T en days before President Hosni Mubarak announced his nomination, Egypt’s highest Coptic religious body celebrated the 51st anniversary of His Holiness Pope Shenouda III’s monasticism at the same meeting at which it announced its endorsement of Mubarak in this month’s presidential election.

According to Bishop Ermia, secretary to Shenouda III, a statement to that effect was then signed by the attendees and sent to the president. But the statement angered some Coptic intellectuals, who accused the Church of overstepping the boundaries of its religious role by meddling in politics.

“President Mubarak has wide popularity from Alexandria to Aswan,” argues Bishop Ermia. “People love him. He has a strong personality and many achievements [As for Coptic affairs], the president heeds [Copts’ demands] when he realizes they have the moral strength.”

The endorsement came just a few days after the chief of the Presidential Staff Zakaria Azmi paid a visit to the Pope. In several interviews conducted by the semi-official press with the Pope, the latter strongly supported the re-election of Mubarak for a fifth term, insisting that he is guaranteed to win the elections “on the basis of his achievements.”

However, Ermia insists that the Church’s stance, made official by the Holy Senate meeting, is not binding on the Coptic faithful.

“It is the opinion of the Church. We express our opinion as religious instructors. Those who do not want to go by that opinion are free to do whatever they want. We have no repression, but we guarantee freedom of thought,” says the bishop. “We cannot force [someone who opposes our view] to cast his vote for a particular candidate at the ballot box. Whoever finds a replacement for Mubarak, let him vote for that replacement.”

Khaled Habib Filopatir Aziz, member of the supreme board of Al-Ghad party

Ermia also rejects accusations that the Coptic clergy is meddling in political affairs.

But Gamal Asaad, a Copt, former parliamentarian and an expert on Coptic affairs, is adamant that the Church’s endorsement is an encroachment on Copts’ civil right to choose their own president.

“The Church is in charge of spiritual aspects of life and has nothing to do with politics. It may play a national role by opposing occupation or colonization But it should not meddle with the dialect of political affairs,” says an agitated Asaad.

Asaad believes that statements such as that issued by the Holy Senate could prove a barrier to the integration of Copts — who make up 5–17 percent of Egypt’s 72 million-strong population — in public life.

“If Copts constitute a religious seat, they do not constitute one political bloc. A Copt may be poor or rich, ignorant or educated, socialist or capitalist. So Copts have different political ideologies. How can you group them all together as if they had the same political, economic and political interests?” asks Asaad.

Moreover, he believes, the Senate’s statement could well influence Copts’ votes in the presidential contest.

“We cannot separate this statement from the political realities associated with the Orthodox Church and Copts. Copts have immigrated to the Church and have become separate from society which has magnified the role played by clerics. Additionally, there are some situations in which the Church has interfered on behalf of Christians, such as the case of Wafaa Costantine,” Asaad says.

(Last year, tensions erupted between the Church and the state over the disappearance of a priest’s wife and her alleged conversion to Islam. Hundreds of Copts rallied inside the Coptic Cathedral to protest the “forced conversion” of female Copts. The Pope went into seclusion in a desert monastery to object the detention of a number of Copt demonstrators and the state’s approach to the crisis. Tensions did not ease until the police handed over Costantine — who reportedly affirmed her adherence to Christianity — to the Church and released Copt detainees. However, the way the case was handled enraged many Copt and Muslim intellectuals alike, who spoke out against the state’s surrender to pressure exerted by the Church.)

“Ultimately, Copts have the misunderstanding that the Church represents them politically and can be an alternative to the state. In this climate, the statement would have a dangerous impact because many Copts would imagine that it [the communiqué] has a religious significance and that they must abide by it,” clarifies Asaad.

He blames both the state and the Church for Copts’ retreat from public life.

“The state keeps dealing with Copts through their religious leadership, presuming that would make matters much easier. That approach made the Church think it is the mouthpiece of Copts,” says Asaad.

“Let the Church stop meddling with Copts’ problems. Copts are Egyptian citizens. Let Copts struggle alongside Muslims for the sake of instating genuine democracy and citizenship.”

Kamal Zakher, a Copt intellectual who produced several works on Coptic issues, agrees with Asaad that the way the statement came out made it sound as if it were a collective expression of Copts’ political leanings. He also believes the Pope’s statements reveal a “clear shift” in his attitude toward the regime.

“The Pope had been complaining about the way Mubarak’s government dealt with Copts in several incidents such as the case of Wafaa Costantine, the Hamayouni decree [a decree dating to the 19th century stipulating that the construction and the renovation of churches require the president’s approval] What suddenly happened to make him start flattering the regime?” wonders Zakher.

“Definitely, it [the Pope’s endorsement of President Mubarak] is to gain some advantage. This stance will not last for long because it is not based on full conviction,” foresees Zakher.

But Sameh Fawzy, a Coptic journalist with Al-Watani, a weekly Coptic newspaper, believes the Church has an absolute right to back any candidate it chooses.

“The Church has the right as an institution to support whoever its wants, but this choice should not be binding on Egyptian Copts,” says Fawzy. “Copts are citizens of the state, not subjects of the Church. The traditional discourse of the Church was based on that idea. If we look back at the Pope’s statements over the past 20 years, he always said the Church is no one’s custodian,” says Fawzy.

Fawzy does, however, charge that the Church should have acted in a more impartial manner.

“At the time of presidential referenda, such announcements were acceptable,” clarifies Fawzy. “But at a time of multi-candidate presidential elections, the Church’s support of the NDP candidate means that if anybody joins a different party, he would drift away from the Coptic consensus In multiparty elections, the impartiality of religious institutions is required,” says Fawzy.

Ahead of the nation’s last presidential referendum held in 1999, both Shenouda and the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar announced their support for Mubarak.

“It is clear that the Church is determined to support Mubarak. It is not casual support. In his interviews with the press, the Pope did not just support Mubarak, he also criticized his contestants,” Fawzy notes.

In an interview with Al-Ahram on August 12, the pontiff insisted that Mubarak was un-challengeable. “None of the candidates can compete with Mubarak. Some of them are popular in limited areas. Their popularity is not as wide as Mubarak’s,” intoned the Pope.

In an earlier interview with the weekly Akhbar Al-Yom published on August 6, the Pope also commented on the involvement of the Copt activist Georges Ishak in the anti-Mubarak group Kefeya, declaring: “The Coptic Church has nothing to do with him and he is not one of the Church’s sons.”

Ishak dismisses the Pope’s intervention in politics as reactionary.

“The Pope is my spiritual leader. I respect him, but he does not have the right to talk about anybody or to prevent anybody from expressing his view. That approach dates back to the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition,” Ishak says.

After the Coptic Holy Senate released its statement, the Catholic Church followed suit. According to Bishop Youhanna Golta, the official spokesman of the Catholic Community in Egypt, the Catholic Church not only backs Mubarak’s candidacy, but also encourages its followers to vote for him.

“The Church is now engaged in informing people through sermons and in its own magazines of the achievements of President Hosni Mubarak and explaining to them how freedom of religion and equality flourished under his rule,” explains Golta.

Golta does not claim, however, that Egypt’s Catholics, who number some 300,000, have any obligation to abide by the Church’s decision. “There is no restraint on anybody’s choice Everybody is free and has the constitutional right to choose his president with no pressure or coercion. The Church only has to give advice and guidance,” says Golta.

As Golta sees it, Mubarak is the strongest bulwark against Islamism in the region. “Let us say it frankly, all Christian Arabs fear that [Islamist] religious groups seize power,” says Golta.

The Christian clergy is not the sole religious establishment to endorse President Mubarak.

In a phone interview, the Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar confirmed to Egypt Today that the highest Sunni institution in the Islamic world supports the president’s re-election.

“Here Al-Azhar is not meddling in [politics]. We are testifying before God that we choose the President [Mubarak] because we believe he is the most appropriate candidate,” says Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, invoking the Qur’anic verse: “Do not withhold any testimony by concealing what you had witnessed.” [2:283]

According to Nabil Abdel Fattah, a political analyst with Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and the editor of an annual report on Egyptians’ religious perceptions, statements from Coptic, Catholic and Muslim scholars and clergy alike are unlikely to influence voters’ choices in the presidential contest.

“They [religious institutions] should have remained impartial because the collective endorsement and allegiances are no longer compatible with the values of modern states,” says Abdel Fattah.

The Orthodox Church’s endorsement of Mubarak coincided with the suspension of a Coptic priest serving at St. Mary’s Church for his vehement criticism of the government.

Filopatir Aziz, 39, who is a member of the supreme board of Al-Ghad Party headed by the opposition presidential candidate Ayman Nour, has written several strongly worded articles in a Church periodical charging the regime had allowed discrimination against Copts to continue.

The Giza bishopric under whose jurisdiction Aziz falls could not be reached to comment on the matter. But in a statement to the state-owned Rose Al-Youssef weekly magazine on August 13, the bishopric explained that the priest was suspended for his criticism of the Egyptian government, his membership in an opposition party and his inefficient clerical guardianship.

“The regime tries to convince Copts by different means that their status now is far better than under President Sadat’s corrupt regime. Is that a fair comparison? Do we have to compare between a corrupt regime on one hand and a less corrupt one on the other when we examine the Coptic portfolio?” read one of Aziz’s latest articles, which first appeared in a church periodical in June and was re-run in Al-Ghad newspaper.

Aziz denies having committed any infarction justifying suspension of his services.

“Partisan leanings do not represent a crime. I do not commit a crime if I hold an opinion. There are many clerics who joined political parties in the past Also, the Pope encourages his sons to become involved in public life The one who made that decision is the one who violated the official leanings of the Church, not me,” says Aziz.

While Bishop Ermia, the pontiff’s secretary, explains that canonical law does not prevent clerics from joining political parties, he insists that Aziz breached a Christian doctrine by offending the President in his writings.

“He was not tried because he joined a certain party, but because he violated one of the teachings of the Holy Book, which stipulates that every soul should be submissive to the ruler and prohibits [Christians] from offending the president,” says the bishop.

Aziz claims he referred the matter to the General Clerical Council for Clergy Affairs headed by the Pope and was contemplating the Pope’s decision. At press time, the Pope was undergoing ophthalmic surgery in the United States.

Yet Ermia, a member of the council, denies Aziz’s claim that an appeal of the suspension would be a futile.

“That [the sanction imposed on Aziz] is a light sanction If he had been tried in the General Clerical Council, he would have been punished much more severely,” says the bishop. The council’s decisions are binding on all bishoprics.

Aziz insists that he is not opposing the Coptic religious establishment, but the “sectarian” government which must have pressured the Church to punish him.

Despite the rebuff, Aziz says he is adamant about supporting Nour in the upcoming presidential elections for his commitment to the “Coptic issue.”

“As a fledgling party, we cannot claim that Al-Ghad has massive influence, but it has a presence in public life. I think this party can solve the Coptic question. It is actually preoccupied with this issue.”

Asaad dismisses Aziz’s claims about the persecution of Copts as “dangerously sectarian,” insisting that clerics should not have partisan leanings.

“For Christians, the priest is a father. He is presumed to have good relations with all his children. His membership in a certain party would affect his relationship with his children, who may belong to an opposite party. He can only act politically as an individual voter,” adds Asaad.

Fawzy agrees, adding that the involvement of clerics in political affairs contradicts Christian dogma.

“I believe the cleric should not be engaged in politics. His cleric work is supposed to occupy most of his time, so he would not have the time to play a political role [Additionally,] Christianity is based on the concept stipulating that there is no politics in religion and no religion in politics. How could he be involved in both?” wonders Fawzy.

While Zakher is categorically opposed to clerics’ political activism, he points out that some of the suspended priest’s claims about infringements on Copts’ rights are true.

“This discourse is correct to some extent. On the popular and official levels, there are aspects of discrimination in favor of Muslims. Here, we need to talk frankly, regardless of any considerations and without fear,” says Zakher.

Zakher is among many Copts who question the legality of the constitutional stipulation that Shariah is the nation’s primary source of legislation. “Of course Copts have demands, but these demands are not sectarian. First, the values of citizenship must be promoted and that would not happen unless all laws and constitutional articles that were promulgated on religious grounds are amended,” says Zakher.

Aziz couldn’t agree more: “Copts must get involved in public life by joining political parties and legitimate organizations. I always encourage my sons to do so. It is illogical to keep weeping and complaining about marginalization without contributing to changing reality.” et