For the Sake of Science

It isn’t just Muslims who get upset.

Thousands of enraged Christians clashed with the police in Egypt on Thursday in response to a drive-by shooting the night before that left six Christians dead and nine wounded.

The attackers, who are still at large, had opened fire on several groups of Christians gathered to celebrate Coptic Christmas in the southern Egyptian city of Nag Hammadi, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

The killings seemed to be an act of revenge tied to accusations in November that a Christian man raped a Muslim girl, the statement said.

Take religion out of the equation and there is no excuse for this violence. Not all violence disappears (despite the strawmen often drawn from the previous sentence), but there lacks a motivation for these type of attacks. Religion is largely what divides these Egyptians.

Clashes between Muslims and Christians have grown increasingly common in recent years, especially in Upper Egypt, where there is a large Christian population and a strong culture of vendetta killings. Those killings typically spring from unexceptional disputes that spiral into full-blown conflicts that have to be settled by security forces. There are no official statistics on the size of the Christian minority in Egypt, but the generally accepted figure is 10 percent of the population.

Again, that 10% share a number of commonalities with the 90%. The key dividing factor, as always, is religion. And if there was any doubt,

During a funeral procession on Thursday for the victims of the shooting, thousands of angry Christian protesters chanted, “With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice ourselves for the cross,” and pelted police cars with stones. The police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds.

…

“There is a prevailing atmosphere of sectarianism and religious incitement which has led to this behavior,” said Gamal Asaad, a Coptic intellectual and former member of Parliament. “People deal with each other now as Muslims or Christians, not as Egyptians.”

Filed under: Religions | Tagged: Coptic Christians, Egyptian Christians, Muslims, religion, Riots | 22 Comments »