CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian police on Sunday arrested a Coptic man for allegedly turning his house into a church, police said.
Sulieman Ibrahim, a farmer from a village in the province of Sohag, about 290 miles (455 kilometers) south of Cairo, had turned his house into a church where Copts from the area prayed daily, police said.
Muslims in Ibrahim's village of Nag'a al-Keeman complained to police after hearing people's prayers coming from the house, police said, who added that some of the Muslim villagers were planning to attack the house.
Some 2,000 Muslims and 40 Christians live in Nag'a al-Keeman. The village is near the town of el-Kusheh, which was the center of a spate of sectarian strife in January 2000 in which 23 people, mainly Copts, were killed.
Egypt's Christians, who are mostly Copts, generally live in peace with the Muslim majority. But many Copts, who comprise about 10 percent of the country's 68 million people, have long complained of discrimination, particularly over civil service jobs.