CAIRO, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Policemen encircled a cathedral in Cairo Wednesday where Christian Copts have been protesting the alleged compulsory conversion of a Christian woman to Islam.
Riot police equipped with clubs deployed along the road leading to the cathedral where 500 young Copts have staged a sit-in for four days urging the government to intervene to settle the issue.
The protesters charged that the wife of a Coptic cleric in the village of Umm Matatir north of Cairo was kidnapped by neighbors and forced to convert to Islam.
But security sources denied the allegations, asserting that the woman decided voluntarily to convert to Islam after divorcing her husband and marrying a Muslim colleague in a government department where she worked.
The incident reflected the growing sectarian tensions in Egypt, which is home to 7 million Coptics, 10 percent of the population of 70 million.
In the meantime, a Washington-based Coptic group, the National Coptic Organization, pleaded in a statement Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to mediate with the Egyptian government "to prevent the persecution of Copts and the kidnapping of their women to force them into Islam."
The statement reminded Sharon of the old relations between Jews and Copts saying "the Copts protected Jews at the time of the Pharos (Pharaoh) and now it is the turn of the Jews to save the Copts from the Arab Muslims."
