Last Sunday’s violent confrontation between Egypt’s military and protesters that left dozens of people dead and as many as 300 injured threatens to become a major crisis in Egypt’s political evolution. The military’s carefully crafted image as the most authentic national institution, above politics and ideology, was reinforced when the army took a hands off approach to last spring’s demonstrations and then took control of the country to guide it to democracy. Despite some serious criticism about the pace of reform, centering on the continuation of Mubarak-era emergency laws and some of the provisions for parliamentary and presidential elections, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has retained widespread legitimacy and approval. That is now threatened by what appears to many Egyptians as the violent suppression of a legitimate protest march.
What stands out to many observers is the centrality of the Copts in the original protest. I suspect that many people, hearing that a “Coptic Christian” protest turned bloody did a double take. Christians in Egypt? Isn’t it Muslim like the rest of the Arab Middle East?
The answer is yes and no. Yes, Egypt is a Muslim country in the sense that around 90 percent of the people are Muslim, but no, Egypt is officially a secular republic and non-Muslims play a significant role in Egyptian life. The arrival of Islam in the 7th Century resulted in widespread conversions and a profound transformation of local cultures, but it also left space for religious minorities. The Copts of Egypt are a good example.
At the time of the arrival of conquering Arab armies and Islam, Egypt was a Christian country, part of the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Orthodox world. The great schism between Rome and Constantinople had occurred some 200 years earlier.
Islam in Egypt, as elsewhere, was spread from the top down, as the religion of a conquering force. Some people converted to Islam because of its values and spiritual appeal. Others because it was expedient. The Quran makes a clear distinction between “People of the Book” and pagans. The People of the Book are Jews and Christians to whom God sent prophets, beginning with Abraham and ending with Jesus Christ. The fact the Jews and Christians worship one God, Allah, even if they don’t know His proper name, and their religions are based on the teachings of God’s prophets, even if they misunderstand and misrepresent them, means that they can be tolerated within a community dominated by Islam.
Thus significant Jewish and Christian communities persisted in the Middle East, most often in cities. As long as they paid extra taxes and did not challenge the dominance of Islam and Muslims, Christians and Jews could govern themselves and run their domestic affairs as they saw fit.
Because Jews and Christians were second class citizens and because they were not bound by Islamic law, they tended to specialize in occupations that were forbidden to devout Muslims, like banking and money lending, or were nasty and smelly, like tanning hides. Banking and money lending became a significant source of wealth for some Jews and Christians. The Quran forbids usury which was traditionally interpreted as any interest charges on loans. But if non-Muslim, lower status people wanted to risk going to hell by meeting the obvious need for banking and finance, that was their look out.
Side note: traditional Christian teaching in Europe equated charging interest with usury and condemned it. Think Shylock in the Merchant of Venice. As capitalism emerged after the Renaissance, the teaching was modified to damn “excessive” interest so good Christians could get in on the action.
In general Jewish and Christian communities in the Middle East fared far better than Jewish communities in Europe. There was nothing remotely like the expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal in the 15th Century. In fact, most of the Jews expelled from Iberia quickly resettled in North Africa and the Middle East. There was nothing like the Inquisition and forced conversion, and there were no wide spread pogroms or virulent anti-Semitism. But Christians and Jews always had much lower social status, were always heavily taxed and barred from many occupations and were always acutely aware that they were a tolerated minority, not full members of the larger community. And they could always be scapegoated in times of stress and turmoil.
When Europe began to impinge heavily on the Middle East in the early 19th Century, it affected the status of religious minorities, especially Christian communities. Christians were seen as more reliable and “more like us” than Muslims and were preferred in the colonial civil service and wealthy Christian families were more eager to send their sons to the Sorbonne or Oxford to be educated. This cut both ways. It led to the economic and social advancement of some families. Some of the prominent figures in various nationalist movements in the early to mid 20th Century were Christians. Copts were especially prominent in Egyptian intellectual and political life. The Coptic Christian Butros Butros-Ghali capped his career in Egyptian government by serving as foreign minister before becoming UN Secretary General. But the apparent pro-Copt bias of the British led to resentment against them and the perception that they weren’t really loyal Egyptians. This was especially noticeable in the late 1940s and early 1950s when Egypt was struggling for real independence form Britain.
Egypt has seen growing influence from groups who want a more socially conservative, explicitly Islamic society. As a more Westernized, non-Muslim minority, Copts have often been targets of harassment and vandalism. Coptic communities have looked to state authorities to protect them and under the old regime the security forces were generally ready to help by suppressing radical Muslim groups. The fact that Copts are seen in some quarters as sympathetic to the old regime makes them more vulnerable now that Egypt is in the midst of political and economic insecurity.
The Sunday march began as a protest against the desecration of a church in Aswan province and the failure of the local authorities to do anything about it. Everyone agrees on that; then it gets murky. Many sources agree that the marchers were joined by other Egyptians who are concerned about broader principles of democracy and freedom as well as supporting the rights of Copts as Egyptian citizens. And joined by some who are unhappy with the military regime in general. The marchers were apparently set upon by “thugs” armed with clubs and iron bars and, by some accounts, guns. The security forces either did nothing initially or actively aided the attackers. Everyone agrees that shots were fired; at first the military blamed the marchers claiming that 13 soldiers were dead. (That claim has largely disappeared in the last couple of days.) Hospital authorities state that several of the dead were crushed by vehicles; the army denies that they ran over anyone with tanks or armored personnel carriers. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces has announced an investigation.
I think much rides on this investigation. I am pretty sure most politically active Egyptians have already made up their minds about what really happened and will accept the findings of a military run investigation only if it fits with their preconceived narrative of a shocking military assault on innocent civilian demonstrators. Anything that looks like a cover up or whitewash will be met with open skepticism and could lead to renewed demonstrations. It is important to keep in mind that for the Egyptian military, stability is the supreme value. Preserving the system that puts the military front and center as the symbol of nationals unity and patriotism and has made the senior officers wealthy and privileged is the first priority. Mubarak was pushed out because he and his behavior had become a source of instability. Democratic reforms were embraced by the senior military officers because they seemed to offer the best chance at restoring stable government and avoiding a real revolution. If demonstrations, especially violent demonstrations like the attack on the Israeli embassy and Sunday’s march, begin to break out in Egypt, the military may decide that military dictatorship is the only option.
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