Egypt’s Coptic Christians, While Struggling to Maintain Their Heritage, Decry U.S. Anti-Persecution Act

By James J. Napoli

The question Cairo taxi drivers ask their foreign passengers most often is whether they have children. And if not, why not?

But if the cab driver is a Copt, with a saint’s icon on the dashboard or a cross tattooed on his hand or wrist, the passenger is also likely to be asked—circumspectly—about his religion. If this careful query elicits the right answer, the driver will respond in kind: “I am a Christian man.”

This mundane ritual of life in Cairo, initiated by a subsection of every correspondent’s favorite group of socio-political commentators, cab drivers, reflects the felt need of Egyptian Copts for religious solidarity in an overwhelmingly Islamic nation.

But the reaction of Egyptian Copts to recent legislation in the United States, purportedly intended to protect religious minorities around the world from persecution, was anything but grateful.

Everybody from Coptic Pope Shenouda III on down said they were shocked—shocked!—to learn that anyone would think there was religious discrimination in Egypt. And besides, the United States ought to keep its nose out of Egypt’s business.

The Freedom from Religious Persecution Act, which passed overwhelmingly in the U.S. House in May, doesn’t mention Egypt by name; the name of every country except Sudan was eliminated in the final version after stiff lobbying by the Clinton administration. But Egypt had been mentioned in earlier drafts, partly in response to pressure by international Coptic organizations based outside Egypt.

The International Coptic Federation, for example, has taken out ads in The Washington Post and The New York Times decrying the difficulties Copts have in building and repairing their churches, their virtual exclusion from top positions in government, universities and the military, and their harassment and murder by Islamic extremists.

The Times ad accused the Mubarak government of “turning a blind eye” to the slaughter of scores of Copts—10 massacred in a church in the town of Abu Qurqas alone in 1997—during the past five years of Islamic militant insurgency.

Under the legislation passed by the House, an Office of Religious Persecution Monitoring would be established in the State Department. It would also impose sanctions, such as bans on trade and financial assistance, on countries found to be discriminating against religious minorities. A somewhat more flexible version has been introduced in the Senate, but the administration opposes both of them for tying its hands in the conduct of foreign policy.

The measures, spearheaded by conservative Republicans, aroused a firestorm of condemnation in the Egyptian press. Government officials, religious figures, journalists and others denounced U.S. presumptuousness for trying to bully and threaten other countries for their treatment of minorities. The United States, after all, has not solved its own minority problems, and simply ignores human rights violations in Israel.

The press also gave big play in March—before passage of the House bill—to a statement by the Council of Churches of New York City that Egyptian Copts were not persecuted. Members of the organization had met with senior Egyptian officials, including President Mubarak, to discuss the issue.

It is true that Copts, who number somewhere between 7 and 10 million (even the estimates have political connotations) in the Egyptian population of 62 million, are generally well-integrated, particularly in the cities. They practice their religion freely and hold prominent positions in business and the professions and, in Cairo, they hold the malodorous monopoly over garbage collection.

A History of Discrimination

But it is equally true that Copts do suffer, and have always suffered, discrimination. They were among the earliest Christians, and were severely persecuted under the pagan Roman emperors Decius and Diocletian, giving rise to a rich martyrology. They were also oppressed for Christian theological and other differences under the Byzantine emperors.

After the Arab conquest in 641 A.D., the Copts were generally treated benevolently, though they went through some periods of outright oppression, suffered discriminatory taxation and were barred from military service as Islam gradually became the dominant religion in Egypt.

The position of the Copts improved considerably in the 19th century under the relatively tolerant Muhammad Ali dynasty, and, partly under the influence of the British, they began to take important posts in the Egyptian bureaucracy. But there were several periods of economic and political deterioration this century when Coptic-Islamic tensions burst into violence.

Shenouda himself was known for his aggressiveness in promoting and defending the rights of Copts even before his election as Pope and Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church in 1971. The Church was particularly concerned about proposals for making Islamic religious law, the shariah, the source of state legislation in the Egyptian constitution, as well as about alleged anti-Copt discrimination in the state bureaucracy and politics.

President Anwar Sadat publicly accused Shenouda of trying to establish a Christian state in Upper Egypt, and, in 1981, there were serious armed clashes between Muslims and Christians in the Shurabiya district of Cairo. That same year, the president ordered a crackdown against religious militants. Shenouda was suspended from his position by Sadat, only to be reinstated by President Mubarak in 1984.

So, why the denials that discrimination exists? Many Egyptian Copts and several human rights groups, including the Legal Research and Resource Center for Human Rights, have expressed concern about a possible backlash. They fear that punitive actions, such as dropping aid payments to Egypt for its treatment of the Copts, could provoke violent retaliation by Muslim extremists against the Christians.

Further, the Copts have signed on to the prevailing mythology of national unity, which makes it treasonous even to talk about sensitive, divisive issues on the assumption that talking about it can make it so. Their loyalty already held suspect by some Muslims, many Copts assume a more-Egyptian-than-thou posture to ward off criticism.

A few years ago, the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development, which avowedly promotes civil society through open debate, ignited a fiery press controversy when it planned a conference in Cairo on the problems of minorities in Egypt and the Middle East. Much of the Egyptian press proclaimed that there were no minority problems because everybody was treated equally in Egypt, and that it was irresponsible even to talk about a “minority.”

But sometimes outside pressures, however unworthy their motives, can have a salutary effect on public debate in Egypt.

Up until 1994, before the international news network CNN ran a story on the widespread and horrific practice of female genital mutilation in Egypt, the Egyptian press never discussed the issue. But when CNN did run the story, the press took the time to attack the network for its alleged sensationalism besmirching Egyptian society. And eventually, the issue of genital mutilation itself became a staple of the news agenda, prompting the government to take some tentative steps to curb the practice.

Perhaps there’ll be a similar evolution on the issue of religious discrimination. Once the indignation about U.S. legislative meddling dies down, and the heated denials and recriminations cool off, Egyptian minority problems might finally get some serious attention.

James J. Napoli is a professor of journalism at the American University in Cairo.