Two Muslim children in a large village/small town in lower Egypt draw swastikas on a Muslim seminary school. Roughly a week later, the Orthodox cathedral in Abassiya is being attacked by Islamists, local thugs, and the Ministry of Interior. In any sane universe the two events should not be related. But in Egypt there is a direct causal relation between the two. For some reason, local Muslims were eager to consider the swastikas crosses. Naturally, they proceeded to burn down the local church. When local Christians tried to defend themselves, naturally local Muslims killed five of them, burned all Christian shops, and forced all other Christian families to move out of town. When the cathedral in Cairo tried to hold a funeral for those who were killed, local Muslims in Cairo were naturally offended that Christians held crosses in a funeral and proceeded to try to burn down the cathedral. The police, naturally, fired repeated volleys of bird shot and teargas into the cathedral.
This exercise in nonsense is unusually dramatic in its culmination at the traditionally state-protected cathedral, but in other respects it is not uncommon for Egypt. In fact, it has never been uncommon in Egypt through its history. Sectarian tension and stratification have been essential components of Egyptian society since the Arab conquest. The only exception to this is the Nasserite era, where honest to goodness secularism removed sectarian boundaries and suppressed extremism among both Muslims and Christians. To fight leftists, Sadat empowered political Islamists, leading to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the formation of groups on its right wing.
During the Mubarak era, the state essentially tried to keep sectarianism under wraps. There was a generally colorless nature to this effort as with everything in the Mubarak era. Security forces protected churches, even if half-heartedly. if sectarian clashes erupted, authorities tried to contain them, even if they exerted pressure on the victims (almost always Christian) to let go of their rights. High ranking appointments of Christians were often made, even if they had a token nature, and even if sectarianism ran amok at other levels of the bureaucracy.
But during the Mubarak era, sectarianism or lack thereof completely left the realm of the regime. Large numbers of people working in and coming back to Egypt from Saudi Arabia reshaped the country in the nineties. Bringing back different levels of religious fundamentalism ranging from outright Saudi Wahabism to some sort of synthetic Egyptian televangelism (a la Amr Khaled), this returning diaspora reshaped the country. The veil spread, prayers became more a matter of social pressure than personal spirituality, personal freedoms were restricted by society through society, and a general wave of superficial religiosity washed over the Muslims of Egypt.
In parallel, Christians developed their reaction to this sweeping wave of Islamization. The end result by the early twenty first century is that a people who are essentially the same in ethnic and linguistic terms became two people. Look at a family, if the woman is not veiled and they don't look rich, they are Christian. If they look rich, look at the guy's wedding band, if it's Gold they are Christian. Suddenly, everyone on both sides of the fence needed to find out the religion of everyone around them.
The January 25th revolution was a complex issue for Christians. The former pope of the Coptic church was vocal in not supporting the revolution, and a lot of Muslims and Christians probably agree with him now in hindsight. But at the time, most Christians were also furious with the Mubarak regime for various (mostly unrealistic) reasons. So contrary to Islamist propaganda, most Christians supported the revolution. But the revolution brought about an Islamist regime. And to everyone's surprise the Islamist regime brought about the most obvious result for Christians: Violence, persecution, neglect, and injustice.
Many may claim that neglect and persecution were also there under Mubarak. The main difference is that with the MB it is institutional and official. Whereas under Mubarak progroms did happen once every few years, sometimes perpetrators were caught, and sometimes they were punished. Under the MB progroms happen almost every month and they are fanned and directed by local FJP and Salafist leadership publicly and in official media. Using Egypt's Christians as scapegoats for instability in the streets and blaming them for all the anti-Morsi rallies is a dangerous and well documented game among the MB's top leadership. And unlike the Mubarak era (or Sadata or Nasser or even the Alawy dynasty) the main Cathedral in Cairo is attacked, the attackers are videoed, and the police aids them, and nobody is held accountable for it. What the MB regime is saying is that they essentially don't care about Christians. They are not particularly going to directly target them. But if the MB needs a scapegoat, it will use the church. And if local salafists decide they want to burn down a church, the MB is not going to make a super effort to stop it.
This exercise in nonsense is unusually dramatic in its culmination at the traditionally state-protected cathedral, but in other respects it is not uncommon for Egypt. In fact, it has never been uncommon in Egypt through its history. Sectarian tension and stratification have been essential components of Egyptian society since the Arab conquest. The only exception to this is the Nasserite era, where honest to goodness secularism removed sectarian boundaries and suppressed extremism among both Muslims and Christians. To fight leftists, Sadat empowered political Islamists, leading to the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the formation of groups on its right wing.
During the Mubarak era, the state essentially tried to keep sectarianism under wraps. There was a generally colorless nature to this effort as with everything in the Mubarak era. Security forces protected churches, even if half-heartedly. if sectarian clashes erupted, authorities tried to contain them, even if they exerted pressure on the victims (almost always Christian) to let go of their rights. High ranking appointments of Christians were often made, even if they had a token nature, and even if sectarianism ran amok at other levels of the bureaucracy.
But during the Mubarak era, sectarianism or lack thereof completely left the realm of the regime. Large numbers of people working in and coming back to Egypt from Saudi Arabia reshaped the country in the nineties. Bringing back different levels of religious fundamentalism ranging from outright Saudi Wahabism to some sort of synthetic Egyptian televangelism (a la Amr Khaled), this returning diaspora reshaped the country. The veil spread, prayers became more a matter of social pressure than personal spirituality, personal freedoms were restricted by society through society, and a general wave of superficial religiosity washed over the Muslims of Egypt.
In parallel, Christians developed their reaction to this sweeping wave of Islamization. The end result by the early twenty first century is that a people who are essentially the same in ethnic and linguistic terms became two people. Look at a family, if the woman is not veiled and they don't look rich, they are Christian. If they look rich, look at the guy's wedding band, if it's Gold they are Christian. Suddenly, everyone on both sides of the fence needed to find out the religion of everyone around them.
The January 25th revolution was a complex issue for Christians. The former pope of the Coptic church was vocal in not supporting the revolution, and a lot of Muslims and Christians probably agree with him now in hindsight. But at the time, most Christians were also furious with the Mubarak regime for various (mostly unrealistic) reasons. So contrary to Islamist propaganda, most Christians supported the revolution. But the revolution brought about an Islamist regime. And to everyone's surprise the Islamist regime brought about the most obvious result for Christians: Violence, persecution, neglect, and injustice.
Many may claim that neglect and persecution were also there under Mubarak. The main difference is that with the MB it is institutional and official. Whereas under Mubarak progroms did happen once every few years, sometimes perpetrators were caught, and sometimes they were punished. Under the MB progroms happen almost every month and they are fanned and directed by local FJP and Salafist leadership publicly and in official media. Using Egypt's Christians as scapegoats for instability in the streets and blaming them for all the anti-Morsi rallies is a dangerous and well documented game among the MB's top leadership. And unlike the Mubarak era (or Sadata or Nasser or even the Alawy dynasty) the main Cathedral in Cairo is attacked, the attackers are videoed, and the police aids them, and nobody is held accountable for it. What the MB regime is saying is that they essentially don't care about Christians. They are not particularly going to directly target them. But if the MB needs a scapegoat, it will use the church. And if local salafists decide they want to burn down a church, the MB is not going to make a super effort to stop it.
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