Nabil Gergis, a Coptic Christian, lived for nearly two decades in the Egyptian town of Amriya, raising his children and managing a modest business. Those ties couldn’t protect him after a sex video purportedly showing his brother with a Muslim woman began to circulate.
Angry residents in the conservative, Muslim-majority town held protests and set fire to the Gergis family businesses. None of the attackers was prosecuted. Instead, a committee of tribal elders, local lawmakers and security officials ordered the 11 members of the Gergis family -- the brother, Nabil and others -- to leave town.
The story of Amriya demonstrates one of the reasons Egypt’s Coptic Christian minority and even some in the Muslim majority feel the situation is precarious, particularly since the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak a year ago. The rule of law, they and human rights groups say, is being eclipsed by such “reconciliation councils,” trying to fill the security vacuum left by Mubarak’s fall.
Any sex outside of marriage is a lightning rod for controversy in the Muslim world, where a woman’s chastity is vociferously protected by her family. That a Christian man might have an affair with a Muslim woman only further fanned the flames.
A series of attacks over the last year has also stoked Christian fears. A year ago, a Muslim-Christian love affair led a Muslim mob to torch a church in the village of Soul, 18 miles (30 kilometers) south of Cairo. Christians protesting the burning were attacked by a mob; 13 people died and 140 injured.
In May, ultraconservative followers of the Salafi trend of Islam burnt a church in the Cairo working-class district of Imbaba and clashed with Christians, leaving 12 people dead. Many of the rioters believed that a Christian woman who fell in love with a Muslim man had converted to Islam and was being held prisoner by the church.
In October, a Cairo protest led by Copts demanding greater rights was crushed by soldiers, leaving 27 people, mostly Copts, dead.
Source: http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2 ... 02153.html