“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks…” (Qur’an 47:4)
“An attempt to slaughter a Coptic in the village of Sharona in Minya,” translated from “محاولة ذبح قبطية في قرية شارونة بالمنيا,” Coptic Solidarity, June 15, 2022:
A Coptic woman called Mona Wafdi Marzouk, 35, in the village of Sharona, Maghagha district, Minya governorate, was subjected to an attempt to slaughter her using a “sickle,” a sharp tool used to cut grass, at the hands of a person called Qassem Faleh Muhammad. The girl was transferred to Sheikh Fadl Hospital and received treatment with seven stitches in her neck.
One of the village’s Copts said that the woman was on her way in the morning to the family’s farmland, to do her work to help her family and her sick father. Qasim Muhammad was walking behind her, and without introduction, he tried to strangle her with a scarf, then he took from her hand a “sickle” tool, which she had to use in agriculture, and tried to slaughter her with it, but by divine providence the sickle was not very sharp, so the assault did not cut the arteries of the neck.
Makari, the cousin of the victim, said that Qassem ran away quickly and left her lying on the ground, and no one was present until her brother came, so he and others took her to the hospital, where she was treated with seven stitches to close the wound in her neck. Mona now lives in a state of terror and panic after she was exposed to a harsh experience from this extremist person.
Makari indicated that the security forces arrested the perpetrator’s brother, and are making every effort to arrest the culprit after his escape, noting that his family is trying to promote the claim that he is a mental patient, and produced an unaccredited certificate to that effect. This is unacceptable, because the young man is one of their neighbors, and they know that he is healthy. But he sometimes takes some narcotics – and if he is mentally ill, why does he target Copts only? Is it conceivable that in every incident against the Copts, the claim that it is because he is a “psychopath” is propagated, as if the psychopath only sees the Copts in order to try to kill them?
He added that he trusted the security services and the investigation authorities to enforce the law on this offender, who had never had any contact with him, and that his crime was surprising and provoked terror in the village.
One of the village’s Copts said that the accused, Qassem, was a young man known for extremism and had several incidents of forced theft. The day before this incident, he attacked the house of a Christian man named Raja Najis in the same village and stole money and a mobile phone from him, rejecting the idea that he was mentally ill.
