CAIRO: Egypt Wednesday said it was considering drafting new laws to criminalize sectarian violence and ease restrictions on building churches, four days after 12 people died in violent inter-faith clashes.
The Cabinet said in a statement it would also ban protests and gatherings outside places of worship and forbid the use of religious slogans by political parties, particularly during elections.

The sectarian clashes represent a challenge for Egypt’s new military rulers, under pressure to impose security and revive the economy while seeking to avoid tough security tactics against Islamists employed by the former regime.
The Cabinet statement said it had set up a committee to draw up the new regulations including “a unified law for building of places of worship.”

Current laws make it easier to build mosques than churches. Christians, who make up around 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million people, have long demanded equal rights.
Muslims and Christians staged unity demonstrations during protests that toppled former President Hosni Mubarak on Feb. 11, but inter-faith tensions have intensified.
On Saturday clashes triggered by rumors that Christians had abducted a woman who converted to Islam left 12 people dead and around 238 wounded. A church, a residential building and two shops were also wrecked by fire.
Many Egyptians said the violence was sparked by Salafists, who adhere to a strict interpretation of Islam. Others blamed remnants of the former regime.

The Cabinet statement said authorities would renovate churches damaged by violence and re-open a number of churches that were closed in the past by authorities without explanation.
Egyptian activist and lawyer Gamal Eid said Egypt needed to do more to protect religious freedoms.
“Egyptians should not be asked to identify their religion in their National ID. Change of faith should be granted by law and should happen easily and with no discrimination or violence,” he told Reuters.

Earlier, Egypt’s state-sponsored human rights council said in a preliminary report Wednesday that a security vacuum and a rise in Islamist extremism contributed to deadly mob attacks on Cairo churches this week.
The National Council for Human Rights, which was founded by government decree in 2003, demanded increased security for houses of worship and the speedy return of police, especially in poorer neighborhoods like Imbaba.
It also said that supporters of the ousted government of Mubarak played a role in Saturday’s violence.
“The tremendous changes Egypt is undergoing since the great revolution of Jan. 25 has brought out a number of phenomena directly linked to the Imbaba incident,” said the report.
Chief among them was “the general absence of security that has given outlaws an increasing role and the spread of illegal weapons,” it said.

It also blamed “the intensification of extremist religious interpretations that propose rearranging Egyptian society to exclude Christians, as they are considered wards of the state without rights to religious protection.”
Council member Hafez Abu Saada told AFP that police, who recently began to redeploy after most of their buildings were burned down during the revolt, had to quickly take over policing from the military. “The army is not trained to control the street. The police is necessary,” he said.

But the council said the sectarian attacks also stemmed from a decades-old atmosphere of intolerance.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday that he was disturbed by the recent clashes.
Ban expressed concern that sectarian violence could affect the recent progress toward democratic reform and a “more free, just and harmonious Egypt.”
“It is critical that the people of Egypt maintain that unity of purpose for … their democratic aspirations,” he added.
Egyptian pro-democracy activists have called for nationwide “unity” protests Friday, including a demonstration at Tahrir Square, the symbolic heart of rallies that brought down Mubarak’s regime in February.