The BBC reports on “a further backlash” against Egypt’s Christians, who have found themselves increasingly subject to physical attacks – up to and including several murders – at the hands of Islamists who support former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi.

The Coptic Orthodox Church is one of Christianity’s oldest, founded in Alexandria around 50 AD. But since President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood were removed from power by the military in early July, Islamist extremists have targeted Egypt’s Christian minority, holding them partly responsible.

Scores of Christian homes and buildings have been defaced and burned. Last week a 10-year-old girl walking home from Bible class was shot in the chest and killed, making her, according to Amnesty International, the seventh Christian murdered in recent sectarian violence across Egypt.

At another church in Cairo, St Cyril’s, the walls outside are scrawled with graffiti. Inside, Father Antoine Rafik Greiche is praying for his Melkite Greek Catholic flock as he prepares for the evening service.

“The fall of President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood was a release for Christians,” he says, explaining that many Muslims and Christians felt that early promises made by the Morsi government were never fulfilled, leading to the mass popular demonstrations against his rule.

“But at the same time, since then it’s become more dangerous because some in the Muslim Brotherhood now want to prove themselves by using force and violence. We are doing our best to bear it, but young children and others are paying a high price.”

The systematic religiously driven violence is in tension with claims made last year by Brotherhood figures – and by some Western foreign policy analysts -to the effect that Egyptian Islamists were ideologically prepared to form a pluralistic government guaranteeing equal rights and protections to Egypt’s religious minorities.

[Photo: Lollylolly78 / Wiki Commons]