Arab Angles, Issue No. 1
16 September 2006
Welcome to Arab Angles, an independent volunteer project that aims to present English translations of analyses and opinions published in the Arabic-language media in different countries, dealing with political, social and cultural issues from a variety of viewpoints.
Each issue of Arab Angles will present articles that examine a single topic from different perspectives. This first issue contains articles from the independent Egyptian media on the underlying reasons for the sectarian violence that broke out in Alexandria in April 2006, when a Muslim attacked worshippers in three Coptic Christian churches there. In addition to offering different explanations of sectarian violence in Egypt, the articles in this issue have much to say about the functions of religion in Egyptian society:
The Sword of Force and the Scales of Justice: ‘The Citizen’… Holds the Knife
In the magazine Weghat Nazar [Points of View], ُeditor Ayman El-Sayyad argues that religion is not the main issue: rather, the Egyptian state’s violent repression of all dissent, and its refusal to accept an independent judiciary, have created a climate in which ordinary citizens have come to believe that they must resort to violence in order to achieve their aims.
The editor of the newspaper Al-Dustur [The Constitution], Ibrahim Eissa (who was recently jailed for defaming the Egyptian president), rails in his inimitable half-comical, half-serious style (to which the translation cannot hope to do justice) against religious bigotry in Egypt, which he sees as partly a way of compensating for a collective inferiority complex, partly a cover for corruption, partly a result of ignorance about religion, and partly a substitute for the political competition that the state forbids.
Writing in the newspaper Nahdat Misr [The Rebirth of Egypt], Abd El Moneim Said argues that Egyptians have become one-dimensional, that religion has usurped the place of all the other ties that once held Egyptian society together, and that this has divided Egypt along religious lines.
Is Egypt Protecting the Rights of Minorities, or Paving the Way for Civil Strife?
In an article published on Ikhwan On Line, the web site of the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt’s mainstream Islamist group, which is banned but tolerated to an extent), Ahmad El Talawy expresses the view that the US and Israel have provoked sectarian conflict in Egypt, as part of a plan to divide Egypt and other Arab states into statelets along ethnic and religious lines. He emphasises that the Muslim Brotherhood is committed to full and equal citizenship for Christians and Muslims.
What is Behind the Incident in Alexandria?
Writing in the Coptic newspaper Watani [My Nation], Samih Fawzy argues that disruptions in Christian-Muslim relations elsewhere in the world have been needlessly imported into Egypt by a self-serving media, which encourages Muslims to be hostile towards Christians rather than addressing the real problems Christians have faced for decades.
We hope you find this issue of Arab Angles stimulating reading.
What is Behind the Incident in Alexandria?
15 September 2006
By Samih Fawzy (سامح فوزي)
Appeared in the 30 April 2006 issue of Watani (وطني), an independent Coptic newspaper published in Egypt
Original title: ما وراء حادث الإسكندرية؟
(For background on the topic of this article, please see Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt.)
The question seems superficial, yet it has become important. Why are Egyptian Christians paying the price for the worldwide disruption of Christian-Muslim relations? What have they and their Muslim fellow citizens got to do with what is happening in Iraq or Afghanistan? Why must Christian-Muslim relations in our society carry the burden of a global cultural discourse that pushes people towards a clash of civilisations, religions and cultures?
Clearly, Egyptian society, like other societies, is negatively affected by the global atmosphere of unrest. It is no longer possible to claim that relations between Muslims and Copts remain aloof from these negative effects. It is difficult to say that Egyptian society is impervious to the global changes that are taking place, particularly in light of the efforts of some media outlets and political currents — particularly Islamist ones — to import global conflicts, and to create links between those conflicts and local events.
by Ahmad El Talawy (أحمد التلاوي)
Published on 18 April 2006 on Ikhwan On Line (إخوان أون لاين), the web site of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
Original title: ما يحدث في مصر.. حقوق للأقليات أم تمهيد للفتنة؟!
(For background on the topic of this article, please see Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt.)
Between the incidents that have occurred in churches in Alexandria, and the verdict recently handed down by Egypt’s Administrative Court in favour of a married couple who had been trying for nearly two years to win the right to be listed as belonging to the Bahai faith in official documents, the thread of a link is thin, yet strong and frightening; it is the thread of sectarianism in Egypt.
In the background of what happened is the question: What is happening in Egypt now? This question has been, and still is, on the lips and in the minds of many people, both inside and outside this great nation, following the many incidents that have taken place recently in Egypt, and that have made it clear that there is a quickly progressing plan to demolish the governing principles on which the Egyptian state is based, striking at the heart of Egypt’s national security.
These incidents basically concern the identity of Egyptian society and the nature of the prevailing relations between its various members. To elaborate further on the issue of sectarianism in Egypt as a society and as a State, in the series of events that have taken place recently — and which are not likely to be the last of their kind — it is possible to see a far-reaching plan to accentuate the sectarian dimension of discourse in Egypt, in a way that, in some respects, threatens the unity of the Egyptian nation, which makes negative thoughts spring to mind when this problem is discussed.
These incidents concern sectarianism in Egypt. In some ways, some of them concern the policies of the Egyptian state, which has erred in its handling of this matter, thus exacerbating it, and — as is perfectly clear and needs no demonstration — one can see the outlines of an international conspiracy against Egypt, in view of the fact that this country is truly one of the keys to resolving the crisis of the Arab and Islamic world.
One-Dimensional People
28 July 2006
by Dr. Abd El Moneim Said (د. عبد المنعم سعيد)
Published in the 24 April 2006 issue of Nahdat Misr (نهضة مصر), Egypt
Original title: أصحاب البعد الواحد!
(For background on the topic of this article, please see Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt.)
I was invited to begin this article with a kind of beginning that I have never used; I don’t think any other writer would venture to use it either, because in the art of writing, there is nothing worse than beginning with a prediction. To make predictions about human beings and society is to court disaster; it is generally accepted that, the relevant factors and circumstances being highly interconnected and changeable, to state one’s expectations about what may happen is to risk one’s reputation and one’s standing as a scholar. But things are different in this case; I am more certain this time than I have ever been before, or am likely to be in the future. What happened in Alexandria in recent weeks held no surprises for me, except for the identity of the person who attacked churchgoers with his two swords, the identities of the victims and the fact that it took place in Alexandria. I wasn’t expecting any of these details, nor did I know anything about the time or place or the people involved, yet I knew that some sort of ‘sectarian strife’ was going to occur. What I can predict now, before the end of the first paragraph of this article, is that what happened in Alexandria will happen again. This prediction cannot fail to come true, because we have not done, nor will we do, anything different from what we are used to doing in all cases of sectarian strife; therefore, there is no reason to be surprised when the entire situation repeats itself, even though the time, the place, the people involved, and the other details are different.
The certainty of this prediction does not reflect any lack of demonstrations attended by well-intentioned people carrying crescent moons and crosses together, or any shortage of attempts by intellectuals to raise people’s awareness of the rules of citizenship. It is a realistic expectation because the nation has undergone a structural change; it has become a one-dimensional nation, producing only different sorts of bigotry and aggressive behaviour. The most dangerous aspect of this transformation is that is has taken place under the gaze of the government, the political parties (both within and outside the opposition) and the civil society organisations (liberal and otherwise), and that none of them has been able to have the slightest effect on it. This doesn’t mean that what has gone wrong can no longer be set right; on the contrary, it seems to me that we can still return to the normal course of Egyptian patriotism and citizenship, but that we lack the courage and the will to make this happen.
Unstable Nation
15 July 2006
by Ibrahim Eissa (إبراهيم عيسى)
Published in the 19 April 2006 issue of Al-Dustur (الدستور), Egypt
Original title: وطن المختل!
(For background on the topic of this article, please see Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt.)
It’s a disaster when the greatest victory for Muslims in Egypt is a Christian teenage girl’s announcement that she’s converting to Islam.
A girl’s conversion, or a [Coptic] woman’s attempt to divorce her husband [by converting to Islam], is widely praised. Then there is strong support and great rejoicing, as if we had invaded Europe with our science and our exports, as if we had invented a cure for hepatitis C, or discovered an equation in physics that was going to change science and the world, as if we had defeated Israel. Indeed, there are enthusiastic young people campaigning for the sake of that woman or that girl, as if they were doing battle alongside the prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), while preaching inane, repugnant sectarian hate. The abundant, worthless sectarian media bring us this sort of news every day, expressing feelings of joy and nourishing feelings of malicious glee. It’s a disaster when Muslims demonstrate not to end the tyranny of the State, or to bring to justice the corrupt officials and powerful crooks who are robbing our country, but when instead, a village is shaken or a whole town is up in arms because Christians were contemplating, planning or beginning the construction of an additional room in a church, or the installation of a bell on a wall, as if the very existence of Islam was in danger and the whole Muslim world was facing disaster. Therefore thousands of people set out to demolish the church, or beat up the Christians, as if the building of a church was a defeat for Islam and a victory for Christianity, a reason for a holy war!
by Ayman El-Sayyad (أيمن الصياد)
Published in the May 2006 issue of Weghat Nazar (وجهات نظر), Egypt
Original title: سيف القوة.. وميزان العدل: « المواطن » يحمل السكين
(For background on the topic of this article, please see Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt.)
It doesn’t matter at all whether the ‘citizen’ who appears in this picture holding a knife in front of a church in Alexandria is a Muslim or a Copt. Nor does it matter what his full name is, or where he lives, or what his ‘national’ ID card number is, all of which belongs to the category of details that may interest the authorities responsible for criminal or legal investigations, or ‘people’s moral sensibilities’.
What matters is that this ‘citizen’ who went out into the street, called to battle, holding a knife, isn’t a member of an extremist organisation that targets members of the other religion, as was sometimes the case before 1999. On the contrary, he is an ordinary ‘citizen’ who is absolutely convinced (and this is the core of the problem) that he cannot defend himself, or obtain what he ‘imagines’ he is entitled to, except by force and violence — and the knife.
How did we get here?
