Two young girls were among the four people killed outside a church Sunday in the Egyptian city of Giza, the latest in what the Associated Press described in early August as a “stepped-up hate campaign” against the country’s Coptic Christian community. Samuel Tadros, a Research Fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, subsequently described the wave of anti-Christian attacks as the worst organized violence that Egyptian Copts have faced in 700 years.

Islamist supporters of Egypt’s former president Mohammed Morsi had within weeks of his early July overthrow begun targeted Christians across the country, blaming them in part for the overthrow of Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood-linked government. Scores of Christian churches, homes, businesses, and community centers have been destroyed, and roughly 10 Christians have been murdered in the violence. The concentrated, continuing violence is likely to deepen skepticism that the Muslim Brotherhood was willing to form a pluralistic government guaranteeing equal rights and protections to Egypt’s religious minorities.

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