthodox churches follow the Julian calendar, according to The Independent. They have not adopted the Gregorian calendar, proposed by Catholic Pope Gregory in 1582
In 1923, a revised version of the Julian calendar was introduced bringing Christmas Day in line with the Gregorian calendar, but it was only adopted by some of the Orthodox Christian countries including Greece, Cyprus and Romania
Attacked in Egypt
More than 100 Coptic Christians have been killed in a spate of violence, including a shooting at a church south of Cairo just last week claimed by the Islamic State. Since the military ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in 2013, security forces have sought to quell attacks led by the Egypt branch of IS which has increasingly targeted Christians
Copts, who make up about 10 per cent of Egypt’s 93 million people, have long complained of sectarian attacks. After Morsi’s ouster, army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi resigned and won a presidential election the following year, and has reached out to the Copts. Sisi’s government had, at the end of 2016, adopted a long anticipated law to regularise the construction and restoration of churches, something that had been a flashpoint in sectarian clashes
Security clearance for building churches
Unlike the construction of mosques, churches needed seldom-approved security clearances, and rumours that a church would be built sometimes led to attacks on Christians in the conservative rural south of the country. In December, hundreds of Muslims attacked a church south of Cairo that had been operating without a permit for more than a dozen years, according to AFP