"Copts as Egypt's Conscience," at Al-Akhbar English

I just published my first opinion piece for Al-Akhbar English, entitled "Copts as Egypt's Conscience"...

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/copts-egypt%E2%80%99s-conscience

Three liberal fantasies about Copts

I have just finished reading Amira Nowaira’s latest column on The Guardian’s ‘Comment is free’ website.  As is so often the case with the writings of Egyptian liberals on issues of ‘sectarianism,’ the piece is well intentioned but lazily falls back on mischaracterizations of Copts and their concerns.  I address a few of these below.

1.     “Remaining on the sidelines is no longer a feasible or an advisable option for Egypt's Christians.”

Nowaira echoes here the myth of Coptic apathy or passivity.  But exactly when were Copts passive or apathetic?  Not during the 2011 revolution, when Copts flooded into Tahrir Square alongside Egyptian Muslims to demand an end to the Mubarak regime.  This was, keep in mind, in defiance of the Patriarch’s explicit admonition to Copts at the time, that they should support the regime and stay at home.  Nor were Copts passive or apathetic when a church in the Hilwan governorate was destroyed shortly after the revolution: Again, in defiance of the church hierarchy, they staged a sit-in in front of the Radio and Television Building that lasted a week.  Nor were Copts passive or apathetic during the past thirty years, when they suffered the privations all Egyptians faced under the Mubarak dictatorship, yet built a vibrant communal life within the framework of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

2.     “The Coptic church, like al-Azhar, should remain a source of spiritual inspiration and moral guidance.”

The notion that the Church should not have a role in politics might have had a measure of credence until and shortly after the 1952 Revolution – but for the half century since that time, whether one approves or not, the Church has had an integral role in Egyptian politics that one cannot simply wish away.  Nor would most Copts approve of such a shift.  President Nasser and Patriarch Kirollos VI pioneered a relationship between church and state under which loyalty to the regime was exchanged for recognition of the Church hierarchy as the legitimate voice of the community, as well as the provision of resources.  After a brief interruption of this relationship in the 1970s, the partnership was revived and, indeed, thrived throughout the tenures of Hosni Mubarak and Shenouda.  The Church hierarchy has so skillfully seized upon this partnership with the state that there now exists practically no non-clerical leadership among the Copts.  So to suggest that the Copts relegate their Church hierarchy to a status of moral guardian alone would be to disempower them profoundly and essentially negate the Copts as a political force within Egypt.

3.     “They [Copts] must remember that many great Coptic personalities in the first half of the 20th century helped shape Egypt's outlook and contributed to the political and cultural life of the country by engaging in mainstream politics.”

So contemporary Copts should look back to figures like Boutros Ghali and Makram Ebeid as their heroes?  And yet Boutros Ghali and Makram Ebeid had about as much in common with the majority of Copts of their day as King Farouk had with the majority of Muslims.  There existed no single, monolithic Coptic community then, and there exists no single, monolithic Coptic community now.  Indeed, a critical part of the success of the clergy in wresting power away from lay Copts like Boutros Ghali and Makram Ebeid over the course of the twentieth century was the fact that the clerical forces were much, much closer in social origins to the majority of Copts than were the Coptic lay leaders of the liberal era.  Nowaira’s suggestion that figures like Boutros Ghali and Makram Ebeid should be lionized because they were supposedly ‘mainstream’ only increases contemporary Copts’ sense of marginalization.  They have nothing in common with such people, and why should they?  Perhaps more to the point, why should Egyptian liberals expect them to?

Egyptian Nationalism in a Post-Revolution Age

At those moments when great ideas were being embodied in crowds, when crowds were inventing their own organizations, when the burning urgency of social action became emotionally and almost tangibly perceptible, the people — for suddenly it was no longer merely the crowd, but a people, bearing its own message — evinced implacable soundness of judgment.  It was no longer to be put off with excuses.  Only yesterday it could have been terrorized, bribed or swindled, but now it was displaying an astonishing clearsightedness; or rather, facts and signs, history and day-to-day existence had at last coincided and were interacting on each other.

—   Jacques Berque, Egypt: Imperialism and Revolution, on the 1919 Revolution

Now I realize that I spent my life striving for the absolute and that the absolute is the spouse of death.  I realize that there is no permanency and no stability in a life the nature of which is perpetual change.  Now I realize that for me love meant losing oneself in the other.  I realize that my crime was unpardonable because it was I who committed it, because there is no crime more serious than burying the self alive.  My hands are stained with my own blood.

—   Latifa Zayyat, The Search

I have never seen so great a concentration of Egyptian flags in one place at one time as I saw in Cairo during my short visit – flags large and small, waved by young and old, painted on the walls of building and the cheeks of children.  Save one place, that is – at a football match.  Without doubt, in overthrowing the dictator Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has won a great victory that is worthy of such celebrations – much as Egyptians would celebrate a great victory on the football pitch.

To liken the revolution to a football victory may seem inappropriate, perhaps a touch heretical – but the parallel is a deliberate one.  For there remains a vital question with which Egyptians must reckon, if we are to make the revolution last longer than the warm but fleeting glow of a football victory.  We need to decide why we are waving that flag, what that flag means, who and what that flag represents.

Indeed, perhaps the greatest theme that I took away from my recent visit to Egypt was the struggle to redefine Egyptian nationalism.  This is a struggle waged in the streets through protests, both planned and impromptu, several of which I witnessed.  There were the Copts in front of the imposing Radio and Television Building, demanding an end to discrimination in employment and the construction of houses of worship, as well as recognition of their culture and way of life.  There were the workers in front of the People’s Assembly, demanding higher wages, an end to corruption, and a voice in the socio-economic reform of their country.  And there were the youth at Tahrir Square, demanding justice for their peers brutalized by the police and State Security.

All of these sectors of the population are seeking to redefine the Egyptian nation in different, important ways – but what they hold in common, I would argue, is the desire to extricate the power to define the nation from the Egyptian state.  For their part, the Copts were defying a Church structure which has long collaborated with the state in exchange for a degree of autonomy in communal affairs.  The workers were defying a structure of unions and syndicates which has long remained co-opted by the state, a means by which to distribute favors to regime loyalists.  And the youth were defying the Ministry of the Interior whose monitoring and violence had sought to instill a systematic fear within the population which served to defuse threats to the regime.

The victories these constituencies have won are important ones.  Habib el Adly, the former Minister of the Interior, will face trial for his abuse of power, and gradually, the crimes committed by his agents in the Ministry are coming to light.  Persistent worker sit-ins have prompted resignations of corrupt managers, and Egypt is now witnessing the rise of independent trade unions.  The military has agreed to rebuild the church near Helwan recently burned in a sectarian attack.

But the challenge of redefining Egyptian nationalism for the post-revolution age remains.  This is why, to my mind, the current debates about amendments to the constitution, the sequencing of elections, and presidential personalities seem rather beside the point.  What was so thrilling about the revolution was how Egyptians seized control of their own affairs – how we took responsibility for such matters as protecting our neighborhoods and cleaning our streets into our own hands.  A state which had consciously abdicated its responsibilities in countless areas was shown, at the end of the day, to be little match for the initiative of Egyptians ourselves.

Now is surely not the time to take a step back and reinvest the state with powers and responsibilities it has abused time and time again in the past.  What I am proposing here is a radical refashioning of the relationship between Egyptians and the state, as part of which the latter will at last become the servant of the former and not vice versa.  If Egyptians are to trust the state again to administer our affairs, the state can no longer remain an arena for barter of loyalties, favors, and resources among power-brokers.  The state must become both more and less than this – more, in the sense of an impartial arbiter for the distribution of resources and the administration of justice, and less, in the sense of a ‘mere’ representative of the popular will.

How to get there from here?  Not, I would suggest, by simply casting aside one set of personnel for a different, ‘technocratic’ set.  The impetus for this new state and, by extension, for a new Egyptian nationalism, must come from the people.  We must continue to set an example for the state, as we did during the revolution.  It is only with the continuing, integral involvement of the Egyptian people in establishing new precedents for administration and welfare that a fundamentally different governing entity will arise – one that is worthy of the revolution.

All of this requires a different nationalism – a nationalism that encourages participation and involvement, a nationalism that embraces diversity and pluralism.  The legacy of post-colonial Egyptian nationalism under Nasser and his successors was one of mobilization but exclusion as well – exclusion of women, exclusion of Jews, exclusion of Islamists.  Is it possible to conceive an Egyptian nationalism that mobilizes without excluding?  I saw glimmers of this nationalism in the revolution, when Islamists rushed to the side of secularists to rescue them from the violence of the ‘thugs’ or baltagiyya.  My hope is that this palpable sense of common cause, this pluralistic Egyptian nationalism, will not be lost in the midst of all the current flag waving.  Because there is a country’s future to be decided, not the result of a football match.

Documentation: Flyers from National Unity Friday