Today I revisited two essays I wrote during the past year about the Maspero massacre and the failure of the Egyptian state to deliver justice for the Copts murdered there in October 2011. There is terrible tragedy in the fact that I could well have written either today, so little has changed about the quest for justice and the persistent failure of the state to act.
Martyrdom at Maspero: Searching for Meaning
One year ago, nearly 30 Egyptians, almost all Coptic Christians protesting against sectarian violence, were murdered as they marched at Maspero, the Egyptian Radio and Television Union building in downtown Cairo.
The events of that day are seared into my memory despite the fact that I was thousands of miles away at the time — not least, the images of devastation and desolation that were photographed and videotaped at the Coptic Hospital as the victims of the violence sought medical aid. In my view as a historian of modern Egypt, there are few traumas that can compare to the trauma of 9–10 October 2011.
For me, Maspero has joined Dinshaway and Bahr al-Baqar as sites of memory, the mere mention of which evokes a panoply of images in the mind’s eye.
The pace of events in Egypt is now so great that the revolution often strikes me as having taken place ages ago, rather than a mere 20 months ago. For whatever reason, though, Maspero is an exception to this: Maspero seems like only yesterday.
Perhaps this is because of the vividness of the images of that day — images whose horror and desolation seem not to diminish with time. Or perhaps this is because of the peculiar futility that I associate with the massacre — the overwhelming sense that, despite the horrors that transpired, nothing that happened that day had a purpose.
I should emphasize immediately that this is not to say that the massacre is without meaning. The victims of the massacre are described by both Copts and Muslims as martyrs. Among Copts, this language of martyrdom has a particular resonance, rooted in a history of struggle as the practitioners of a minority faith in Egypt.
When I refer to the peculiar futility of Maspero, I am speaking, rather, of the persistent difficulty I have had understanding and explaining the events of 9–10 October 2011. There are those, for instance, who immediately took up the language of “pogroms” to account for the events.
In crudest form, this account of the massacre breezily invokes a purportedly primordial conflict between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, of which Maspero was only the latest instance. Less crudely put, this “pogrom” account suggests a divide-and-rule strategy on the part of the military authorities who then ruled Egypt — that is to say, anti-Christian violence was used as a means to divert attention away from threats to the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
My own view at the time was that neither of these accounts was persuasive — that the SCAF, above all, sought to send the message that protest was unacceptable. In this sense, Maspero fit into an existing pattern of attacks on freedom of speech and assembly undertaken by the SCAF, of which the prior “virginity tests” and the subsequent Battle of Mohamed Mahmoud formed part.
Yet there was, and remains, the gnawing suspicion that even this explanation was not enough. As a close colleague and friend asked upon listening to my view, “But didn’t it matter that they were Copts?”
It did. It did matter that they were Copts. It mattered not in the sense that there is a primordial conflict between Copts and Muslims, nor in the sense that the massacre was of a cynical SCAF’s design.
It mattered in the sense that there exists in Egyptian public life what I would call a latent sectarianism, which denigrates the citizenship of Copts.
There is an important sense in which, during the past 40 years, the Copts and the Muslims of Egypt have become two solitudes — that is to say, two communities that share one space and yet fail to communicate in basic ways. To my mind, this trend is related above all to the decline of public spaces — both literal and figurative — in which this communication can take place. In the absence of such communication, a latent sectarianism has thrived.
Regrettably, the evidence for this latent sectarianism is not hard to come by, as Coptic families flee their homes to secure their lives and livelihoods, as Coptic teachers fend off blasphemy accusations from peers and students, and as Coptic children find themselves in police custody for playing with the wrong set of papers. And perhaps most disturbing of all is a Constituent Assembly that seems more concerned with the terms of exclusion from the Egyptian polity than inclusion.
There is a strange irony in the identification of Maspero with this sectarianism and the attendant depredation of Copts’ citizenship. The area of the Radio and Television Union building was named in honor of Gaston Maspero, a French Egyptologist who repeatedly served as the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
But Gaston Maspero’s interests were not limited to ancient Egypt. Indeed, on 19 November 1908, he visited the Ramses Club in Cairo to deliver a lecture on the links between the ancient and modern inhabitants of Egypt.
The final words of the lecture are still worth pondering, a century later: “What is the conclusion? It is straightforward: There are not two Egypts, one Coptic and one Muslim, but only one Egypt. To be a Muslim or a Copt is a question of religion. In France, we too have citizens with different religious convictions, but whether Protestants or Catholics, they are all French. A bit of tolerance, a bit of goodwill here and there, and among you, Muslims and Copts will soon recognize that they are one people.”
For all of his colonial condescension, Maspero had a point — one that eluded the perpetrators of the massacre that now, lamentably, bears his name.
The Maspero Massacre: Adding Injustice to Insult and Injury
Martyrdom at Maspero: Searching for Meaning
- Originally posted at Egypt Independent on October 9, 2012
One year ago, nearly 30 Egyptians, almost all Coptic Christians protesting against sectarian violence, were murdered as they marched at Maspero, the Egyptian Radio and Television Union building in downtown Cairo.
The events of that day are seared into my memory despite the fact that I was thousands of miles away at the time — not least, the images of devastation and desolation that were photographed and videotaped at the Coptic Hospital as the victims of the violence sought medical aid. In my view as a historian of modern Egypt, there are few traumas that can compare to the trauma of 9–10 October 2011.
For me, Maspero has joined Dinshaway and Bahr al-Baqar as sites of memory, the mere mention of which evokes a panoply of images in the mind’s eye.
The pace of events in Egypt is now so great that the revolution often strikes me as having taken place ages ago, rather than a mere 20 months ago. For whatever reason, though, Maspero is an exception to this: Maspero seems like only yesterday.
Perhaps this is because of the vividness of the images of that day — images whose horror and desolation seem not to diminish with time. Or perhaps this is because of the peculiar futility that I associate with the massacre — the overwhelming sense that, despite the horrors that transpired, nothing that happened that day had a purpose.
I should emphasize immediately that this is not to say that the massacre is without meaning. The victims of the massacre are described by both Copts and Muslims as martyrs. Among Copts, this language of martyrdom has a particular resonance, rooted in a history of struggle as the practitioners of a minority faith in Egypt.
When I refer to the peculiar futility of Maspero, I am speaking, rather, of the persistent difficulty I have had understanding and explaining the events of 9–10 October 2011. There are those, for instance, who immediately took up the language of “pogroms” to account for the events.
In crudest form, this account of the massacre breezily invokes a purportedly primordial conflict between Copts and Muslims in Egypt, of which Maspero was only the latest instance. Less crudely put, this “pogrom” account suggests a divide-and-rule strategy on the part of the military authorities who then ruled Egypt — that is to say, anti-Christian violence was used as a means to divert attention away from threats to the rule of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
My own view at the time was that neither of these accounts was persuasive — that the SCAF, above all, sought to send the message that protest was unacceptable. In this sense, Maspero fit into an existing pattern of attacks on freedom of speech and assembly undertaken by the SCAF, of which the prior “virginity tests” and the subsequent Battle of Mohamed Mahmoud formed part.
Yet there was, and remains, the gnawing suspicion that even this explanation was not enough. As a close colleague and friend asked upon listening to my view, “But didn’t it matter that they were Copts?”
It did. It did matter that they were Copts. It mattered not in the sense that there is a primordial conflict between Copts and Muslims, nor in the sense that the massacre was of a cynical SCAF’s design.
It mattered in the sense that there exists in Egyptian public life what I would call a latent sectarianism, which denigrates the citizenship of Copts.
There is an important sense in which, during the past 40 years, the Copts and the Muslims of Egypt have become two solitudes — that is to say, two communities that share one space and yet fail to communicate in basic ways. To my mind, this trend is related above all to the decline of public spaces — both literal and figurative — in which this communication can take place. In the absence of such communication, a latent sectarianism has thrived.
Regrettably, the evidence for this latent sectarianism is not hard to come by, as Coptic families flee their homes to secure their lives and livelihoods, as Coptic teachers fend off blasphemy accusations from peers and students, and as Coptic children find themselves in police custody for playing with the wrong set of papers. And perhaps most disturbing of all is a Constituent Assembly that seems more concerned with the terms of exclusion from the Egyptian polity than inclusion.
There is a strange irony in the identification of Maspero with this sectarianism and the attendant depredation of Copts’ citizenship. The area of the Radio and Television Union building was named in honor of Gaston Maspero, a French Egyptologist who repeatedly served as the head of the Egyptian Antiquities Service in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
But Gaston Maspero’s interests were not limited to ancient Egypt. Indeed, on 19 November 1908, he visited the Ramses Club in Cairo to deliver a lecture on the links between the ancient and modern inhabitants of Egypt.
The final words of the lecture are still worth pondering, a century later: “What is the conclusion? It is straightforward: There are not two Egypts, one Coptic and one Muslim, but only one Egypt. To be a Muslim or a Copt is a question of religion. In France, we too have citizens with different religious convictions, but whether Protestants or Catholics, they are all French. A bit of tolerance, a bit of goodwill here and there, and among you, Muslims and Copts will soon recognize that they are one people.”
For all of his colonial condescension, Maspero had a point — one that eluded the perpetrators of the massacre that now, lamentably, bears his name.
The Maspero Massacre: Adding Injustice to Insult and Injury
- Originally posted at Jadaliyya on February 14, 2013
Amidst the marches, street battles, and political deadlock covered
night after night by the Egyptian media, one recent story almost escaped
notice. On 4 February Michael Farag and Michael Shaker were each
sentenced to three years in prison for having stolen weapons from the
armed forces. With noteworthy decisions handed down by Egyptian judges
on an almost daily basis, these sentences might seem, at first glance,
rather mundane. What makes the media inattention harder to comprehend,
however, is the context in which the theft was said to have occurred –
the evening of 9 October 2011, at the Egyptian State Radio and
Television Union Building in Cairo, commonly known as Maspero.
Coptic and Muslim activists alike have long awaited action from the Egyptian judicial system for the crimes that were committed that evening – namely, the murder of nearly thirty people, almost all of them Coptic Christians protesting sectarian violence, in what has become known as the Maspero massacre. Yet, the defendants in the 4 February case were not the soldiers who drove their armored personnel carriers into the crowds, without regard for the bodies of the demonstrators they were crushing. Rather, Michael Farag and Michael Shaker were among the Coptic demonstrators who were arrested shortly after the massacre – demonstrators who then stood accused of the very sectarian violence they had come to Maspero to protest.
One could hardly find a clearer case of “blaming the victim.” And yet here, over fifteen months after the event, the armed forces were simply perpetuating the lies they had fabricated the evening of the massacre – lies that were then spread without the least verification by Egyptian state media. Indeed, on the evening of 9 October 2011, state television had falsely claimed that Copts were roaming the streets of downtown Cairo with weapons they had seized from the military.
In August 2012, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt’s ruling military junta, was apparently sidelined by the country’s first elected civilian president, Mohamed Morsi, there was a slim measure of hope that Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and his peers on the junta might face justice for the crimes they had committed during their rule. Without question, the Maspero massacre was the greatest of such crimes. And yet only three soldiers have found themselves in court, charged with involuntary manslaughter. The sentences they received ranged from a meager two to three years.
To my mind, the whole sordid tale points to two principal conclusions about the state of Egyptian justice. First, the victims of the military junta’s violence and repression should expect no accountability for SCAF crimes in the near future, regardless of who is occupying the presidential palace. Emblematic of the impunity that the military continues to enjoy in Egypt is the vast discretion afforded to the armed forces in administering their internal affairs under the constitution recently rushed through an Islamist-dominated constituent assembly.
Second, there simply is no equal justice for Coptic Christians in today’s Egypt. And here again, the story of the constituent assembly is instructive. Copts were entirely unrepresented in the assembly that approved the constitution, due to mass resignations from the drafting body. Further, despite the powers afforded the Coptic Orthodox Church to govern the personal status affairs of the Coptic community under Article 3 of the constitution, the Church – an institution central to the everyday lives of the majority of Copts – has described the document as “discriminatory.”
Unfortunately, with the second anniversary of the revolution, Copts have had precious little to celebrate. One cannot escape a certain wistfulness as one recalls the human chains with which Copts protected Muslims and vice versa during their respective prayers in the eighteen-day Tahrir encampment. That so much hope and optimism has vanished so quickly is testament to the craven, narrow-minded political strategies pursued by both the military junta and the Muslim Brotherhood in power. But this collapse of the so-called Tahrir spirit is testament, too, to a broader failure on the part of Egyptians – a failure to come to terms with the sectarianism in their midst.
Coptic and Muslim activists alike have long awaited action from the Egyptian judicial system for the crimes that were committed that evening – namely, the murder of nearly thirty people, almost all of them Coptic Christians protesting sectarian violence, in what has become known as the Maspero massacre. Yet, the defendants in the 4 February case were not the soldiers who drove their armored personnel carriers into the crowds, without regard for the bodies of the demonstrators they were crushing. Rather, Michael Farag and Michael Shaker were among the Coptic demonstrators who were arrested shortly after the massacre – demonstrators who then stood accused of the very sectarian violence they had come to Maspero to protest.
One could hardly find a clearer case of “blaming the victim.” And yet here, over fifteen months after the event, the armed forces were simply perpetuating the lies they had fabricated the evening of the massacre – lies that were then spread without the least verification by Egyptian state media. Indeed, on the evening of 9 October 2011, state television had falsely claimed that Copts were roaming the streets of downtown Cairo with weapons they had seized from the military.
In August 2012, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), Egypt’s ruling military junta, was apparently sidelined by the country’s first elected civilian president, Mohamed Morsi, there was a slim measure of hope that Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi and his peers on the junta might face justice for the crimes they had committed during their rule. Without question, the Maspero massacre was the greatest of such crimes. And yet only three soldiers have found themselves in court, charged with involuntary manslaughter. The sentences they received ranged from a meager two to three years.
To my mind, the whole sordid tale points to two principal conclusions about the state of Egyptian justice. First, the victims of the military junta’s violence and repression should expect no accountability for SCAF crimes in the near future, regardless of who is occupying the presidential palace. Emblematic of the impunity that the military continues to enjoy in Egypt is the vast discretion afforded to the armed forces in administering their internal affairs under the constitution recently rushed through an Islamist-dominated constituent assembly.
Second, there simply is no equal justice for Coptic Christians in today’s Egypt. And here again, the story of the constituent assembly is instructive. Copts were entirely unrepresented in the assembly that approved the constitution, due to mass resignations from the drafting body. Further, despite the powers afforded the Coptic Orthodox Church to govern the personal status affairs of the Coptic community under Article 3 of the constitution, the Church – an institution central to the everyday lives of the majority of Copts – has described the document as “discriminatory.”
Unfortunately, with the second anniversary of the revolution, Copts have had precious little to celebrate. One cannot escape a certain wistfulness as one recalls the human chains with which Copts protected Muslims and vice versa during their respective prayers in the eighteen-day Tahrir encampment. That so much hope and optimism has vanished so quickly is testament to the craven, narrow-minded political strategies pursued by both the military junta and the Muslim Brotherhood in power. But this collapse of the so-called Tahrir spirit is testament, too, to a broader failure on the part of Egyptians – a failure to come to terms with the sectarianism in their midst.
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