Egypt was left in a state of fury, bewilderment and grief after the shooting of six Coptic Christians and a Muslim guard outside a church in the Upper Egyptian town of Naga Hammadi on 6 January. In the aftermath of the killings, Egypt’s media has been confronted by the sensitive topic of the country’s history of sectarian violence. Some in the media have responded with nuanced appreciation of the issue’s complexities; others have reverted to a crude denial that any sectarian tensions exist.
In some of the earliest coverage of the Naga Hammadi shooting, the media seemed unsure of how to address the issue of sectarian strife. As a result, many outlets quickly resorted to didacticism. In Al-Akhbar’s 10 January coverage of the first parliamentary sessions addressing the issue, an unnamed security source mentioned on the front page warned against listening to rumors that “could lead to inciting or inflaming sectarianism," adding that the crime “has nothing to with religion, but is about society’s culture.”
The article reported on the Shura Council session in which Chairman Safwat el-Sherif expressed a collective condemnation of the tragic event on behalf of the council. The council’s members “stood united against sectarianism and separatism,” according to el-Sherif, who came prepared with a handy slogan for preachers to use in churches and mosques: “Religion is for God, and the country for all.” The Shura Councild chairman called on all writers to "heal the nation’s wounds" by writing about Egyptians’ “rejection” of this crime, and warned educators and judges especially against “ignorant declarations” that may lead to incitement.
Mufid Shehab, minister of legal affairs and parliamentary councils, who was next to speak in the session, said, “No religious dimension should be attached to this incident, only a criminal one.”
“Our national unity is greater than to be affected by this incident," declared Shehab. Abdel Rahim el-Ghoul, the Naga Hammadi’s representative, remarked that those who wanted to place the case within the context of a history of sectarian strife in Egypt “will face difficulty, because history proves the opposite."
The 11 January edition of “Weghat nazar” (Point of view), a talk show on Al Masriya channel, was one of the more blatant demonstrations of the complete denial of sectarian strife in Egypt. In a segment that hosted Qena’s Christian governor, Magdy Ayoub, presenter Abdel Latif el-Minawy introduced his subject with a saccharine oration on the glories of Egypt that included a mention of 7000 years of culture by the Nile and a dismissal of sectarianism as a national issue. The governor was seen quickly biting his tongue, going through the mental gymnastics of trying to avoid the phrase "sectarian." Finally, Ayoub opted to say, "The killer was a criminal with no religious affiliation, who targeted places that could have had Muslims too."
El-Minawy went on to introduce his studio guests, journalist Saad Hagras and researcher Hani Labib, asking them to comment on the issue “not from a sectarian perspective, but the point of view of a regular civilian altercation." The guest speakers seemed to miss these instructions. Both responded with informed and level-headed comments.
Hagras immediately spoke of the culture of denial that brushes such subjects under the carpet, the insistence that these incidents are isolated, and the increasingly fanatical discourse surrounding them, which, he said, is itself a result of growing fundamentalist trends. He also pointed to the inherent conflict in attempting to term such incidents “civilian” while addressing them with the state security apparatus.
Labib noted that while representations of these incidents may be exaggerated on the internet or in the media, the real problem was a lack of a civilian institutions that could “manage” such conflicts. He called for more preemptive work from the government, in the form of admitting to discrimination and insisting on transparency in the operations of religious institutions that use their centers for political intervention and reform.
El-Minawy, however, reverted back to hyperbole when ending the segment, pleading with his viewers to “return to the state of forgiveness found within the depths of the Egyptian character,” a character “innocent of discrimination along religious lines.”
While coverage like el-Minawy’s may have been the norm, there were some outspoken intellectuals who confronted Egypt’s history of sectarian strife, and attempted to analyze its causes. On 11 January, Al-Dostour Editor-in-Chief Ibrahim Eissa titled his daily column "Unfortunately, it won’t be the last." Eissa said that while such incidents exhibit an absence of organized religious terrorism, there were other worrisome symptoms to consider, such as how they have spread from Upper Egypt, with its “heritage” of sectarian violence, to other parts of the country including Alexandria, Mahalla, and the Delta countryside. Egypt, Eissa wrote, has evidently witnessed a rise in civilian religious extremism.
Eissa claimed that such incidents are unlikely to end anytime soon because they have “increased and evolved” over the years. "We won’t get rid of the problem if the solution involves state security," wrote Eissa, "or if we keep denying the simple truth that there can be no economic reform without political reform and no political reform without religious reform."
In a column in Al-Shorouq on 12 January, novelist Alaa el-Aswany gave what he considered the three main reasons behind the Naga Hammadi incident. The first was the national climate of poverty and oppression, a fertile ground for any form of violence. The second was the importation of Salafist theology in the late 1970s, noting the current Salafi websites spouting hatred of, and misinformation about, Copts. He gives the example of the group Huras el-Aqida (The Guardians of the Doctrine), which publishes such articles as “Why the Muslim is better than the Copt.” The third issue el-Aswany sees as creating a climate for the Naga Hammadi shooting is the rise of politicized Coptic fundamentalism.
The novelist ends his article with the big-picture final thought: “What killed those Egyptian citizens that day was not the people who the fired gunshots, but the corrupt, despotic system… [that] stole their money, suppressed them, and drove them to despair, extremism and violence.”
Anyone hoping that the debate over whether or not to describe the Naga Hammadi incident as sectarian will blow over, will not be reassured by the heated exchanges in Egypt’s parliament on 18 January, covered by Al-Masry Al-Youm. In a session of parliament, MP Georgette Kalliny insisted that the incident be described as an episode of sectarian violence, and said that Governor Ayoub had misinformed people about strife in the village of Bahgoura. According to Kalliny, Ayoub said at 8 PM on the day after the incident that the situation in the village was "calm," while in reality rioting went on from 5 PM until midnight. Kalliny also asked parliament why it took eight days to send a fact finding mission to Naga Hammadi.
An angry group of members of the ruling National Democratic Party, led by el-Ghoul tried to contain Kalliny’s outbursts, and called her “a criminal,” according to Al-Masry Al-Youm’s coverage.
People’s Assembly Speaker Fathi Sorour told Kalliny that the assembly safeguards the rights of all citizens equally, and asked whether she thought the incident was an isolated one. Kalliny responded with an emphatic, “No. This was a sectarian crime.” Sorour then denounced interference from the European parliament, and said “Egyptian Copts reject European claims that they are a minority in need of protection.”
That a heated dispute over the use of the word "sectarian" continues in parliament indicates that the debate around sectarian violence in Egypt, and the larger issues it discloses, has not yet been settled. It seems that it will take more than a crude spin campaign to cover up the issue.
