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!
So here’s a Muslim citizen, who’s unemployed and doesn’t have enough to eat, and who — instead of standing up to the State that deprives him of his rights, instead of confronting his corrupt, oppressive government, which robs and plunders him — focuses all his hatred and aggression on his Christian neighbour, or on Faltas Ibn El Qasis [a whimsical Christian-sounding name used to refer to any hypothetical Christian], that kid who lives on the corner. And here’s a citizen, corrupt from head to toe, and yet the only thing that keeps him busy is proving that Christians are infidels and will go to hell. And here’s a girl, spoilt rotten, who never once prayed in her life, and who nevertheless can’t stand eating in a Christian’s house. Or here’s a police officer who tortures political prisoners, cooks members of Islamist groups with electric current, brutally attacks members of the Muslim Brotherhood, kills inmates in prison camps, and yet talks about the infidel Christians and the Copts who ought to be burnt. (Someone who was in the latest group of political prisoners told me that a State Security officer was torturing them in the most vile, despicable manner, and when the call to the afternoon prayer was heard, the officer shouted at him, “Get up, you son of a bitch, and lead us in the prayer!” So he prayed, and the officer prayed behind him with the policemen!) And here’s a corrupt official, swimming in a sea of bribes, theft and extortion, who criticises and attacks the Christians who have become wealthy and influential. And here’s a thug whose knowledge of religion is limited to the curses he uses in fights, and who nevertheless thinks that Christians’ voices have been getting too loud in this country, that they should keep to their place. And in schools, among university students, in government agencies, in clubs and elite gatherings, in bus stations and TV stations, in houses of worship and publishing houses, in sensitive areas of government and completely insensitive ones, you’ll find this climate of sectarian aggressiveness against Copts. Thus Copts have accumulated feelings of hate and rejection, they feel oppressed, so they’ve exchanged hate for hate, hostility for hostility, bigotry for bigotry.
What’s going on?
Sectarianism is prevalent in Egypt, and expresses itself from time to time, in different situations, through different disasters, through a violent event or incident that gives vent to a latent, bloodthirsty hatred that appears and disappears yet remains fully present.
There is a climate of sectarianism based on steadily escalating hatred between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, a feverish tension, a repressed conflict, that flares up suddenly, but lurks most of the time under the skin, in the depths of people’s minds and hearts, burning ever more fiercely, feeding on the culture of hate and aggressiveness propagated every day in mosques and churches, on television and in newspapers.
This isn’t a matter of a few infiltrators, or foreign hands, or a few bigots on either side, or a few agitators stirring up conflict, contrary to the analyses offered by those who have stuck their heads in the sand like ostriches. It’s a matter of the silently spreading climate of sectarian conflict in which we now live (or die), whose manifestations appear clearly every day, in incidents of murder and arson making their way from Upper Egypt to the north, to Alexandria. A sectarian incident can occur at any time, for any reason, because of a woman, or a toilet, or a church opposite a mosque, or a Muslim boy still wet behind the ears who falls in love with a spoilt Christian girl. Blood is spilt and innocents die for the sake of such ludicrous, trifling matters, and for the sake of matters even more trivial and inane.
Why has our society turned into a loathsome society full of sectarian hatred? Christians, why is all this in our hearts?
1. I think Egyptians’ souls are full of a sense of individual and social defeat, a sense that our society has been defeated by the Western world, which seems to excel at everything and to own everything. How can Egyptian society feel that it’s better and more virtuous than someone else? The Egyptian citizen also feels defeated by his government, which deprives him of everything, and oppresses him and impoverishes him, and he can’t do anything about this or resist it in any way, so he surrenders to financial defeat and to the defeat of his civilisation. Still, he needs to maintain his dignity and sense of superiority. When a manager picks on an employee and laughs at him, the employee might then go and pick on his wife, and beat her, so he can feel powerful. And then what does she do but go and pick on her children and beat them in their turn, so that she, too, can feel superior and powerful, and maybe she’ll inflict a penalty on one of them arbitrarily, as a protest against her own humiliation and weakness. Trapped in the same sort of vicious circle, Egyptian society feels defeated and picks on the Copts, turning its aggression and hate against them, so it can feel that it’s better than someone. Thus, even though we’re humiliated and worthless, at least we can think we’re better than the Copts, who are this, that, and the other thing. Instead of facing the reality of my situation and of my own weakness, I make myself feel strong at the expense of the weak, I curse them and their parents, because I want to feel superior in order to shore up my dignity.
2. I think that the prevalence of a kind of fake, empty piety in the Egyptian soul is also responsible for the spread of hate and aggressiveness between Muslims and Copts. The prevailing form of piety is concerned only with the formalities and superficial appearances of religion, such as a gold pendant representing the Koran or a crucifix on a necklace. In a startlingly large section of the Egyptian population, religion is nothing more than rituals and formalities, amulets and muttered prayers. This shallow religiousness is based on the display of piety rather than on the practice of piety. Sincerity in prayer isn’t measured by the thickness of the callus on one’s forehead, and abstinence from iniquity and sin isn’t measured by whether one fasts on Mondays and Thursdays, and the practice of Muslim values isn’t measured by whether one makes a show of loving the Prophet by praying for him after every other sentence. The empty piety of appearances always aims for confrontation with opposing, competing appearances. Thus the superficially pious Muslim inevitably hates the sight of the crucifix, is annoyed by the priest’s clothes, opposes the construction of a church in his neighbourhood or street, or raises hundreds of thousands of pounds to build a mosque opposite an old church. Buildings facing buildings, appearances facing appearances.
3. I think (no, I’m sure) that the hypocrisy that’s prevalent in Egypt is a major factor in the climate of sectarianism and in the outbreak of sectarian strife. I have in mind the hypocrisy manifested when a corrupt official covers up his corruption by making an exaggerated display of piety and faith. In order to compensate for his sins, for his extortion, bribery and theft, he gives alms and displays his piety to the point of exaggeration, vents his wrath on Christians, defames Copts. Experience has taught us that the people who talk the most about honour are thieves, that the ones who make the biggest show of praying and praising God are swindlers, that the ones who give alms most conspicuously are drug dealers and female dancers, and that most of the people imprisoned for bribery and extortion are referred to as ‘Hagg So-and-so’ [an honorific title, implying that the person referred to has made the pilgrimage to Mecca]. Hypocrisy by means of ostentatious bigotry against Christians is a way of covering up errors and crimes, in search of possible forgiveness for undeniable sins. Thus you’ll find many people willing to donate a flat to a Christian girl who has converted to Islam, and an unemployed Christian suddenly finds a respectable job as soon as he announces that he has converted to Islam. And so on.
4. I think ignorance plays a fundamental role in the phenomenon of sectarian strife. Most people in Egypt get their religious culture via their ears, nose and throat rather than through reading and study. They pick it up by listening to Friday preachers, most of whom are actually ignorant, or from television and radio programmes and cassettes here and there, or via religious hearsay of the form “I’ve heard that…” or “A sheikh once said…” or “Someone told me…” that circulates orally from one person to another, and has no basis in scholarship, Islamic jurisprudence or history. People are losing the principles that come from authoritative reference works, and are becoming slaves to a single idea, to premature interpretations, simplified to the point of superficiality. Most Egyptians don’t make the slightest effort to attain true religious knowledge and culture, and are prisoners of what they’ve heard, what they like to listen to and what they understand. And it’s easy for an ignorant person to become an extremist and a fanatic.
5. I think the political void that Egyptians live in is one of the pillars of the sectarian fiasco that we have been living with lately. There is no political life in Egypt. People aren’t allowed to participate in politics. Our regime is Pharaonic and tyrannical, our government is oppressive and corrupt, our political parties are mediocre, vacuous, old and senile, student activism is forbidden in our universities, and students in our schools and universities are denied free and fair elections. Everything in Egypt is controlled by the president, or the president’s son, or the president’s party and its son. Elections are rigged and there is no hope for change, so people take refuge in mosques and churches, and instead of talking about politics — which is relative and worldly, and which we therefore can, indeed must, disagree about and debate — they talk about religion, which on the contrary is fixed and sacred. They replace opposition between political parties and ideas with opposition between religions: who is better and more virtuous, which of us will go to heaven and which of us will go to hell? People go into mosques and churches looking for spiritual satisfaction and a sense of belonging; then what starts as a matter of psychological cohesion develops, or rather deteriorates, becoming a matter of bigoted devotion, then zealotry, then extremism, then hate and aggression.
6. I think that the media in Egypt are sectarian, that education is extremist and lacks tolerance and openness, that the security apparatus is bigoted and fanatical. Thus Egypt is suffused with a culture of hatred of the Other, of people who are different from us, whether they’re Westerners, Egyptians of a different religion, or Muslims who follow a different school of Islamic jurisprudence. We think everyone is an infidel and a bastard except us: the Egyptian Copts, the crusading Americans, the dissolute Europeans, the heretical Shia, the Wahabi Saudis, the Bedouins from the Gulf, the Palestinians who sold their land, the Lebanese infidels, the Indians with their cows, the Japanese with their Buddha. None of them are better or more honourable or more virtuous than us, and nobody except us will go to heaven.
Therefore it’s natural, considering everything we see, that people become unstable. We’re all unstable, and every one of us is walking around with a saucepan on their head!
