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While driving through Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto, I saw the most formidable church I have ever seen. Not even the Cathedral of St. James, in Toronto, comes close, at least in size and prominence.
The Canadian Coptic Centre is a colossal building with some eight or nine cupolas. Its church was consecrated as the Church of Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius in 1989.
A few miles down the same road is the Al-Farooq Mosque, an unassuming building for now, but with plans for a $6 million expansion.
Copts in Egypt have suffered constant persecution from their Muslim conquerors, and in fact, the antagonism and violence against them in Egypt seems to be growing. Many Copts here in Canada know of this experience first hand. What a shock it must have been for them that just down the road is a mosque, relatively small and innocuous for now, but with the promise of huge expansions.
Al-Farooq Mosque was established in 1987, as the first mosque in Mississauga. The Canadian Coptic Centre's Church of Virgin Mary and St. Athanasius was consecrated just two years after, although its property had been bought in 1982, when construction continued for another eight years.
Now, this is speculation on my part, but it looks like the mosque came later (established 1987, says its web site, whereas the Coptic church started construction in 1982 which was completed in 1989). So, surely the Copts, in retaliation to what looks like the antagonistic presence of their age-old enemies, continued to expand this cupola-rich church to ward off, and to warn against, their new Muslim neighbors?
What more can they do? If they talk too negatively, they will be harming the “freedom of religion” mandate of Canadian society. And Muslims will never let them get away with it. To me, the best they could come up was to build their imposing building, both to protect themselves (spiritually), and to warn their Canadian host country of the dangers they had to flee, literally in life and death situations. And that the same could happen to them again, and in fact to anyone in the path of the single-minded Muslims.
I hope people are listening.
