Persecution of Christians Gopalganj District. Foreign missionaries are allowed in the country if they restrict their activities to social improvements and refrain from proselytizing. The Coptic Pope Shenouda III was internally exiled in 1981 by President Anwar Sadat, who then chose five Coptic bishops and asked them to choose a new pope. They refused, and in 1985 President Hosni Mubarak restored Pope Shenouda III, who had been accused of fomenting interconfessional strife. Particularly in Upper Egypt, the rise in extremist Islamist groups such as the Gama'at Islamiya during the 1980s was accompanied by increased attacks on Copts and on Coptic Orthodox churches; these
Anwar Sadat the Egyptian Army and involved in anti-British revolutionary activities, is presented quite sympathetically; his willingness to cooperate with German spies is clearly shown to derive from his wish to find allies against British domination of his country, rather than from support of Nazi ideology. Some of the scenes in the book, such as Sadat's arrest by the British, closely follow the information provided in Sadat's own autobiography. Sadat was a recurring character on "Saturday Night Live", played by Garrett Morris, who bore a resemblance to Sadat. Anwar Sadat Muhammad Anwar el-Sadat (; "", ]; 25 December 1918 – 6 October