March 01, 2015
On
Christmas Eve Mass on January 6, 2015—when President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi
became the first Egyptian president to attend a church on the Coptic holy
day—the congregation erupted in applause.
The Egyptian Pope Tawadros II, who took office in November 2012, expressed his
steadfast support for Sisi and called on his adherents to back the regime.
Other prominent clerics, such as Father Makary Younan, even claimed Sisi had been “sent from heaven.” But
despite the church leadership’s conservative leanings, not all Copts support
the Pope’s partisan leanings. The Pope’s lack of neutrality and support for the
regime may even be limiting the church’s ability to protect the rights of the
Coptic community.
The
Coptic papacy has dominated the community’s political activism since the
1950s—after Nasser’s de facto dissolution of the al-Maglis al-Milli, a powerful
council of Coptic laymen—but papal hegemony has not bettered the community’s
lot. Discrimination against Copts is deeply embedded in Egyptian society, not
only among radical Islamists (as state media frequently mentions), but among
governmental and military ranks as well. Successive governments have
maintained, for instance, strict policies on the construction of new churches
or maintenance of existing ones. Among other things, the president’s
authorization is required in order to repair basic items such as a church’s
toilet. Christians were promised after Morsi’s ouster in July 2013 that the
government would remove “all barriers to building
churches,” signaling a long-awaited breakthrough, but the issue
remains unresolved.
The
Pope’s support for the military-backed regime is often explained in terms of
security for Egypt’s Christian community. But the state’s record in protecting
Copts has, however, been mixed. For example, documents seized by protesters
storming the premises of the security services in March 2011 have raised
concerns about the role of the security services in the 2011 bombing in
Alexandria that killed 23 worshippers at the Church of the Two Saints.
According to documents published by Youm7,
security services had established a secret unit and recruited members of
al-Gama ̒a al-Islamiyya and other
extremist groups to conduct the attack.
In
more recent cases of Islamist violence against Christians—which has warranted extensive
media attention—Egypt’s security apparatus and judicial system have failed to
deliver justice. In August 2013, when a wave of violence hit more than 40 churches, security forces left their posts
during some attacks or stood idly by as the fury unfolded. The authorities later
vowed to reconstruct
the damaged churches, but those promises have largely fallen through as well.
For
Coptic activists, these security incidents underscore the need for Pope
Tawadros II to reverse the church’s role in domestic politics. The Pope has
done little to put the issue on the political agenda, and only a few other
clerics have dared to openly criticize the regime for its inertia. The Pope’s
backing of the Sisi regime risks coming at the expense of the community’s
long-term ability to defend its rights. Among his critics, the most prominent
is Father Philopateer Gameel Aziz, who has repeatedly condemned the army over
the Maspero killings. He was in turn accused of inciting violence against the
Egyptian Armed Forces, and a military court imposed a brief travel ban on him
in 2012. Moreover, Father Matias has repeatedly advocated for the fair representation of the
Copts in politics and denounced Egypt’s judiciary for failing to protect
Egypt’s largest minority.
Both
clerics are coordinating with the Maspero Youth Union, which was established in
the wake of the 2011 Maspero Massacre in which military police opened fire on
Muslim and Christian demonstrators, killing 28 people. The pope has drawn much criticism for
suggesting that the Muslim Brotherhood was behind the incident and supporting
former president Hosni Mubarak’s acquittal, among other things. The union has
thus provided Coptic activists an important platform to express their demands
and served as a model for independent Coptic activism outside papal politics.
Yet
despite these dissenting voices, the papacy is still the central political
force for the Coptic community. Many Christians back the Pope out of suspicion
of secular institutions such as al-Maglis al-Milli and their fear that
opposition would further marginalize the community, which is already heavily
underrepresented in the national decision-making process. But if persistent
discrimination against Copts is to be addressed, the papacy will sooner or
later have to embrace an active Coptic civil society and their demands for
reform. In such a scenario, the Pope would step back from his worldly powers
and grant Copts an active and critical political role by encouraging Egyptian
youth to vigorously participate in society and claim equal citizenship.
Otherwise Copts as a whole risk being viewed as steadfast supporters of the
Sisi government.
This article is reprinted
with permission from Sada. It can be accessed online at: http://carnegieendowment.org/sada/2015/02/26/egyptian-pope-s-risky-partisanship/i2zi
Johannes A. Makar is an MA
candidate at Leiden University. He has written for various print and online
media, including Daily
News Egypt and the Atlantic Council’s EgyptSource.