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February 18, 2011
Minorities see change in Egypt
Tahrir Square demonstrations include Christians.
DAVID E. MILLER THE MEDIA LINE
For Egyptian Christians, a feeling of persecution has given way to cautious optimism as signs of fraternity marked the demonstrations in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, when the protest reached the beginning of a third week earlier this month.
On Sunday, Feb. 6, a group of Coptic demonstrators held mass at the square, surrounded by clerics from Al-Azhar, Egypt’s leading Islamic academy. Muslims and Christians joined voices in chanting the Lord’s Prayer.
“Muslims chanting the Lord’s Prayer was one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever seen,” said Joseph Fahim, a Coptic Egyptian journalist who took part in the demonstration. “That was a utopian vision of Egypt. In Tahrir, everybody just seems nicer.”
Before widespread demonstrations broke out Jan. 25, Christian-Muslim relations in the country seemed at an all time low. Twenty-three worshippers lost their lives in an Alexandria church on New Year’s Eve in a suicide bombing, blamed by the government on a Gaza-based jihadist organization. Ten days later, an off-duty police officer opened fire on a group of Coptic Christians on a train between Cairo and Asyut, killing one and injuring five.
The government downplayed the sectarian nature of the attacks, further enraging the Coptic minority, which accounts for some 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million population. Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Human Rights, a Cairo-based think-tank, said he believes that Egypt’s security apparatus used sectarian tension to benefit the regime.
“The security would take advantage of the Copts to create sectarian tension, and also to show the West that there is an Islamic threat,” Ibrahim told reporters. “Without a unifying project, Egyptians’ religious and sectarian identities intensified. Now these demonstrations have created such a project – toppling a dictatorial regime.”
Ibrahim said Muslim-Christian cooperation throughout the period of uncertainty surrounding the demonstrations was real.
“When there was security anarchy, Muslims protected churches just as they protected mosques, through common popular committees,” Ibrahim said. “This is a very good model for cooperation, which hadn’t existed previously.”
Politically, however, the Coptic leadership sided with President Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Pope Shenouda III appeared on Egyptian television on Saturday, Feb. 5, urging protesters to “listen to the voice of reason” by ending protests and entering dialogue with Mubarak. Shenouda was appointed by President Anwar Sadat in 1971, but expelled from Cairo for four years in 1981 after publicly celebrating Easter in an act of defiance against religious persecution.
Also on Saturday, Feb. 5, Egyptian security officials reported that unknown assailants detonated a bomb in an empty church in northern Egypt. No one was injured in the attack on Holy Family Church in the town of Rafah on the border with the Gaza Strip. Security officials say the attackers also removed a cross from outside the church.
Ibrahim was not worried about a potential rise in the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most sizeable opposition group. “Most Egyptians are secular and want a civil state, not a religious one,” he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood is not a majority here – as long as they express their views democratically, there’s no problem.”
Fahim said that although democracy won’t eradicate extremists on both sides, it will contribute to improved Christian-Muslim relations.
“The Muslim Brotherhood has always been viewed as the boogeyman,” he said. “But the demonstrations proved that this is not the case. Christians in Egypt are realizing that the fear of the Muslim Brotherhood rising and taking over the country was unfounded.”
Fahim said the Brotherhood lost much of its credibility on the street by declining to participate in the demonstrations when they first began. “Later on, when the opposition groups realized where things were going, everyone jumped on the bandwagon,” he said.
Dalia Ziada, an Egyptian human rights activist, said Muslim-Christian fraternity would last as long as political oppression is removed. “This is the real Egypt we knew and missed during the Mubarak era,” Ziada said. In her opinion, when the government oppresses the people, the powerful tend to oppress weaker groups – men harass women and Muslims bash Copts. “Under normal circumstances, no one will be pushed to pressure anyone. This is how things have been in the 1940s and 1950s, and even the 1960s,” she added.
But Fahim said that, despite his optimism, Egypt has a long way to go. “I’m still skeptical. We need democracy but politically there’s still much to be done. The opposition is still divided, but Tahrir Square feels like the biggest music festival in the world.”
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