One person died and dozens were wounded during when Muslims attacked Christians late Friday night outside a Coptic church in Egypt’s city of Alexandria, state newspaper Al Ahram reported.

The two sides threw firebombs at each other before security forces intervened and cordoned off the area around the church, according to Reuters news agency.

Police arrested eight people after about two hours of fighting.

Christians make up about 10 per cent of Egypt’s 84 million people and have complained that the authorities have [...]

Egypt’s prosecutors on Tuesday referred a Christian schoolteacher to trial on charges of insulting Islam, judicial sources said.
Dimiana Abdel-Nour, who was arrested on Wednesday, was accused by her Muslim students’ parents of insulting Islam and comparing it to Christianity by saying that the late Coptic Pope Shenouda was better than the Prophet Mohammad.

Alongside the political and economic turmoil Egypt has endured since Hosni Mubarak was overthrown in February 2011, tensions have risen between Muslims and Christians, especially since the election [...]

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s decision not to attend this coming Sunday’s Coptic Easter mass was entirely predictable. Morsi, after all, declined to attend Pope Tawadros II’s November investiture and, during his previous stint as chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party, Morsi visited a church on Christmas but made a point of emphasizing that he exited before services started. Yet because Morsi’s decision comes on the heels of a Brotherhood fatwa prohibiting Muslims from wishing Christians a “Happy Easter,” Morsi’s [...]

A Cairo court postponed the trial on Saturday of 26 alleged Islamist militants accused of planning attacks against the Egyptian state, after the defendants shouted at the judge overseeing the case.

They specifically objected to court officials putting one of them in a separate cage, and called Judge Shaaban el-Shamy a corrupt figure from deposed leader Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

“There is no judgment except by God. Allah is great, Allah is great” and “You are from the corrupt era, you are from [...]

Egyptians were voting on Saturday in the second and final phase of a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution, but there was little indication that the result of the vote will end the political crisis in which the country is mired.

The vote comes a day after clashes between supporters and opponents of Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. It was the latest outbreak of street violence in more than four weeks of turmoil, with the country [...]

Violent clashes on Thursday returned to the streets of Egypt as Islamist supporters and largely secular opponents of a controversial draft constitution hurled stones at each other, a day before the final round of a referendum on the new charter.

Several thousand demonstrators backing President Muhammed Mursi gathered in northern port city of Alexandria’s Qaed Ibrahim Mosque for Friday prayers to “defend (Islamic) scholars and mosques”, and to call for Sharia (Islamic law).

The rally, which was initially peaceful, turned violent when [...]

Egyptian Islamist groups are planning a mass protest in Alexandria on Friday, a move that will raise tensions a day before the final stage of a referendum on a new constitution that has split the nation.

The rally announced by the Muslim Brotherhood responds to a violent confrontation between Islamists and their liberal and secular opponents in Egypt’s second city last week that ended with a Muslim preacher besieged inside his mosque for 14 hours.

The run-up to the referendum on the [...]

Egypt’s opposition plans new protests on Tuesday against a planned Islamist-backed constitution that looks set to be approved in the second round of a referendum next weekend.

Islamist President Mohamed Mursi obtained a 57 percent “yes” vote for the constitution in initial voting on Saturday, his party said, less than he had hoped for.

The result is likely to embolden the opposition, which says the law is too Islamist, although the second round is expected to result in another “yes”, while underlining [...]

A group of Egypt’s Christian women voters were banned on Saturday in Cairo’s Nasr City from casting their ballot in a disputed constitutional referendum, an Al Arabiya correspondent and AFP reported.

Nasr City was the scene of mass rallies last night as Islamists who support President Mohammed Mursi took to the streets.

Details of banning Coptic Christians from voting are not immediately available, but earlier the opposition National Salvation Front was quoted by AFP as saying that a judge in Nasr City [...]