Two Coptic Christian boys have been detained by the Egyptian authorities on charges that they defiled the pages of a Koran, the latest in a spate of recent cases involving accusations that people have insulted Islam, The New York Times reported Thursday, October 4. The boys, ages 9 and 10, are being held in juvenile detention in the village of Ezbet Marco, south of Cairo. They were detained last Sunday, when the imam of the local mosque claimed that he saw the children tearing the pages of a Koran. Other news reports said the boys were accused of urinating on the Koran pages. The charges seemed likely to add to growing anxieties in Egypt about free speech rights, the sway of hardline Islamists and the status of the country’s Christian minority, which fears an erosion of rights under an Islamist government.