Categories: christianity
Date: 05 March 2009 11:28:23
Today's country is Egypt.
Languages: Arabic, French
The church in Egypt is one of the oldest in the world. Egypt's former capital of Alexandria was one of the great Christian centres until 640 AD. Numbers of Christians declind to just 100,000 by 1820 but now there are between 6 and 9 million - which is roughly 10% of the current population.
Although the Egytptian constitution guarantees freedom of religion it seems that Christians are discriminated against at schools, universities and work. Presidential permission is required to build churches and obtaining the permit can be a long process with no guarantee of success.
There have been cases of Christian women and girls being kidnapped and forced to convert to the majority religion and marry men outside their faith.