Life came back to normal in the villages of al-‘Adar, Sallām and Manqabād in Asyut after days of violence and clashes between Muslims and Copts.

Maj. General Ya’qūb Hassan, Secretary-General of the Upper Egyptian governorate, paid a visit to the Manqabād Secondary School, in which the accused young Copt is a student, and appealed to the school students to encourage their absent Coptic colleagues to return without any fears.

“We’re all one and the same fabric in one nation. The student has committed a mistake and was punished by the departure of his family from all of Asyut,” said Hassan, appealing to teachers to always speak about religious tolerance to defuse any possible crisis between Muslims and Christians from the start. [Mamdūh Thābit and Sahar al-Himdānī, Al-Misrī al-Yawm, Jan. 2, p. 7]