Kids’ Quarrel Turns to Religious Strife in Alexandria
“Cairo - Fifty years ago, no Egyptian would have believed that a fight between two children - a Muslim and a Christian - could ignite violence requiring the presence of truckloads of heavily-armed riot police to contain it.
But this happened last month in the once cosmopolitan Mediterranean city of Alexandria, albeit in one of the city’s poorer districts. There, a fist fight between two boys in front of a church turned into a full-blown sectarian clash between Muslims and Christians.
As religious zealots and angry mobs fanned the flames, the incident could have escalated had it not been for police which arrived quickly on the scene and contained the clash.
‘This situation is not unique to Alexandria. The tension is everywhere,’ says Father Yohanna Naseef, a Christian Coptic priest and an Alexandrine.”
“Claims of discrimination and even religious persecution against Copts are on the rise. Egyptian authorities claim radical Coptic communities resident abroad, especially in the United States, are fanning the flames, and asking foreign powers to intervene to empower Egypt’s Christian minority.”
From Monsters and Critics >
Category: Ignorance, Persecution, Violence