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April 15, 2006

Egypt: Muslims And Christians Fight At Funeral

Yesterday, Muslims attacked three churches in separate synchronised attacks. In one church, a 67-year old man, Noshi Atta Girgis, was killed in a knife attack outside the Al-Quidissin church east of Alexandria.

Today, according to Reuters AlertNet and News 24, Mr Girgis, a Coptic Christian, was buried. According to News 24, which gave Mr Girgis' age as 78, as his funeral procession made its way from the Al-Quidissim church to the cemetery, fighting broke out between Christians and Muslims.

Several hundred Coptic Christians had turned up for the funeral, and the procession became a demonstration calling for Coptic unity. Witnesses claimed that Muslims and Copts set about each other with sticks, and stones were hurled from windows.

Thirty people were injured in the clashes, according to medical and police sources. Two cars were set alight, shop windows were smashed, and 15 people were arrested. Police put an end to the fighting by firing tear gas into the melee.

During the procession, Christians chanted "We want justice. Christ is the winner". Banners carried by marchers bore slogans, such as "Why can't we live in peace?" and ."No to oppression."

President Hosni Mubarak made similar appeasing noises to the ones he made following the last serious clashes caused by Muslims attacking Christians, last October. His words of reassurance then did little to stem the ongoing persecutions of Christians by the Sunni Muslim majority.

He said "Egypt is considered a model of national unity and religious tolerance. The occurrence of an individual incident or problem cannot disturb the serenity and strength of this relationship between the two elements of the nation."

Despite these platitudes, Muslims, often encouraged by the Mosques, have continued to regard Coptic Christians as easy targets. In January this year, a community centre at el-Udaysaat, near Luxor, which was used as a Christian place of prayer, was subjected to an arson attack in which a Coptic Christian died.

In late 2002, Hosni Mubarak made one positive concession to the Coptic communities, when he declared that January 7, which the Copts regard as the date of their Christmas, should be made into a national holiday.

There is institutional discrimination against Copts, exemplified by the legal restriction upon building Christian places of worship, which Mubarak has made no attempts to repeal in more than 20 years of leadership. This legislation, the The Hamayouni Decree, which dates from 1856 and the rulership of the Ottomans, places severe restrictions only upon the construction or repair of non-Muslim houses of worship. Mosques are unaffected. In December 2005, Mubarak announced a revision to the law.

As a result of this revision, Churches no longer need to have presidential approval to repair or build churches. But the law has not been repealed. Now Christians must apply to local governors, who are in turn obliged to respond within 30 days to such requests. But still, Muslim places of worship have no such restrictions.

As reported in 1994 by the Jubilee Campaign the Hamayouni Decree was deliberately employed to prevent churches being either built or even repaired. Along with beatings, other instances of persecutions by Muuslim extremists included the pratice of Itawa or protection money, which was demanded of Christians by Muslims in various parts of Egypt.

Recently, there have still been cases of forced conversions of Christians to Islam, in which a woman is usually kidnapped and made to profess Islam as her faith.

A famous case of forced conversion took place in 2004, according to Egypt Today, which wrote after the October disputes in Alexandria:

Last year, tensions erupted between the church and the state over the disappearance of a priest's wife and her alleged conversion to Islam. Hundreds of Copts rallied inside the Coptic Cathedral to protest the so-called "forced conversion" of Copt females. The Pope (Shenouda III, titular head of the Coptic church) went into seclusion in a desert monastery to object the detention of a number of Copt demonstrators and the state's approach to the crisis. Tensions did not ease until the police handed over the woman, Wafaa Costantine, who reportedly affirmed her adherence to Christianity, to the church and released Copt detainees.

The animosity between Egyptian Copts and Muslims even continues when they flee abroad, as suggested in the case of a murder of a Coptic family in the US in February last year.

The worst case of Muslim attacks upon Copts in recent years took place in 1999, in the southern village of Kosheh, in which 22 people were killed in sectarian strife.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 15, 2006 5:56 PM

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