How Egypt should tackle religious strife and conflict moving onwards

Egypt needs to study the root causes of religious strife in Upper Egypt, Mona Makram-Ebeid writes for Al Masry Al Youm. A scholar and former member of the predecessor to today’s House of Representatives, Makram-Ebeid says extremism and disrespect for the rule of law are expressing themselves in religious strife that undermines the government’s work on developing a modern society based on the principles of equality and citizenship.

In the same newspaper, opinion writer Mohamed Nour Farahat turns the clock back to Al Khanka in 1972, when a Coptic church and the properties of a number of prominent Christians were attacked in one of the most high-profile incidents of sectarian violence after the 1952 Revolution. Sectarianism, he writes, is too complicated to be addressed only be religious and security institutions and must be rooted in constitutional protections of equality.