Faith Under
Fire...
TENS of thousands Protest against Egypt Christian governor
* From: AAP
* April 23, 2011 2:05AM
TENS of thousands of protesters massed in a southern Egyptian city
yesterday and cut off a major railway to demand the exit of a
Christian governor as the government sought to resolve the crisis,
police officials said.
The protests began last Friday after Emad Mikhail, a former Cairo
police commander, was appointed governor of Qena, the second
Coptic Christian governor in a row.
The protesters' motivations appear to vary but the presence of
hardline Islamists has raised sectarian tensions in the province,
which has a large Christian population and a history of religious
strife.
Police officials said the protesters gathered in front of the
governor's headquarters and reinforced demonstrators already
camped out on a railway track after Friday prayer sermons exhorted
them to end the sit-in.
Some of the protesters said they should have been consulted in the
appointment of a new governor, especially one with a background in
the country's vilified police force.
State television aired interviews with protesters who denied they
were Islamists, but a Coptic Bishop in the province said the
demonstrators have been heard chanting anti-Christian slogans.
"The protests are sectarian," Bishop Kirilos of the nearby town of
Nagaa Hammadi told AFP.
"They are led by Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, and they are
chanting: 'We won't leave until the Christians leave,'" he said.
The bishop, who was present when Muslim gunmen killed six
churchgoers after an evening mass in January 2010, said
parishioners were fearful of further attacks.
But a prominent Salafi cleric in Cairo, Abdel Moneim al-Shahat,
denied that his sect, which advocates a return to early Muslim
practices, was spearheading the protests.
"People object to him because he has a security background, and
also because he was appointed as though for a Coptic quota, and
Qena always gets the quota Christian," he said.
"My religion forbids me from being ruled by a Christian, but if he
were popular I would be willing to set aside my religious
objection," he said.
Many traditional Muslim scholars believe a Christian or a woman
may not rule a Muslim country.
The government has unsuccessfully tried to persuade the
demonstrators to disperse by sending two prominent Salafi clerics
to negotiate with them along with the interior minister.
State television reported that Prime Minister Essam Sharaf was
preparing to head a delegation to the southern city to defuse the
crisis.
Copts make up about 10 per cent of the country's 80 million people
and have been the targets of attacks.
The protests in Qena have served as a stark reminder to some of
the persistence of sectarian tensions after a popular revolt
ousted president Hosni Mubarak in February.
Telecoms billionaire Nagib Sawaris, who launched a liberal party
after Mubarak's ouster, wrote on his Twitter account that the
protests showed a Christian would stand little chance of becoming
the country's president.
"To those who said I should run for president: if we can't even
have a Copt as Qena governor, what about Egypt?," he wrote.