Copts on the Beat

12/5/2011

An intriguing account of Abeer, a Coptic Christian woman, who allegedly converted to Islam, sparked the worst sectarian clashes in Egypt since the 25 January Revolution. Anba Moussa, archbishop of the youth in the Coptic Orthodox Church, warns Gamal Nkrumah that the furore is more politically significant than it appears.

“I don’t know anything about this Abeer. Who is she? And, where is she detained? I plead with our detractors to name the church where she is allegedly interned,” remonstrated Archbishop of the Youth in the Coptic Orthodox Church Anba Moussa. He was referring to the damsel in distress, who in her own words was abducted by the Church and confined in a secret hiding place — the Mar Mina Church — against her will for converting to Islam.

On Tuesday, subsequent to the interview, it was reported that Abeer Fakhri had voluntarily surrendered to the Armed Forces, seeking their protection.

“Where is the rule of the law? Have we degenerated to such a sorry state that juvenile vagrants now execute justice? Surely, this is unacceptable. Is it not?” Anba Moussa rhetorically asked Al-Ahram Weekly.

“And, suppose there is such a person. Is it up to her ostensive defenders to take the law into their own hands? What we are witnessing is the law of the jungle. We cannot tolerate mob justice. There are proper channels through the courts and through the authorities to ascertain if our accusers’ version of events is true,” Anba Moussa lamented.

The archbishop ascribes the Coptic Church’s survival over the millennia to “playing by the rules” and to the “open-mindedness, fairness and uprightness of the injunctions of the Islamic religion — especially as far as the treatment of the People of the Book are concerned. The personal integrity of individual Muslim leaders of Egypt from Amr Ibn Al-Aas, Egypt’s first Muslim ruler, to Gamal Abdel-Nasser, Egypt’s late president, is beyond reproof, is unquestionable,” Anba Moussa stresses.

“I personally plead with Salafis to read and judge for themselves what the Muslim religion says about the treatment of Christians and the injunctions against violence or harming Christian communities,” Anba Moussa notes, conceding that under certain less righteous rulers, “the Coptic Christian community suffered a humiliating experience of subordination and oppression.”

Anba Moussa quotes directly from the Quran: “Whosoever kills an innocent soul without cause must be killed”. He warned that, “violence breeds violence.”

And “nearest among them in love to the believers are those who say, ‘We are Christians'”.

Untangling the truth from the claims and counter- claims is always a tricky business, the archbishop acknowledged. “The conversion of Christian women to Islam — and there are hundreds of them and we as the Coptic Church do not object — is no excuse for the burning of churches and the wanton destruction of Christian and church property. This is vandalism, pure and simple.”

Anba Moussa explained, “Christian women who convert to Islam for reasons of creed or for emotional motives are free to do so. If, however, they later decide to go back to their original decision and do not do so under pressure from the Church, then nobody has the right to stop them. It is their free will. We respect and uphold the freedom of religious affiliation. Why do the Salafis make such a fuss over Abeer, Camilia Shehata or Wafaa Constantine? Does their conversion, or reversion to their original religion, warrant all the madness of brutish vengeance?”

“The Salafis are the new boys on the block. Jihadist Salafism is a new and dangerous trend because it is uncompromising, intolerant and vengeful. These executioners of justice are not the state and their grievances are no excuse to destroy churches and kill innocent parishioners.”

Anba Moussa’s priority now, he suggests, is to ensure that the perpetrators of the violence and destruction be brought to book. “The police, the army and security forces must ensure that the rights of Christians are upheld. Christians must enjoy full citizenship rights and cannot be used as a punching bag.”

Archbishop Moussa suspects that there is a “hidden hand, a hidden agenda, determined to undermine the goals of the 25 January Revolution. These subversive elements do not want to see the revolution succeed. They want to sow the seeds of destruction and sectarian strife. They believe that the Copts are the soft underbelly of the Egyptian society and that the Coptic Christians can be persecuted and that their persecutors could get away with murder.”

Archbishop Moussa believes that the authorities should act more forcibly. “The Salafis should not be permitted to gain unexpected political capital because they persecute Coptic Christians. And, the Copts should not be turned into sacrificial lambs.

“The political imperative to enforce justice may seem strong, but the Higher Council of the Armed Forces cannot simply shrug off its responsibility not to abet the behaviour of the Salafis that violates human rights,” he says pointedly.

“In the past we as Copts voted en masse for Mubarak for fear that the militant Islamists would attack us and deny us our full citizenship rights. Mubarak had imprisoned the Salafis and they did not act with impunity as they do now that they have been released from jail.”

Anba Moussa concedes that under the presidency of Mubarak Copts in general paid a high price for their political naiveté. The late president Anwar Sadat, Archbishop Moussa believes, was behind the frustration of Christians and his imprisonment of Coptic Pope Shenouda III left an indelible mark on the psyche of the Copts. “Mubarak was better than Sadat, no doubt. At least under Mubarak there was a semblance of protection for the Copts. The Salafis used to throw bombs at churches but fled soon after they committed their heinous crimes. Today, they attack churches and the police and security forces and even the army stand idly by,” Anba Moussa bemoaned.

“The vast majority of Copts in the previous parliament represented the former ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). Those Copts who stood as candidates for opposition parties ended up in political oblivion. The Mubarak regime routinely appointed a token Coptic Christian minister often with a low- profile portfolio.”

“But at least we as Christians felt some sort of relative security. Now everything is gone haywire, everything is literally on the blink. We cannot stomach such a situation for very long,” Anba Moussa said.

The Coptic Christian public is in the mood for something radically different. “Copts want a strong authority, a government that could protect the personal safety of Christians and guarantee the rights of Copts.”

The lessons of modern history, however, do not always inspire confidence. “The golden age of contemporary Copts was under Nasser. He enforced social justice and instituted agrarian reform even though the lands of some of the wealthiest Copts were confiscated and distributed to the poor peasantry. Some Copts were feudalistic,” Anba Moussa said jokingly. “But, relations between the Copts and the government under Nasser were on the whole good. Sadat unfortunately undid all the good that Nasser did.”

“The problem is that the culture of hatred created a climate where gangs of violent youth representing rival religious and sectarian groups spread the incidence of sporadic violence in poor neighbourhoods. Both groups of youth, the Christians and the Muslims, are deprived and frustrated. They are also disfranchised and so they resort to violence to let off steam.”

“Copts have focussed their frustration on the reluctance of the municipal authorities to construct new churches. Here again justice must be done,” Anba Moussa extrapolated. “The government needs to speed up the implementation of the law on this particularly vexed question.”

“The authorities must ensure Christian popular participation in the decision-making process. Democracy does not mean simply the rule of the majority by a particular religious group. Rather, democracy means that no group is peripheralised or discriminated against. This is why many of our youth are trying in desperation to immigrate to Western countries. We can’t force them to stay in the country under such deplorable conditions. But, I remind our youth that Egypt is our homeland and that the Church enjoins its congregation to stay put.”

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