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Copts will long remember Friday, October 21, as a night of terror, flame, and violence in Alexandria. Late that evening, thousands of rioting Muslims targeted three poorly protected Protestant congregations and an Orthodox church in the Muharram Bey section of Alexandria. Muslims were venting their anger over a video of a Christian play, produced at an Orthodox church. Muslims allege the video defamed Islam.

Days after the violence, I visited Christian congregations all over Alexandria and found everyday believers in a state of anxiety and shock over the attacks. Muslim-Christian violence, they told me, was something that happened in poor areas of Cairo or rural Upper Egypt, not Alexandria.

This fall, the relative calm between Muslims and Copts (as Christians in Egypt are known) changed with the publication of an article in Al-Midan, a sensationalist Arabic-language newspaper widely available in urban areas.

The article described a video CD (not a DVD) of a play produced at St Girgis, a prosperous Coptic Orthodox church in Alexandria, a coastal city of 5 million where little religious violence has occurred.

Headlined "Christian Play Insults Prophet Muhammad," the article detailed how church members produced and videotaped a play titled, "I was blind, but now I see." The newspaper account stimulated deep anger among Muslims. In the days after publication, thousands protested outside Alexandria's churches.

On October 18, the Islamist group, Mujahadeen of Egypt (said to be responsible for the recent Sharm el-Sheikh bombings) incited Muslims via the Internet to act against Christians in connection with the video. The next day, the first violence occurred. A Muslim exited a street car in Alexandria and attempted to assault a group of girls. Sara Rushdy, a Coptic nun, stepped in to intervene, but the attacker stabbed her repeatedly with a knife just outside a church. (She was not seriously wounded.)

After Friday prayers on October 21, Muslims again protested outside St. Girgis church. But local police had cordoned off the area. The crowd grew larger and more violent as attacks with rocks and sticks were met with tear gas and rubber bullets from police.

Rioters moved throughout Muharram Bey and began to target Protestant churches, which had much less security. During an exclusive interview with Christianity Today, one Protestant pastor and his staff members described an unforgettable night of fear inside their sanctuary on a narrow side street in Muharram Bey. The pastor and his staff piled pews against the church's large wooden doors as rioters assaulted them with large rocks, sticks, and crude Molotov cocktails. They showed me the splintered shutters and doors and burn marks on the building exterior.

By the morning of October 22, police found that three people, all Muslims, had died in the riots. It's estimated that 90 people were injured. Some shops were looted and received damage to their exteriors. Vehicles were torched. More than 100 people were placed under arrest.

Christianity Today toured portions of Muharram Bey's Pentecostal church, which received the most extensive damage. Rioters broke through the doors and heavily damaged the church's interior. They destroyed Bibles, hymnals, and other literature.

The rioting has triggered international outcries. "The violence to which Copts in Egypt have been subjected is nothing but state-sanctioned terrorism against the Coptic minority," read a statement from Michael Meunier, president of the U.S. Copts Association, an organization representing Copts in America.

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November (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49