Egyptian media blamed the recent deadly violence between Islamists and Coptic Christians on “anti-revolutionaries” as the country’s grand mufti and chief interpreter of Islamic law warned the country could descend into a civil war.
“We are facing the anti-revolutionary groups who are convinced that any success of the revolution was an even greater threat to their interests and so are trying to fuel confessional conflict,” wrote Al Ahram newspaper, the most widely circulating Egyptian daily publication.
Justice Minister Abdel Aziz Al Gindi has vowed the government would strike with an “iron hand” those who threatened the country’s national security and warned that “Egypt has already become a nation in danger.”
On a day when casualty figures relating to clashes between Islamists and Coptic Christians over a controversial interfaith marriage kept rising, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf postponed a trip to the Gulf to hold an emergency meeting with his cabinet members.
Ali Gomaa, Egypt’s grand mufti and chief interpreter of Islamic law, was quoted in main independent daily Al Masri Al Yom as warning of the potential for civil war, “because of outlaws who want to defy the authority of the state,” according to Agence France-Press.
Meanwhile Interior Minister Mansur Al Issawi denied reports that weapons had been stored in Saint Mena church.
“Contrary to rumors that there were weapons inside the church, it was the owner of a cafe near the church who fired a gun,” he told the government daily Al Akhbar.
Security officials said police arrested a man they identified as the Muslim husband of the alleged convert, saying he had spread the word that his wife was being detained in a building next to the church.
Saturday’s incident, in which 12 people were killed and 232 were wounded, was the second deadly sectarian clash since the January 15 revolution, in which Muslims and Christians joined hands in Tahrir Square to demand the departure of then President Hosni Mubarak.
The clashes were triggered by a controversy over interfaith marriage concerning a 26-year-old woman, Camilia Shehata. She is the wife of a Coptic priest, Tadros Samaan, and disappeared in July 2010 after reportedly converting to Islam, possibly on account of an unhappy marriage. Divorce is forbidden by the Coptic Church, and some Christians have been known to convert to Islam in order to remarry.
Islamists, charging that she was forcibly confined in a church, protested several times. They gathered in front of the Saint Mena Church, which was where the clashes occurred.
But Ms. Shehata has appeared in a new picture published by Al Ahram newspaper with Naguib Gebrael, of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organization. Mr. Gebrael, a lawyer, told Al Ahram that he would represent her in a court where a complaint was filed against the church for allegedly holding her in forced confinement.
Ms. Shehata also appeared on a Christian broadcasting channel, with her husband and child.
“Let the protesters leave the church alone and turn their attention to Egypt’s future,” she said, adding that she had never converted to Islam.
In March, Muslims and Christians clashed in the town of Helwan near Cairo. Thirteen people were killed and a church was torched. The cause of the fighting was a rumored romantic relationship between a Muslim woman and a Christian man.
In swift response by the country’s military rulers, 190 people were arrested in Saturday’s violence and were sent to trial, as security was stepped up at houses of worship, amid indications that Egypt’s conservative Islamic movement, led by Salafis, was becoming increasingly restive about the country’s traditionally secular environment.
Inter-faith relationships among faiths are frowned upon in Egypt, where Christians make up about 10 percent of its 80 million people. Such relationships are sometimes the source of deadly clashes between the faiths, said The Associated Press.
If a Christian woman marries a Muslim, she is expelled from the church. A Muslim woman is not allowed to marry a Christian man, according to state law.
Because divorce is banned under the Coptic Church, unless under extenuating circumstances, many women resort to conversion as a way to get out of a marriage.
Christians complain about unfair treatment, including rules they say make it easier to build a mosque than a church.
In 2010, Egypt saw more than its usual share of sectarian strife, and a rights group has said such clashes have been on the rise. Muslims and Christians had been brought together during the protests that ousted Mr. Mubarak.
(Published by Mustapha Ajbaili on http://english.alarabiya.net/ May 9, 2011)
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