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.
If we focus on some of what has taken place in Egypt in recent years, we notice a series of events that have established the importance of this problem, and the need to look for a solution based on a thorough study of the phenomenon of sectarianism in Egypt, of the extent of its roots in society and of the factors that have led to its appearance in an ethnically and intellectually united society such as ours, in order to deal with the roots of the problem, rather than taking the naïve approach adopted by the State’s media and administrative apparatus.
Our starting point, however, will not be the events of Ain Shams or El Zawia El Hamra [areas in Cairo] in the 1970s, because these events, despite their gravity, were to a great extent exaggerated, and linked to a limited phenomenon in Egyptian society, that of religious extremism and the political and security chaos that characterised that period, and from which Egypt extricated itself only by paying a heavy price.
The real starting point was in the 1990s, because of a number of political and social factors, including poverty and the return of political violence to Egypt, this time in a bloodier form which had an enormous effect on Egyptian society. Sectarian violence began to reflect a higher degree of planning and organisation, despite the state-run media’s continual attempts to deny its existence or at least contain its effects, while the government failed to play its role in controlling the situation and dealing with its causes.
This led to the first and second incidents in El Kosheh, and those surrounding the play I Was Blind, But Now I Can See. These events reflected some aspects of the picture. Between the incidents in El Kosheh, which developed against the background of the political violence taking place in Egypt during the 1990s, and the latest incident in Alexandria, there was a web of connections that passed through many stages, producing tensions that nearly developed into a real crisis, as in the case of the defrocked monk in Deir Al-Muharraq [in Assiut], or the case of Wafaa Constantine, the monk’s wife [translator’s note: actually a priest’s wife] in Beheira.
In all these cases, observers noted symptoms of a high degree of sectarian tension, which manifested itself in many ways, such as in the clashes between zealous young Copts and the police in front of the Abbassiya Cathedral [in Cairo] during the crisis concerning Wafaa Constantine in December 2004.
A Sectarian Crisis in Egypt?
On this level of analysis, we must distinguish between two important dimensions of the question “Is Egypt facing a sectarian crisis?” The first concerns the actual current situation in Egypt in terms of the extent to which this problem is ingrained in Egyptians’ minds. The second concerns the question of how real or urgent this problem is in Egypt on the political and on social levels, in terms of the attitudes and behaviour of ordinary Egyptian citizens and of the Egyptian state.
As for the first dimension, most studies that have been done on the state of religion and sectarianism in Egypt, whether by Egyptians — above all, the reports of the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, and the reports and books of the Hisham Mubarak Centre for Law — or by researchers from abroad, such the reports of research institutes and of the CIA, have found that Egyptian society is not by its nature a sectarian society. This is partly due to the lack of ethnic, national or denominational divisions among Egyptians, as well as the nature of Egyptian society since its appearance nearly six thousand years ago in this part of the world.
Even after the arrival of Islam in Egypt in the 7th century A.D., when Arab immigrants settled in different parts of Egypt, from Upper Egypt to the Eastern Desert and of course the Delta, Egypt did not experience this problem. Indeed, Islam solved some of the problems that Egypt’s Copts faced in the Roman Empire. Islam gradually became the religion of the majority of Egyptians, just as Arabic became the country’s main language. The arrival of the Arabs in Egypt did not cause any ethnic conflicts; instead, society was blended in the big Egyptian ‘melting pot’, such that Egyptian society, including the remaining Copts, adopted an Arab and Islamic identity.
Unlike other Arab societies, Egypt has not experienced, at any time in its history, sectarian problems that threatened the fabric of society. There have not even been the outward signs of any tendency towards discrimination between Muslims and Copts in Egypt.
As for the second dimension, which relates to the question of how real or urgent this problem is in Egypt, it may be said that sectarian tensions are indeed running high in Egyptian society. I can state confidently that neither Islam nor the Arab or Islamic identity are playing a role in the appearance of these tensions, which are usually stirred up by some of the Copts in Egypt.
This situation appeared as a result of a number of factors, but mainly because of the government’s social and political policies, as well as a series of relationships and interactions between Egypt and regional and international powers, specificially the Zionist entity [Israel] and the United States. On the domestic level, the State’s policies led to widespread poverty, political oppression, abuses of human rights, poor economic performance and a retreat from the social role of the State. Because of the weakness that the State has been suffering from in the past four decades, it was unable to get the evolution of society under control.
Political and social tension began to run high in Egypt against the background of the State’s reliance on the security services, and the oppression and mistreatment that it was meting out to its citizens, even on a microscopic level, when faced with any political or social demands, or any grievances concerning Egyptians’ standard of living. Ordinary Egyptian citizens looked for an outlet for their increasing exasperation with the State, for a way to give vent to the suppressed anger that they could not voice against an oppressive State armed to the teeth.
Among the important effects of this situation on society and politics, and also on security, are the escalation of political violence and the appearance of violence that has been categorised as sectarian violence in Egypt. During the 1970s, the State may sometimes have encouraged this, or at least disregarded it, for the sake of its own political interests.
A Conflict Between the Internal and the External
On the external level, the Egyptian government’s practices enabled the American-Zionist alliance to penetrate Egypt. After the rapprochement between the US and Egypt in the second half of the 1970s, and the signing of the Camp David protocols in 1978 and of the peace treaty with the Zionist entity in 1979, both the US and the Zionist entity began to exploit the mechanisms established by these agreements, in order to reach into the heart of Egyptian society and influence it on political, economic and social levels.
As a result, things have reached a point where the Egyptian economy has become linked to the American and Zionist economies by means of certain agreements, such as the QIZ [Qualified Industrial Zone agreement] and agreements on natural gas and commercial partnerships, in addition to the exploitation of the current economic liberalisation in the areas of media and communications, in order to penetrate to the heart of Egyptian intellectual life, in the absence of a comprehensive national cultural plan capable of filling the current void in intellectual and cultural policy. Likewise, some parts of Egyptian civil society, especially charities, have been placed under control, by means of projects run by the American embassy in Cairo, such as the Self-Help Program, which has reached even into Egyptian villages, i.e. into the heart of society. Similarly, the US has allowed itself to interfere in Egyptian domestic politics, in the name of human rights, political reform and democracy.
All this interference has taken place in accordance with the profound transformation that the US has brought about in international relations during the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. In 1993, the US set out, via the United Nations, an important new principle in international relations: that of interference in a state’s domestic politics in order to protect human rights.
This principle of interference was confirmed after the events of 11 September 2001, when the US decided that the use of military force was the most suitable immediate response to the events of this American ‘Black September’ [translator’s note: an allusion to September 1970 in Jordan], but that it was also important to look for the real reasons that led to the events of September and to formulate a long-term strategy in order to deal with them. And here appeared a very important weapon, which had shown itself to be astoundingly effective during the Cold War: the weapon of ideas and minds, which is based on the use of the media and the revolution in knowledge, communications and information, and is known as the war of words and ideas, or ‘soft power’. It was also important to establish some of the foundations of democracy and respect for human rights — by force, if necessary — in societies ruled by oppressive dictatorships in the Middle East, since the totalitarianism of the governments of this region is clearly one of the most important reasons for the appearance of groups that resort to political violence, and for their use of violence abroad, against Americans.
Thus the American and Zionist presence in Egypt has become clear, even on a security level. The American and Zionist tinkering with the deep-rooted constants of Egyptian society has gradually increased and become more noticeable in recent times. Pressure has been put on Islamist currents in the interest of liberal currents, and religion and its values have been marginalised. Political and material assistance has been given mainly to certain figures and symbols whose aims are dubious, such as secularists and representatives of the Coptic diaspora. Insistent demands are put forth on behalf of groups that, according to the US, are marginalised in Egypt and whose rights are insufficiently protected, whether these groups have a social identity such as the peoples of Nubia, or the Bedouins of the Sinai and the Eastern and Western deserts, or an ideological or sectarian identity such as the Shia (including the Bahai) and the Copts.
It is worth noting that none of these groups, except for the Copts, represent more than one or two percent of the Egyptian population. According to the available statistics, there are between seven and ten million Copts in Egypt, or somewhat more than ten percent of the population, but Copts have captured 65% of the highly-paid technical jobs, e.g. in pharmacy and medicine, and a similar share of Egypt’s commercial activity and industrial installations. The two biggest companies in two of the most important areas of the Egyptian economy are owned by Coptic brothers: the automobile manufacturer Ghubur and the telecommunications company Orascom Telecom, which owns Mobinil, one of the two companies that have an official monopoly on the country’s mobile phone networks.
The State has lately focused on developing media, administrative and political policies in order to address some of the complaints of Copts and other minorities in Egypt. At the end of 2005, a national directive was announced, giving regional governors ‘the powers of the Egyptian president’ in matters concerning the construction of churches. Our Coptic brothers have been given more space in television dramas, and several children’s television series have been produced showing the diverse groups that make up Egyptian society, including Nubians in the cartoon Bakkaar, and Copts in the programme Alam Simsim [Sesame’s World]. Political discourse and the media have stressed the concept of full citizenship for all Egyptians and the idea that all citizens are equal before the law. Perhaps the recent judgement in favour of the Bahai couple clarifies the nature of the State’s policy in this regard.
That is, from this point of view, and in terms of the historical, social and political truths summarised here, we cannot say that Egypt is in general suffering from a sectarian crisis. However, trickery from outside Egypt is being used in a determined effort to create this problem, and the policies of the Egyptian regime are facilitating this effort.
Among these policies is something permitted by the current regime from time to time, in accordance with the views of some of its followers: a certain amount of mass domestic violence, which is controlled by the state despite appearances, and which serves some of the regime’s objectives, such as allowing the masses to vent their frustrations and their discontent, in the streets, in a chaotic fashion, instead directing their anger at the regime itself. They are not allowed to organise themselves in order to confront the regime’s misdeeds, which range from violations of human rights to Egypt’s current economic and social weakness. The poverty rate has risen to encompass two thirds of the population. The number of requests for emigration exceeds fifty thousand people per year, who mainly go to the West, especially Canada, the US and the Zionist entity, taking with them some of the skills that Egypt badly needs.
The State uses these phenomena — mass violence which turns sectarian in some cases — to justify its continued application of the Emergency Law, the iron grip of the security services and of martial law, under the oppressive weight of the exploitation of slogans such as ‘securing the domestic front’, as a way of protecting the regime and its profits.
As a result of the mishandling of this issue, and in particular the arbitrariness that has characterised the State’s approach to minority issues, these policies have been directed merely at removing excuses for complaints from abroad (and in particular from the US), without attending to the feelings of the Muslim majority. For example, the recent judgement concerning the Bahai faith aroused the resentment of many people in Islamic circles. Similarly, the State (as reports have recently indicated and as documents have confirmed), and its official Islamic institution, Al-Azhar, are heading towards allowing Christian missionary activity in Egypt; this created a storm of opposition in the Egyptian Parliament and in the university and mosque of Al-Azhar, after the revelation of a document signed by Dr. Muhammad Said Tantawi, Sheikh of Al-Azhar Mosque, permitting Christian missionary activity in Egypt.
A Foreign Conspiracy
Of course, Egypt is an important centre of power in the Arab and Muslim worlds, and removing Egypt — as happened to Iraq — from the Arab and Muslim power equation is a basic and permanent goal of the colonial powers in the region, whatever their identity.
The Zionist-American identity currently represents the basic approach of the new wave of colonialism in the Arab and Muslim world. In general, as shown by a number of important Zionist documents, the biggest challenge facing the security of the Zionist nation is the large Arab states that play a strong, central role in the region. In order, these are Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Sudan and Algeria.
The dismemberment of these states into weak statelets, fighting over water, resources, borders, etc., guarantees that the Zionist entity will not be the smallest or weakest in the region, and on the contrary makes it into the biggest power and the principal state in the Middle East.
One of these documents is an article entitled ‘A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties’, which appeared on pages 50-51 of the February 1982 issue of Kivunim, a magazine published in Jerusalem by the World Zionist Organization. It states: ‘The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel’s primary target on the Eastern front in the short run’ [translator’s note: the English translation linked above reads ‘long run’]. It also states: ‘Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as the next candidate for Israel’s targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel…. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi‘ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north.’ Furthermore, ‘Lebanon’s total dissolution into five provinces serves as a precedent for the entire Arab world including Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the Arabian peninsula….’ These statements are very important, because they are now being put into practice in full, lending credibility to the previous assertion that the Zionist entity’s goal is the dissolution of the large Arab states into tiny statelets.
The article goes over the situation in a large number of Arab countries. The sectarian dimension, and internal ethnic and political divisions, are particularly important in the Zionist perspective and in the American and Zionist approach to this issue [i.e. the fragmentation of Arab states], because sectarianism and ethnicity, when they become a problem, are the keys to any operation aimed at partitioning states. The article referred to above proposes taking the same approach to Egypt.
It notes, first, the sectarian and social map of Egypt: ‘In Egypt there is a Sunni Muslim majority facing a large minority of Christians which is dominant in upper Egypt,’ and adds, ‘even Sadat, in his speech on 8 May 1980, expressed the fear that they’ — i.e. our Christian brothers — ‘will want a state of their own, something like a “second” Christian Lebanon in Egypt.’
The article also says that poverty, unemployment and overpopulation in Egypt will be key factors in the rise of violent sectarianism, in a way that may give the Jewish plans a strong impetus. In this regard, the article says: ‘Millions are on the verge of famine, half the labor force is unemployed, and housing is scarce in this most densely populated area of the world. Except for the army, there is not a single department operating efficiently and the state is in a permanent state of bankruptcy and depends entirely on American foreign assistance granted since the peace.’
The article continues its evaluation of the situation in Egypt as follows: ‘Egypt, in its present domestic political picture, is already a corpse, all the more so if we take into account’ — in the author’s opinion — ‘the growing Muslim-Christian rift. Breaking Egypt down territorially into distinct geographical regions is the political aim of Israel in the 1980s on its Western front.’ Present circumstances clearly indicate that the fulfillment of this aim has been extended beyond the 1980s.
In its closing paragraphs, the article states: ‘If Egypt is divided and torn apart into many foci of authority, as opposed to its current situation, it will not represent any threat to Israel. [Translator’s note: the italicised text in the previous sentence is not present in the English translation of the article.] This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today. [Translator’s note: in the English translation of the article, the previous sentence occurs in a subsequent paragraph, in which it refers to the dissolution of all Arab states, including Egypt.] If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt. The vision of a Christian Coptic State in Upper Egypt alongside a number of weak statelets with very localized power and without a centralized government as to date, is the key to this historical development.’ Thus we can now see what has been called the recent sectarian incidents in Egypt in a different light.
Egypt and the Religious Phenomenon?
A number of Egyptian experts on strategy, including academics from the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, say that Egypt has now reached the point where it is facing an intensely complex religious phenomenon, both Muslim and Coptic, such that the practice of religion has been transformed from an ethical system with roots and tributaries as well as many social effects, into real political horizons, via Islamist movements, as well as via the Coptic Orthodox church itself, ever since Pope Shenouda III assumed responsibility for the Coptic papacy in Alexandria, which reigns over the world’s Copts, and the patriarchate of the See of St. Mark, the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egypt, succeeding Pope Cyril VI [in 1971].
In the context of foreign interference in Egypt, including the issue of minorities, an open conflict appeared between the Coptic Church on one hand, and a number of organisations representing the Coptic diaspora on the other hand, particularly the U.S. Copts Association, founded by the engineer Michael Meunier in 1996, and organisations founded by figures such as the lawyer Adly Abadir Youssef. This conflict concerns the question as to who has priority in speaking for Egypt’s Copts, expressing their problems and striving to solve those problems within and outside Egypt. This issue has caused a split within the Coptic diaspora itself.
The initiatives of Meunier and Abadir and their followers created several problems in Egypt, after even the official Coptic religious institution accused them of disloyalty. This naturally had repercussions for Copts in Egypt, after some circles — perhaps intentionally, in order to create sectarian problems that did not previously exist in Egypt, at least not to any great extent — confused the positions of the Coptic diaspora with those of Egyptian Copts.
Thus the Coptic diaspora’s conferences, which have been held both in Washington and Cairo during the past twenty months, have been incorrectly interpreted in some Islamic circles in Egypt, and judgements about these conferences, which in reality are part of a foreign agenda, have been generalised to include all the Copts in Egypt.
Some aspects of the picture presented by the yearly report The State of Religion in Egypt, published by the Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, point to a state of institutional, rather than doctrinal, religious polarisation. In other words, Egyptian society, with its Christian and Muslim components, is not experiencing sectarian polarisation on a doctrinal and intellectual level, but is experiencing this polarisation in the effect of Islamic and Christian religious institutions on their followers. This seems clearer in what for some time has been called Islamist organisations, such as al-jama‘at al-’islamiya and Islamic Jihad. In the context of Coptic Christianity in Egypt, the Coptic Church has become the main refuge for Copts in all matters concerning their public and private affairs, including participation in politics and elections.
The incidents of individual sectarian violence that occur in Egypt from time to time reveal a number of political and social issues — I would not say problems — faced by Egyptian Copts in their everyday life, at work, in their families and in society.
The pressure of these issues has been increased by the problems — yes, problems — that have arisen from the Egyptian Orthodox Church’s expansion overseas, to support Coptic Orthodox Christianity abroad and to provide pastoral services to its followers via the clergy. This expansion has led to the appearance of new generations of Christians within the Coptic diaspora who have not absorbed Egyptian culture, because they no longer need to return to their homeland to interact with the mother church; it has gone to them instead. A group of figures have appeared, with responsibility for pastoral services abroad, whose approach is different from what Egyptians, and even Copts, are accustomed to in representatives of the Church.
The Position of the Muslim Brotherhood
Under no circumstances could one exclude a considerable social and political force and an Islamic authority such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt from the discussion on the sectarian issue in Egypt. Nor is it conceivable to encompass the Muslim Brotherhood’s position on Copts in Egypt, and its copious literature on this subject, in the limited scope of this article.
However, in general, the position of the Muslim Brotherhood, as a social and political group that is guided in all things by Islam and its teachings, recognises the right of Egyptian Copts to full citizenship. The Brotherhood believes that Copts are ‘partners in a single nation’, and does not discriminate between them and Muslims on the basis of their identity. This position rests on a complete and enlightened system of Islamic jurisprudence, which takes its model in this regard from true religion and from the venerable forefathers [of Islam].
The Muslim Brotherhood’s General Guide, Muhammad Mahdi ’Akif, has expressed this position on more than one occasion. Ever since the martyred Imam Hassan El-Banna [who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928] began the Brotherhood’s missionary work, the subject of the Copts has occupied an important place in the thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood’s theorists. Perhaps the best reply to the official campaign of disinformation surrounding the Muslim Brotherhood’s position on the Copts is what occurs in practice. In his latest interview on the web site Ikhwan On Line, the Brotherhood’s General Guide stated that during the [1948-49] Palestinian war, his driver was a Copt, and that his closest friend during that period, Albert Tadrus, was also a Copt.
Through the important theoretical points set out by Banna (may he rest in peace) and a number of other figures of the Brotherhood’s missionary work, we can emphasise two fundamental aspects of the Brotherhood’s position on the sectarian and Coptic issue in Egypt:
- The Brotherhood rejects sectarianism in any form and recognises the three revealed religions that Islam speaks of [Judaism, Christianity and Islam], according to the authority of religion.
- Citizenship is the context in which the Brotherhood views the Copts in Egypt.
That is a summary of the picture; it is very far from the image spread by the official media, and by some circles that are opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood, concerning the Brotherhood’s position on what may be the most important issue in the history of political and social issues in Egypt.
What the foreign media conceive of as a ‘sectarian crisis’ in Egypt is a fabricated crisis, without roots in Egyptian society’s religious, ethical or intellectual components, whether Muslim or Christian. This issue has been stirred up from abroad in order to reach a perfectly clear set of objectives. What is required of all religious, political and media organisations, as well as state and non-governmental institutions, is to look for a formula acceptable to all parties in Egypt, in order to clarify some aspects of the preceding picture, and to make a long-term plan to undo the damage that this foreign plot has done to a domestic picture that once had no equal in the world: that of a pious and united people.
