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Published
by Christianity Today, November 10, 2005
Copts' Night of Terror
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Rioting
chills Muslim-Christian relations as new
parliament is elected. (Christianity Today)
 Copts
will long remember Friday, October 21, as a night
of terror, flame, and violence in Alexandria. Late
that evening, thousands of rioting Muslims
targeted three poorly protected Protestant
congregations and an Orthodox church in the
Muharram Bey section of Alexandria. Muslims were
venting their anger over a video of a Christian
play, produced at an Orthodox church. Muslims
allege the video defamed Islam.
Days after the violence, I visited Christian
congregations all over Alexandria and found
everyday believers in a state of anxiety and shock
over the attacks. Muslim-Christian violence, they
told me, was something that happened in poor areas
of Cairo or rural Upper Egypt, not Alexandria.
This fall, the relative calm between Muslims and
Copts (as Christians in Egypt are known) changed
with the publication of an article in Al-Midan, a
sensationalist Arabic-language newspaper widely
available in urban areas.
The article described a video CD (not a DVD) of a
play produced at St Girgis, a prosperous Coptic
Orthodox church in Alexandria, a coastal city of 5
million where little religious violence has
occurred.
Headlined "Christian Play Insults Prophet
Muhammad," the article detailed how church
members produced and videotaped a play titled,
"I was blind, but now I see." The
newspaper account stimulated deep anger among
Muslims. In the days after publication, thousands
protested outside Alexandria's churches.
On October 18, the Islamist group, Mujahadeen of
Egypt (said to be responsible for the recent Sharm
el-Sheikh bombings) incited Muslims via the
Internet to act against Christians in connection
with the video. The next day, the first violence
occurred. A Muslim exited a street car in
Alexandria and attempted to assault a group of
girls. Sara Rushdy, a Coptic nun, stepped in to
intervene, but the attacker stabbed her repeatedly
with a knife just outside a church. (She was not
seriously wounded.)
After Friday prayers on October 21, Muslims again
protested outside St. Girgis church. But local
police had cordoned off the area. The crowd grew
larger and more violent as attacks with rocks and
sticks were met with tear gas and rubber bullets
from police.
Rioters moved throughout Muharram Bey and began to
target Protestant churches, which had much less
security. During an exclusive interview with
Christianity Today, one Protestant pastor and his
staff members described an unforgettable night of
fear inside their sanctuary on a narrow side
street in Muharram Bey. The pastor and his staff
piled pews against the church's large wooden doors
as rioters assaulted them with large rocks,
sticks, and crude Molotov cocktails. They showed
me the splintered shutters and doors and burn
marks on the building exterior.
By the morning of October 22, police found that
three people, all Muslims, had died in the riots.
It's estimated that 90 people were injured. Some
shops were looted and received damage to their
exteriors. Vehicles were torched. More than 100
people were placed under arrest.
Christianity Today toured portions of Muharram
Bey's Pentecostal church, which received the most
extensive damage. Rioters broke through the doors
and heavily damaged the church's interior. They
destroyed Bibles, hymnals, and other literature.
The rioting has triggered international outcries.
"The violence to which Copts in Egypt have
been subjected is nothing but state-sanctioned
terrorism against the Coptic minority," read
a statement from Michael Meunier, president of the
U.S. Copts Association, an organization
representing Copts in America.
Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Virginia) indicated that
local security services in Alexandria were largely
to blame for allowing violence to occur.
"Egyptian officials have been at best lax
and, at worst, criminally negligent in the October
21 riots," Wolf said in a November 9 press
statement.
Was the video offensive to Muslims?
On October 31, Christianity Today visited
Christian leaders in Alexandria and obtained the
video CD from a Muslim journalist after police had
confiscated and destroyed most of the CDs,
ordering Christians not to show them to anyone.
I viewed the video, while an interpreter provided
an English translation. The play chronicles a Copt
youth who leaves his Christian heritage behind to
follow Islam, guided by a Muslim friend. But after
his conversion, the youth discovers the local
sheik consumed with a lavish lifestyle of eating
and pursuit of pleasure.
Later on, the youth is thrown into a spiritual
crisis and wonders whether he made the right
choice of rejecting Christianity. He questions
fellow Muslims, but is met with great hostility.
After the youth declares his rejection of Islam,
Muslim radicals chase him down and shoot him. But
he is not killed. At the end of the video, the
youth is shown as an old man. He warns Coptic
children to learn from his example and stay within
the Christian fold. At the end of the production,
church members applaud enthusiastically.
The play is loosely based on a popular Egyptian
film, "The Terrorist." In the church
video, Muslims are depicted as concerned with
material prosperity and aggressive toward those
who question their commitment to Islam. In the
wake of the rioting, Coptic Orthodox leaders have
taken both priests out of St. Girgis church. It's
unclear how long their temporary suspensions will
last.
In my interviews with church members, they denied
any harmful intent. They believe the video was
only for in-church use, not for evangelism, but
for education of their youth. "We don't think
we did anything wrong," one staff member told
me.
But other Christian leaders in Alexandria question
whether the play's producers took into account
what would happen if Muslims viewed the video. A
prominent Coptic Orthodox leader in Alexandria,
Father Tadrous Malaty, told CT that the production
of the play and video "lacked wisdom."
Some Coptic leaders believe the play could easily
be misinterpreted as a general critique of Islam,
but that in no way justified violence of any kind.
Political tensions
The riots and the video are influencing local
politics. This week, Egyptians are going to the
polls for the first time since 2000 to elect
members to the national parliament.
Religious tensions are higher because the Muslim
Brotherhood, a radical group banned for decades,
has several candidates on the ballot as
independents.
The Muslim Brotherhood remains committed to
remaking Egypt into a fundamentalist Islamic state
by gaining control of the political process. For
years, the group's slogan has been: "Islam is
the solution" (al-Islam Houwa al-Hall).
There were two Christian candidates in Alexandria
on the November ballot: Maher Khella of the ruling
National Democratic Party and George Gabra, an
independent. Some Christian leaders believe that
political opponents of Khella (from Muharram Bey)
played a role in stimulating the riots.
The only way Khella could win a seat in parliament
is with a meaningful number of Muslim votes. The
Christian vote by itself would be insufficient to
elect him. Others suspect that state security was
behind the rioting to discredit the Muslim
Brotherhood as violent agitators, thus undermining
their popular support.
There are few other Coptic candidates running for
office elsewhere in Egypt. The National Democrats
have only two Christians out of 444 candidates on
the ballot. Political science professor Mona
Makram Ebeid, who as a woman and a Copt is a
rarity in Egyptian politics, lost in the first
round of elections in a predominantly Christian
electoral district.
Despite many limitations on Christianity in Egypt,
Copts represent up to eight percent of the
population and many are deeply integrated into
Egyptian society. Of Egypt's 77 million people,
about 5 million or 6 million are Coptic Orthodox,
Catholic, or Protestant. The Christian population
has its greatest concentration in rural Upper
Egypt, hundreds of miles south of Cairo along the
Nile river.
Influential Christian leaders have supported
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, especially in
the campaign against militant Islam. Coptic
Orthodox Pope Shenouda III and Anglican Archbishop
Mouneer Anis endorsed the re-election of Mubarak
earlier this year.
In Cairo and Alexandria, Copts form a vital
segment of Egypt's middle and upper classes.
Moderate Muslims and Copts are widely seen as
mutually tolerant. Grand Sheik Tantawi of Al-Azhar
University embodies the kind of moderate Islam
that is more accepting of the Christian presence
within Egypt and committed to dialogue. Tantawi
recently even invited the Anglican archbishop of
Canterbury, Rowan Williams, and other Christians
to lecture at Al-Azhar, the intellectual hub of
the Islamic world.
At the grassroots level, relations between Muslims
and Christians are strained. Competition for jobs
and educational opportunities in Egypt is fierce,
regardless of religious affiliation. A significant
part of the Coptic population is entrenched at the
bottom of the economy, including the well-known
Muqattam Copts. They are Cairo's garbage
collectors (zabbaleen) and builders of the famous
cave church set under a massive overhanging cliff
south of Cairo. Seating 20,000, it is one of the
largest churches of the Middle East.
Religion remains one of Egypt's greatest
flashpoints. In recent years, the low-water mark
for Coptic-Muslim relations is the New Year's
massacre in El-Kosheh, an Upper Egypt village,
where 21 Christians lost their lives in rioting in
2000. The local courts eventually acquitted all
the suspects, triggering cries of injustice among
Copts in Egypt and worldwide.
Timothy C. Morgan is deputy managing editor of
Christianity Today. Additional reporting from
Cornelius Hulsman, editor-in-chief of Arab-West
Report, in Cairo.
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