What in a normal setting is an everyday land dispute can quickly turn into a full-blown sectarian flashpoint with adverse effects on the wider community, when one side of the feud happens to belong to the wrong religion. This is what happened in El Oula in the district of el-Ameriya (in the article wrongly spelled as Amreyya. On September 20 police tried to allow the Copts to regain land that had, according to the report, been taken from a Muslim family. One young Muslim was shot dead. "A forensic report quoted by the Makanotis' lawyer said the young man was killed by police fire." Local Muslims blamed Christians. Recourse to a local reconciliation (orfi) session would not be in favor of Christian. Crossmap republished the text from World Watch Monitor  www.worldwatchmonitor.org

Cornelis Hulsman: This is a good article. Land disputes are often the result of poor land registration and thus one would need to look into this. According to Worthy News, October 6, "a court ordered police to return the property" to the Christian family. I do not like accepting stories just because some source has said so and thus I would recommend anyone who digs into this story to ask for that court document and verify the authenticity with an independent lawyer. Worthy News that took its information from the Barnabas Fund formulates it story in a very partisan way. It also has only Christians as source. The Word Watch Monitor article was definitely better written.