Legal Commentary

Egyptian Muslims Attend Coptic Christmas Mass, Hoping to Deter Violent Attacks by Muslim Extremists

By Eugene Volokh

So reports Ahram Online:

[T]housands of Muslims showed up at Coptic Christmas eve mass services in churches around the country and at candle light vigils held outside.

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as ?human shields? for last night?s mass ....

?We either live together, or we die together,? was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the ?human shield? idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak ....

The Becket Fund?s Ashley Maguire (in the Washington Post On Faith blog) comments further, relying on the Ahram Online story. If anyone has pointers to news accounts on the subject, please post them in the comments. Thanks to Prof. Josie Brown (First Amendment Law Prof Blog) for the pointer.

Full post as published by The Volokh Conspiracy on January 08, 2011 (boomark / email).