The first completely Christian, Egyptian-run television channel is to hit the country’s airwaves amid growing tensions between Christians and Muslims.

|TOP|Aghapy TV, which made its debut last month, aims to promote the teachings of the Coptic Christian faith around the world with a 24-hours-a-day programme including church services, documentaries on saints and family programmes, all in several languages, reports the Christian Science Monitor.

The new channel, funded by donations from around the world, is owned by the Coptic Church and airs on a US-operated satellite network.

Father Bishoy Al-Antony, executive director of Aghapy TV, said the goal of the channel is to foster better relations between Copts, who make up around 10 per cent of Egypt’s population, and the Muslim majority.

“Our aim is to get Christians and Muslims closer together,” he said. “God is love, and we will show them our God and our love.”

Not all have welcomed the arrival of the Christian channel, launched just weeks after sectarian riots broke out in Alexandria, killing 3 people, with the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood gaining surprise victories in the parliamentary elections which ended Thursday.

“I am against Christians having one TV station and Muslims having another,” said democracy activist Negad Al-Borai. “This is part of the problem, not the solution.”

|AD|Coptic Christians continue to face severe discrimination in Egypt, despite the country’s constitution guaranteeing religious freedom, keeping many Copts from gaining senior government posts, as well as positions in the police and military. There are no Coptic governors or public university deans.

“Why not let a Copt work in government?” asks Bassem, a Coptic accountant. “In our universities you can’t enter certain colleges. It’s clear: you’re a Copt, you can’t enter.”

Observers believe that the growing tensions between Copts and Muslims lies in increasing segregation: as the country continues to become more fundamentally religious and as government services continue to decline, Muslims are turning to their mosques and Christians to their churches for the provision of basic social services.

“More and more day-to-day life revolves around the church for Copts and around the mosques for Muslims, which makes them more divided,” says Mounir Fakhry Abdel Nour, a Copt and former parliamentarian with the opposition Wafd party. “This is an extremely dangerous situation.”

Others fear the gains of the Muslim Brotherhood during the election, which ran under the slogan “Islam is the solution”.

“It’s a catastrophe,” says Adel, a Coptic manager at a glassmaking firm. “It will make our situation worse.”

Just this week a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood argued against the right for Christians to hold senior positions in the country’s leadership ranks.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Habib said: “If w are to apply the Islamic rule, which says that non-Muslims have no guardianship over Muslims, then a Christian may not be president.”

Government officials claim they are dealing with the sectarian tensions in Egypt fairly.

“Whenever there is a complaint, we act right away, not through police measures, but by amicable means, by talking to people and telling them that it is a travesty of justice to treat a non-Muslim differently than a Muslim,” said Osama Al-Baz, political adviser to President Hosni Mubarak.

US lawmakers recently threatened to reduce their support for US aid to Egypt if the government did not do more to protect Copts.

Political analyst, Fahmy Howeidy, said: “With freedom and democracy and the right to participate people will believe that this is their country, to build together.”