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
Islamic extremism in the 20th-century Egypt at the Ministry of Awqaf, a government ministry in charge of religious endowments. Kishk’s sermons became so popular that extra buildings had to be constructed for his Friday sermons, and they began recording his sermons to be publicly aired on the radio in 1972. After about a decade of popularity amongst the Egyptian people, he was arrested again in 1981, and many of his tapes were banned. Kishk was released in 1982, after the assassination of Sadat, and the new regime has given him access to the media yet again. On 6 October 1981, President Anwar Sadat was assassinated during