Despite sometimes tense relations between Egypt’s Muslims and Christians, the government, Islamists, professional associations, the press and most citizens have closed ranks to denounce a tabloid account of a former Coptic monk's alleged sexual relations with a married woman.
The newsweekly Al Nabaa published the controversial front-page story accompanied by pictures of a bearded man, described as a monk from the Asyut monastery, in a compromising position with a woman.
The newspaper account prompted 3,000 to 4,000 Copts to riot in Cairo on Sunday, injuring six policemen before being reined in by the Coptic Pope Shenuda III, the head of Egypt's minority Christian community. On Monday, the pope issued a statement calling for calm and reiterating his church's stand against tearing apart the national fabric.
The church said the so-called monk in the article had been expelled five years ago from the Moharraq monastery for "abandoning the traditions of the church and monasticism," without elaborating on his conduct, according to AFP.
Recalling previous clashes between Copts and Muslims, it also warned that the newspaper article could spark "sectarian strife and provoke violent reactions among Copts."
Pope Shenuda told an angry crowd later that the church would file a libel suit against the newspaper. "There must be legal proceedings," he told around 200 people within the cathedral compound.
No rioting was reported Monday, said AFP, but security had also been stepped up at churches and Christian areas in Cairo and southern Egypt, where the atmosphere was tense.
PRESS, ISLAMISTS PLAN JOINT SUIT AGAINST TABLOID
According to the daily Al Ahram Arabic, the press association and the Islamist-dominated bar association will join forces to sue the responsible editor-in-chief, Mamduh Mahran, and the reporter who wrote the article.
Al Jazeera satellite channel said Monday that Muntasser Zayyat, the lawyer for the radical Islamist groups in Egypt, was also likely to lend his efforts to the suit.
For its part, Egypt's Higher Press Council condemned the paper for "infringing on the traditions of society, its values and national unity" and transferred the case to the state prosecutors.
The journalists union, meanwhile, stripped Al Nabaa’s editor of union privileges pending the resolution of the case. The union slammed the paper's "irresponsible attempt to harm the deep-rooted Egyptian church."
Police were quoted by AFP as saying they had confiscated all copies of the paper, as well as its affiliate publication, Akher Khaber, which also ran the story.
Ina related development, the prosecution department said it was investigating a complaint by a Christian woman who accused Mahrouqi of blackmail and stealing her jewelry. She said that the ex-monk and another man extorted EP34,000 from her using a video cassette in which she appears with the accused, apparently in an intimate situation, according to Al Ahram.
EASING UNDERLYING TENSIONS
Despite the united front presented by many Muslims and Christians, Sunday’s riots refocused the spotlight on Egypt’s potentially volatile religious mix.
The Copts, who the government says account for six percent of Egypt's 65 million people, complain that authorities discriminate against them in the state bureaucracy, police and army, education system, and other areas.
AFP recently reported that detailed accounts of the Copt’s grievances were partly behind a court decision to sentence US-Egyptian rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim to seven years in jail last month.
The agency quoted the court as saying Monday that Ibrahim, in a report he sent to a German Christian organization in Bonn, said there had been "a noticeable increase in discrimination against Coptic Christians to unprecedented levels.”
"The court has determined that the reports, which he admitted writing and sending abroad, included lies and misleading information," the court said, explaining its May 21 decision to jail Ibrahim.
Ibrahim, director of the Ibn Khaldun Center for democracy and human rights, was primarily convicted of spreading "false reports" abroad about electoral fraud and religious persecution and receiving unauthorized funding from the European Union.
The state security court said his reports claimed Egyptian Christians were "subject to abuse and have become besieged by harassment from Islamists" and that they "don't feel secure in Egypt."
It said he had also received 145,000 euros from the European Union without the required authorization from Egypt's Social Affairs Ministry, in violation of a leftover rule from a previous period of martial law.
The court said its decision was also based on documents found in Ibrahim's house regarding "the rehabilitation of extremist Islamists," as well as a fax from Jerusalem's Hebrew University asking for a copy of the Ibn Khaldun Center's annual report, without explaining why these were in contravention of Egyptian laws, according to AFP.
Ibrahim was sentenced to seven years in jail, while two co-workers received three years of hard labor. Four others -- including Ibrahim's accountant, Nadia Abdel Nour – were sentenced to two years in prison, while the remaining 21 defendants were handed one-year suspended prison sentences - Albawaba.com
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