_Informed Comment_ (http://www.juancole.com/)
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_Why did the Egyptian Military Attack the Copts?_
(http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/juancole/ymbn/~3/S3S7RM84814/why-did-the-egyptian-military-attack-the-
copts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email)
Posted: 10 Oct 2011 10:00 PM PDT
_Monday saw clashes yet again between Coptic Christians and Egyptian
police_
(http://news.yahoo.com/clashes-resume-between-egyptian-christians-police-101822266.html)
, when a crowd of mourners gathered outside a hospital
where the bodies of some of the over 30 protesters killed Sunday night are
being kept because relatives haven’t yet given permission for them to be sent
for autopsies. The protesters threw stones at police. They were joined by a
prominent woman protester from the New Left April 6 movement, Asma’
Mahfouz (a Muslim), who said she blamed the military for those killed in the
Maspero district. Mahfouz has been calling for the officers to go back to
their
barracks, and was briefly jailed in August.
Al-Hayah _writes in Arabic_
(http://international.daralhayat.com/internationalarticle/316785) that
thousands of Coptic Christians had marched on
Sunday from the Cairo slum of Shubra to the area of the state television
station, where they were attacked by soldiers in armored vehicles. Some 28
were
killed, the bulk of them crushed by an armored vehicle, and dozens were
wounded or arrested.
The demonstrators _appear to have intended to camp_
(http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/503360) out in front of the television
station in the
Maspero area, and presumably the military used such unusual amounts of force
in
an attempt to forestall the emergence of another ongoing Tahrir
Square-type rallying point. The military may also have been angered by calls
from the
Coptic Christian crowds for the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to
withdraw and let civilians rule. Copts had been angered by military dispersal
of an earlier protest, and a general feeling that the ruling officers are
unsympathetic to their demands for more equality.
The current round of Christian protests was sparked by a _Muslim-Christian
dispute in the town of Mar Inabu_
(http://asenseofbelonging.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/burning-the-church-dome-awr-investigations-in-edfu/)
near Edfu in
distant Upper Egypt, over whether a storefront church there was properly
licensed. The small Christian congregation of two dozen families in the town
of 50,000 maintain that it it has been, for some time. Local
fundamentalist Muslims argued that the building was not zoned for religious
use but was
rather a private apartment. The Christian attempt to build a second story
over it with a dome was attacked by local Muslim fundamentalists. You wouldn
’t think a dispute like that would be best resolved by burning down the
church, but that is what the fundamentalist Salafis are accused of doing. The
latter were taking advantage of the reduced presence of security forces in
the new, revolutionary situation.
The conflict between the Salafis and the _Copts in Upper Egypt_
(http://www.minorityrights.org/3933/egypt/copts.html) is likely at least
partly over
class and status hierarchies. Although Coptic Christians are only 10
percent of Egyptians, they are a larger proportion of the population in Upper
Egypt, and there some are part of provincial elites, being landowners or
merchants.(I’m not saying this was the case in Mar Inab, just regionally).
Many
Salafis are working or lower middle class. Well-off minorities are often
attacked by disadvantaged members of the dominant majority, in what might be
called the _Virgil Tibbs phenomenon_ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0061811/)
.
Then the governor of Aswan more or less took the side of the
fundamentalists, questioning whether the Copts had had the right to maintain a
storefont
church in the building.
But the conflict also cuts across religious divides, since many of the
pro-democracy protesters of Muslim heritage are taking the Coptic Christians’
side against the authorities of Egypt’s interim government.
The important thing to note is that while one can understand Christian
anger over the events in Mar Inabu, it is a tiny place way out in the
boondocks, and what happened there is, while hardly unprecedented, not typical
of
the fate of Christians in Egypt. The Coptic Sawaris family, with more than
one billionaire in it, did not get to where they are without partnerships
and alliances with Muslim Egyptians. There is an open alliance, e.g., between
_Naguib Sawaris and Egypt’s Sufi orders, comprised of more open-minded
mystical Muslims_ (http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/200223) who reject
Salafi fundamentalism.
The big question is why the military in Cairo responded so violently to
the attempt to stage a sit-in at the television station. After all, there
have been much bigger protests on many occasions since Hosni Mubarak stepped
down, which have not been dealt with so brutally. There are only a few
possibilities:
1. Relatively green troops went berserk on _hearing from state television
that the Coptic protesters_
(http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/23813/Egypt/Politics-/Copts-say-Egyptian-state-TV-incited-riots-against-.aspx)
were attacking military police (which was untrue before the military ran
their friends over with tanks). State television is still full of Mubarak
appointees and sympathizers.
2. The officers who gave the crackdown orders are tired of public protests
and decided to send a signal that they should end, figuring that it was
safe to crack down hard on a minority to make them an object lesson.
3. The officers deliberately wanted to divide and rule by distracting the
public with sectarian tensions, as an excuse to maintain military rule.
The last explanation is the darkest, and one credited by many in the
democracy movement. Personally, I think explanation 1) above is more likely.
In any case, it is not true, as Prime Minister Essam Sharaf said Monday,
that sectarian issues are a threat to Egypt’s movement toward more
democracy. The threat came from heavy-handed military intervention against
demonstrators. This is proven by the solidarity of Muslim-heritage protesters
with
the Christian rallies. If the government had supported the rule of law in
Mar Inabu and honored the right of peaceable assembly at Maspero, there would
have been no crisis. Blaming the problems on religious tensions is just a
way of muddying the waters. The problem is that authoritarianism, coddling
fundamentalists, and heavy-handed military rule are incompatible with human
freedoms.
--
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