LETTER FROM CAIRO:Sectarian conflict in Egypt is growing in frequency as Copts and Muslims radicalise, writes ROB CRILLY
FROM A distance the domed roofs and towers look like any other mosque in Cairo, a city where the architecture of Islam dominates the low skyline. But up close the minaret turns out to be a bell tower; each roof has a whitewashed crucifix at its highest point.
The armed police at the gate – dressed head to toe in menacing black – are the final giveaway.
This is St Mark’s Cathedral, spiritual home of Cairo’s embattled Coptic Christians. A rising tide of sectarian hatred, which culminated on Christmas Eve when seven people were gunned down as they left a service in southern Egypt, has left the Middle East’s oldest Christian population living in fear.
“People are scared. They will not tell you anything,” says one young man, stopping for a moment amid the throng of people leaving morning Mass.
He glances around, taking in the grand steps of the cathedral, the low apartment blocks, home to a dozen or so priests, and a shop selling prints of the Virgin Mary. Leaning closer, he lowers his voice. “There are police all around, even agents inside,” he continues. “If we say something, then maybe no one will see us again. They will make it look like an accident.”
Copts account for about 10 per cent of Egypt’s mainly Muslim population. Theirs is a long history, and they remain the largest Christian population in the Middle East.
Their roots lie in the first century, with the apostle Mark the Evangelist. He is said to have arrived in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria a decade or so after the ascension of Christ. There he converted Africa’s first Christians.
The arrival of Islam in the seventh century brought the start of centuries of persecution of Copts, interspersed with periods of happy co-existence, depending on the fanaticism or otherwise of Egypt’s rulers.
Today, the Copts – who number about eight million – are living through another period of fear. Sectarian conflict is growing in frequency as both sides radicalise.
Newspapers keep a running tally of the latest casualties. Homes have been burned and dozens from either side arrested.
At the same time, rumour and paranoia turn misunderstandings and isolated disputes into religious clashes.
Christians frequently complain that young girls are being kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam. Yet no one ever seems to know a family affected.
Last year, Copts rioted when the government ordered the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of pigs in Cairo.
The authorities insisted it was a measure to protect against swine flu. This was not how the Copts saw it. For them it was an attack on religious freedoms, an attempt to put the Zebaleen garbage collectors – Christians who use pigs to devour organic waste – out of business by a Muslim government that views the animals as unclean.
But all this pales beside the Christmas Eve massacre on January 6th. Six Copts were shot dead as they left midnight Mass in Naga Hamady, about 40 miles from Luxor. A Muslim also died.
Police immediately connected the killings with the alleged rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian.
But police arrived at that conclusion too quickly for Yousuf Sidhom, editor of Watani, a Sunday newspaper for the Coptic community. He said the motive for the attack lay in a dispute between the bishop of Naga Hamady and a local politician.
“Initially, like everyone else though, I did think it was a sectarian attack,” he said in his downtown Cairo office. “Sadly these attacks are becoming more frequent and are a sign of the tension. But they can also be used as a smokescreen, almost as if to use the rape to justify a punishment by a Muslim mob.”
Like recent clashes in Nigeria, the tensions are very real. But often they are rooted in social or political differences. Membership of a sectarian grouping leads to expression of these tensions. The spark may be real or it may be accidental.
With a festering culture of suspicion, both sides are ready to fight.
Nowhere is the meeting of Christian and Arab worlds more apparent than in the courtyard of St Marks.
Young Coptic girls loll on the steps, their arms covered and their ankles hidden beneath long skirts – just like their Muslim counterparts.
Men sit in the shade, sipping glasses of sweet, black tea.
Were it not for the fact that the girls’ heads are bare and that some of the men are in long black robes, crucifixes hanging from their necks, it could be any Arab town.
For now, all they can do is hide behind the walls of their cathedral.
One priest, shuffling slowly through the bright morning sun, summed it up: “What can we do? We pray.”
Rob Crilly's book Saving Darfur is published by Reportage Press on February 9th