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Egyptian Christian Students On Trial For ‘Insulting Islam’

Alexa Santry Contributor
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Three Egyptian Coptic Christian students will appear in a Cairo court Thursday for “insulting Islam” in a video they created, The Associated Press reports.

A teacher filmed the high school students in a video that parodied Muslim prayers. One student knelt on the ground reading from the Quran while the other students stood behind him laughing and motioning their hands to mimic beheading.

The video surfaced in April, just two months after ISIS militants posted a video of the beheading of 21 Coptic Christian Egyptians in Libya.

The students’ 30-second video spurred widespread anger amongst Muslims. A large number of people in the village demanded that both the students and teacher should be forced to leave the town.

The teacher has since been sentenced to 3 years in prison after a separate accusation of insulting Islam.

Maher Naguib, the students’ lawyer, said that since the emergence of the video, “The students couldn’t attend school and remained indoors to avoid insults, beating and harassment. This is all because of random and spontaneous action by some youngsters inside a bedroom and for only few seconds.”

Approximately 10 percent of people in Egypt are Christian, while the vast majority of citizens are Muslim.