Five Egyptian Christian children have been arrested by the police recently for making a prayer video, which angry Muslim mobs deemed blasphemous because they were seen making fun of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) with their Coptic teacher, who was earlier arrested.
Their teacher was detained for four days but the children weren't, so Muslim mobs stormed their houses Minya village of Nasreya and threw rocks in order to prompt their parents to hand over the children to authorities, which they later did.
Mina Thabet, a Coptic activist and researcher at the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms told Fox News that apart from the five children, there are a lot more Christians who have been victimised by Muslims assaults.
"We have five Coptic children charged with blasphemy and insulting Islam," he said. "We still have other open cases where Christians are charged with inciting violence as if they were the perpetrators, but where they were the victims."
Blasphemy is a crime in Egypt, but Thabet lamented that authorities have often taken advantage of the law to persecute minorities, most of them Christians.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has tried his best to call for national unity and protect the country's Coptic Christians, but his actions were all in vain.
There are some who fear that the five Christian children might suffer from an unjust and lengthy prison sentence. Todd Daniels, the Middle East regional manager for International Christian Concern told The Christian Post that their arrest is "yet another case of how Egypt continues to bend to the weight of extremist ideology."
"Despite progress in terms of rhetoric from President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt has pervasive persecution that continues to occur not only on the societal level but also in the judiciary," he said.
