Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

[Reviewer: The original Arabic

title uses

the plural form of churches, although the article refers to a single church only. The author

most likely means that

the type of rumors about building churches was what created the problem being

discussed].


Building

churches has always been a source of the Muslim-Christian tensions that

bubles beneath the surface of the fragile

Egyptian

society.

‘Alā’ ‘Ādil reported on

a new episode of clashes between Muslims and Christians over this issue. The problem this time escalated

from

rumors spread by children from the neighborhood of al-Sayyid Nā’il Street in the

district of al-

Marj, north east of Cairo, to official reports in police stations and ended with

confrontations between

Muslims and Christians from the area, ‘Ādil explained.

The

story of the sectarian sedition

in al-Marj started when Hājj

Rifā‘ī, a Muslim resident of the area,

filed an official report in the police

station, accusing his Christian neighbor Hilmī Qultah, a contractor

and owner of a 750 square-meter

piece of land next to Rifā‘ī’s house, of threatening the

stability of his house by

digging deep, close to the foundations of his house.

What really added to the

tensions in the

already-strained situation was when Hājj Rifā‘ī claimed, in

his

report, that the piece of land was owned by Pope Shenouda III and was reserved to be a ten-floor unauthorized

church.

Hilmī Qultah denied the accusations, presenting the official documents for the land

to the

high-rank police officers, who rushed to the location in an attempt to stop the establishment of the

alleged

church. Qultah affirmed that he had obtained official permission to build a residential building of

ten

floors.

‘Alā’ ‘Ādil, author of the article, added that the

problem

dramatically escalated when Hājj Rifā‘ī sold his house to an

Islamic society

which allocated the ground floor of the building to establishing a mosque.

‘Ādil speculated that

the whole situation may erupt if rumors about the unauthorized

church under construction are

true.

‘Alā’ ‘Ādil called on

concerned authorities to take necessary

procedures to stop the expected clashes and to nip the problem in

the bud.