Conflicts between Christians
In writing Armanoussa l'Masriyah, Juiri Zaydan[1] gives an historical account in relation to the details of the Islamic conquest of Egypt by Amr Ibn Al-As in the year 640. What he wants to show is the support of the Copts[2] for this conquest, due to to their opposition to other Christians who, since the time of Byzantium, had sought to impose on them an orthodoxy which they resisted. The writer describes the violence and tyranny of the Byzantine troops who occupied Egypt before the Arab Muslims. However, he neglects to mention that violence was equally committed by the Copts against the Byzantine Christians and that their churches were given to the Copts after 640.
Further north, in what was to become Lebanon and Syria, the Melkites[3] , the Jacobites[4] and the Nestorians[5] engaged in sometimes bloody conflicts during the course of the centuries. The fact that they subscribed to the same gospels, preached the same religion of love and peace and aimed to govern society according to that same scripture, did not prevent this conflict. Beyond rivalry for power and the corruption of some leaders, this is explained by differences in interpretation and the desire to impose theirs exclusively. In such a way wars, massacres and exile divided Catholics and Reformers for a long time in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.