Sectarian Tension Flares in Egypt

A-Tayiba, Egypt (TML) - Clashes between Muslims and Christians in Egypt renewed on Sunday after a Copt was killed a day earlier. The fighting began on Friday in A-Tayiba, located 220 kilometers (130 miles) south of the capital Cairo. It was reportedly sparked by an insulting comment by a Christian to a Muslim woman, compounding an already tense relationship between the two communities, which are quarreling over land ownership. Three Christians and a Muslim were wounded in the clashes.

Storefronts were damaged and a shop and a car were burned before security forces broke up the fight and arrested 48 people. Egypt's Christians, who are mostly Copts, make up around 10 percent of the country's 80 million inhabitants, constituting the largest Christian community in the Middle East

Rights groups say the Copts in Egypt face discrimination and harassment from the Egyptian authorities. They complain of having fewer rights than Muslims, and say they are refused positions of authority in some sectors of the government, the military and academia. The relationship between the two communities is usually calm but there have been a few violent flashpoints in recent years.

A Muslim was killed and four Christians were wounded in May in a land-ownership feud in the same district, Minya. Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said there was a steady increase in the level of sectarian tension in Egypt, which on several occasions has developed into incidents of collective violence against entire communities of Christians.

"We had a period of relative calm since July throughout the summer and the month of Ramadan, but the recent incident, which led to at least one killing, signals a return of this sectarian tension," Bahgat told The Media Line.

"We're dealing with a 35-year failure by the state to provide effective remedies for sectarian violence that started in the early 1970s, or to address the root causes that led to this relatively recent phenomenon," he said. "As a result, these incidents keep recurring because every time something like this happens, the perpetrators are not brought to justice and the victims are not compensated."

Bahgat added that the victims of violence often find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Both the state and the Coptic Church will put pressure on the victim to accept reconciliation and close the case. "The last thing on anyone's mind is the rights of the victim, and that is a recipe for the recurrence of these assaults because it ensures impunity and leaves the victim with a sense of injustice," he said.

Meanwhile, security forces are hunting for an Egyptian blogger who is wanted for authoring a piece that supposedly offended Islam. The Coptic writer, Hani Nazir 'Aziz, has been accused of accepting money from outside sources in order to incite sectarian strife within Egypt, according to the London-based A-Sharq Al-Awsat. The Coptic Church says offending any religion is wrong, and that the writer of a story, which they say insulted Christianity, should be brought to justice.

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