Minorities and the State in the Arab World

Ofra Bengio and Gabriel Ben-Dor (eds.)

Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

1999

3. Egypt’s Coptic Pandora’s Box
Ami Ayalon

 

A shadowy curtain has long veiled the Coptic issue in Egypt, a curtain woven of intense sensitivity, perpetual denial, and a profound reluctance to discuss what is behind it. Not quite a unique Egyptian phenomenon, such sensitivity and denial seem to have stemmed from a perplexing cultural predicament prompted by the changes of modernity. It has been marked by an irritating uncertainty about communal identity, about the role of religion in society, and about relations with the rest of the world, in particular the West. The status of the Copts, a religious minority in an otherwise homogeneous society, and their relations with the state and with the Muslim majority, has been problematic for more than a century. The issue has been so intricately entangled with other national dilemmas, and its implications have often been so confusing, as to elicit a general aversion to touching it. One typical symptom of this situation has been the mist engulfing the question of Coptic demography: How many Copts are there really in Egypt and what is their share of the population? Church sources have claimed that no less than 18 percent of all Egyptians are Christian. The government has chosen to speak of “around 6 percent” (5.7 percent, according to the 1986 census), with certain official publications quoting still lower figures. A noted Egyptian scholar in the mid-1990s adopted the loose and rather standard assessment of 7 percent to 10 percent (to wit, between 4.2 million and 6 million Copts at the time), a figure he still offered with a word of caution. ₁   Such discrepancies have reflected the general puzzle of the Coptic issue and the discomfort of being specific about it.

Long kept quiet, the issue became particularly sensitive in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The change occurred as a side effect of a more momentous development, that is, the rise of Islamic militancy, the product of cultural disorientation and material hardship from which the faith seemed to offer an escape. In the process, Egypt’s Christians were targeted by their agitated Muslim compatriots and fell prey to their rage. Copts, it should be noted, suffered from the very same national tribulations as Muslims and responded to them concurrently. By the time they became victims of their neighbors’ violence, they had already been contending with a serious sociopolitical and cultural crisis of their own. Their problem, further aggravated by this deepening friction, continued for a while to be largely overlooked by the government and public alike, as both were preoccupied with what seemed to be more pressing troubles. The Coptic issue was suddenly brought out into the open in early summer 1994, when an academic conference on minority rights in the Middle East convened and probed the state of the Copts, among other topics. A heated public controversy on the matter erupted, which shed new light on hitherto shady corners of the Muslim-Christian arena and, more important, on some of Egypt’s intricate cultural dilemmas.

 

Monarchy and Revolution: From Integration to Marginalization

The historical status of the Copts as dhimmis, a protected minority in the Islamic state, implied certain distinct political and economic handicaps. That system, however, also had the advantage of clarity in defining the Copts’ place in the state and society. The dissolution of the old Ottoman order in Egypt in the late nineteenth century therefore evoked questions of communal identity among the Christians—as it did among their Muslim neighbors—that were further compounded by the bewildering encounter with Europe, its missionaries, thinkers, and occupiers. The problem was at first mostly cultural-ideological rather than material: the changes the country experienced did not cause a particular economic crisis for its Christians, and in some ways they even opened up new opportunities that improved their lot. Yet the problems of identity were irritating enough. Haunting both Muslims and Copts, they eventually spawned political difficulties as well. By the turn of the century interfactional tension was brewing in Egypt, and it would turn violent on the eve of World War I. Then, for a brief historical moment during the interwar period, there was an interval of peaceful coexistence and even cooperation, as Muslims and Christians joined hands in the grand battles for independence and nation building—a period later to be remembered with nostalgia (relying, as all nostalgia does, on a somewhat selective memory). The facade of solidarity began to crack in the mid-1930s against a backdrop of a severe socioeconomic and cultural crisis that brought confessional tensions back to the surface. Soon the 1952 revolution would banish the Copts to a corner of the national arena with no role to play. Such bewildering vicissitudes within a few short decades immensely exacerbated the crisis of communal orientation for the Copts. ₂

The solutions Egyptian Christians found for their identity problems under the monarchy were of the familiar kind under such circumstances. They included defiant assertiveness; an attempt at redefining the frame of communal reference for all of Egyptian society so as to place themselves comfortably within its confines; and, when these two approaches failed, emigration. Talk about a distinct Coptic identity began around 1900, accompanied by a call for cultural and linguistic revival and measures to reform the church. Among these measures were the opening of a clerical seminary in Cairo and the establishment of a Sunday school network for young Copts, religious projects that developed into a social support system and would later assume a political role. Christians discussed the needs of the “Coptic nation,” and some of them called for the formation of a political party to defend Christian rights. Such ideas were abandoned during the interwar phase of Muslim-Christian collaboration. But in the late 1940s, as confessional tension resurfaced, Coptic activists founded an organization in Cairo entitled Jama‘at al-Umma al-Qibtiyya (Coptic Nation Society), which became a political party in 1952 in response to the vocal rising of Islamic sentiments of the time. ₃

More illuminating was the Copts’ effort to reformulate the country’s communal guidelines and eliminate or minimize the role of religion in Egypt, as it was emerging from its Ottoman past. The most obvious option for a new community was one based on territorial nationalism—“Egyptianness”—as distinct from a pan-Islamic or regional identity of any kind. Egyptian nationalism was born on the eve of World War I and became popular in the country during the struggle against foreign domination; Christian leaders were among its chief advocates and ideologues, as it was both consonant with the Coptic historical legacy and politically beneficial. Other Copts adopted a “Mediterraneanist” orientation for similar reasons. ₄   The appeal of these two options—defiant assertiveness and integration—alternated with the changing political circumstances, and the Christian community wavered between them without landing firmly on solid ground.

The July Revolution and the quest for pan-Arabism, which it substituted for Egyptian territorialism, disconcerted the Copts still further. On the morrow of the Free Officers’ coup, they found themselves in cultural straits more serious than ever before. Pan- Arabism, its Islamic undertones undeniable despite its professedly secular call, was highly problematic for the Christians as a frame of reference. What made the transition to a military regime even more of a crisis for them was its adverse effect on their economic and political standing. The confiscation of extensive Coptic property and the nationalization of Christian-controlled businesses deprived the Coptic elite of its public influence, as did the abolition of political parties, the main avenue of political participation. ₅   Under the new rules, the channels for social and political mobility were the military and state-controlled civil bureaucracy. Copts, however, were traditionally scarce among army officers (there was none among the Free Officers and in the Revolutionary Command Council), and thus could have little access to top civilian posts except through the president’s goodwill. The new government discriminated against them in recruiting people to state and public-sector positions, and the Copts could hardly protest. Age-old feelings of deprivation, once brushed aside by the shared zeal of patriotic cooperation, now reappeared along with an acute sense of communal isolation. Under the regime’s firm grip, divested of economic options and effective means of political self-expression, Copts for the first time in their history turned to a third type of solution for their problem: emigrating from their ancestral land in large numbers, mostly to the United States, Canada, and Australia. ₆

The July Revolution, with its vision of national pride and individual redemption and with its charismatic leader, Gamal Abd al-Nasser, at first appeared to offer a total remedy for the country’s ills. It would later prove a disappointment, prompting a crisis perhaps graver than the one it initially set out to alleviate. For the Copts, ill-treated by the officers’ regime from the outset, frustration came much earlier. When Nasser’s leadership was still being hailed by the majority of Egyptians as holding great promise, the Christian minority was at a low ebb materially and spiritually. It was marginalized in the state and society, away from the limelight of exciting national and international action, its grievances overlooked. A “Coptic problem” was an unknown notion except, it seemed, to the Copts themselves. Egyptian society was too preoccupied with dramatic or dramatized events to pay much heed to the increasing plight of its small and ancient minority.

 

The 1970s: Roots of a Violent Clash

On 6 November 1972 a Coptic church was set on fire in Khanka, north of Cairo. A protest demonstration by Coptic religious leaders developed into a Muslim-Christian skirmish, and a parliamentary commission of inquiry was established to investigate Coptic complaints. ₇   This was an isolated incident—some five peaceful years would separate it from the next wave of violence—and a minor one compared to what was in store for the two communities. But it was an augury for the future, as well as a symptom of tension already bubbling below the surface. Under President Anwar al-Sadat the social and political situation of Egypt’s Christians took another turn for the worse. This was a period in which the attention of most Egyptians turned away from the grand foreign battles of the recent past to more burdensome domestic issues. Growing disillusionment with the state and erosion of the hope for a better future produced a renewed attachment to faith and the phenomenon of religious radicalism. Sadat, more orthodox than his predecessor, at first did little to check the development of the latter; until close to the end of his presidency he even encouraged it in certain sectors for political expediency.

The new religious forces that were taking shape, including militant groups, did not concern themselves initially with the non-Islamic minorities. Their main adversary was the state, their primary objective a revision of society’s values. Copts represented a secondary if not altogether marginal consideration: their role in state institutions should be modified, the radicals believed, but that would be settled anyway once the country was governed by the shari‘a. ₈   Still, the intercommunal atmosphere continued to heat up, in part the indirect result of Muslim radicalization with Sadat’s blessing, but in another part, as we shall now see, the outcome of the Copts’ own attitude.

Sadat’s accession to the presidency coincided with a portentous change in the Egyptian church: the election of Shenuda III as Coptic pope and spiritual head in the autumn of 1971. Shenuda, forty-seven years old upon assuming his post, was a charismatic, dynamic, and uncompromising leader with sharp political instincts, in marked contrast to his recent predecessors. ₉   No sooner had he taken office than he brought the church’s standing within the community to unprecedented centrality. Starting his tenure at a time of severe crisis for the Copts, Shenuda inspired a line of assertiveness, encouraging his disciples to voice their complaints and demands aloud and to seek improvement of their situation through passive struggle and otherwise. The concurrence of rising Islamic activism and a bold Christian leadership effected a far-reaching change in the Coptic problem: from oppressed marginalization to open and sometimes violent conflict between Copts and Muslims.

One of the most bitter complaints Christians now aired vocally (and an obvious priority for Shenuda) concerned discrimination in building houses of prayer. The law relating to the construction of churches was based on the Ottoman hatt-i humayun (noble rescript) of 1856, which guaranteed equality between Muslims and non-Muslims in the empire but also required government licensing to erect a church. A 1934 Egyptian government decree further specified ten restricting conditions for the construction of churches, including a minimum distance between churches and between a church and the nearest mosque, as well as the absence of objection on the part of Muslim neighbors. ₁₀   Getting a license to build a new church became an increasingly tedious matter, with the government never too enthusiastic to grant it. Such restrictions, harsh enough when the decree was issued in the 1930s, became quite unbearable later on. Demographic developments, particularly the growing concentration of Copts in the cities due to internal migration, as well as rising religiosity among them, rendered the need for more places of worship urgent, while the parallel rise in Islamic sentiments made the government less prone to accede to Christian requests. Improvised solutions, namely, the illegal building of churches (often under the guise of “philanthropic societies”), were liable to be taken as provocations by Muslim neighbors, and they sometimes reacted violently. Such was the case in Khanka, where the church attacked in 1972 had been unlawfully erected. For the Copts this was a source of much anguish, especially given the rapid expansion of mosques, which required no license to construct.

Nor were Christian complaints about the absence of religious freedom limited to the building of churches. Copts were alarmed by the mounting pressure from Islamic religious circles to impose Islamic law on all Egyptians. One such Islamic initiative, publicly considered in the mid-1970s, was the “apostasy law” ( qanun al-ridda ) that sought to apply the shari‘a-prescribed death penalty to apostates, including Christians who had converted to Islam temporarily (a common practice among Copts, for certain practical reasons). Another demand, put forth toward the end of the decade, was for the shari‘a to be proclaimed “the main source of legislation” in Egypt. The government dropped the apostasy law following a Coptic uproar, but then succumbed to Muslim pressures and adopted the latter demand, changing the constitution accordingly in May 1980. ₁₁   Such readiness by the state to introduce discriminatory religious measures—whether yielding to radical Islamic pressures or due to its own pro-Islamic prejudice—was highly worrisome to the Copts. “That a single Muslim should embrace Christianity is an unbearable scandal and an assault on the public order,” Mirit Butrus-Ghali, a leading Copt thinker, charged bitterly, “while it is permissible, acceptable and desirable for hundreds of Copts to convert to Islam. [The state] makes things easy for [such converts to Islam], providing them with benefits and gifts, and joyful celebrations and parades are organized for them in the streets,” he noted. ₁₂

Religious intolerance was one area in which the Copts felt oppressed. There were other grievances: in education, from the imposition of Islamic-oriented textbooks on Christian children to discrimination in the allocation of funds for higher education; in free expression and publication, with Christians exposed to unchecked Muslim propaganda attacks while being themselves subject to more rigorous censorship; and in political representation, where it was fairly easy for Copts to prove their deprivation in parliamentary, ministerial, governorship, and top public-sector positions. ₁₃   There was little novelty in these complaints as such. But their open and vocal expression by Copts in the 1970s under their stalwart leader was new. Airing such claims in times of rising Islamic activism, however, was a recipe for mutual suspicion, tension, and eventually violence.

By the late 1970s, the Muslim-Christian conflict was no longer latent. It had evolved into an overt encounter, one that would persist with intensifying waves of violence into the 1980s and 1990s. Agitated by the rising tide of ill-boding Islamism, the Copts under Shenuda defended their cause vehemently. A Coptic convention gathered in Alexandria in January 1977—the first in sixty-six years—and presented a series of explicit Christian demands that from then on were voiced repeatedly, loud and clear, at times accompanied by strikes and fast days. ₁₄   Beyond verbal protests, Coptic students were reportedly organizing in groups on university campuses to counter similar activities by their Muslim counterparts. ₁₅   Such open assertion of sectarian claims and organized action by Christians were anathema to Muslim leaders and provoked their rage, thus stepping up the momentum of rising tension. Rumors, mostly anti-Christian, were another ingredient of this hazardous recipe. Reports originating in the street or mosque, circulated in pamphlets, and echoed in the marketplace and on university campuses, accused Christians of engaging in clandestine organizational activities, amassing weapons, building illegal churches, and plotting to “return” the country to Christian control. The Copts angrily denied these accusations, openly criticized the government for acquiescing in them, and demanded its protection.

But the state was not quite in a position to offer effective protection to its non-Muslim minority, given its own strained relations with the radicals. Moreover, the firm stance Christians now displayed in lieu of their past docility often upset the regime, which viewed it as undermining its own efforts to stabilize the domestic scene. On several occasions Sadat expressed his irritation with Coptic conduct. In May 1980 he reminded them that he was “a Muslim head of a Muslim state,” accused them of political intrigue, and even repeated the “Coptic state” conspiracy rumors. ₁₆   Sadat’s offensive also exposed another dimension of the unfolding Christian problem: the personal antagonism between two charismatic figures, the president and the Coptic pope. With the former ever groping for popular legitimacy and the latter daringly raising delicate issues, confrontation between them was all but unavoidable, with a fatal effect on the intercommunal arena.

Other important factors were at work in the evolving conflict. Coptic demands were voiced not only inside Egypt but also, more freely and vociferously, by Copt immigrants abroad. Their communities in North America, Australia, and France published periodicals and pamphlets, organized street demonstrations in times of violent outbursts in Egypt, and mobilized public opinion in their countries to exert pressure on the Egyptian government. Such activities served to incite their brethren back home, arousing further doubts among Muslims about the Copts’ patriotism, and upsetting and even embarrassing the government. ₁₇   At home, too, there was another complicating factor. Much of the open Muslim-Christian confrontation took place in Upper Egypt, where there were large concentrations of both Copts and radical Islamists (according to one count, 78 percent of all attacks on Copts between 1971 and 1993 occurred in towns in Upper Egypt—in the provinces of Bani Suwayf, Minya, Fayum, Asyut, Suhaj, Qina, and Aswan). ₁₈   In these places far from the capital, where police control was less potent than at the center, the social tradition of blood vengeance ( tha’r) was very much alive and common among Muslims and Christians alike. This powerful custom had a perpetuating effect on the confessional conflict there, regardless of the religious motives that had initially sparked it. ₁₉   Finally, the conflict in Egypt evolved against the backdrop of rising Islamic sentiments in neighboring countries and growing pressure on non-Muslim minorities—in postrevolutionary Iran and elsewhere—which encouraged Egypt’s fundamentalists and increased the Copts’ anxiety.

Under these troublesome circumstances a dynamic of mutual animosity and violence developed. Local incidents, like the one in Khanka, occurred again in the autumn of 1977 in Fayum and Asyut, continued on a more violent scale in Asyut and Minya in early 1978, and rapidly gathered momentum thereafter. By the end of the decade such incidents had become a common feature in Upper Egypt, spreading to the capital and the Delta. Violence peaked in an unprecedented bloody explosion in the poverty-stricken Cairo suburb of al-Zawiya al-Hamra in June 1981, resulting in scores of casualties and hundreds of arrests. The sociopolitical order in Egypt, an Egyptian observer sadly noted, “reverted back hundreds of years” as the country was witness to a “Lebanese scene.” ₂₀   Known as “the fitna of al-Zawiya al-Hamra,” the event was the grievous highlight of the stormy prelude to the assassination of Sadat four months later.

 

Violent Peaks: Targeting the “Enemies of God”

President Husni Mubarak inherited a Coptic dossier as tangled as ever. For a while the Muslim-Christian front was quiet: the 1981 blast in suburban Cairo, Sadat’s brutal death, and the ensuing tough clampdown on Islamists had a paralyzing effect that lasted for several years. Also contributing to the calm was that during much of this period Pope Shenuda was kept in confinement in a remote monastery, to which he had been banished by Sadat in September 1981. Still, all the factors of intercommunal strain remained, waiting to resurface. The material and ideological woes besetting both communities persisted, and mutual mistrust perpetuated itself in a vicious circle. The Copts remained intensely nervous about Islamic militancy and critical of the authorities for their impotent handling of the problem. Radical Muslims, for their part, adhered to deep suspicion of the Copts, of their demands and rumored plots, and continued to view them as a legitimate target in the battle against society’s ills. The Islamists were now equipped with a fatwa, a religious ruling issued sometime around Sadat’s death by their authoritative blind shaikh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman, which stated:

Christians belong to three categories: those who kill Muslims, those who support the church with money and arms in order to harm Muslims, and those who do not cause any harm to Muslims. An eye for an eye must be exacted from Christians in the first category, while Christians in the second category must be deprived of their wealth. But no harm should come to Christians in the third category. ₂₁

Early in 1987 the intercommunal arena flared up again. As so often before, it was a rumor that ignited the encounter, this time about Copts secretly spraying women’s veils with a chemical that caused cross-shaped markings to appear on them after a while. Wide-scale riots broke out across Upper Egypt, following the sadly familiar pattern of rumor-assault-counterassault-arrests. ₂₂   Once sparked, the fire persisted with periodic outbursts in the southern towns and villages. One typical instance was the incident of March 1990 in Abu Qurqas, an agricultural town in the Minya province. Rumors about an illicit love affair between a Coptic boy and a Muslim girl incited tension and rage. Islamists circulated a leaflet entitled “Wipe Out the Disgrace, Oh Muslims!” charging “Nazarenes” and “Crusaders” of seducing Muslim girls with drugs and money to act in pornographic films. A fiery Friday sermon in the local mosque sent hundreds of Muslim youths armed with sticks and firebombs to the streets to attack Coptic property, and by the end of the day two churches, a hospital, and other buildings had been badly damaged. The police apprehended about 100 of the assailants but failed to quell the tension, and for the next two weeks more Christian property in nearby villages was devastated. Then, at the order of the president, leaders of the two communities moved to contain the crisis, and cabinet ministers were sent to address a “national reconciliation meeting” in Abu Qurqas. In a closing scene, Muslim and Christian leaders marched through the shabby town hand in hand, chanting “Long Live the Crescent with the Cross ( yahya al-hilal ma‘a al-salib )!” ₂₃   A murky curtain closed on the gloomy show, scarcely masking the hatred and fear that continued to seethe behind it.

The short years of tranquility preceding this gory wave became an episodic interim. Once more violence spread to the Cairo vicinity, inflaming its gloomy neighborhoods that were overcrowded with southern rural immigrants, both Muslims and Copts. There, radical Islamists succeeded in establishing temporary semiautonomous strongholds, reportedly imposing a poll tax on their Christian neighbors, “the enemies of Allah.” Intercommunal clashes broke out in 1990, 1991, and 1992 in the suburbs of ‘Ayn Shams and Imbaba, commencing as ordinary disputes between neighbors and evolving into riots with casualties and extensive damage. ₂₄   These events demonstrated the high explosiveness of the situation in close proximity to the authorities in the capital. But the hub of the conflict remained in the south, where, one observer noted, it was easier to buy a gun than a chocolate bar. The Islamists’ animosity to the Copts no longer derived from presidential inducement: the devil had long since come out of the bottle. A decade after Sadat’s death, confessional tension had returned to its 1981 peak. The frequency and cruelty of riotous encounters had long surpassed it.

A further upturn in the scale of violence occurred in mid-1992. Muslim militants upgraded their struggle to a more vicious stage, one far more costly for the state. They now aimed at such vulnerable targets as tourism and foreign business and launched frontal attacks on security forces, causing enormous damage. ₂₅   Christians were not a prime target in this sweeping offensive, but they were easy prey and were hit hard. No fewer than twenty-two Copts died, and many others were wounded in thirty-seven attacks aimed directly at Copts in 1992 alone, according to one count. Similarly intensive attacks on Christians during the following two years resulted in scores of casualties. ₂₆   Reports from Upper Egypt, especially from Minya, Asyut, and Qina, depicted incessant Muslim-Christian clashes and excessively fierce assaults by the former on the latter. Public and governmental attention was focused on the ominous Islamist challenge to the regime’s stability and survival, the dangerous malady that seemed to dwarf the intercommunal sore.

For the Copts this was a troublesome period in other ways as well. In the early 1990s, discord broke out between the Coptic Church and lay community spokespersons, as well as within the church itself. It revolved mostly around Shenuda’s style of leadership: there was mounting criticism of his overinvolvement in politics, his tyrannical conducting of community affairs, and his ill-disposed treatment of senior church functionaries. Such censure was voiced both in Egypt and in the Coptic diaspora, preoccupying the community alongside its other pressing struggle. Although Shenuda’s leadership seems to have been still acknowledged by the great majority of Copts, the community, now under heavy Muslim siege, was less than unified. ₂₇

How did Mubarak’s government, engrossed in combating an Islamist peril of more than one stripe, view the Coptic problem? Curiously, the regime shared certain important objectives with the Copts. For both of them Islamic militancy was a threat. Both were interested in a basically secular orientation for the state, and neither wished to see accelerated implementation of the shari‘a. Mubarak’s interests in these issues, however, were dictated by considerations other than concern for the Copts and their grievances. For him the intercommunal strife was an irritating by-product of the bigger challenge his regime was facing. That bigger problem acutely exacerbated the delicate Christian issue and disrupted the long-term efforts to settle it. But that was only one, and certainly not the most hazardous, aspect of the Islamist challenge. Once it had been contained, Mubarak assessed, the Coptic problem would revert to its old, basically harmless state.

Mubarak therefore applied a low-key approach to the problem, employing palliatives to pacify that front as best he could. Having learned Sadat’s bitter lesson, he was cautious not to play the lethal game of evoking anti-Christian sentiments among Muslims. Instead, his officials preached Muslim-Christian friendship and made it a point to minimize the matter whenever asked to comment on it. Sectarian sedition was “not an issue in Egypt,” they claimed, but rather an exaggeration of simple sociocultural differences by the opposition and the hostile foreign media. ₂₈   The government retained the measured quota of Coptic ministerial representation according to their officially stated share in the population—two portfolios (with brief intervals of one) throughout Mubarak’s tenure, as against a single Christian minister during most of Sadat’s time. ₂₉   Such measures, the president hoped, would help defuse the tension on this front.

 

A Glimpse into the Box

In spring 1994 the Cairo Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies announced its intention to hold a conference in May of that year, to discuss the rights of Middle Eastern minorities, including the Copts. ₃₀   The announcement stirred a public storm in the country. That the delicate question of minorities in the region should be openly debated, and that Egypt’s Christians should be considered under that rubric, was abhorrent to publicists, politicians, and religious leaders. Far more candid than would be conceivable in any other Arab country, and highly passionate, the debate yielded hundreds of polemic articles—many still marked by the old equivoque, others bolder and more frank—along with several serious studies on the subject. They opened a unique window into the complex sensitivities associated with the Copts. More instructive, the debate shed much light on broader social and cultural issues. It reflected something of a predicament, illustrated by the tension between the reluctance to regard the question of minorities in the region as a problem and the call to confront it boldly, between the desire to revert somehow, without an encounter, to the old communal equilibrium and the sense that only an honest exposure of all relevant aspects would lead to that desired end. More broadly, it mirrored the battle over Egypt’s cultural soul in recent decades, between the traditionally oriented trend and the secular-rationalist one.

Critical reactions to the conference idea appeared from the second week of April on, at first in a relatively mild tenor. But on 22 April, the veteran writer Muhammad Hasanayn Haykal published an article in al-Ahram entitled “Egypt’s Copts Are No Minority but Part and Parcel of Egypt’s Human and Cultural Fabric,” in which he bitingly assailed the conference concept and its organizers. His attack prompted a spate of reports, essays, and interviews in the Egyptian and Arab press during the following weeks, most of which echoed Haykal’s arguments and advocated his stance, with only a handful of objections to them. Members of the Ibn Khaldun Center, led by their robust chairman, the sociologist Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim, handled the heavy fire valiantly and clung to their decision to hold the conference and address the Coptic question. As the heat intensified and shifted from criticism to threats, they were forced to make two alterations in their plan: they transferred the conference from antagonistic Egypt to Cyprus; and they dropped from its title the notion of “minorities” ( aqalliyyat)—a term often taken to imply elements extraneous to society’s main body—replacing it with “religious communities, sects, and ethnic groups” ( al-milal wal-nihal wal-a‘raq ). The conference took place in Limasol on 12–14 May 1994 and concluded with what the Ibn Khaldun Center described as a solid success. The Copts were discussed both in open sessions and in a special closed session. Encouraged by the achievement, the center convened a follow-up symposium in Cairo in November, where the problem and its ramifications were further considered.

Haykal’s article, whose themes inspired much of what was written later, epitomized the basic concept of the conservative trend concerning the Coptic issue: harmful to the national interest if explicitly debated, it is best denied or depicted as a nonissue. Coming from a celebrated rationalist thinker, such reasoning was particularly effective. Haykal’s essay presented two basic arguments: (1) The Copts are not an ethnic, sectarian, or religious [ sic] minority like other such groups in the region; rather, they are an integral part of the country’s multicolored fabric, a multitude that had always lent Egypt its vigor; and (2) treating the Copts as a minority is thus false and dangerous, for it may serve the interests of Egypt’s enemies; moreover, such a wicked idea must be a product of alien conspirators seeking to weaken the country from within.

Disregarding Haykal’s skillful rhetorical techniques (he repeatedly digressed to side issues, some with dubious relevance, so as to create a broader context for his reasoning), ₃₁   his argumentation could be taken as an authentic expression of deep-rooted Egyptian concerns. It articulated the old aversion to viewing the Copts as anything but an integral part of the Egyptian body, perhaps even its most ancient part. Referring to them as a minority, let alone an oppressed one, contradicted that common view and jeopardized the community’s self-image as a cohesive body. Anyone raising the issue in such terms must therefore be the enemy or its pawn.

These points were reiterated and elaborated with many variations in the following weeks. The Copts, it was argued, were “Egyptians in the full sense,” historically, culturally, and legally. If they had special problems, as some writers were prepared to acknowledge, these problems emanated from circumstances that were not particular to Christians but troubled other Egyptians as well in one way or another. Such was their victimization by militant Islamists: many innocent Muslims shared that fate with them. Presenting the Copts as a minority was inconsonant with their being loyal Egyptians, evoked the damaging notion of Christian separatism, and was insulting to the Copts themselves. Such talk meant a return to the old imperialistic thinking that had once sought to divide and rule; it was necessarily a plot by such foes as the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Israeli Mossad, as well as by Copt emigrants abroad who were rendering their brethren in Egypt a ruinous disservice. The whole project, then, was a threat to national unity. “Saying that the Copts in Egypt are an ethnic or cultural minority who are separated from the rest of the community is an affront to all Egyptians,” Tariq al-Bishri, an eminent thinker, told an interviewer. “I cannot imagine anybody accepting the notion that Egypt’s Copts are a minority.” ₃₂   Haykal’s rebuke for the Ibn Khaldun Center was likewise vigorously echoed, with the accusation that its activities were politically and not scientifically motivated. There was even a demand for police action against the center and its chairman. Of the scores of writers who joined the fray (no fewer than 300 in Egypt and abroad, according to Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim), ₃₃   the great majority expressed such critical views. ₃₄   At base they were conveying a major genuine concern, which none of them expressed more clearly and succinctly than Haykal: “Should our economy become ill, we will remedy it. Should we stray in our political course, we will find the right path. Should our thinking get confused, we will one day rectify that as well. But should the national cohesion of this country be cracked—God forbid!—that would be beyond our capacity to repair.” ₃₅

As against this, the voices of those defending the conference idea were few and, given the general uproar, quite feeble. They wrote fewer than 10 percent of all the pieces published on the subject. ₃₆   Most of them were members of the Ibn Khaldun Center, who, finding access to the popular media difficult, pronounced their position in the center’s courageous but small-circulation monthly newsletter Civil Society. Rejecting Haykal’s attack as “intellectual terrorism” and the assaults on the conference and the center as “full of inaccuracies, insults, and despicable offenses,” they reiterated their principal concept: the problem of the Copts as a religious minority does exist and should be discussed earnestly, for only a sincere effort to face it would benefit national unity. ₃₇   “Ignoring the problem does not deny its existence, or decrease its malignancy,” argued Amina al-Na‘ash (Naqqash). “The first step to circumvent it is to shed light on it and expose it, whilst engaging in a responsible dialogue in order to prevent the miseries that could result if we turn a blind eye.” ₃₈   The public offensive soon led the conference defenders to focus on the need for an open discussion rather than on the grievances of the Christians. The conference itself did consider the difficulties facing the Copts in the areas of education, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and political representation, for all of which it offered recommendations. Yet its most important statement, everybody felt, was the fact that it took place at all and dared to open the delicate Egyptian Christian file in public. ₃₉

From a Coptic perspective, the public debate of early summer 1994 revealed a disheartening reality. The unusual scope of the discussion and its intensely emotional tone attested that, far from being a nonissue, the problem was very much a fact of life in Egypt. It was widely conceived as a disturbing fact of life—however, one that should remain untouched, undiscussed, concealed. Their troubles, Copts were told resoundingly, represented a Pandora’s box for Egypt. They contained a potential menace to the sociopolitical order that could weaken the nation’s defenses against its enemies. Opening it would therefore be irresponsible and unpatriotic. Nor would it be in the Christians’ own interest, for it would most likely invite more Islamist violence against them. Equally frustrating for the Copts, many of their members shared the fright and preferred not to touch the box. Christian spokespersons invited to attend the conference refused, ₄₀   and some even joined its critics. ₄₁   Pope Shenuda himself found it expedient to distance himself and his followers from the fire. “We are not a minority in Egypt,” he hastened to state as soon as the question hit the headlines. “If the Copts have certain problems or demands, these matters should be resolved in a spirit of amity in the same homeland without resorting to such terms as ‘minority’ and ‘majority.’” ₄₂   As for the government, it remained conspicuously silent: the mainstream of expressed opinion and Coptic complicity was comfortably consistent with its own strategy on the matter.

Why was the mainstream of the Egyptian political community so sensitive about the status of non-Muslims in their society? The question relates to broader dilemmas involved in Egypt’s quest for a proper role under the sun following two centuries of complex relations with the world. Clearly, the Copts differed from the rest of Egyptian society. Otherwise, there would have been no special institutions to run their affairs, no special legislation concerning their religious rites, no special quota for their political representation. Equally clear, their main distinction was their religious faith. It was primarily their standing as a religious minority in a predominantly Sunni Muslim society—an undeniable fact, at least in the technical sense—that most participants in the public debate sought to conceal or dismiss.

But treating the Copts as a religious minority would define the Muslim majority as a religious community as well. And underscoring religion as the primary determinant of Egypt’s collective identity would diminish the weight of its other parts, including the legacy of ancient Egypt and the Arab heritage binding it with its neighbors. Moreover, granting religion such a leading status would signify reverting to premodern values—those associated with the Ottoman and pre-Ottoman past—while minimizing later developments that underlay Egypt’s claim to modernity. It is thus easy to see why such an option was objectionable to many in the liberal educated class who participated in the public debate. For this class, thinking of the Copts in such terms was a matter of a past that should be left behind. If, they felt, the status of Christians was still ridden by problems as the Ibn Khaldun Center people insisted, these should be viewed in their true limited proportions, reduced to insignificance or, better still, overlooked altogether in the service of more important interests.

This tension between past values and those considered desirable for the present and future was further highlighted by the state’s open conflict with the Islamists. Preaching religious tradition to the exclusion of all else, the Islamists sought to harass the Christians as such. And because they were so adamant on targeting the Copts, those aiming to check the radicals rejected the notion of “religious minority” as part of the anti-Islamist struggle. In this, the educated class was joined by the government, which tacitly concurred with the vocal rejection of opening the Coptic file. Deeming the Islamists’ call dangerous, the regime viewed the militants’ anti-Christian offensive as part of their drive to undermine its own legitimacy. Thus, while secular-minded intellectuals and the government had their respective outlooks and considerations for obscuring the issue, both considered such a tactic an essential tool in the battle against militant Islam. Only a small group among the educated class, vocally represented by members of the Ibn Khaldun Center, thought otherwise and favored a different approach.

The views of other groups—the great mass of Egyptian society, which did not take part in the public debate—have not been examined in this discussion. Exploring them would require a different approach and different research tools. Clearly, the popular response to the Islamist message was far from consensual rejection. On the contrary, in its less aggressive version the message seemed to appeal to large sections of society. It would thus perhaps make sense to assume, tentatively and broadly, that the silent mass of Egypt’s Muslim population not examined here held views on the Christian minority that were somewhere between those of the political and educated elite and those of the Islamists.

 

The Box Left Open

Once unsealed, the Coptic trouble box remained open in the country’s public domain. The plight of Christians and their relations with their neighbors now won widespread attention. But, as both the government and Coptic leaders had once feared and now came to learn, more attention meant more tribulation. For the militant Islamists, attacking Christians who were now in the limelight could buy them well-desired visibility. In Upper Egypt, Copts remained a soft target, and the radicals managed to strike at them periodically even after having been destabilized by the regime’s counteroffensive in the mid-1990s, thus scoring useful propaganda gains. In one such typical attack in February 1996, Muslim gunmen opened indiscriminate fire on passers-by in the village of ‘Izbat al-Aqbat, Asyut province, killing eight. In a more brutal one a year later, a band of armed militants broke into a church in Abu Qurqas and massacred twelve young men and women during a religious meeting. Another thirteen Copts were slaughtered in one day in Qina province four weeks later, rendering the toll in Christian lives within one month the highest in recent memory. ₄₃   Accounts of these last incidents indicated that the victims were attacked for their refusal to pay jizya, or poll tax—a tribute levied from non-Muslim minorities in Islamic states of the past, which the radicals now sought to impose on Christians as a kind of “protection fee.” ₄₄   With the Coptic problem still the focus of public attention, this idea had an explosive potential and the militants were not the only ones to exploit it. Heads of the Muslim Brotherhood—the big religious movement likewise under the regime’s clampdown—stated in April 1997 that in Muslim Egypt Copts should pay jizya and be excluded from the army because their loyalty could not be trusted. ₄₅   The Brotherhood later backed down from the statement, but not before it had generated a public uproar that kept the Christian problem burning. ₄₆

Nor were the Islamists the only ones whose activity was effected by the publicity of the problem. The Christian voice was also heard louder now, especially that of the diaspora Copts. Their community in North America became vociferously active in raising the issue of Coptic civil rights in Egypt as a consideration in Egypt-U.S. relations. In summer 1997 they were accused by a popular Egyptian weekly of working to sabotage U.S. aid to Egypt, a charge that added fuel to the fire of Muslim-Christian polarization. ₄₇   “Never have those relations been more frayed than at present,” a seasoned observer of Egypt assessed in early 1998, some four years after the issue became a matter of public debate. ₄₈

In this agitated atmosphere, the government’s policy of minimizing the problem and veiling it became more difficult. It was increasingly harder to appease the Christians without antagonizing the Islamists. Still, the government continued to adhere to this strategy as the best option under the circumstances. This was seen during the parliamentary elections of fall 1995, when the ruling National Democratic Party’s list of candidates included no Copts, not even in constituencies with a Christian majority. From among the Copts themselves—soberly pessimistic after the recent redemarcation of their boundaries—no more than seventy-seven joined the race through other parties or independently, a mere 1.97 percent of a total of 3,890 candidates. When none of them was elected, Mubarak, acting upon his constitutional prerogative, appointed six Copts to the Assembly, none of them a prominent figure. ₄₉   Such measures to marginalize the Christians were coupled with traditional vocal expressions, well orchestrated and often televised, of national unity following violent Islamist attacks on them. With the government locked in a tough battle against its militant adversaries, this was hardly an appropriate time for measures effectively improving the lot of the Copts.

The government recourse to the old shadowy veil for covering the brutal action on the Muslim-Christian stage could not hide it from the actors themselves. The Copts, who will always remember Sadat for encouraging Islamic radicalism and thus turning them into victims of their neighbors’ fury, will conceivably remember Mubarak’s era as one in which too little was done to reverse that trend. ₅₀   For much of the last decade of the twentieth century, Copts continued to feel isolated within their own society and witness their problem denied. Developments on the ground seemed to indicate that the situation was likely to persist to the end of the century and possibly beyond.

 

Endnotes

Note 1: For a discussion of these data, see Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal wal-a’raq; humum al-aqalliyyat fi al-watan al-‘Arabi (Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, 1994), pp. 382–384; J. D. Pennington, “The Copts in Modern Egypt,” Middle Eastern Studies 18, no. 2 (April 1982), pp. 158–159. In some of his other publications Ibrahim most often quotes the figure of approximately 5 million Copts. See also Youssef Ibrahim in the New York Times, 15 March 1993 (speaking of 17 percent, i.e., about 10 million), and Jumhuriyyat Misr al-‘Arabiyya, wizarat al-difa‘, Al-Aqalliyyat fi al-mintaqa al-‘Arabiyya wa-ta’thiruha ‘ala al-amn al-qawmi al-‘Arabi (Cairo, [199?]), p. 152, where the total number of Copts in Egypt, Sudan, and Syria [ sic] together is given as 4.1 million.  Back.

Note 2: For historical studies of these developments, see B. L. Carter, The Copts in Egyptian Politics, 1918–1952 (Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 1986); Mustafa Fiqqi, Al-Aqbat fi al-siyasa al-Misriyya (Cairo: Dar al-Shuruq, 1985). For a more concise discussion see Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, pp. 406–446, and tables on pp. 510–514.  Back.

Note 3: Carter, The Copts, 279–281; Rafiq Habib, Al-Ihtijaj al-dini wal-sira‘ al-tabaqi fi misr (Cairo: Sina, 1989), pp. 107–111.  Back.

Note 4: Carter, The Copts, pp. 89ff.  Back.

Note 5: For further discussion of these developments, see Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, pp. 446–450. According to Ibrahim, the Copts lost some 75 percent of their jobs and property.  Back.

Note 6: Saad Eddin Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt (London: Minority Rights Group, 1996), p. 16. According to this source, by 1977 the Coptic diaspora in the United States and Canada had reached 85,000. Church assessments put it at 65,000 in that year and estimated that by 1995 the number had grown to approximately 300,000 in the United States, 50,000 in Canada, and 35,000 in Australia; see Nabil ‘Abd al-Fattah (eds.), Taqrir al-hala al-diniyya fi Misr, 1995 (Cairo: al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, 1996), pp. 216–217.  Back.

Note 7: Details in Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, p. 462; Pennington, “The Copts in Modern Egypt,” p. 171. The commission of inquiry submitted detailed recommendations, which, however, were ignored.  Back.

Note 8: For a succinct and sophisticated analysis of these issues, see Hamied Ansari, “Sectarian Conflict in Egypt and the Political Expediency of Religion,” Middle East Journal 38, no. 3 (summer 1984), pp. 397–418. Also, Faraj Fuda, “Al-Fitna al-ta’ifiyya,” in Faraj Fuda et al., Al-Ta’ifiyya ila ayna!? (Cairo: Dar al-Misri al-Jadid, 1987), pp. 11–58.  Back.

Note 9: Pennington, “The Copts in Modern Egypt,” pp. 167–168.  Back.

Note 10: Details and text in Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, pp. 549–550; ‘Abd al-Fattah, Taqrir al-hala al-diniyya, pp. 87-88.  Back.

Note 11: Details in Shimon Shamir and Ran Segev, “The Arab Republic of Egypt,” Middle East Contemporary Survey (MECS), vol. 1 (1976–1977), p. 298; Israel Altman, “The Arab Republic of Egypt,” MECS, vol. 4 (1979–1980), pp. 335, 344.  Back.

Note 12: Quoted by Nabil ‘Aziz ‘Abd al-Malik, “Huquq al-aqbat al-insaniyya wal-wahda al-wataniyya al-Misriyya fi daw al-i‘lanat al-‘alamiyya li-huquq al-insan wal-aqalliyyat,” in Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-Milal wal-nihal wal-a‘raq, al-taqrir al-sanawi al-thani (Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, 1995), p. 127.  Back.

Note 13: For a discussion of Coptic complaints, see ‘Abd al-Malik, “Huquq al-aqbat,” pp. 122–132; John Eibner (eds.), Church Under Siege (Zurich: Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World, 1993). Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, pp. 515–517, produces tables showing Christian representation in Egyptian parliaments and cabinets from 1952 on. According to these tables, between 1952 and 1980 (with one short-lived exception in 1970–1971) Copts always occupied one ministerial position only. In 1980 a second Copt minister (with the somewhat lower position of minister-of-state) was appointed. See also Sulayman Shafiq, “Al-Aqbat wa-azmat al-muwatana,” in Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-Milal wal-nihal . . . al-taqrir al-sanawi al-thani, pp. 213–215.  Back.

Note 14: Details in ‘Abd al-‘Azim Ramadan, Jama‘at al-takfir fi Misr (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-Misriyya al-‘Amma lil-Kitab, 1995), pp. 275–277.  Back.

Note 15: Ansari, “Sectarian Conflict,” pp. 403–404.  Back.

Note 16: Sadat’s speech, al-Ahram, 15 May 1980, and further in Altman, “The Arab Republic of Egypt,” MECS, vol. 4 (1979–1980), pp. 329–332. Sadat’s speech came after a visit to the United States, where he was embarrassed by noisy protests by members of the Coptic diaspora. See also Ramadan, Jama‘at al-takfir, pp. 303ff; Hala Mustafa, Al-Dawla wal-harakat al-Islamiyya al-mu‘arida bayna al-muhadana wal-muwajaha (Cairo: Markaz al-Mahrusa, 1995), pp. 267–279.  Back.

Note 17: Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, pp. 18–19. See also note 16.  Back.

Note 18: Ibn Khaldun Center, Humum al-aqalliyyat, al-taqrir al-sanawi al-awwal (Cairo: Ibn Khaldun Center, 1993), pp. 47–48.  Back.

Note 19: “Misr: fitna bi-thiyab al-tha’r,” al-Watan al-‘Arabi, 3 July 1992, pp. 24–25.  Back.

Note 20: Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, p. 473. For details and a discussion of the incident and its implications, see Ansari, “Sectarian Conflict,” pp. 408–413.  Back.

Note 21: Quoted in Ansari, “Sectarian Conflict,” p. 415.  Back.

Note 22: Details in Ami Ayalon, “The Arab Republic of Egypt,” MECS, vol. 11 (1987), pp. 334–335.  Back.

Note 23: Al-Jumhuriyya (Cairo), 4 March 1990; al-Akhbar, 8 March 1990; AFP, 10 March—Foreign Broadcasting Information Service: Near East and South Asia. Daily Report (DR), 11 March, 1990; Akhir Sa‘a, 14 March 1990; al-Ahram, 15, 22, 27 March 1990; MENA, 25 March 1990; Middle East International, 8 June 1990.  Back.

Note 24: Le Monde, 25 September 1991, 10, 28 December 1992; Misr al-Fatat, 7 October 1991; New York Times, 22 October 1991; al-Ahram Weekly, 31 October 1991; MENA, 8 December—DR, 9 December 1992; al-Wafd, 13 December 1992.  Back.

Note 25: Details in Ami Ayalon, “The Arab Republic of Egypt,” MECS, vol. 16 (1992), pp. 366–372; MECS, vol. 17 (1993), pp. 284–288; MECS, vol. 18 (1994), pp. 261–265.  Back.

Note 26: Ibrahim, Al-Milal wal-nihal, pp. 522–523. Also Ibn Khaldun Center, Humum al-aqalliyyat, pp. 38, 40–41; Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-milal wal-nihal . . . al-taqrir al-sanawi al-thani, p. 235.  Back.

Note 27: Rafiq Habib, Al-Masihiyya al-siyasiyya fi Misr (Cairo: Jaffa, 1990); Habib, Man yabi‘ Misr? al-dawla, al-nukhba, al-kanisa (Cairo: Misr al-‘Arabiyya, 1994), esp. pp. 99–124; Ghali Shukri, a series of reports in al-Watan al-‘Arabi starting from 21 January 1994; al-Majalla, 2 October 1994; al-Wasat, 5 December 1994; Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim, The Copts of Egypt, pp. 21–22.  Back.

Note 28: See, for example, Interior Minister ‘Abd al-Halim Musa in MENA, 6 May—DR, 8 May 1990.  Back.

Note 29: At the time of Sadat’s death, the Egyptian cabinet uncharacteristically included three Copt ministers, of whom one had been appointed two weeks previously and another in May 1980. Mubarak initially retained this number, but he brought it down to two within less than a year.  Back.

Note 30: The Ibn Khaldun Center is an independent research institute whose main concern is the social, political, and cultural development of Egypt and the Arab countries, with special emphasis on issues of democracy and civil rights. It was set up in 1988 but became particularly active following the 1990–1991 Gulf crisis and war, which drew much international attention to questions of civil society in the Arab world. The center has been chaired since its foundation by Professor Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim of the American University in Cairo. Its monthly mouthpiece, Civil Society (and its Arabic version, Al-Mujtama‘ al-madani ), is a bold promoter of liberal, secular-oriented, and democratic views.  Back.

Note 31: ‘Abd al-Hamid Safwat, “Mu’tamar al-aqalliyyat bayn al-ithara wal-mawdu‘iyya,” in Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-Milal wal-nihal . . . al-taqrir al-sanawi al-thani, pp. 182–186, presenting a systematic and critical textual analysis of Haykal’s essay. According to Safwat’s count, over 80 percent of it dealt with irrelevant matters.  Back.

Note 32: Bishri to Al-Watan al-‘Arabi, 6 May 1994, p. 30.  Back.

Note 33: Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-Milal wal-nihal . . . al taqrir al-sanawi al-thani, p. 1 of the English part. In the Arabic part, p. 9, he mentions a total of 200 articles and other pieces published in April–May 1994.  Back.

Note 34: Safwat, “Mu’tamar al-aqalliyyat,” pp. 169–186, analyzing the contents of 142 reports, articles, and interviews on the subject appearing in Egypt between 8 April and 14 May 1994.  Back.

Note 35: Haykal in al-Ahram, 22 April 1994.  Back.

Note 36: According to Safwat’s count, only thirteen articles, or 9 percent of the total pieces examined in his study, supported the idea.  Back.

Note 37: Civil Society, May 1994, pp. 3, 14. The controversy occupied much of the May and June issues and to a lesser extent subsequent issues.  Back.

Note 38: Civil Society, May 1994, back cover. See also Safwat, pp. 178–180.  Back.

Note 39: Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-Milal wal-nihal . . . al-taqrir al-sanawi al-thani, pp. 24–28 and 72–73 of the English part; pp. 113–136 of the Arabic part.  Back.

Note 40: Al-Hayat (London), 29 April 1994; Marlyn Tadros, “A Case of Fear, Ignorance and Passivity,” in Ibn Khaldun Center, Al-Milal wal-nihal . . . al-taqrir al-sanawi al-thani, p. 27.  Back.

Note 41: See, for example, William Sulayman Qilada, Nabil Murqus, Samir Murqus, and others in al-Watan al-‘Arabi, 6 May 1994, pp. 31–33. Also al-Wasat, 2 May 1994, pp. 26–28.  Back.

Note 42: Shenuda’s interview in al-Musawwar, 29 April 1994. See also al-Hayat (London), 25 April 1994.  Back.

Note 43: MENA, 25 February—DR, 27 February 1996; Civil Society, June 1996, pp. 12–13; April 1997, pp. 4, 7; al-Hayat, 16 February 1997; al-Wasat, 24 March 1997.  Back.

Note 44: Al-Quds al-‘Arabi, 16 April 1997.  Back.

Note 45: Mustafa Mashhur, General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood, in an interview to al-Ahram Weekly, 3 April 1997.  Back.

Note 46: Al-Wasat, 21 April 1997.  Back.

Note 47: Usama Salama in Ruz al-Yusuf, 21 April 1997. See also the response by Sa‘d al-Din Ibrahim in the following issue of that journal, and Civil Society, August 1997, pp. 11–12.  Back.

Note 48: Robert Springborg, “Egypt: Repression’s Toll,” Current History 97, no. 615 (January 1998), pp. 35–36.  Back.

Note 49: ‘Abd al-Fattah, Taqrir al-hala al-diniyya, pp. 316–317. For a detailed discussion of the Copts and the 1995 elections, see esp. pp. 307–326. Also Muhammad Ahmad Khalfallah in al-Ahali, 20 December 1995. Of the seventy-seven Copts who ran for election, thirteen were nominated by other political parties and the rest competed independently.  Back.

Note 50: Muris Sadiq in al-Ahali, 30 December 1995.   Back.