Egypt’s Christians Made Scapegoats for Coup

Once Friendly, Christian-Muslim Relations Divided in Parts of Egypt

In the village of al-Nazla, Christians and Muslims have lived side-by-side for generations without incident. Today, Christian churches find themselves increasingly targeted by supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ousted civilian government.

It’s not coincidental. As religious leaders tried to explain the protests against the Morsi government in the lead-up to the military coup, they regularly claimed that the protesters were overwhelmingly Christian.

Now, with the military in power and massacring Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo, the group’s angry supporters elsewhere in the country are finding the Christian a convenient scapegoat, even though by and large they’re tried to stay out of it.

Such attacks are a win-win for the junta, which can claim Christian backing they didn’t necessarily have to begin with and can also claim to be fighting “terrorist” Islamist protesters as a way of selling its massacres to the international community.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.