Sectarian clashes have broken out in Kom Ombo, in Upper Egypt, over the disappearance of a woman who is rumoured to have been kidnapped and forcibly converted to Christianity.

Ahram Online reports:

"The city's most central and largest church, Mar Girgis, has been under attack for the past three days from what residents described as "unknown assailants." Mostly in their teens, hundreds of young boys and men have been surrounding the church, showering it with rocks and Molotov cocktails.

"With Central Security Forces (CSF) trucks and soldiers fighting the assailants with teargas grenades, the church was relatively protected, although Molotov cocktails and rocks managed to reach its roofs and its open central courtyard.

"A field hospital was set up in one of the corners of the courtyard while many of the injured sat inside the church resting, others praying ..."

Despite all the rumours and speculation, as yet no one has produced any evidence that the kidnapping story is true. Claims of forced conversions with Muslims being abducted by Christians and Christians being abducted by Muslims are a fairly common occurrence in Egypt and they often result in violence. One of the most famous and controversial cases was that of Camillia Sehata, the wife of a Coptic priest, in 2010.

The most notable fact about these abduction tales is that they almost always involve women. Commenting on the Shehata case, Mariz Tadros wrote:

"It is a truism of study of patriarchal societies that concepts of honour are tied to women. The Coptic demonstrations in Upper Egypt upon the 'disappearance' of Camillia [Shehata] were driven by a sense of having lost a priest’s wife to a predatory Muslim majority. 

"The phenomenon of abduction is thoroughly gendered in Egypt, since it is always a woman, and never a man, who is thought to have been abducted for the purposes of conversion. 

"Certainly, there have been fierce sectarian clashes over land, places of worship and the commentary of religious leaders, but none have so fired the imagination of both Muslims and Christians like cases involving women in this intensely patriarchal society."

Posted by Brian Whitaker, 3 March 2013.