Female Copts spark Muslim student furor
By JOSEPH MAYTON (Middle East Times )
Published: May 30, 2008
Egyptian Copts at a university social. (Sipa Press via Newscom)
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CAIRO -- Sectarian resentment was reignited this week when a Coptic student scrawled an "X" across Koranic verses in a female dormitory at an Egyptian university, just as tensions were beginning to subside after another Coptic student in the same dorm last month drew caricatures of Prophet Muhammad.
The images of Muhammad drawn by a girl at the University of Minya in central Egypt sparked outrage from Muslim students who demanded an explanation from their Coptic colleagues. The response was apparently less than satisfactory as police had to intercede to end the confrontation that had turned violent.
That incident which occurred in April is just one of many of a spate of sectarianism incidents to plague Egypt in recent years.
And last Monday a female student at the same university desecrated Koranic writing by drawing a large "X" through its Arabic verses.
This act led to a spontaneous demonstration at the university campus involving hundreds of students.
Although Monday's events are disputed, it goes something like this:
A disagreement broke out between two roommates – one a Copt, the other a Muslim – at the university's dorm, which led to the Copt, Marian Ishaq, scrawling the "X" in the Koran.
A heated fight broke out. Word rapidly spread that the Koran had been defaced until hundreds of Muslim students were gathered on campus demanding that Ishaq be expelled.
"We are furious, because the university has not investigated what has happened," Mona Mahmoud, a student at the university who participated in the protest, later told the Middle East Times.
Police, fearing the angry students would track down Ishaq, stepped in to quell the tension.
Demonstrators said the police went to extremes and attacked them violently. They "hit us with belts and water hoses," Mahmoud said.
She added that a student in niqab – the head-to-toe veil – had her veil pulled at by police.
The Coptic church has since attempted to calm tensions, saying that Ishaq and the student who drew the Muhammad image, Diana Samual, were psychologically unstable and should not be held responsible for their actions.
"What the students did are individual acts and cannot affect the relationship between all citizens of this country," Father Aghathon told the Middle East Times.
Samual herself said in a statement that she did not "mean to insult" the Muslim students and "was sorry" that tensions had turned to violence.
The university president, Maher Gaber, sought forgiveness for the girls.
"This was an individual incident and I asked the [Coptic] girls to be excused and protected, because they [aged between 18 and 22] are too young to know what they have done."
However, one Coptic priest has challenged eyewitness and police accounts of what occurred, saying that the Coptic students are not to blame for the violence.
"Diana was studying next to her room and during that time she wrote some verses of the Bible on the wall and went back into her room. When Muslim students saw it they were the ones who drew an "X" – on the Bible verses," Father Zachary Yussif Khalil said in comments in Sawt al-Umma newspaper.
Eyewitnesses in Minya have argued that the priest is wrong and is attempting to change the facts in order to deflect attention from the situation.
"He is wrong, this is not what happened. Ask the police and the hundreds of people who demonstrated," one university student said on condition of anonymity.
The university has since relocated all its Coptic students to a nearby church in Maghagha for their safety.
But the police said the situation has calmed over the last couple of days.
"The security forces have controlled the situation in the campus by securing the safe passage of Christian students to alternative student housing," Minya's chief of police Muhammad Nour al-Din told reporters.
Sectarian violence in Egypt has not resulted in any deaths since 2006 when a Coptic film about the conversion methods used by Muslims sparked days of violence in Alexandria on Egypt's Mediterranean coast leaving an old man dead. Hundreds were arrested.
Central Egypt is home to a large number of Christians and has seen its share of sectarianism.
Earlier this year, a junior high school teacher, Nermin Neshat, was relieved of her duties after comments she made in class prompted students' parents to call for her removal.
According to Sawt al-Umma, Neshat told her students, "the hijab will give you diseases" and drew a picture of the Prophet Muhammad as a bird on the classroom's blackboard. She was then investigated and accused of proselytizing and forcing students to convert.
To make matters even worse for the Coptic church, the proposal of new amendments to a 1938 Melli council on personal status rights in the church, have been received with controversy and dissent.
Local rights group the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) has called on the government to protect the rights of all Egyptians to marry and found a family of their own. The Cairo-based organization said the proposals would "infringe" upon personal rights.
EIPR believes the new amendments to the Coptic creed will "impose further restrictions on Copts' right to divorce and remarry."
The organization argued that state officials must create "alternatives" that guarantee citizens their right to "make decisions concerning their private and family life" no matter their religious affiliation.
"State officials have no right to wash their hands of the problems, needs and suffering of thousands of Coptic citizens who are demanding no more than their basic right to marry and create a family," said Hossam Bahgat, EIPR's director.
But the likelihood of the government stepping in is not likely with tensions on the rise following the incident in Minya. With unrest between the two religious communities in the nation, the government does not want to be seen as taking sides.
"The church is entitled to its interpretation of religious texts, but the state has the right – indeed, the duty – to provide an alternative to those Copts who disagree with this interpretation," Bahgat said.
Female Copts spark Muslim student furor - Middle East Times
Christian - Muslim tensions rising in Egypt
