MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

By Betsy Hiel – “QENA, Egypt — When Ayman Anwar Mitri heard his apartment building had burned, the high school administrator rushed to see the damage.

He found a crowd of bearded men waiting.

They ‘beat me all over’ with charred furniture, recalls Mitri, 47, one of the Coptic Christians who make up 10 to 15 percent of Egypt’s 83 million people.

He says a rival falsely accused him of renting the apartment to two Muslim prostitutes and of having sex with them — a social and sectarian taboo that inflamed local Islamists.

‘They were chanting, ‘There is no god but Allah.’ They wanted me to convert to Islam,’ Mitri says. ‘… I was on my knees with my hands over my head. It felt like icicles falling on my body, and I prayed.’

An attacker slashed his back, an arm and a cheek with a box cutter before slicing off his right ear.

Afterward, a caller told police: ‘We took our Islamic justice; you can now take your civilian justice.’

White gauze is wrapped around Mitri’s head, covering the wound and part of his receding hair. A small cross is tattooed on his right wrist.

He says he learned his attackers — who were never charged — were Salafis.

Four days later, he says, authorities forced him into a ‘reconciliation’ meeting with the men and made him change his police statement to deny knowing the culprits.

Across Egypt, Salafis are accused of increased violence, mostly against Christians, since the Mubarak regime fell in February.

‘A month ago, you wouldn’t even dare to walk around. We were expecting them to throw acid (on us),’ says Hala Helmy Botros, 47, a Coptic activist and blogger here. ‘They were on fire, cutting off ears and making lots of threats.'” Read more.