Thanks only to the intervention of Rashid police, the full demolition was stopped mid-act. The attempt was exposed by Father Luka Asaad, the church’s priest, who has refused to remain silent even at personal risk. He described the incident as “an attempt to erase the church’s historical identity before the litigation stages were completed.” For speaking out, he was beat, dragged out of his church, and robbed of his phone as he tried to document the destruction.
The workers hired to destroy the church’s domes and roof did so under the flimsy pretense of “ownership rights.” One of the sons of a counselor—ironically a senior judge in the Egyptian judiciary—claims he purchased the church in 1990 from the Greek community. Even if true, such a claim is irrelevant: Egypt’s own judiciary has ruled that churches, like mosques, cannot be bought, sold, or demolished.But opportunism has nothing to do with law and everything to do with seizing Christian property while hiding behind a legal façade.
The Rashid church, built in the early nineteenth century and once under the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate before being entrusted to the Copts during the reign of Pope Shenouda and bishop Anba Pachomius, is not some real estate parcel. Like the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai—which is facing its own not dissimilar problems—it is a religious and historical monument.
Yet since 2009, it has been dismantled piece by piece—first its bell tower, then large sections of the church building, and now its roof and domes. This is simply premeditated erasure. The fact that the assailants are tied to Egypt’s judiciary only underlines the scandal: those who should defend justice are leading the assault on the nation’s indigenous Christian heritage. Ironically, the case has been in front of courts since 2009, with no final ruling issued yet.
Incidentally, as if stripping a church were not enough, Rashid’s Copts were also struck—once again—with the desecration of their cemetery. In August 2025, local authorities demolished the protective wall around the Coptic cemetery—despite the fact that the church had obtained an official license (No. 6 of 2025) to build it. The wall had only recently been completed at great expense, its purpose simple and necessary: to safeguard the dignity of the dead. Yet bulldozers arrived without warning or explanation, tearing it down as if Christian graves themselves had no right to protection.
The Coptic priests of Rashid expressed their outrage at this arbitrary action, stressing that it was not just a matter of bricks and mortar but an assault on the “sanctity of the eternal resting places of our sons and fathers.” Their pleas for a proper road to the cemetery—promised by city officials back in November 2024—continue to be ignored. Appeals to parliamentarians have gone unanswered. Complaints to Cairo, including to the presidency and cabinet, remain in limbo. Silence and neglect compound the injustice.
This is no coincidence. Rashid is a microcosm of Muslim Egypt’s wider war on its Christian heritage. The playbook is clear and forever on replay: Islamist actors use (sometimes forged) claims or “purchases” to justify seizing churches; authorities look the other way—or worse, send in bulldozers themselves; legal protections and court rulings exist on paper but are ignored in practice; Copts are beaten when they resist; their churches are dismantled while inspections are pending; their cemeteries are demolished even when officially licensed.
Meanwhile, mosques are untouchable. Muslim sites enjoy absolute protection—while Christian ones are expendable. This double standard reveals the truth: Egypt’s Christians live as second-class citizens in their own ancestral land, their heritage targeted not only by Islamist opportunists but by the very state that claims to guarantee equality.
To be clear, the destruction of the Rashid church and the demolition of the cemetery wall are not “isolated incidents.” They are part of a systematic effort across Egypt. From Alexandria to Minya, from Upper Egypt to Cairo itself, Coptic churches are frequently closed, denied permits, or seized under pretexts ranging from “safety hazards” to “lack of authorization.” Monasteries face encroachments. Cemeteries are neglected or destroyed. Even when international attention forces the government to rebuild, the process is dragged out while the community suffers.
What is happening in Rashid is what has happened—and continues to happen—across the country: the slow confiscation and Islamization of Christian spaces. The methods may differ—judicial trickery, mob violence, bureaucratic obstruction, or outright demolition—but the goal is the same: to erase Christian presence from Egypt’s landscape and memory.