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?
