“They asked if we needed any additional patrols,” said Iskander, with Saints Peter & Paul Coptic Orthodox Church in south Bixby.
The courtesy visit from law enforcement came in the wake of multiple terrorist attacks on Coptic Christians in Egypt in recent weeks that left dozens of people dead and hundreds injured.
Copts, as they are called, comprise about 10 percent of the population of Egypt, a Muslim-majority country, and they consider themselves descendants of the ancient Egyptian people under the pharoahs before the Arab conquest of Egypt 1,400 years ago.
They have been a historically persecuted minority, but that persecution spiked after the so-called Arab Spring about six years ago and has surged in recent weeks. Suicide bombers killed 45 people at two Coptic churches on Palm Sunday, and last week gunmen mowed down 29 Copts on a bus heading to a monastery. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting. Survivors said the shooters told the Copts they could renounce their Christian faith and live. Most did not.
