Egypt‘s Copts After Kosheh:
Part 1: A Sensitive Coexistence
The events of the first days of the new year in the Nile town of El Kosheh (See the Last Issue
) left at least 23 people dead, according to the latest count: at least 20 Coptic Christians, at least one Muslim, and two bodies which had not been
officially identified. For the second time in less than two years, El Kosheh (al-Kushih) has become a name heard around the world. So much so that the Municipalities Council of Sohag Governorate has decided to change the town’s
name: from Arabic, the Classical Arabic root of which means “enmity”, to al-Salam, or peace. That bit of politically correct nomenclature has, for the government, the added advantage of erasing from the map a name which has drawn a
great deal of attention abroad.
With 23 dead, the killings in Kosheh surpassed the official count of 17 dead in the Zawiya al-Hamra’ religious riots in Cairo in 1981, to make
the latest events the bloodiest officially confirmed Christian-Muslim clash in recent decades. But it also revived international concerns expressed in 1998, when Kosheh last made headlines: at that time,
the murder of two Copts in Kosheh led to the arrest by police of hundreds of Copts, many of whom claimed to have been tortured, though the local Copts insisted the killers had been Muslims. When
the local bishop complained, he was arrested. When the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) complained, and a strongly negative account appeared in London’s Daily Telegraph, the head of
the EOHR was arrested for giving information to a foreign power. Eventually the bishop and the EOHR leader were released, but by then the Coptic community in the West, and particularly in the US and
Canada, were protesting loudly, and the US Congress investigated Egypt as one of a list of countries alleged to be discriminating against Christians.
For the past 30 years or so, at least since the resurgence of political Islam in Egypt, Coptic-Muslim clashes have sporadically erupted, particularly in areas where the two communities live side by side
and rumors and wild accusations are readily spread. The Egyptian government often finds itself reacting after the event, and sometimes, as in 1998, reacts ham-fistedly. This time the government
has been quick to promise a thorough investigation and a punishment of those who incited the trouble; it has also emphasized the equality of all Egyptians and the coincidence of Coptic
Christmas and the end of Ramadan this year. But in addition to this after-the-fact attempt to improve matters, it has warned against outside interference in Egyptian affairs, presumably a
warning aimed at Copts abroad and their friends in the US Congress. Although The Estimate did not directly address the August 1998 events in Kosheh, this is not a
new theme for it: the May 9 and May 23, 1997 issues carried a two-part Dossier on “Egypt’s Copts and Political Islam”. Your Editor, Michael Dunn, first dealt closely with the early history of
Coptic-Muslim relations in a doctoral dissertation written nearly 25 years ago; he was in Cairo at the time of the Khanka demonstrations of 1972 and a few weeks after the Zawiya al-Hamra’ violence
of 1981 — the two worst Christian-Muslim outbreaks in recent decades — and openly admits to certain sympathy both with the Egyptian government — caught trying to deal with a problem not of
its own making — and with everyday Muslims and Copts who find themselves in confrontations created by radicals on both sides. With those admitted predispositions, we offer a multi-part look at the Copts today. Kosheh is said to have about 25,000 people, probably more; three-quarters or so of these are Copts, belonging to several parish churches of the Coptic Orthodox diocese of Balyana. Kosheh
itself has little agricultural land and has become a trading center for the several towns around it, many of which are more heavily Muslim. The town is in the heart of Upper (though really Middle)
Egypt, 450 kilometers south of Cairo, in Sohag Governorate, between the cities of Sohag and Nag‘ al-Hammadi. This is one of the most heavily Christian parts of Egypt; ironically — and this is the
heart of the problem — it is also an area where political Islam of a radical populist sort runs deep. Those tensions are part of the problem. In a rural area where Copt and Muslim frequently must
interact but rarely are close socially, rumors and wild accusations flourish. When trouble does break out, the Coptic community in the past has sometimes been known to spread stories that
Copts have been crucified. Islamist preachers have sometimes charged that Copts are forcibly converting Muslim girls (the Copts make the same charge of Muslims), or that the Copts have been
selling pornography. Reportedly some of those charged in the latest troubles in El Kosheh had spread word that the wells had been poisoned by Copts — the classic slander once spread about
Jews in Europe, and perhaps reflecting a similar resentment, since Copts in El Kosheh tend to be merchants selling to the rural population of neighboring, more heavily Muslim, villages.
Relations between Copts and Muslims have sometimes been good, sometimes awkward. The Church of Alexandria traces its origins traditionally to St. Mark the Evangelist, first patriarch of
Alexandria; the present Pope (Copts do use the term) is Shenouda III, 117th in the succession of St. Mark. (
|
The Church today is called the Coptic Orthodox Church, but it is not a
member of the Orthodox Community with the Russian and Greek churches, but one of the “Oriental Orthodox” churches which did not accept the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, along with the churches of Armenia and the Syrian
“Jacobite” tradition. (The churches of Ethiopia and Eritrea originated as daughter churches of Alexandria.) During the Byzantine Empire, Egypt’s distinctive religious tradition helped reinforce Egyptian national identity. After
the Muslim conquest in the late 7th century AD, Egypt began a long, slow, gradual Arabization and Islamization, with the Coptic language — a descendant of ancient Egyptian — disappearing centuries ago except as a
liturgical language. Copts have remained a significant minority in Egypt — significant enough that the census is always controversial. Officially Copts represent about 6%-7% of the population,
though some enthusiastic Copts will (against all evidence) claim to put the proportion as high as 25%; some outsiders guess that Copts might represent 10%, assuming some undercount in the
census, but not much more than that. Despite anti-discrimination laws, as a minority the Copts do face barriers to certain jobs, and this provides an incentive to conversion. In rural areas it is not
uncommon to see children with crosses tattooed on their arms, to discourage later conversion. Unlike some Middle Eastern minorities, like the Armenians or the Kurds, the Copts do not differ
from their Muslim neighbors ethnically or linguistically; all speak Arabic, all are Egyptians. The difference is religious, and some Copts give their children neutral-sounding names so that their
religion is not immediately apparent. At least one prominent Egyptian correspondent, now deceased, always used a Muslim-sounding pseudonym, and even some of his friends were surprised at his Christian funeral.
|
Copts often complain about job discrimination, and their Muslim countrymen then point to prominent Copts who have done well. During the era of the British, one Copt — the original Boutros Ghali — attained the Prime Ministership in 1908. But he was widely denounced as too pro-British and assassinated in 1910. The Boutros-Ghali family remains prominent, having produced perhaps the world’s best-known Copt, former Acting Foreign Minister and later United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, as well as the present Minister of the Economy and Foreign Trade, Dr. Youssef Boutros-Ghali. The other Coptic member of the current Cabinet is the Minister of State for Environmental Affairs, Dr. Nadia Makram ‘Ebeid, another scion of a famous Coptic family.
It is true, of course, that the Boutros-Ghalis and the Makram ‘Ebeids represent old Coptic landholding families, and their relative success does not necessarily translate to the average Egyptian Christian in a town like El Kosheh.
Copts generally do not win many seats on their own in the Egyptian Parliament; this is one reason the Egyptian President always appoints a certain number, to redress the imbalance created by the fact that under the Egyptian electoral system it is hard for a minority to elect its members. Copts do sometimes rise to high rank in the Army, though never to the very top staff positions; Commander of a Field Army seems to be the record. And it is true, as Copts abroad often note, that none of Egypt’s governors are Copts: but then, none of Egypt’s governorates has a Coptic majority, and naming a Copt over Muslims would raise all sorts of problems, not least of which involve Islamic shari‘a legal issues. No Egyptian President has been daring enough to try that.
|
One of the elements which has entered into the tensions of recent decades is, as mentioned, the rise of political Islam, and particularly of a populist Islamist resurgence sometimes accompanied by local feuds and vendettas. Another element has been a genuine resurgence of the church itself. In the 19th century, many Coptic priests were not even literate, being forced to learn and recite the liturgy by rote; since the mid-20th century, the church has enjoyed a number of well-educated leaders who have presided over a renaissance of the ancient tradition. One of the ancient monasteries of the Wadi Natrun — a desert valley of monasteries reminiscent of Greece’s Mount Athos — is in fact now largely filled with monks who previously held professional jobs. The present Pope, Shenouda III, worked as a journalist and had a secular university degree before entering the monastery.
This renaissance has, at times, had its political repercussions. Although the assassination of Boutros Ghali in 1910 had reflected a general sense that the Copts were somewhat pro-British, Pope Cyril V supported the nationalist uprising of 1919, and the Wafd Party, the nationalist party against the British from the 1920s to the 1950s, had many Coptic supporters.
In the 1940s, when the Muslim Brotherhood, the Communist Party, and other such secret movements were rampant, a “Movement of the Coptic Nation” was founded and in 1954 actually kidnapped the Pope from Wadi Natrun. In 1959 Patriarch Cyril VI, himself a prominent “desert father” and the real founder of the Coptic resurgence, was elected during the Presidency of Gamal ‘Abdel Nasser. The two men got along, and with the President’s blessing the church’s educational system was fully reformed — partly by the man who is now Pope Shenouda — and there were few signs of intercommunal tension.
But Nasser had, of course, suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood a few years earlier, and was defining Egypt as an Arab and African state, promoting a secular socialist identity. And the tight national security apparatus of Nasser’s era made sure that those who had other ideas remained below the surface. Nasser died in 1970, and Cyril VI in 1971. Their successors, Anwar Sadat and Shenouda III, never enjoyed the same relationship as their predecessors.
Sadat, who had himself flirted with the Muslim Brotherhood as a young officer, allowed it to re-emerge unofficially, in part to offset the old leftist and Nasserist rivals to his power. Shenouda III also proved to be an assertive Pope. In the summer of 1972 there were a number of allegations of illegal church construction: under a Turkish-era version of Islamic law still in force in Egypt, construction of new Churches had to have the approval of the President. (In the very recent past, Husni Mubarak has reportedly delegated this power to local governors.) In November of 1972 a building in the Cairo suburb of Khanka, which had been a school, was reportedly being used for church services, and the police intervened. Shenouda urged Copts to go to the site and celebrate the Eucharist, and there was a clash with the police. A government commission was set up, and the Sadat government agreed to the construction of a limited number of churches.
The growth of political Islam led to new tensions. Parliament moved to reaffirm that the shari‘a was the legal basis of the state; there was an effort to introduce a draft law to formalize the death penalty for apostasy from Islam. The Copts saw this as a direct threat and Shenouda staged a fast. The bill was withdrawn, and the Pope had shown himself able to exercise political power against the Muslim state. In 1977 also, Shenouda became the first Coptic Pope to visit the United States.
Mohamed Heikal, in his book Autumn of Fury written after the Sadat assassination, claimed that Sadat considered that he had been instrumental in getting Shenouda elected Pope in 1971 and that he felt betrayed by Shenouda, who politicized the church and sought the support of Copts living in the US. It must be said that Heikal, who lost his job when Sadat fired him, was no admirer of Sadat and his judgment should be considered biased, but Heikal made relations with the church a key theme in his book on Sadat.
Another problem was the tendency of some Islamist groups, opposed to Sadat, to vent their anger on Coptic targets. It proved easier to attack a church than, say, a police station, for obvious reasons. When the Shah of Iran was given refuge in Egypt, Islamists in the Asyut area attacked churches. Wild rumors of the type already mentioned — of forced conversions, abductions of girls, and the like — were deliberately spread. Government sources have claimed that Sheikh ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman (now in a US prison) issued a religious fatwa stating that his followers could rob Christian jewelers without sin, in order to finance his movement.
After his visit to Jerusalem in 1977, Anwar Sadat enjoyed enormous popularity in the United States for his peace efforts with Israel. He therefore became increasingly annoyed that Coptic groups in the US were waging a propaganda campaign charging him with discrimination and toleration of attacks on churches. Sadat’s annoyance with Shenouda deepened, though it is not entirely clear to what degree the Pope was actually responsible for the politicization of Copts abroad. Also, Sadat reportedly wanted Shenouda to authorize pilgrimages by Egyptian Copts to Jerusalem after the peace treaty with Israel, but the Pope did not do so, lest Copts be seen as defying the rest of the Arab and Muslim world.
By the summer of 1981, Sadat was still enormously popular in the West but under fire from many directions at home, not merely because of his peace with Israel but because of deteriorating social order in several areas. The Muslim Brotherhood and more radical Islamist groups were active, and in that difficult summer, a major riot erupted in Cairo between Copts and Muslims.
Zawiya al-Hamra’ was a densely populated slum section of Cairo whose inhabitants had been moved from an area nearer the Nile when that area was demolished to make room for new government offices. It was an urban housing project of poor Copts and Muslims, and there were allegations that a Coptic church was being built on land which had been promised for a mosque. Wild rumors of killings and other allegations spread, and violence erupted. Officially, 17 people died, though there may have been many more; there were numerous arrests.
Sadat was infuriated. A sectarian riot in central Cairo gave him a black eye internationally, and he promptly began a crackdown on opposition of all kinds. On September 3, 1981, Sadat arrested some 170 Coptic priests and bishops; in a broader crackdown, he also jailed the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood. On September 5 he announced the Pope Shenouda had been deposed and that a five-bishop committee, headed by Bishop Samwil, the Bishop for External Relations, would replace the Pope.
One month and one day later, Sadat was assassinated on October 6, 1981. It is generally forgotten (if ever known) that Bishop Samwil was also killed in the fusillade. Pope Shenouda remained confined at the Wadi Natrun for more than a year, until Husni Mubarak reinstated him. Since that time, Shenouda has been less openly political in his dealings with the government.
In Part 2: The Mubarak Era
© Copyright 2000, The International Estimate, Inc. No part of this web site, including its graphics, written content or
any other material may be reprinted without the written permission of The International Estimate, Inc.