Rumours of love affair spark sectarian clashes in Egypt

By Pakinam Amer Sep 24, 2007, 16:47 GMT

Cairo - Accounts of a love story between a young Christian man and a Muslim woman turned sour, prompting rumours, sectarian clashes and arrests in the once cosmopolitan port city of Alexandria.

On Monday, 25 Christians and Muslims answered to charges including disturbing the peace, damaging public property and using sharp objects as weapons.

The angry young men had pelted each other with stones and shards of broken glass, damaging nearby cars and private property in the process.

The brawl ensued late Friday in a poor part of the Sidi Bishr district during prayers that are held in observance of the holy month of Ramadan during which Muslims fast and make supplications to God.

'Throngs of people were attacking each other. A man wearing a face veil was throwing stones at Christians, and women were standing in balconies cheering on the Muslims, shouting 'God is Great',' said a Christian witness. 'They shouted 'Christians are sons of dogs'.'

According to the witness, the Christian groups sought refuge from the stones in entrances to buildings. Six Muslims were injured in the clashes as well as three Christians.

The truth is lost about the real cause of the clashes as both groups hurled accusations at each other and circulated different accounts.

As Muslims alleged that a love story had illicitly developed between 21-year-old Sami Samir and a young woman, Christians rejected the accounts saying that Muslims had attacked them for other reasons.

'The Muslim guys are only jealous because our family has a car and two cafeterias while being Christian,' said a relative of Samir.

The incidence of religiously-motivated violence is escalating in Alexandria, a city that used to be home to Jews, Muslims, and Christians and sheltered many expatriate foreign communities until the late 1950s.

Observers believe that Alexandria is gradually embracing religious radicalism and a form of bigotry alien to its reputation as a tolerant metropolis.

Despite being a summer resort, popular for its long stretches of beaches and sea activities, the attire of women in particular is becoming more and more conservative even on hot summer days.

Men wearing white ankle-length robes and women dressed in black from head to toe except for two slits for the eyes are a common sight.

Mosques and churches have started replacing other societal institutions, offering not only moral direction but also social, legal and political guidance to the faithful.

Whether they blame the so-called Salafi movements, followers of a strict form of Islam akin to Saudi Arabia's austere Wahabism or the popular Muslim Brotherhood, many observers have agreed that the 'overly-conservative religious groups' had a role in changing the face of Alexandria.

An Alexandrian recounted how a sheikh kept intimidating him after discovering that he was a Christian. 'He would ask me why I believed in the Bible. I used to run from him.'

Although a leader of the conservative Muslim Brotherhood himself, Ali Abdel-Fatah believes that religious clerics are using the economic and political turmoil that Egypt is enduring to mobilize Muslims and Christians against each other.

'In Alexandria, Muslims take shelter in mosques. Christians find asylum in their church. This leads to the blunt expression of religious views and so clashes, and confrontations ensue,' said Abdel-Fatah.

'When a love affair turns into a sectarian row, we know we have a big problem,' said Kamal Habib, member of the Supreme Church Council in Alexandria. 'A road accident could easily spur a religious rift these days.'

The recent street riots in Alexandria rekindled memories of violent incidents in 2006 when an extremist, claimed by security authorities to have been mentally deranged, attacked four churches in Alexandria. An elderly Coptic citizen was stabbed to death and five others were injured.

In 2005, on two consecutive Fridays, Muslims attacked St George's Church in Alexandria's Moharam Bek district, incensed by the leaking of a CD containing a play performed inside the church and considered disdainful of the Prophet Mohammed.

'The state cannot punish the church like it punishes religious institutions and so people take matters into their own hands and seek to regain their rights by use of force,' said Abdel-Fatah.