Moros
8th January 2005, 08:20 PM
http://www.chinapost.com.tw/i_latestdetail.asp?id=25545
Christmas came to Egypt under a cloud on Friday. The capital's grand Coptic Orthodox cathedral was not decorated with the usual festive lights and red carpets after a series of incidents that highlighted tension between the country's Christians and Muslim majority.
An alleged attempt to convert a Coptic Christian woman to Islam enraged young Copts last month and sparked days of protests and stone-throwing at the cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo. Two dozen police were injured and 34 Copts detained.
The prosecutor general released the Copts in a goodwill gesture ahead of Christmas, which Copts celebrate by the Julian Calendar on Jan. 7, and declared the woman had not gone through with the conversion. But the affair put a dampener on this year's festivities.
[..]
Police escorted Copts in the village Thursday as they went to the main church to celebrate Christmas.
"Copts are suffering from being denied their basic right to build places of worship by discriminatory legislation that makes it easier for Muslims to build mosques than Christians to build churches," said Youssef Sidhom, the editor of the Coptic newspaper Watani.
But Sidhom said the release of the 34 Copts detained in Cairo, and the news that the woman at the heart of the conversion saga would remain a Copt, meant that Copts had reason to celebrate this Christmas.
"I find no reason to give the appearance that we are mourning because the issues we were going through ended in a happy way," he said.
Christmas came to Egypt under a cloud on Friday. The capital's grand Coptic Orthodox cathedral was not decorated with the usual festive lights and red carpets after a series of incidents that highlighted tension between the country's Christians and Muslim majority.
An alleged attempt to convert a Coptic Christian woman to Islam enraged young Copts last month and sparked days of protests and stone-throwing at the cathedral in Abbasiya, Cairo. Two dozen police were injured and 34 Copts detained.
The prosecutor general released the Copts in a goodwill gesture ahead of Christmas, which Copts celebrate by the Julian Calendar on Jan. 7, and declared the woman had not gone through with the conversion. But the affair put a dampener on this year's festivities.
[..]
Police escorted Copts in the village Thursday as they went to the main church to celebrate Christmas.
"Copts are suffering from being denied their basic right to build places of worship by discriminatory legislation that makes it easier for Muslims to build mosques than Christians to build churches," said Youssef Sidhom, the editor of the Coptic newspaper Watani.
But Sidhom said the release of the 34 Copts detained in Cairo, and the news that the woman at the heart of the conversion saga would remain a Copt, meant that Copts had reason to celebrate this Christmas.
"I find no reason to give the appearance that we are mourning because the issues we were going through ended in a happy way," he said.