Review of Vivian Ibrahim’s The Copts of Egypt: Challenges of Modernisation and Identity (original) (raw)
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During Egypt’s 18 day uprising in early 2011 that saw the toppling of Hosni Mubarak through a wave of popular protests, regular pictures were beamed across the world of Muslim and Copt side by side in Tahrir Square. During Friday prayers on 4 February 2011, Copts—brandishing their tattooed wrists with a cross—protected their Muslim brethren from attack. Two days later, Muslim crowds encircled Coptic Sunday Mass in the square ensuring safety. These images whilst wonderful are not reflective however of underlying religious discrimination against non-Muslim communities in Egypt today. Instead, these images serve to reinforce a series of myths that have long found currency in Egypt and the Arab World.
The other Copts: Between sectarianism, nationalism and catholic Coptic activism in Minya
2017
When the French campaign came to Egypt (1799-1801), the Catholic missions started to be more active and entered Egypt among many foreigners. They never left after the French did; still, they were privileged by the protection of France. When Mohamed Ali Pasha started to rule Egypt (1805-1847), he used them in many interests. The Latin missions of Franciscans, Frères and Jesuits continued but never succeed. The efforts of both the Catholic missions and the Governor led to the conversion of Master Ghali, his son Bacillus and his brother, Francis, to Catholicism along with their families and supporters. Thus, they proved themselves in the country and they are what are known as Coptic Catholics that submit to the Pope of Rome. In the 19 th of June 1899, the first Coptic Catholic Pope was Anba Cyril Macarius. He tried to attract the Copts to his church but couldn't achieve it. At the end he realized that it was a mistake leaving his original Orthodox doctrine and announced that in front of many people. 4 This journey starts with a story of failure. Perhaps failure is not the ultimate mind-set when one wishes to commence a project, yet it is the perfect 4 More importantly, the writing itself of the Catholic Coptic Church as a project that is dependent on missionary work and his snub to their history and present reveal the need for updated studies regarding Catholic Copts.. Consequently, this thesis will claim that modern Coptic studies that portray Catholic Copts as a fabricated minority and do not complicate the term "Copt" through internal sectarian lines are liable for portraying Catholic Copts in a manner that is inconsistent with post-revolutionary Egypt. This will be further supported by exploring the identity politics of the Coptic Orthodox Church that has complicated the notion of citizenship and representation of Egyptian minorities excluded from the historical Church-State partnership. The negotiations that take place in the JBAD across sectarian lines will reveal that Catholic Copts need not of supra-structures to excise their citizenship, but rather exercise it by praxis, through activism. The first chapter will serve to lay out a historical, theoretical and methodological background surrounding this study. Scattered through different cities and villages-mainly in Upper Egypt-and with a relatively modest diaspora 6 , the apparent social political invisibility and even scholar snub of Catholic Copts can initially be understood by their numeric paucity. 7 In this line, with an uninterrupted Catholic presence that can be traced back to the Council of 6 Their diaspora includes the churches of: St.
The "Coptic Question" in post-revolutionary Egypt: Citizenship, Democracy, Religion
Relations between the Coptic minority and the Egyptian state have gone through different stages, with Copts experiencing greater or lesser degrees of integration into, or alienation from, the social and civil fabric of Egypt. This paper traces the long and ongoing path of the Coptic community from dhimmah to citizenship, a path that is not yet concluded, with a particular focus on the relations between the Copts and Al-Azhar, especially in the transition period opened by the 25 January Revolution. New discourses among both Islamic and Christian intellectuals are examined in order to search out the conceptions of citizenship emerging both in Al-Azhar and Islamist scholars’ thought and in Coptic circles.
After the conquest of Islam, scholars argue for a ‘crisis of the Coptic identity’. With a major focus on the Mamluks’ period, they propagate that the Mamluks imposed strict restrictions upon Copts which turned them into a marginalized minority. The historical sources of that period are loaded with intercommunal tensions among the ‘ordinary people’ which increases suspicion and tension between both communities in our modern times. In order to get a deeper insight into the reasons behind the turbulent intercommunal relations, and highlight the social change in medieval Egyptian society, I will analyze the religious speech of both Muslim and Christian communities, using Bourdieu’s habitus theory. This study argues that the fading boundaries, resulting from the period of the Shi‘i Fatimids’ rule, led to a struggle of religious identities among both the Sunni Muslims and the Christians. Upon the succession of the Sunnis to power, Sunnis emphasized their religious identity, in relation to the other, based on what is not, rather than what it is. A strategy which was followed by the Christians as well. This led to reciprocal hatred and interreligious violence which brought the Coptic Christians to a low point in their history under the rule of the Mamluks. Consequently, a ‘Coptic’ Christian identity emerged in order to face the developing Sunni Muslim identity.
Conquest of Paradise: Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization
Middle East Critique, 2016
This article explores conflicts within the Coptic community related to problems of definition and representation. Coptic groups that emerged from Egypt’s 2011 revolution brought these tensions to the fore. Groups such as the prominent Maspero Youth Union (MYU) [Itihad Shabab Maspero] were formed to contest the hegemony of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egyptian national politics. The MYU and others have attempted to reconstruct social boundaries drawn by the Church and the state, promoting political secularism, or the separation of religion from politics, as a solution to inter-communal strife and remedy to intra-communal conflict over the position of the Coptic Orthodox Church as the sole representative of the community. At the same time, the group has emphasized their Coptic identity through religious symbols and imagery at protest events, as depicted at the Maspero memorial march in 2012. While the MYU officially endorsed secular governance as a means to overcome sectarianism, its actions also made visible internal conflicts over the representation of Coptic identity in contemporary Egyptian society. Although the promise of secularism and equal citizenship is not specific to the Coptic or Egyptian context, this article focuses on its paradoxical effects within the Coptic community and its relationship to the state.