Coptic Church, EgyptFrom the Scotsman:
N THE shadows of the Moqattam cliffs that tower over Cairo's eastern fringes, Safwat Nazeem is picking his way through tens of thousands of empty plastic bottles.
Safwat, like his father before him, is one of the Zabaleen, Egypt's invisible army of refuse collectors who gather the urban waste around them and welcome it into their homes. Their neighbourhood, known as Garbage City, overflows with rubbish all waiting to be sifted and recycled. And after a recent spate of national violence and media intrigue, the Zabaleen have become a community on the defensive.
Like the vast majority of Garbage City's residents, Safwat is a Coptic Christian – part of an eight million-strong religious minority in Egypt that predates the presence of Islam in the country by over 500 years.
In the past months, the country's fragile sectarian balance has been rocked by violent clashes, accusations of discrimination on both sides and rumors of "special interests" spreading disruption from abroad.
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My Comment: Islam's intolerance to other religions is rearing its ugly head again, but this time it is in Egypt.