Egyptian Christians Clash With Police

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — 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.
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.
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.
According to the Interior Ministry, witnesses have identified the lead gunman as Mohamed Ahmed Hussein, a Muslim man with a criminal record.
Egyptians have been united historically by a strong sense of national identity, allowing the Muslim majority and Coptic Christian minority to live in peace, for the most part. But the recent rise in religious fervor, especially among Muslims, has strained relations and increased reported episodes of religiously inspired violence.
The general sentiment among Egypt’s Copts is that they are being squeezed into a tighter space, and there are increasing complaints of discrimination. They say, for example, that permits to build churches have become very difficult to obtain.
“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.