Local Coptic Christians Protest Persecution

January 17, 2010

Author: Kevin Wiatrowski

Source: Tampa Bay Online

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2010/jan/17/na-local-coptic-christians-protest-persecution/

A fatal shooting last week in southern Egypt drew hundreds of Coptic Christians to the streets of Tampa in protest Saturday afternoon.

Members of Coptic churches from Clearwater, Tampa and Sarasota attended the rally. People waved posters protesting what they described as 1,400 years of persecution of Copts in Egypt.

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Copts split from the Christian Church in 451 - about 500 years before the schism that created the separate Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. Today, Coptic Christians make up about 10 percent of Egypt's population of 80 million, most of whom are Muslim