By Yolande Knell
Over the past 1,600 years Coptic monks have wandered in the desert close to the Abu Fana monastery in Upper Egypt, in silent prayer and contemplation. Recently, however, the quiet has been lost to the noise of construction work.
There is little time for spiritualism as monks in black robes sit in bulldozers hurriedly building a protective wall four miles long around their grounds near Mallawi in Minya governorate.
“See how fast this is going up. It is the work of God,” remarks Father Mina as he inspects the brickwork. “We need the wall. Without it criminals will break in and kill us.”
In May, a land dispute with local Bedouin Arabs, who are Muslim, led to an act of unprecedented aggression against the monks, stirring up sectarian tensions. About 60 armed men attacked buildings and kidnapped three monks. They were tortured and told to convert to Islam and spit on their crosses.
Altogether, seven monks were injured in the clashes and a Muslim man was shot dead. A Christian worker was accused of the killing. It took police three hours to arrive.
Since the 1970s, when Islamic extremism began to rise, there have been periodic outbursts of violence between Muslims and members of the Coptic Christian minority who account for about 10 per cent of the population.
According to the Egyptian Initiative on Personal Rights, an independent monitoring group, the number of clashes between the two communities have increased this year.
“Tensions have reached an alarming level,” says Hossam Bahgat, the group’s director. “It takes just a minor squabble between Muslim and Christian neighbours, or rumours of one, to spark sectarian violence through a whole village.”
The authorities’ handling of such cases has been widely criticised. Police are often accused of delaying their response to reports of fighting and then indiscriminately arresting equal numbers of individuals from each faith.
Typically, Christians and Muslims are pressured into attending informal reconciliation meetings mediated by local officials to avoid facing criminal charges. “They don’t care at all who is the attacker and who is the victim,” says Youssef Sidhom, editor of Watani, a Coptic newspaper. “They only deal with it in terms of the political balance. This is a denial of the civil law. Every time, the reality of the situation is changed.”
The seriousness of the events at Abu Fana caused the Coptic Pope, Shenouda III, to take a firmer line than in the past, refusing to allow talks with the assailants and insisting they must be prosecuted. Negotiations took place, but only to resolve a row over access to Bedouin farmland.
However, some Christians complain that the settlement reached was undermined by new orders from officials in Minya restricting the height of the monastery wall and allowing just two months for its completion. Some court rulings and decisions by government agencies also prompt Christians to argue that they are treated as second-class citizens.
In September, there was outrage when a Coptic woman lost custody of her 14-year-old twin sons to their father, who had left his family in 2000 after converting from Christianity to Islam.
The court’s decision was based on its interpretation of sharia (Islamic law) and overlooked a legal requirement which automatically places children under the age of 15 in their mother’s custody.
As grievances have built up over the past 30 years, many Copts have withdrawn from public life and turned towards their church.
Churches, like mosques, now provide more than spiritual guidance; they organise educational courses, healthcare and cultural, sporting and social gatherings.
Increased separation of Christians and Muslims has fostered mistrust and reinforced a tendency on both sides to define themselves by their religious identity.
“We now have a pool of Muslims who are more Muslim than Egyptian and this has created a reaction among Egyptian Christians who are more Christian than Egyptian,” says Mr Sidhom.
“This is serious because the larger umbrella that we all live under is Egypt. Egypt is our nation. As Copts, how can we demand full citizenship rights if we just live under the umbrella of our church?”
Civil and religious groups run many initiatives to promote inter-faith dialogue and understanding.
Yet one of this year’s greatest breakthroughs came from a comedy starring Egypt’s best-known actors, Adel Imam and Omar Sharif.
Hassan and Morqos tells the story of two moderates: one a Coptic priest and the other a Muslim preacher.
Both are forced to go into hiding and change their religious identities when they are threatened by fundamentalists in their own communities.
Brought together by their parallel predicaments, the two men become friends and business partners, and their children fall in love, unhindered by religious restraints.
Adel Imam says his message is one of national unity.
“I have declared war using art against the extremists, against those who foment differences between us,” he says. “I hope Christians and Muslims will leave the cinema and embrace and kiss one another.”