Egypt: Another Christian Killed in His Military Unit, Supposedly by "Suicide"

Egypt: Another Christian Killed in His Military Unit, Supposedly by “Suicide”

Coptic Christian soldiers in Egypt killed by Muslim comrades in recent years include, from left to right, Baha Saeed Karam (August 2015), Bahaa Gamal Mikhail Silvanus (June 2015), and Hany Seroufim (August 2006).

Another young Coptic Christian conscript has allegedly committed suicide in his unit in Menufia, Egypt, says a February 17 report by MCM (actual date of incident not indicated).

According to Maj. Gen. Muhammad Mas’ud, the 20-year-old Copt known only as Michael “shot a bullet from his firearm into his chest, dying instantly.” He supposedly killed himself “after receiving a phone call from his home,” added Mas’ud.

Read here for several more accounts of this “phenomenon” of Coptic Christians being killed in their military units under “mysterious circumstances,” including supposed suicide.

Accordingly, lawyer Hani Ramses remarked that “It’s new for us constantly to hear about Coptic recruits killing themselves in the military and police stations. It’s especially strange that it’s happening now, and not previously, when Egypt was often in a state of war and under constant threat... The killing of Coptic conscripts in the military has become a [new] phenomenon.”

The lawyer also wondered if these deaths indicate that “extremist groups” have infiltrated the Egyptian military.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

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Egypt Anti-Christianism

Raymond Ibrahim

Raymond Ibrahim, a specialist in Islamic history and doctrine, is the author of Defenders of the West: The Christian Heroes Who Stood Against Islam (2022); Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West (2018); Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013); and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). He has appeared on C-SPAN, Al-Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and PBS and has been published by the New York Times Syndicate, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Weekly Standard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst. Formerly an Arabic linguist at the Library of Congress, Ibrahim guest lectures at universities, briefs governmental agencies, and testifies before Congress. He has been a visiting fellow/scholar at a variety of Institutes—from the Hoover Institution to the National Intelligence University—and is the Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum and the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.