Sectarian tension high in Egyptian Armant Elhit village
Sectarian tension remained high for a sixth straight day in a southern Egyptian village where a livestock stall owned by a Christian was torched Wednesday.
A security official told United Press International on condition of anonymity the police continued to encircle the village of Armant el-Heit in Qena province, some 340 miles south of Cairo, as Muslim-Christian tensions persist.
He said the authorities decided to renew the detention of seven people for another 15 days on charges of torching Coptic Christian shops Friday following rumors of a love affair between a Christian man and a Muslim woman.
Reports from remote villages say Christians and Muslims are sometimes forced to convert because of inter-religious love affairs. While Islam allows men to marry non-Muslim women, it prohibits Muslim women from marrying non-Muslim men and must thus convert to Islam.
While Christian-Muslim relations are relatively good, occasional sectarian skirmishes erupt in Egypt, where Christians constitute 8 million of the 76 million population of mostly Muslims.
In December 2004, violent clashes broke out between Christian protesters and police when angry Copts accused a Muslim man of forcing a Christian priest's wife of embracing Islam to marry her.