Sunni mob fatally beats four Shiites
Egypt’s president denounces slayings, still opponents say he is to blame for violence
CAIRO — Egypt’s president on Monday condemned the killing of four Shiites by a cheering Sunni Muslim mob while police looked on, saying the culprits must be brought to justice.
Opponents of President Mohammed Morsi said he was in part to blame for implicitly supporting his hard-line allies as they stir up incitement against Shiites in response to Syria’s civil war. A week earlier, Morsi appeared on stage with hardline clerics denouncing Shiites as “filthy.” Critics warn that militant Islamists are acting with dangerous impunity.
Sunday’s attack in the village of Zawiyet Abu Musalam, near the Pyramids of Giza, came as about 30 Shiites were having a meal to mark a religious occasion. Hundreds of young men descended on them in the house.
In online videos of the killings, young men armed with metal and wooden clubs, swords and machetes, beat the Shiites on the head and back, trapping them in the narrow entrance of the house. The videos conformed with The Associated Press reporting on the attack.
Among those killed was a prominent Shiite cleric, Hassan Shehata. Afterward, the attackers congratulated each other, one witness, local activist Hazem Barakat, said in written and video account of the events he posted online. He said that in the weeks preceding the attack, conservative Salafi clerics in the area had been speaking out against Shiites.
A two-paragraph statement by Morsi’s office condemned the killings. It said the culprits must be found quickly and brought to justice, vowing that authorities will not be “lenient” with anyone who interferes with security and stability.
Police identified 13 suspects but have not yet made any arrests, security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, from which Morsi hails, denounced the killings. But in a seeming show of conservative Sunnis’ distaste for the sect, he would not refer to the victims as Shiites. In a posting on his Facebook page, Ahmed Aref identified them as “the four dead who have beliefs of their own that are alien to our society.”
The violence was startling, even in a country where violence has increased dramatically in the two years after the ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Mobs in rural areas have in recent months lynched suspects amid a rise in gangs robbing motorists and banks. Police still often don’t act to stop crimes, and the public has grown frustrated over increasing economic hardships and shortages.
Attacks against Christians, their businesses or churches have risen in frequency. They are often sparked by specific feuds — even if fed by hard-line clerics’ anti-Christian statements.
Sunday’s attack, in contrast, seemed a straight-forward unleashing of hatreds, prompted only by the Shiites’ religious practice. Egypt’s population of 90 million is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, with about 10 percent Christians. The small Shiite minority is largely hidden and its size never established, though some estimates put it as high as 1 or 2 million.
“Killing and dragging Egyptians because of their faith is a hideous result of the disgusting ‘religious’ discourse which was left to mushroom,” top reform campaigner Mohamed ElBaradei wrote in his Twitter account.
His Dustour Party blamed the president. It said the attack was “a direct result of the disgusting hate speech ... escalating and expanding under the sight ... of the regime and in presence of its president and with his blessings.”
Al-Azhar, the world’s primary seat of Sunni Islamic learning, which has warned against the spread of Shiism in Egypt, said in a statement Monday that it was “terrified” by the killings. “Islam, Egypt and the Egyptians are unfamiliar with killing because of religion, doctrine or ideology,” it said.