Nagy Shenouda is ready to leave the country. He was a faithful employee of the Alexandria Electricity Company for over 12 years, until he found himself in a courtroom fighting for his job against what he says were unproven claims by fellow employees, claiming he was guilty of fraud.One month earlier, in late 2009, while handling payroll issues in the company’s accounting department, Shenouda discovered that a fellow employee had allegedly been registering himself under two names in order to receive double the paycheck. Shenouda reported the man to management, expecting a reward or at least a pat on the back. Instead, he was charged with fraud after dozens of employees filed complaints against him noting that Shenouda is Christian, and the person he turned in is Muslim; the majority of the people who filed complaints took the latter’s side.
“We are a minority everywhere,” says Shenouda. “Instead of directly attacking my life, they attacked my well-being, which is basically what I need to survive.”
Shenouda says no written documents were presented to prove he was at fault, yet the court still ruled he was guilty. The company subsequently fired him. He is suing the company in the Court of Cassation, but says that should an opportunity arise for him to work abroad, he would definitely take it.
His perception that he is discriminated against because of his religion is shared by many Egyptian Orthodox Christians, or Copts, who according to government statistics make up about 10 percent of the nation’s 80 million. Coptic insecurity about their place in society was heightened by an act of violence that shocked the whole nation on the eve of a brand new year.
The New Year’s Eve suicide booming at Al Qeddessine Church that killed 24 people is one of the deadliest acts of violence committed against the nation’s Coptic community, but not the first. Accumulating over the years, the Coptic community’s frustration has reached new heights. Now the government is making efforts to contain their anger and Muslims are speaking up to defend Christianity against terrorism, but analysts say not enough is being done to break the barrier of mistrust. The solution, they suggest, is already at our fingertips in a 40-year-old government report on combating sectarianism.
A Shattered New Year
A few minutes into 2011, worshippers on their way out of the New Year’s Eve service at Al Qeddessine (Saints) Church in Alexandria’s Sidi Bishr neighborhood were deafened by an explosion. The sound was a bomb reportedly strapped to a suicide bomber whose identity disappeared along with the lives of 21 innocent men, women and children. In a January 25 interview with state-run Al-Ahram, Minister of Interior Habib El-Adly blamed the attack on the Islamic Army of Palestine, based in Gaza, and insisted the bomber was not Egyptian.
“After 2005, Egyptian-Christians no longer feel secure,” says Mamdouh Nakhla, an attorney and the head of Al Kalema Center for Human Rights, an independent organization that fights against discrimination based on race, sex, beliefs or religion, with a special focus on religious discrimination.
Nakhla explains that the recent incident has left a divide among Christians in Egypt. While some have decided to close themselves off from society, others, like Shenouda, would jump on any chance to iemigrate. “There is always fear among the Christian community,” says Nakhla. “This is a truth that I’ve encountered personally working in the field for my organization.”
The Al Qeddessine attack was met with not just fear but unprecedented anger. In the days following, thousands of Christians, joined by supportive Muslim activists, took to the streets of Cairo, Alexandria and Minya for protests that often turned violent.
“There were acts of violence carried out by the young people of our community, but we calmed them down because we don’t believe in violence,” says Badry Karam of St. Sama’an Church in Manshiet Nasser, one of the areas that saw constant protests by its residents.
“Things are smooth now, we’ve gone back to living our lives normally, and more people are starting to go to church.”
The buildings in this predominantly Christian neighborhood are still draped with black banners reading: “No to Terrorism.”
The Root of Insecurity
According to Nakhla, the problem begins in society, where ignorance about other people’s belief system is widespread. “The Egyptian streets are not yet mature enough to realize the problem,” he says.
That lack of understanding makes people vulnerable to statements by extremist preachers condemning Christians as infidels. “Today, the person who is fueled by all this sectarian hate,” Nakhla continues, “keeps hearing that these ‘other people’ deserve to die, so he decides to sacrifice his life in order to go to heaven.”
Sheikh Mahmoud Ashour, a member of Al Azhar’s Islamic Research Center and a former deputy of Al Azhar, agrees with Nakhla’s assessment but makes it clear that these hate-filled messages are not part of Islam’s fundamental teachings. “Islam takes a clear stance against terrorism,” says Ashour, “and most importantly highlights the fact that all religions and beliefs are sacred.”
Ashour says that despite what’s written in the Qur’an and Sunna (the sayings of the Prophet Muhammad [PBUH]), there is a large number of extremist scholars and preachers who call for hateful acts that defy the very core of Islam.
Another factor fueling sectarian tension is the lack of participation of the Christian community in society. Georgette Kalliny, a Copt elected to the People’s Assembly in November 2010, says, “There is no participation by the Christian community in Egyptian politics. It’s not just about the physical presence of Christians in parliament but about a different system for elections that allows everyone to be represented.”
Today, Christians make up approximately 1.5 percent of the Parliament; in 1942, Christians made up 10 percent of Parliament. Kalliny traces the problem back to the 1952 Revolution, when political parties were banned. When late President Anwar Al-Sadat allowed political parties to return in the 1970s, he also allowed for the Islamist movement to enter into politics, which Kalliny says turned Copts away from the political arena.
“These past few years, when Egyptians started becoming more active in politics, Coptic Egyptians were also present in political parties and some of them are well known,” says Kalliny. “However, when the time for the elections came, the parties nominated very few Coptic Egyptians for Parliament seats.”
Despite almost no Christian representation in Parliament, Kalliny still has her reservations regarding applying a quota system to increase the number of Christian MPs. “If we want a quota, then [the state] will select the weakest members so they will be actually a burden on Coptic Egyptians,” asserts Kalliny. “You have to have fair elections for everyone, not just the Coptic community.”
Nakhla agrees that increased participation of Christians in society will help bridge the gap between the nation’s two main religions. “If there is more participation,” he says, “then the rest of society will learn to accept them more.”
A Disturbing Trend
Prior to 2005, major incidents of sectarian violence were sporadic. In 1972, clashes between Muslims and Christians broke out in Qalyoubeya over the temporary use of a school building as a church. Nearly a decade later, in 1981, 17 people were killed during sectarian clashes in an incident known as Al-Zawiya Al-Hamra, after a rumor claimed that a plot of land originally allocated to a mosque was used to build a church. A period of relative calm ensued until 1988, when riots broke out after a Muslim man was murdered by a Christian in Sohag; 20 people died.
Sectarian violence started its disturbing trend in 2005, when an Alexandrian church hosted a play depicting Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) in a negative light — violent protests followed in the Mediterranean city. The following year, one week before Orthodox Good Friday, a Muslim man attacked people at four Alexandrian churches with a knife, killing a 78-year-old man; an outraged Coptic community clashed with security forces. In 2007, Muslim men, after accusing Christians of praying in an unauthorized area, set fire to at least 25 Christian-owned shops and houses in Benha; 12 Copts were injured and 59 Muslims arrested for the crime.
From January 2008 until January 2010, there have been at least 53 incidents across 17 governorates reported as sectarian violence, around two incidents a month, according to reports by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, a Cairo-based independent human rights organization.
Until Al Qeddessine, the most notorious incident was the Naga Hammadi drive-by shooting, where six Christians and one Muslim police officer were killed and nine others injured outside a church on January 6, 2010, the eve of Coptic Christmas. One of the three men convicted of the shooting, 39-year-old Mohamed Ahmed Hussein was sentenced to death on January 16, two weeks after the Al Qeddessine attack; the other two are set to be sentenced on February 20.
“We look at this crime [of Al-Qeddesine] as part of a series that has not been addressed properly so far,” says Kamal Zakhar Moussa, coordinator of the Secular Coptic Movement and a well-known writer on issues related to Copts. “I expect even worse acts of violence in the coming days because there have only been superficial solutions to the problem.”
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Opportunity for Unity
On January 1, just hours after the attack, President Hosni Mubarak gave a televised speech urging all Egyptians to unite against terrorism. “This act of terrorism shook the country’s conscience, shocked our feelings and hurt the hearts of Muslim and Coptic Egyptians,” said Mubarak. “The blood of the martyrs in Alexandria tells us all that all Egypt is the target and that blind terrorism does not differentiate between a Copt and a Muslim […] We are all in this together and will face up to terrorism and defeat it.”
The state-run National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) echoed the message in their media statement: “The NCHR confirms that such a criminal act is of a hostile hand to this nation, and seeks to enhance [the] schism and sedition between Egyptian citizens, both Muslims and Copts, who have lived in harmony throughout history. This sinful act is an act of a fanatic extremist or a foreign entity that carries hatred and malice to our nation.”
Moussa believes Al Qeddessine’s attack did indeed prompt a reaction of unity. “What we’ve seen are Egyptian reactions, not just Coptic or Muslim, but for the first time in a long time there was unity among the Egyptian people,” he says.
However, he adds that Egyptian authorities tend to not address the issue for what it is, a result of sectarian tension. “They don’t feel that there is a problem, which in itself is a huge part of the problem,” says Moussa.
In comments marking Police Day on January 25, Mubarak said that talk of anti-Christian discrimination is “unfair and untrue” and that “those who propagate such allegations are spreading fabricated accounts.”
“[A]ll Egyptians, Muslims and Christians alike, are brothers of one nation,” the president continued, “faced by the same problems and motivated by the same ambition for a better future for them, their children and their grandchildren.”
Nakhla says, “[The state] tries to justify all the actions by labeling it as a terrorist act, not a sectarian one, so they’re trying to undermine the incident,” he says. “If you just admit that it was sectarian, it does not undermine the Islamic religion. It’s just an act of extremism and they need to acknowledge that.”
So, Now What?
Moussa suggests that to solve this issue, we should look back to a report written almost 40 years ago. Following the sectarian violence of 1972 in Qalyoubeya, the Parliament assembled a committee to research how to combat the issue of sectarianism. The committee’s findings became known as Dr. Gamal Al-Ataify’s report, after the then deputy head of the People’s Assembly.
The report stressed the importance of reviewing how the media helps shape views about other religions and called for adjusting school curricula to promote tolerance among religions and amending certain laws that fuel sectarian tensions such as those regulating the construction of churches.
Dating back to 1856, the current law requires presidential approval for the building of a church and outlines conditions that must be met before that approval is granted. In 2005, Mubarak issued a decree allowing governors to grant approvals, but Christians have complained of heavy bureaucratic restrictions on the construction of churches, claiming there are widespread fears that a new church construction could possibly provoke Muslim residents.
The governing National Democratic Party announced on January 22 that it will draft a new law in the near future to address the construction of churches. While it is cause for guarded optimism among Copts, observers say nothing can truly change until the government recognizes that the Christian community feels alienated and persecuted.
“All these issues can be easily solved by the state within two to three years,” says Nakhla. “But first they need to admit that there is a problem, that is the first step.”
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