A group of up to three hundred Muslim men reacting to a rumor of a Christian man dating a Muslim woman stripped his 70 year old mother, beat her and forced her to march the streets in a small village in Egypt. They also burned down 7 houses belonging to Christians. Authorities did not respond to calls for help for two hours, by which time the mob had already broken up.
From Independent:
The violence is representative of the tensions between the two religions in the province south of Cairo, where extra-marital affairs between Muslims and Christians are strictly taboo.
But it appears the Coptic church has finally had enough of what they say is unfair treatment from the authorities over such cases. Christians only make up around 10 per cent of Egypt’s population, the majority being Muslim.
And speaking in an uncharacteristically candid TV interview on Wednesday night, Minya’s most senior cleric Anba Makarios said the response if it had been a Muslim man having an affair with a Christian woman “would not have been anything like what happened”.
The local governor in Minya, Tarek Nasser, has tried to play down the incident, despite multiple security officials confirming to the Associated Press that a woman was beaten and insulted while being paraded through the village.
The governor says that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to exploit the incident:
“Some irrational youths threw flammable missiles at the houses of Christians in the village and some women ran away in their nightgowns.”
Attacks against Christians throughout the Middle East has not drawn the attention of Barack Obama, who has not allowed Christians to be among the large number of refugees being given visas to come to the United States, which could reflect his unwillingness to aid people outside of his religion. Likewise, the United Nations has ignored the problem, preferring to focus on the plight of terrorists in Palestinian controlled areas and condemning the victim of those attacks, Israel.