A 70-year-old Christian woman was stripped naked, beaten and paraded through the streets by a mob of around 300 Muslim men in a village in southern Egypt.
The mob also burned down seven homes belonging to Christian families, according to an unusually outspoken statement issued by the local Orthodox Coptic church, after rumors circulated in the village that a Christian man was having a relationship with a Muslim woman.
The violence started at around 8 p.m. on May 20, and the local diocese said it was two hours before police responded, by which point the mob had already dispersed.
The woman who was stripped naked was reported to be the mother of the man involved in the rumored affair. She has since met with church leaders, the Diocese of Minya and Abu Qirqas said.
The violence is representative of the tensions between the two religions in the province south of Cairo, where extramarital 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 percent 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.”
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