ICC Note:

Egypt’s Minya Governorate is home to most of the country’s Christians, yet villages in this area often segregate Christians and Muslims into different districts or neighborhoods. Usually, it is a simple landmark such a shop or tree that separates the two communities. It is an unspoken rule that the two sides should avoid each other’s neighborhoods. While this segregation was initially the result of an old tribal practice of families living close to one another, the situation today has only fueled religious persecution.

01/04/2018 Egypt (Mada Masr) –  Of the few streets that lie perpendicular to each other in Ezbet al-Forn in Upper Egypt’s Minya Governorate, your surroundings vary depending on which one you choose to walk down.

At the corner of one, a few meters away from a house used as a church where one security guard is stationed, I encounter a number of Coptic women.

“Over here, people are Christian. In the area starting with that colorful building over there, people are Muslim,” one of them tells me, pointing to a house 100 meters away, right next to the church. “We face south; they face north,” she adds.

When tension befell the village in September after security forces prevented Coptic residents from holding religious ceremonies in a house they used as a church, arguing that it was not registered, Copts emphasized that their problem was with security forces and not the Muslims living in the area.

Anba Makarios, the bishop of Minya and Abu Qurqas, confirmed this sentiment, telling Mada Masr that the segregation of houses in the area does not allow for sectarian conflict to occur, in a governorate where there are two million Copts out of approximately 5.6 million people, as per his estimate.

But while it is believed that the spatial segregation contributes to the sense of security and freedom of worship that the Coptic minority enjoys in Upper Egypt, it also maintains a separation where false perceptions can fester, as well as the apprehension internalized by both groups toward each other.

In the village, a funeral tent in an alley connects a Christian-populated street with a Muslim-populated one. Visitors flock to it from both sides, an observation that residents point to as evidence of the peaceful relationship between Copts and Muslims in the area.

“We are one family. We say good morning to them, and they say good morning to us. We do not wrong them, and they do not wrong us,” a Coptic woman tells me.

“This is just how we found things,” she says, pointing to how the spatial arrangement is more inherited than chosen.

But underneath the exchange of greetings, the separation doesn’t prevent the expression of less cordial sentiments.

For a Muslim resident of Ezbet al-Forn, the existing segregation is better. “Christians can live among Muslims, but Muslims cannot live among Christians. We are merciful and we forgive; they do not,” he argues.

His friend, from the neighboring area of Ezbet al-Nakhl, concurs, saying that he does not feel comfortable among Copts. Their food, he says, has a foul odor. The segregation helps avert problems that might increase as a result of a mixed living: “If we live on the same street and the son of a Coptic man hits my son, I would kill him. It cannot be that a Christian hits a Muslim.”

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