On April 7, another Coptic Christian clergyman was murdered in cold blood in Egypt. Local Christian media reported that, while walking on a crowded street of Alexandria with a group of church youth and his own family, Fr. Arsenius Wadid was repeatedly stabbed in the neck by an unidentified bearded man, killing him.
Fr. Arsenius, 56, headed the Church of the Virgin Mary in Muharram Bay and later the Saint Paul Church of Alexandria. He was ordained in 1996.
Details are still sparse and sometimes contradictory. Some sources say that Arsenius died instantly, in the middle of the street in front of his traumatized family and youth group, while others say he was rushed to a hospital but died soon thereafter of his wound.
The assailant was apprehended and handed over to police by people who witnessed the murder. According to one source, “preliminary investigations [are expected, as usual] to suggest the suspect is mentally unstable in preparation for him to escape justice.”
Egyptian media will no doubt attempt to portray Fr. Wadid’s murder as a strange and unexpected aberration. In reality, it is part of an ongoing continuum, whereby extremist Muslims in Egypt randomly target and attack, and often slaughter, Coptic Christian clergymen.
Related: A Profanity Laced Islamic Tirade
In one especially notable — because very similar — incident, a Muslim man slaughtered a Christian bishop in broad daylight on October 12, 2017. Security camera footage (formerly viewable here) captured a man with a large butcher knife chasing and stabbing Bishop Samaan Shehata in the head, neck, and torso, in the streets of Cairo.
Some who were personally acquainted with Bishop Shehata’s murderer, Ahmed Saeed Ibrahim (no relation), confirmed at the time that he had recently “begun praying in the street, shouting loudly and calling Christians infidels.” As for motive, one report said “he had decided to kill any Coptic priest, purchased a dagger, and lay in wait for one to pass by, in a street leading to the local church.” Ibrahim’s father was “more of a terrorist than his son,” added one woman; he “used to stop children on their way back from church and say, ‘You are multiplying, may Allah destroy your houses and burn you all. You have filled our neighborhood with filth.’”
Now, Egyptian authorities appear to be positioning themselves to label the murderer of Fr. Wadid as “crazy” — which is just what they did with Bishop Shehata’s killer, Ahmed Saeed Ibrahim, in 2017. That move prompted one Copt to ask, “Why is it that anyone who kills Christians is crazy? The person who killed two Christians in a train was crazy. We got used to this, and are expecting [that Ibrahim] will soon be released too. We don’t want to be unfair to anyone, but Ahmed Saeed is not crazy, he’s a religious extremist.”
One can cite more examples — in 2013, Coptic priest Mina Cheroubim was shot dead as he left his church in al-Arish, North Sinai — but the point of what happened to Fr. Arsenius, and why, should be clear by now.
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