It began as such dreary events often do: a local dispute—over money, land, a woman or something more petty—happens to pit Coptic Christians against Muslims, and quickly devolves into sectarian conflict with national reverberations. On Friday in al-Khossous, a small town north of the capital, such an incident—various explanations have been given as to what sparked it, including that a Muslim mistook a swastika drawn on the wall of an Islamic institute for a cross—yet again turned bloody. A fight between two men turned into a feud between two families, resulting in seven Copts and one Muslim killed, at least 20 wounded, and a church set alight.
On Sunday, a funeral march for the al-Khossous victims was organised at Abbasseya Cathedral, with the procession of mourners shouting slogans against President Muhammad Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood, which they blamed for not doing enough to protect Egypt’s large Christian minority—believed to account for some 10% of the population. Once again, details are hazy—some say the procession acted aggressively towards bystanders, others that it was pelted with stones by unknown assailants. In any case, the marchers eventually took refuge in the cathedral, soon joined by young men who came to defend them. The fighting continued late into the night as police mostly stood by. Two people died and 89 were injured.
Nothing seems to be going well for Egypt, which stumbles from crisis to crisis amidst looming economic collapse and growing polarisation between the Islamists in power and their opponents. Mr Morsi was reproached for being slow to react to yesterday’s crisis, although he did eventually say that he considered the attack on the cathedral as “an attack against myself”. The Muslim Brotherhood and its Freedom and Justice Party have condemned the attacks and blamed them on a plot to “drag the country into chaos”. Brotherhood supporters have laid the blame of much of the recent trouble the country has faced on a counter-revolutionary conspiracy, as well as virulently anti-Islamist sentiment in much of the private media. Their critics say that such shibboleths are conjured to avoid responsibility, and that Mr Morsi and the Brotherhood have long tolerated anti-Coptic discourse from its own top leaders, creating a permissive environment for sectarianism.
Whatever sparked the fighting, Mr Morsi does have questions to answer—such as why the police did so little, and even appeared at times to be taking side with the cathedral’s assailants—and what he will do about it.
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The Economist, London