Copts at the Crossroads , livre ebook

First published in 2013 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
420 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10018
www.aucpress.com

Copyright © 2013 by Mariz Tadros

Some of the material in this book appeared previously in articles by Mariz Tadros published in the Middle East Research and Information Project : “Egypt’s Bloody Sunday,” 13 October 2011; “A State of Sectarian Denial,” 11 January 2011; and “Behind Egypt’s Deep Red Lines,” 10 January 2010. Reproduced by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Dar el Kutub No. 13835/12
eISBN 978-1-6179-7358-1

Dar el Kutub Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tadros, Mariz
     Copts at the Crossroads: The Challenges of Building Inclusive Democracy in Egypt / Mariz Tadros.—Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 2013.
    p. cm.
    ISBN 978 977 416 591 7
    1. Egypt—History
    2. Copts
    962

1 2 3 4 5 17 16 15 14 13

Designed by Adam el-Sehemy
To Dr. Khairy Abdel Malek, Dr. Ra’if Yanni,
Dr. Marie Assaad, and Akram Habib

In memory of the late Dr. Samer Soliman, professor, activist, and co-founder of Egyptians Against Discrimination
Contents

Acknowledgments
Preface

Introduction: A Future of Crescent without Cross?
1.
The Copts of Egypt
2.
Overview of Sectarian Incidents (2008–2011)
3.
The Patriarch–President Pact and the People in Between
4.
The Politics of Backroom Vendettas: The State Security Investigations Apparatus versus the Coptic Church Leadership
5.
Mitigation, Management, and Resolution of Sectarianism under Mubarak
6.
Against All Odds: The Copts in the 25 January Revolution
7.
The Beginning of the End of the Tahrir Spirit
8.
Coptic Protest and Copts in Protest
9.
Egypt’s Bloody Sunday and Its Ripple Effects
10.
The Copts’ Islamist Experience
11.
Winning for God: Sectarianism in the Parliamentary and Presidential Elections
Conclusion: Walking next to the Wall, inside the Wall, and away from the Wall

Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

T his book would not have been possible without the support of many people. First and foremost I would like to thank my husband, Akram Habib, for his immense contribution in developing the ideas and arguments presented in this book and in challenging me to dig deeper, probe further, and question everything. My deepest gratitude goes to my parents, Fikry and Mary, for their unfaltering encouragement and support.
This book benefited immensely from the very capable research assistance of Robeir el Fares, the assistant editor in chief of Watani newspaper and one of the most influential Coptic writers and activists in Egypt today. Chapters 6 and 8 relied heavily on interviews undertaken by El Fares. I owe Hani Morsi, doctoral student at the University of Sussex’s Institute of Development Studies (IDS), my deepest thanks for his research assistance in collating the quantitative data that was then synthesized and presented in chapters 2 and 7. I am deeply indebted to Dr. Sinout Delwar, Dr. Ra’if Yanni, and the Coptic Culture Centre at al-Dahir, Cairo, for sharing with us the database of all the press articles published on sectarianism from 2007 onward. I owe much to all the informants and interviewees who gave me of their time and shared all that they have in both formal and informal capacities. I would like to thank Chris Toensing, editor of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP), for kindly allowing me to reprint some articles that appeared in the magazine. A special thank you to Richard (Dick) Douglas for his incomparable editing skills and substantive commentary. I would like to thank all the members of the “participation tribe” at the IDS for their constant support and my friends in Cairo, in particular Lilian Awad and Faiza Rady, for their constant encouragement.
Many thanks to the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and suggestions were immensely helpful for the refinement of this manuscript. No words can do justice to the editing work that the very capable Nadia Naqib and Jasmina Brankovic dedicated to the manuscript. A special thank you is also due to Neil Hewison and Randi Danforth for their exceptional efforts in bringing this manuscript to light in a timely manner. All disqualifiers apply.
Preface

C opts are at the crossroads. Egypt is at the crossroads. The entire region is in the remaking. Pope Tawadros II was named as the 118th pope of the Coptic Christian Orthodox Church in November 2012, four months after President Muhammad Morsi was elected as Egypt’s president, the first leader to rule over Egypt after President Mubarak’s reign of thirty years and the country’s first leader to come from within the ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood, a movement that was formed over eighty years ago to demand the instatement of an Islamic government. Pope Tawadros II is the successor to Pope Shenouda III, who reigned over the Coptic Church for forty years. Pope Tawadros II will preside over one of the oldest churches in the world, believed to have been formed around ad 48 by St. Mark the Evangelist himself upon his visit to Egypt. Today the Copts number around eight million, or ten percent, of the Egyptian population, representing the largest Christian minority in the Middle East. The pope also presides over a burgeoning Coptic diaspora of significant size in the United States, Europe, Canada, and Australia. Pope Tawadros II will have a tight balancing act to follow: to adopt a charismatic leadership like that of his predecessor, while pursuing genuine internal church reform.
Egypt is at the crossroads. The 25 January Revolution of 2011 which led to the ousting of President Mubarak was supposed to rid Egypt of authoritarian rule and put the country on the path of a transition to democratization. Yet the revolution, this book argues, was hijacked by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), which arrived at a political settlement with the Muslim Brotherhood, the strongest, most organized political force on the scene at the time. This informal political settlement granted the Muslim Brotherhood political concessions to facilitate a fairly smooth accession to political power in return for securing the army a ‘safe exit’ from power—in other words, impunity from accountability and protection from budget transparency. At the time of writing, two years have passed since the 25 January 2011 revolt, yet the catchcries of the revolution, “bread, freedom, and dignity,” are as far from realization as ever. The economic situation deteriorated dramatically after the revolution, with many Egyptians suffering from new economic hardships, including acute shortages in cooking gas cylinders and with daily electricity cuts running to several hours. As for freedom, new restrictions on the press and the media inhibit freedom of expression, while controls over human rights organizations and assaults on non-Islamist coalitions undermine freedom of association. Police brutality, one of the factors that drove many Egyptians to rise up to demand their human dignity in the revolution, has resurfaced.
Egypt is in transition, but transition to what no one can quite tell. The Muslim Brotherhood had vowed to adopt policies in recognition of the representation of all political, civil, and religious forces, yet this had not materialized. New forms of monopolization of power by the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), which has assumed political power, are reminiscent of the ways of the former ruling National Democratic Party, particularly in its latter days when it was informally run by Gamal Mubarak, the son of the ousted president. One of the most important benchmarks of a new political order, the Egyptian constitution, has failed the litmus test of recognizing full equality of all citizens, irrespective of religion, gender, class, and ethnicity.
The Coptic Orthodox Church is at a crossroads in its relationship with the new Islamist-led government. Bishop Pachomious, the acting pope from March 2011 until November 2012, had avoided open confrontational tactics with the new Islamist regime, while being quite vocal in his demand for a more proactive stance on the part of the government in dealing with the escalating violence and assaults waged by Salafis and other Islamist groups against the Coptic citizenry. Yet unlike with the previous regime, where there was some degree of clarity as to the points of entry to backdoor policy-making processes (for example, through Zakariya Azmi to relay messages to President Mubarak), at the time of writing, the policy-influencing processes in relation to President Morsi remain opaque. Will Pope Tawadros II seek to forge an entente with President Morsi as had his predecessor with President Mubarak, or will he seek to remain at an arm’s length as had Bishop Pachomious in relation to SCAF and subsequently Morsi? Will the new pope adopt a pacifist approach or pursue strategies of resistance and confrontation? This book provides the political-historical background of Church–state relations necessary