Although attacks on Christian property and places of worship do not represent a new phenomenon in Egypt’s recent history, experts fear that the scope and pace of violence may escalate to unprecedented heights.
The Coptic minority, which accounts for nearly ten percent of Egypt’s population of over 80 million, constitutes the Middle East’s largest Christian community. They complain of systematic discrimination from the state, especially in public service employment. They also voice anger over the state failing to lift bureaucratic restrictions concerning the building and renovating of churches. Some Muslim voices, on the other hand, argue that the Coptic Church continues to bolster its unofficial status as a “state within the state.”
Intensifying Violence
In January, six Copts and a Muslim guard were killed in a drive-by shooting while leaving a late night mass on the eve of Coptic Christmas in the Upper Egyptian city of Naga Hammadi.
"The tragedy represented a turning point where attacks on Copts are no longer confined to extremists belonging to radical Islamic groups as we witnessed in the 1990s," said Hala al-Masry, a Coptic human rights activist and blogger. “Street violence against Copts dominated 2010. I expect this trend to continue.”
Three Muslims currently stand trial for shooting dead six Christians. The court said that it will hand down its verdict on 16 January.
Human rights activists said that the state’s security forces have become a source of violence against Copts.
In November, hundreds of Copts took to the streets protesting the halt to construction of a local church in Giza’s Omraniyya district located north of Cairo. Clashes with security forces ensued, leading to two deaths and scores of injuries.
"This is a different type of violence because the state is openly discriminating against Copts,” said Ishak Ibrahim of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR).
For Ishak, the state made two mistakes. First, it restricted the building of the church and second, it fired live ammunitions against more than 2000 people demonstrating in front of the Giza Governorate building.
Authorities said the police were forced to respond aggressively when rioters burnt police vehicles and vandalized government buildings.
The Omraniyya incident sparked uproar among Coptic communities inside the country and abroad.
Pope Shenouda III, the spiritual leader of Egypt’s Copts, denounced what he described as “excessive use of force” against Christian protesters. Hundreds of Coptic expats demonstrated in the US, Canada and Australia to call for the release of fellow Christians detained by police.
Threats against Egyptian Copts took a more dramatic shift when Al-Qaeda killed more than 65 Iraqi Christians in October in what it labeled as retaliation for holding two women captive inside Coptic churches. The originally Christian women had allegedly converted to Islam.
In July, Camilla Shehata, a priest’s wife of 25 years, was reported missing for five days before being found by authorities. Christians demonstrated in front of a church in her hometown of Minya, claiming that Muslims had kidnapped her. Independent media sources, however, reported that she had converted to Islam to escape an abusive relationship with her husband because the church would not grant her a divorce.
Some Muslim critics hold Shenouda accountable for inciting sectarian hatred for the last four decades.
In his weekly column at the state-owned daily Al-Ahram, journalist Abdel Nasser Salama wrote in December that "concepts such as sectarianism, citizenship and a resort to foreign power support only became a part of the reigning discourse when Shenouda assumed the papacy in 1971.”
Across Egypt, several Islamic groups staged dozens of demonstrations against the pope and accused the church of holding Shehata hostage. The church denied the allegations.
Christian intellectuals disagree. They argue that pressure from below has pushed the pope to adopt a more confrontational approach.
"The Omraniyya incident, along with the killing of Copts in Naga Hammadi, pushed the pope to favor a public stance, shared with other political parties, of prioritizing the citizenship issue," said Naguib Gebraeel, a lawyer of the Coptic Church.
Shenouda’s shifting tactics
In 2010, Shenouda III’s public criticism of the government signaled a departure from his traditional policy of quietly resolving Coptic disputes behind closed doors.
"There is a strong feeling of dissatisfaction among Copts that the state bears responsibility for all discriminative policies against them. The pope can't ignore those feelings," said al-Masry.
In her blog named Copts Without Borders, al-Masry leveled harsh criticism against numerous state bodies, blaming them for systematically marginalizing Egypt’s Christians. She has also criticized church officials for remaining silent about official discrimination.
"I'm not alone. There is a wide range of Christians dissatisfied with regime's policies against them. They raised their voices against the Coptic clergymen who are taking a moderate stance towards the regime," said al-Masry.
Earlier this month, President Hosni Mubarak made a rare move when calling on the Coptic pope to curtail religious rhetoric. The statement left some experts arguing that current tension between the church and Mubarak’s regime reached new heights.
Since taking office in 1981, Mubarak has developed a close relationship with Shenouda. The pope had assumed papacy ten years earlier.
"The current tensions stirred by prominent church figures is similar to what happened in the 1981 political crises," said Islamist lawyer Mamdouh Ismail, adding that the late president Anwar Sadat refused to address increasing demands by Shenouda. Sadat ultimately deposed the pope, forcing him into exile at the Saint Bishoy Monastery.
Ismail thinks that church aims at achieving political gains ahead of September 2011 presidential elections by pressuring the regime to accept the increasingly political and social role of the church.
The 87-year-old pope suffers from medical problems, and he is scheduled to fly to the US after Christmas celebrations for a periodic medical exam. Observers believe that possible transfers of power in both the church and the regime may constitute one reason behind recent tension.
"The Copts feel that they are subject to systematic discrimination from the state. Even his [Shenouda’s] successor won’t refrain from pushing Coptic concerns,” said Gebraeel.
In the past, the Coptic Church informally supported the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). However, during recently concluded parliamentary elections, Shenouda unexpectedly voted for a candidate from the liberal opposition Wafd Party.
Other Christians preferred to informally boycott the elections.
Bishop Kirollos of the Naga Hammadi Diocese told Al-Masry Al-Youm in a late November that Naga Hammadi’s Christians would not vote in the parliamentary elections which witnessed only ten Christian candidates on the NDP ticket. Total NDP nominations numbered around 800 candidates.
Ignoring Coptic demands
The construction and renovation of churches remains a flash-point issue between Egypt’s Christians and the state.
According to the Ministry of Religious Endowments, there is a disparity between the number of mosques and churches in Egypt. Although Copts comprise almost 10 percent of the country’s population, Egypt contains only 2000 churches compared with 93,000 mosques.
"The state is responsible for spreading an environment of extremism against the Copts. It also doesn't respond to our demands to get a Unified Places-of-Worship Law passed,” said Gebraeel.
The Unified Places-of-Worship law was first proposed by the NDP in 2005 in an effort to regulate the construction of mosques and churches in Egypt. However, the NDP never officially endorsed it.
Christians have long complained of obstacles imposed by the current law–dating back to 1856–which conditions the building of churches on presidential approval. Although Mubarak issued a presidential decree authorizing governors to provide permits for building churches in 2005, many Copts claim the decree has failed to change the status-quo in light of widespread fear that new churches could provoke Muslim residents, especially in Upper Egypt.
