Egypt’s religious divisions

Not so “Happy Christmas”

Why Egypt’s Christians are nervous

NO ONE was surprised that leaders of the Nour Party failed to attend a Christmas mass, despite being invited by the Egyptian Christians’ pope himself. After all, the party, which has done remarkably well in Egypt’s multi-stage parliamentary elections, now drawing to a close, is on the ultra-puritan Salafist fringe of the Islamist spectrum. Its sheikhs concede that it is permissible to greet infidels on personal or national occasions. To say “Happy Christmas”, however, let alone to sit silently and endure priests babbling about a son of God, is to give credence to false belief.

Besides, although the Coptic prelate, Pope Shenouda, welcomed the heads of all Egypt’s political parties to the ceremony on January 7th (the Copts’ Orthodox calendar lags behind the Catholic and Protestant one), some of his flock had staged a pre-emptive protest against the Salafists. Many among Egypt’s anxious 10% Christian minority blame them for inciting recent attacks on churches and for exploiting sectarian tensions to win votes.

In any case, the mass at Cairo’s Coptic cathedral was packed, and not only because milder Muslim scholars had reconfirmed Egypt’s traditional religious tolerance by issuing hasty fatwas to counter the Salafists’ ban. A posse of generals from the ruling military council filled the front pews. The Muslim Brotherhood attended in force, too, keen to soothe Christian nerves after capturing nearly half the seats in parliament. To the Nour Party’s chagrin, its own chairman’s elder brother also discreetly attended. Nour spokesmen first denied any kinship, then sniffed that the wayward sibling was not a party member.

Yet the Christmas pageantry did not really paper over cross-confessional cracks. Some in the cathedral crowd booed the generals, holding them responsible both for an incident in October when soldiers killed 24 mostly Christian protesters, and for the failure to investigate the bombing of a church in Alexandria last year, which killed another 24.

Soon after Christmas, Copts again felt squeezed when a Cairo court gave the go-ahead for a trial of Naguib Sawiris, a scion of Egypt’s richest family, for the crime of having re-tweeted a link to a cartoon picturing Mickey and Minnie Mouse as bearded and veiled Salafists. The Coptic telecoms magnate, who also funds one of Egypt’s beleaguered liberal parties, could face up to six months in prison.

Nor did Egypt’s Christians gain much comfort from another message dispatched across the internet, this time from Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian-born successor to Osama bin Laden as head of al-Qaeda. Egyptian Muslims should refrain from attacking non-Muslims, commanded Mr Zawahiri in a taped address, but only to thwart the global plot hatched by America, Israel and Pope Shenouda that aims to sow sectarian strife to justify intervention to divide Egypt, just as they have divided Bosnia, Kashmir and, most recently, Sudan.

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