Egypt’s Christian-Muslim divide growing amid recent tensions

In an article in Monday’s Washington Post, Ellen Knickmeyer describes the increasingly strained relationship between Egypt’s Coptic Christian and Muslim communities.

Knickmeyer notes that sectarian attacks and the rise of fundamentalist Islam have driven Copts to isolation, while adding that the efforts of Pope Shenouda III, the faith’s current leader, have made the church a center for “schooling, sports and socializing, as well as religion” and also contributed to the separation.

Among those interviewed for the article was Brother Viner, a monk attacked by Arab Bedouins in a May 31 incident at the historic Abu Fana monastery. “When he was a boy,” Knickmeyer writes, “[Brother Viner] 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.”

For the full article, click here.