In Egypt on 15 December 1996, a new centre for mentally handicapped children being built outside Cairo by the Coptic Church was bulldozed. All that had been constructed for the ‘Cheerful Heart Centre’ was destroyed by 300 soldiers from the Egyptian Army chanting ‘Allahu Akbar’, ‘Allah is Great’. Then on 12 February, eight Christians were killed and five others wounded when gunmen, believed to be members of a militant Islamic group, broke into a church in Abu Qurqas, Upper Egypt, and sprayed the interior with machine gun fire.

Five more churches were destroyed and another pastor killed on 1 February in Indonesia. Over 200 churches have been burned or destroyed in Indonesia since 1992, the most recent incidents occurring in October and December last year.

And during the first week of February in Pakistan, thirteen churches were burned and the Christian village of Shanti Nagar was almost entirely destroyed by many thousands of armed Muslims, after mosques announced unproved allegations that Christians had desecrated the Qur’an. About 1,500 homes were razed to the ground, possessions, agricultural tools and livestock were stolen or burned, and pumps and water tanks were wrecked, leaving about 30,000 Christians homeless. The name Shanti Nagar means ‘Community of Peace’ - but there is no peace in Shanti Nagar.