Dr. Mohammed Emara, the Islamic thinker, explained that the Islamic opening of Egypt gave its people life and saved them from the Byzantine despotism and persecution, and gave back the Copts their freedom and church, after they had been hunted fugitives. He stressed that without Islam there would be no Coptic Church, that all the churches in Egypt were built under Islam’s protection, and that Christianity in Egypt owes its survival to Islam and Muslims.