JORDAN - Egypt's highest Islamic legal official denied on Tuesday that Christians faced sectarian discrimination and said Islamists would win no more than 20 per cent of votes in next week's election. Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa said Egypt had done its best to abolish discrimination against Copts, who make up 10 per cent of Egypt's roughly 80 million population, but a small minority of radical salafist Islamists were causing trouble. "There is no real problem," said Gomaa, Egypt's second-highest Islamic official, whose office oversees the issuing of fatwas, or religious decrees, on application of Muslim law. The clash last month "was not sectarian violence", he told Reuters at a Catholic-Muslim dialogue conference at the Jordan River in Jordan. "This just echoes the chaotic transition period we have been going through in Egypt." he said. Gomaa said no more than 250,000 Egyptians were salafists, or radical Islamists, and they and the non-violent Islamist Muslim Brotherhood would win less than one-fifth of the vote. "In the elections, the Islamists will not get more than 20 per cent," Gomaa said through an interpreter. "I'm sure the majority of Egyptians are with the moderate voice of Islam." Gomaa said violence was unfortunately "in the nature of the transition" and not directed only against Copts. "Look at what happened in the last couple of days - about the same amount of people were killed," he said, referring to at least 30 dead in protests since Friday. The chief mufti said he had received Christian leaders after last month's protest and they told him they wanted the governor of the southern state of Aswan fired because he did not protect them against salafist attackers. "I told them this is not a sectarian problem. This is a procedural problem," he said. "The salafists are posing a real problem for everybody," he said. "Their orientation will eventually lead to terror."
