The Church, Maspero, and the Future of the Coptic Community. With the passing of Pope Shenouda III, the journalistic shorthand that has emerged in discussing the current situation of Egypt’s Coptic Christians is that the loss has come at a difficult, precarious time for the community. In the midst of the uncertainty looming over the country as a whole, with the military still ruling Egypt and presidential elections in the offing, the Copts are said to bear a double burden – both that borne by all Egyptians as a consequence of last year’s uprising, and one particular to Christians, namely, the apparent revival of sectarian tensions dating to last year’s bombing of an Alexandria church.
In the wake of the notorious New Year’s bombing in Alexandria, Copts came together, in defiance of the Church hierarchy, to mount a series of unprecedented protests, particularly at the Radio and Television Building in downtown Cairo, commonly known as “Maspero.” [Pope Kirollos VI, Image Source: Memory of Modern Egypt archive of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.] Egypt Mourns Pope Shenouda. On : Wednesday, 21 Mar, 2012 Egypt Unwrapped The outpouring of grief for Pope Shenouda III is a reminder of how nervous Egypt's Coptic community has become in recent months. Egyptian Coptic Christians carry the coffin of Coptic Pope Shenouda III As he followed the ambulance carrying the body of Pope Shenouda III away from Cairo’s main cathedral after today’s funeral mass, Romani Abaded explained exactly what it was that made the Coptic patriarch such a totemic figure among Egypt’s Christians.
“He was like a father, a mother and a brother, all in one,” said the 26-year-old restaurant worker. With thousands of other mourners streaming through the streets of Cairo behind the Pope – affectionately known as Baba Shenouda – it seemed difficult to disagree. Shenouda’s body was resting in a white casket inside the cathedral, dressed in traditional religious robes complete with a golden crown. With Shenouda gone, the Coptic church has become rudderless at a critical moment in its history. More Posts. Paradoxes of "Religious Freedom" in Egypt. The place of religion in the political order is arguably the most contentious issue in post-Mubarak Egypt. With Islamist-oriented parties controlling over 70 percent of seats in the new People’s Assembly and the constitution-writing process about to begin, liberals and leftists are apprehensive about the implications for Egyptian law and society, including the rights of Egypt’s millions of Coptic Christians.
Mindful of these anxieties and pragmatic in its approach, the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party (FJP) has backed away from earlier calls for an “Islamic state.” Its 2011 election platform opts instead to promote the sharia as a “frame of reference. ” Working hard to assuage anxieties both at home and abroad, the Party explicitly calls for a “civil state” and repeatedly stresses the importance of equality of citizenship among Muslims and Christians: This is seen most clearly in the field of family law. A New Crisis for Egypt's Copts | People & Places. Fakhri Saad Eskander leads me through the marble-tiled courtyard of the Church of St.
Mina and St. George in Sol, Egypt. We pass a mural depicting St. George and the Dragon, climb a freshly painted staircase to the roof and gaze across a sea of mud-brick houses and date palm trees. Above us rises a white concrete dome topped by a gold cross, symbols of Coptic Christianity. The church—rebuilt after its destruction by an Islamic mob four months earlier—has a gleaming exterior that contrasts with the dun-brown townscape here, two hours south of Cairo.
Eskander, the church custodian, was on the roof the night of March 4 when some 2,000 Muslims chanting “Death to Christians” arrived at the compound in fevered pursuit of a Coptic man believed to have taken refuge inside. He leads me downstairs into the chapel. One hopeful thing did come from the attack. Repairing the psychic damage will take longer. The Coptic branch of Christianity dates to the first century A.D. when, scholars say, St. The Hatred, and Hope, for Arab Christians. NOT so long ago, I was in the town of Beit Meri for the baptism of a friend’s daughter. The church, Mar Elias, was perched over Beirut and the Mediterranean Sea and built amid the Roman ruins of the town. Incense that symbolized prayers lifted to God filtered through the hall. So did history, all those rituals of a Christian community indigenous to a region whose faith runs as deep as its diversity. Chants vaulted over the stone, their rhythm defiantly Eastern, with an intimation of Constantinople, and inflections of Greece, Rome, Persia and the ebb and flow of Arab tribes moving across the Syrian desert.
“Of whom shall I be afraid?” Fear is, in fact, a sentiment voiced often these days by Arab Christians, a sad refrain for an ancient community that was so long a force in politics and culture in the Arab world. “I’m not a fanatic Christian,” a friend told me after the baptism. The idea is not new. The question is, on what basis can the Arab world forge that guarantee?
Index on Censorship » Blog Archive » Egypt’s Bloody Sunday. By Yasmine El-Rashidi / 17 October, 2011 On 9 October, 27 demonstrators protesting attacks against churches were murdered outside Egypt’s state TV building. Yasmine El-Rashidi asks why the media is silencing one side of the story For anyone who witnessed the violence that unfolded on the evening of 9 October outside the state TV building in Egypt, there is no doubt that something had changed. What was intended to be a peaceful march by the Coptic communityturned into something of a massacre. We watched heavily armoured vehicles trample protesters; we witnessed military police beating young men; thugs wreaking havoc with bludgeons, knives, glass and swords. Molotov cocktails rained down on us, and by the evening’s end, the once pristine street was a site of devastation, blood and broken glass and even flesh on the ground, burned and overturned vehicles still in flames, and empty bullets cartridges lying around.
It was a sight some of us had seen before. Tags: Egypt | sectarianism. The Unbreakable Muslim Brotherhood. The protesters who led Egypt's revolt last January were young, liberal, and linked-in. They were the bloggers who first proposed the demonstrations against Hosni Mubarak on Twitter; the Facebook-based activists who invited their "friends" to protest; and Wael Ghonim, the 30-year-old Google executive who, after Egypt's state security agency detained him for 12 days, rallied the crowds to hold Tahrir Square. Far from emulating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, they channeled Thomas Paine, calling for civil liberties, religious equality, and an end to Mubarak's dictatorship. Their determination, punctuated by the speed of their triumph, fueled optimism that the long-awaited Arab Spring had finally sprung -- that the Middle East would no longer be an autocratic exception in an increasingly democratic world.
The political transition following their revolt, however, has dulled this optimism. To continue reading, please log in. Don't have an account? Register Register for free to continue reading. The Brothers and the Generals | The Majalla. Why Egypt is still far away from its Turkish model Tensions between the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood—who have a broad popular support base—and the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces threaten to derail the smooth transition of the country in the post Mubarak era.
While there are a number of issues that can be a source of disagreement between the generals and the MB, there are also pragmatic reasons for them to cooperate, at least in the short term. In this context, are there lessons to be learned from the Turkish example? Supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo make their feelings known In a US diplomatic cable, released by WikiLeaks this summer, Egypt was described as “a major regional economic, political and cultural power. However, economic problems have frustrated many Egyptians. Egypt’s per capita GDP was on par with South Korea’s 30 years ago; today it is comparable to Indonesia’s.”
Another political force to be reckoned with is the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). More Posts. Freedom and Justice | The Majalla. Egypt Unwrapped Interview with Dr. Mohammed Morsy, leading member of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and chairman of the Freedom and Justice Party. Dr. Mohammed Morsy The office of Professor Mohammed Morsy does not look like the lair of a man who will soon become one of Egypt’s premier political players. About 10ft square with a pot plant in one corner and desultory views out onto nothing but a crumbling brick wall, the room belonging to the chairman of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing is humble, if not quite Spartan. “The free market system is similar to the Islamic system.”It is probably befitting for a man whose party’s stance against fasaad, or corruption, has for decades attracted support from the dejected and down-at-heel. “The Egyptian regime was very difficult under Hosni Mubarak,” explained Morsy. Opinion polls conducted since February have shown the group’s approval ratings hovering around 15 per cent.
Unsurprisingly it is a notion rejected by Morsy as “completely wrong”. One of the People | The Majalla. Hamdeen Sabahi: No fear of the Brotherhood – The People will make the decision Hamdeen Sabahi, the Nasserist candidate, is very popular in Egypt, especially in villages and the rural regions of Egypt. He is seen as “one of the people,” which is also the motto Sabahi has adopted for his electoral campaign. Sabahi uses his revolutionary opinions and history of struggle against Sadat and Mubarak’s regimes—which led to his arrest and imprisonment on several occasions—to his advantage. Hamdeen Sabahi Gamal Abdel Nasser, was a unique politician. Although it has been more than four decades since his death, his politics still inspire many.
Sabahi started his political career as a troublemaker. Sabahi vocally opposed the American invasion of Iraq at the time and has frequently spoken up for the Palestinian issue. The Egyptian People Deserve the Best I have an immense belief that Egypt deserves a lot better than what it currently has. Q: How do you plan to win the elections? The Inevitable Rise of Egypt's Islamists - Thanassis Cambanis - International.
So far, Egyptian politics center around debate among competing interpretations of Islamic politics, rather than a struggle between religious and secular parties A veiled woman casts her vote during the second day of the parliamentary run-off elections at a polling station in Cairo / Reuters CAIRO, Egypt -- Egypt's liberals have been apoplectic over the early results from the recent elections here. Everybody expected the Islamists to do well and for the liberals to be at a disadvantage. But nobody -- perhaps with the exception of the Salafis -- expected the outcome to be as lopsided as it has been so far. Exceeding all predictions, Islamists seem to be winning about two-thirds of the vote.
Even more surprising, the radical and inexperienced Salafists are winning about a quarter of all votes, while the more staid and conservative Muslim Brotherhood is polling at about 40 percent. The saga is unfolding against a political backdrop of alarmism. Muslim Brotherhood, other Islamists have changed their worldview. The Islamists have, in fact, changed: They are more middle-class “bourgeois,” and they benefited from the liberalization of local economies during the last decades of the 20th century, especially in countries with no oil rent. The Islamists have also drawn lessons from the failure of ideological regimes and from the success of Turkey’s AKP party. They are no longer advocating jihad and understand geostrategic constraints, such as the need to maintain peace, even a cold one, with Israel.
Realism is the starting point of political wisdom. The Islamists have been elected with a clear agenda: stability, good governance and a better economy. This mix of technocratic modernism and conservative values is their brand, and to turn their back on multipartism and legalism would alienate a large portion of their constituency, at a time when they have no means to confiscate power. They are stepping into a new political landscape: a democracy, although a fledgling and fragile one. The Muslim Brotherhood's New Power in Egypt's Parliament. The question of what Islamists want has acquired new urgency, thanks to Egypt's ongoing elections -- which appear poised to hand the Muslim Brotherhood's political party, Freedom and Justice (FJP), more than 40 percent of the seats in parliament. But despite the perception of the Brotherhood as rigid and hard-line, the fact is that even Islamists themselves are not entirely sure what they want.
Western observers have placed undue focus on the Muslim Brotherhood's ideology. Yet for most Egyptian political parties, FJP included, beliefs rarely accurately predict behavior. As I argued in the May/June 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs ("The Rise of the Islamists"), the Brotherhood -- far from being ideologically inflexible -- is a thoroughly political actor, routinely compromising on ideals to pursue organizational interests. That makes it far more fluid and prepared to change than many now assume. Of course, there is a more intransigent faction gaining ground in Cairo. Don't have an account? The Muslim Brotherhood's Presidential Gambit. The Muslim Brotherhood resolved months of speculation this weekend by announcing its intention of nominating Deputy Supreme Guide Khairet al-Shater for Egypt's presidential election.
It may not seem so surprising for a country's largest political force and the largest parliamentary faction to field a Presidential candidate. But it was. The announcement sent an earthquake through Cairo's already wildly careening political scene. I'm happy to admit that I was taken by surprise. What was the Brotherhood thinking? I've been studying Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood for many years, and have interviewed most of its senior leaders (including Shater) multiple times.
First, the Muslim Brotherhood had promised for months to not field a presidential candidate. The Brotherhood-bashing over this reversal may have been a bit over the top ("Boo hoo. The second reason for surprise was that the move carries significant political risks for little obvious advantage. So why did the Brotherhood do it? The Chosen One. Khairat Al-Shater, the Man who Would be President In an official statement on Saturday, the Muslim Brotherhood announced it had reversed its decision not to nominate a presidential candidate.
The news caught many by surprise. The chosen one was Khairat Al-Shater, the group's key financier. Khairat Al-Shater In an official statement on Saturday, the Muslim Brotherhood announced it had reversed its decision not to nominate a presidential candidate. The news caught many by surprise. Al-Shater was in prison during the revolution and was released shortly afterwards. In December 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named Al-Shater as a one of its “Top 100 Global Thinkers”. As one of the group’s three deputy leaders, Al-Shater has played a strategic role and is said to have been involved in negotiations with the military council. Al-Shater is seen as a moderate Islamist, praising its commitment to democracy, the rights of religious minorities and a free market. The Muslim Brotherhood’s About Face. Islamists on Art. No Brothers in Arms in Egypt. Egypt Unwrapped | The Majalla.
The Arab Spring and the coming crisis of faith. Inside Egypt's Salafis - By Lauren Bohn. Where the Salafis Go From Here. Egypt’s Salafi Challenge - Omar Ashour. Egypt's Salafi Surge - By Sarah A. Topol. A Crisis of Mistrust. The Inconvenient Truth. "The Egyptian Crucible" by Javier Solana. Hoisting the Flag of Political Islam. The Brotherhood's One Percent. Brotherhood and US Meet About Women, Israel and Copts in Egypt. Brother Number One - By Shadi Hamid. Islamists Threaten SCAF with New Revolution. A Deal Could Be Reached to End Current Confrontation: SCAF, Brotherhood Sources. Islamists Dominate Tahrir Sit-In Against SCAF. Morsi, SCAF, and the Revolutionary Left. Marching for Morsi. Muslim Brotherhood Criticizes SCAF Statement as Power Grab. The Muslim Brotherhood and the Military: A New Deal?