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.

Unstable Nation

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.

One-Dimensional People

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.

(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.

There is a fundamental issue that merits our attention concerning the attacks on churches in Alexandria.

It has frequently been mentioned that the person who attacked the worshippers was raving: ‘No to defamation of the Prophet!’ This means that in his mind, there was something like a direct link between, on one hand, a Danish newspaper’s recent affronts to Islam and to its religious symbols, and on the other hand, Egyptian Christians, his fellow citizens, who had absolutely nothing to do with those acts, and who indeed condemned them on many levels. The question is, how did this confusion come about in that man’s mind? Is a similar confusion widespread among Egyptian Muslims?

It seems to me that this complex phenomenon is reverberating on many levels in Egyptian society. Many Muslims, as a result of decades of sectarianism and segregation, believe that Egyptian Christians are part of the Christian world at best, and part of the global Christian plot against Islam and Muslims at worst. In this they reflect the incessant talk of certain media outlets about this plot and about the growing power of Copts abroad, as well as illusions and rumours that have been repeated for years about a Coptic plan for political separation.

The average person is confused, and some media outlets are playing a role in increasing this confusion, by promoting stories that deepen the sectarian crisis between Muslims and Christians. The media’s role should be to inform, enlighten and provide information freely, but some media outlets are imitating street culture and the instinctive political thinking that is prevalent among the masses, the lack of a critical attitude towards phenomena, in an attempt to increase the circulation of a newspaper or the number of viewers of a satellite television channel.

Anyone who has read the newspapers in recent months has seen articles provoking Muslims on the pretext that they are being persecuted, even though they are in the majority, and telling them clearly that Christians — even though they are in the minority — are better off in terms of wealth and protection. This discourse, which announces disaster for Muslims, faces an opposing Coptic discourse that continuously talks about the many problems that Copts have been facing for decades. Thus Muslims are suffering from a sham injustice, while Copts are suffering from sectarian tension that creates an obstacle to their participation in society. These two feelings produce a fertile ground for any sectarian incident. Such incidents reveal the depth of frustration, and the lack of clear perceptions of one another, among the children of our single nation.

(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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

(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.

In order to clarify this situation, we must trace it backwards from the end. The basis of the concept of citizenship isn’t simply that a group of citizens, equal in rights and duties, have come together to form a nation — Egypt in this case — but also that they are linked together by a multiplicity of ties. Some of these are political (being Egyptian, for example), some are economic (the exchange of goods and services) and some are social, such as relations between neighbours and colleagues, or even relations of mutual esteem based on good humour. These are the dimensions that come to mind now, but careful researchers will discover other, far greater dimensions. At the moment when two Egyptians, a Muslim and a Christian, meet each other, these dimensions immediately appear, just as other dimensions appear between members of a family, who are linked by kinship and by their shared way of life.

All these dimensions have now come to an end in Egypt. Lest I be accused of exaggeration, let me add that Egypt is headed for ruin. What has happened in Egypt during the past four decades has gradually done away with all these dimensions, and emphasised a single dimension, specifically the Islamic dimension, which has become the basic factor that determines all social relations. This transformation has taken place via a process that has sometimes been planned, sometimes unplanned, sometimes entirely spontaneous. The result is that nothing remains of individuals but a single dimension, associated with a single aspect of their identity and of their social, political and economic relationships. This process, which casts individuals in a certain mould, begins with the use of public space, and ends up taking over the citizen’s private space, such that the individual is no longer an Egyptian citizen, but simply a Muslim who belongs to the vast community of Muslims. When the General Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood said “To hell with Egypt,” he crowned this tendency, which abolishes geographical citizenship connected to a nation with its borders and its history, and replaces it with religious citizenship based on partnership with people in Malaysia rather than with the inhabitants of the neighbourhood of Shoubra [in Cairo].

It is very difficult to establish when this process started, but it may have been the moment when it was decided that every mosque in Egypt would broadcast its prayers over loudspeakers at high volume, piercing public space, even though the muezzin’s voice, calling Muslims to prayer, had been sufficient for fourteen hundred years of Islamic history. When the State disregarded this, on the grounds that it was an unimportant matter, a simple expression of Egyptians’ pious nature, religious one-upmanship became inevitable, and it became necessary to deprive Muslims of their responsibility for knowing when it is time to pray, by broadcasting the call to prayer on all television and radio stations. The State, which often joined in with its own programmes, then found it necessary to seek out the opinions of the Mufti [Egypt’s most senior Islamic jurist] and Dar al-Ifta [the Islamic authority responsible for issuing religious edicts] on every subject: on war and peace, on the hereafter and the here-and-now, on administration and decoration. There was really no need for unknown groups to line all of Egypt’s main roads with signs displaying religious expressions, advice, and the 99 names of God. It was not long before this practice was extended to all the public squares in Egypt. According to my limited observations, the concentration of these signs was higher in Alexandria than in any other Egyptian city.

While this was going on in the streets, which were also being blocked [by crowds of worshippers outside full mosques] during the Friday prayers, a process was taking place, in all governmental agencies and national institutions without exception, that moulded citizens so as to rid them of all the dimensions that had governed their behaviour. At first, there was resistance to the appearance of mosques in these institutions, and prayers were therefore organised in front of lifts and stairwells instead. The aim was, on one hand, to obstruct movement and work, and on the other hand to make a kind of political statement, giving a bad reputation to anyone who thought that, except at the time of Friday prayers [at the mosque], they could pray by themselves. It was not long before these gatherings turned into religious and social movements that held readings from the Koran and organised pilgrimages to Mecca. What happened in government institutions also took place, in different ways, in residential areas. Although mosques were already to be found everywhere, the appearance of even more mosques, in every green space, was inevitable. After a short time, the new mosques and prayer rooms became places of religious instruction given by groups that cropped up specifically for this purpose.

All this might just have been an expression of the piety for which Egyptians are known, but this time, it was not just a matter of piety, but rather training in one-dimensionality. Children taking classes in Islamic jurisprudence are told to separate themselves from their Christian peers and not to play with them. There are people who, when discussing health, state right away that they prefer the Christian doctor, but who also discriminate against the Christian grocer, and so on. Along with flare-ups in the regional and international situation, with Egyptian workers returning from the Gulf wearing short white robes, with the spread of salafi beards and other such symbols, the division between Egyptians has grown in different ways. Religion has become the basic factor that determines social relations in Egypt. Even among Muslims, most of the dimensions related to family, neighbourhood, citizenship, profession, market, culture and learning have disappeared, and the only dimension that still forges social relations, friendships and mutually beneficial exchanges is the religious dimension. This has created a psychological barrier between women who wear the hijab and those who don’t, between those who wear the gallabiya [a traditional robe worn by men] and those who don’t.

The one-dimensional person is the one who runs toward a church, carrying two swords, in order to kill Egyptians who are performing Easter prayers. If we are to believe that he was suffering from mental instability, it must have been a special kind of instability, which began with his intense isolation and was shaped by a hostile orientation towards Christians in particular. During the past few weeks and months, the culture of the single dimension has been focused on the unfortunate Danish cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. From amongst all the many possible ways of dealing with this offence, the isolationist mentality seized upon a single formula, which appeared on all the billboards: “O Messenger of God, I would sacrifice my father and mother for you.” Egyptians do not commonly use this expression in contemporary speech; it came directly from the first century AH [622-718 AD], and naturally led to the carrying of swords — not, fortunately, to the carrying of rifles or pistols — and to attacks on those who the perpetrator believed were an extension of the Danes, from whom he had long since dissociated himself.

This infernal mechanism, which has become prevalent in our society in the past few decades, could not fail to produce an opposing infernal mechanism among Christians, which has driven them in the direction of one-dimensionality in Christianity. Although this mostly took place inside churches, rather than in the streets as it did among Muslims, a decrease in the interaction between Muslims and Christians soon divided a nation that has not often known division in its history.

All this is the essence of the problem. Christians certainly have other legitimate grievances, concerning housing, employment in the civil service, and the political system, but these well-known problems are perhaps not commensurable with the greater problem stemming from the one-dimensional individual, isolated and angry with his lot in life and his position in the world. Thus the violence will be repeated, and the disasters will multiply, because we have stopped developing all the other dimensions that make up a balanced personality, and cases of mental instability are therefore on the increase.

(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!

(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?

First, we must recognise that we live in a state of tension (social and not merely sectarian tension) that Central Security’s truncheons will not calm, and that their tear gas, however thick it becomes, will not hide.

Second, we must recognise that a state of high tension, though we may deny it, is now under everyone’s skin, and that a knife, though we may ignore it, is now close to everyone’s hand.

Third, we should worry when we observe that some people don’t realise, or perhaps don’t want to believe, that the powder keg is now closer to igniting than we think, closer than at any time in the past. As if no one wants to see the fire under the ashes. Even though the Central Security revolt in 1986, in case we had forgotten — and we must remember — came without any warning, with no need for any organisation, cadres or ‘first press release’. But at the end of the day, or at the end of the ‘surprise’, they drove tanks into the streets and fear into our souls.

***

How did we get here?

Doesn’t this picture, and this gleaming knife, remind you of a similar picture, published here only a few months ago (last September), showing the conspicuous, unprecedented thuggery that occurred outside the polling stations [during the parliamentary elections]?

At the time, everyone resorted to violence. Perhaps. But the State, whether it used violence, or colluded in it, or turned a blind eye to it — (which it did), is the main culprit.

At the time, those who chose to resort to ‘truncheons and knives’ in order to guarantee their majority didn’t realise how dangerous it is for society to accept the idea that force or violence is the ‘only’ way to reach one’s aims (whether they be good or bad).

At the time, some of them didn’t reflect a great deal before declaring, in the ‘official’ press, that the legal verdicts issued on the eve of the elections ‘would not be taken into consideration’. Just like that! They didn’t realise how dangerous it is for ordinary citizens to despair of being able to have recourse to litigation, ‘as a peaceful means of resolving conflicts’. Nor did they realise that when the judiciary’s hands are tied to keep it from protecting the victims of injustice, everyone’s security is threatened, and the very concept of the State is in danger.

At the time, for the sake of narrow electoral calculations, some people weren’t ashamed to spread a state of ‘panic’ among this country’s Copts after a number of Islamists won seats in Parliament via the ballot box. Even the ruling party, which, since it has a majority, is supposed to be responsible for the whole fabric of society, seemed at the time as if it had assigned the sacred mission of ‘spreading panic’ to some of its favourite journalists.

At the time, we warned against pushing Copts towards political one-upmanship, against constantly playing on the string of fear, the string that spreads panic, in whose mounting, dissonant echoes some people seemed to be calling on every ‘citizen’ to put a knife under his pillow, expectantly, as a precaution.

At the time, again for the sake of shortsighted security calculations, ‘the decision-makers’ thwarted more than one attempt (some, as it happened, among Alexandrians) to promote mutual understanding between Muslims and Copts on the basis of the concept of ‘citizenship’, on the initiative of those newcomers in Parliament whose election had irritated some people. These attempts, had they reached completion, would have tended to bring about a ‘better’ climate than the suffocating, oppressive atmosphere in which the streets of that calm northern seaside town were crowded with the ready, the angry… and the knife-wielding.

***

Why did we get here?

Those who believe that what happened in Alexandria was ‘just a sectarian matter’ are mistaken, as are those who see the pictures of the drawn knives, in front of the Saints Church, as disconnected from the overall political scene, which is haunted by violence and ‘despair’.

Perhaps we are all responsible, in one way or another, for the climate of drawn knives. But we repeat: by definition, the State — whether it was involved, or colluded, or turned a blind eye, ‘flaunting its power, denying its sins out of pride’ — is still the main culprit. Otherwise, how can we describe these official, ‘crude’ battles with judges, journalists, students and professionals in various syndicates? How can we describe what emerged in the ‘official’ report of the Human Rights Council concerning citizens arrested and detained without any legal basis, confirmed cases of torture, and legal verdicts that those in power have ignored, considering them ‘mere ink on paper’?

How can we describe the closing of the Alexandria University faculty club with chains, to keep the faculty from convening their general meeting, even though the judiciary ruled that the meeting was legal? Is that not thuggery, a ‘knife’ that the State, or some of its agencies, is brandishing in the faces of academics?

And after all this — or rather in the midst of it — how can we describe the opening of an investigation concerning ‘renowned’ court judges, who are accused not of bribery, or profiteering, or influence-peddling, but rather of calling for the truth to be uncovered about what happened in the last parliamentary elections? Isn’t a judge’s mission, by definition, to uncover the truth?

Why, in our Egypt, which has known the concept of the State for thousands of years, has the sword of power risen above the scales of justice?

Here we are, brandishing the ‘knife’ of intimidation in the judges’ faces. And though some of us may rejoice in the immediate consequences, the very concept of the State, which by definition is based on ‘law and order’ and thus on ‘respect for the law and its guardians’, will be the first victim.

***

So the ‘sword of power’ may triumph. Because of its absolute power over the ‘scales of justice’, which are the judges’ only weapon, the regime maintains a firm grip on this sword. But the final result will be much more dangerous than the shortsighted believe: we will all come out losers. For when it is clear to everyone that ‘force is above justice’, people will seek to secure their rights and their safety with knives, chains and swords.

Please reflect carefully on this picture.