Egypt's Coptic Christians Are Choosing Isolation

Brother Sawiris, left, Brother Viner and fellow monks were attacked in May by Arab Bedouins. The monks are reclaiming a 1,700-year-old monastery from the desert. (Ellen Knickmeyer - Twp)

A few days earlier, gunmen in Cairo killed four Copts at a jewelry store but left without taking anything. Strife over liaisons between Christian and Muslim men and women led to recent clashes between the communities in Egypt's countryside.

Egypt's government invariably denies that sectarian tension lies behind the violence. It blamed the violence at the Abu Fana monastery on a land dispute.

Abu Fana's monks deny that.

"Is it a land dispute when they kidnap monks and torture them?" Brother Michael, 34, asked from a hospital bed in Cairo, where he cradled an arm hit by shrapnel in the attack.

"Is it a land dispute when they tell you to spit on the cross, when they try to make you say the words to convert to Islam?" asked Brother Viner, 30, sitting on Brother Michael's bed. He wore a neck brace because of the beating he received in the attack.

When he was a boy, Brother Viner said, he and his neighbors played together without paying attention to who was Muslim and who was Christian.

But recently, he said, his niece came home from her first day at school with tales of Muslim and Christian first-graders refusing to share desks with children of the other faith.

Part of the separation stems from a policy by Pope Shenouda, who rose to prominence in the church by promoting Coptic Sunday schools. The church in Shenouda's time has built its institutions, so that Copts can count on the church for schooling, sports and socializing, as well as religion, said Sidhom, the newspaper editor.

"That has been the biggest change . . . the withdrawing," Sidhom said.

Many Copts think Egypt makes them second-class citizens -- requiring presidential approval, for instance, for construction of any church. Copts say state security services have little interest in protecting Christians.

Meanwhile, the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood movement has helped squeeze Copts out of competition in politics and trade unions, increasing the importance of Shenouda's role as intermediary between the Copts and Egypt as a whole.

Sidhom said he has a simple rule for predicting where Muslim and Christian violence will break out. In a community where Muslims and Christians still live and work together, he said, there will be no problem.