A spokesman for Egypt's Catholic Church has praised the efforts of local Muslims to support Coptic Christians fleeing the terror of ISIS in Sinai, Egypt.
Father Rafic Greiche told the Catholic News Service that Christians need to see the difference between radical, militant Islam and ordinary peace-loving Muslims, Crux reports.
'Ordinary Muslims are kind and try to help however they can - they're often first on the scene, rescuing the injured and taking them to hospitals,' Greiche said last week, as hundreds continue to flee persecution from ISIS militants in El-Arish, North Sinai.
The priest said ISIS forces were now 'strongly entrenched' in North Sinai, having used tunnels from the Gaza strip, with the help of Hamas and Muslim Brotherhood. He warned civilians to stay away from the military zone surrounding the region, which he said was now 'under attack all the time'. He said he believe Egyptian authorities were doing all they could to rebuff ISIS forces.
'You can never do enough against jihadist and terrorist attacks, which come, like any criminal acts, at a time no one can foresee,' the priest said. 'But while no country can be fully secure, I think there's will on government side to act decisively against these constant attempts to destabilize Egypt.'
Egypt's Orthodox Coptic Christians represent about 10 per cent of the country's 82.5 million population. The Catholic Coptic Church is significantly smaller, numbering about 200,000 across Egypt.
In December, ISIS claimed responsibility for a Cairo Coptic church bombing that killed 27. In recent weeks the jihadist group released a video inciting violence against the 'infidel' Christian faith community. Since Jan 30, seven individuals have been murdered by militants in northern Egypt, with victims being burned alive, stabbed in their sleep and shot in the street.
Last week several Egyptian Muslim groups condemned the jihadist violence, and said ISIS' actions 'go against the teaching of Islam'. The country's leading Christian and Muslim clerics gathered for the 'Freedom and Citizenship' conference in Cairo, to promote peaceful coexistence between the religious groups.
Coptic Christian Pope Tawadros II said that militant Islam represented a 'mistaken understanding of religion' and called for 'fighting extremist thought with enlightened thought'.
