More than 150 people –including some children– remain in jail following that incident, in a country notorious for police brutality and other human rights abuses.
While Christians have difficulty even finding a place to worship in Egypt, some Egyptian Muslims manage to make their antipathy against the country's Christians well-known. Fr. Greische said groups of Muslims are known to “become violent and make demonstrations,” often burning pictures of the head of Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church.
They're particularly offended, he noted, by “people who want to change their religion” – specifically, Muslims who want to become Christians, who can expect ostracism and may face death threats. Christians who dare to evangelize Egyptian Muslims can expect violent retribution if their work becomes known.
Even instances of Christians becoming Muslims can make these tensions turn explosive. In October, when suicide-attackers at Iraq's Cathedral of Our Lady of Salvation killed almost 60 worshipers at a Sunday Mass in Baghdad, the Islamic State of Iraq group claimed it was an act of retaliation for two alleged female converts from Christianity to Islam, supposedly being held captive by Coptic Christians.
Iraqi experts at the time told CNA that they had no reason to believe the story. Fr. Greische noted that it might simply have been an instance of an ordinary domestic disagreement, being turned into a public libel against Coptic Christians in a climate of suspicion and hostility.
He suspected that the Oct. 31 attack in Baghdad, one of the deadliest acts of anti-Christian terrorism in years, was a response to the Synod for the Middle East that had concluded earlier in the month. That synod ultimately issued only light criticisms of Islamic regimes, and represented an exercise of the kind of religious liberty Islamic extremists disallow.