Category Archives: Coptic Christians

“Christian Brotherhood” Formed in Egypt on the Model of the Muslim Brotherhood

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Andrew McGregor

July 12, 2012

As Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood attempts to consolidate its political control of Egypt’s presidency and parliament, the formation of a new “Christian Brotherhood” was announced on July 5. The new movement does not have the endorsement of the Coptic Orthodox Church and is described by its founders as either a “sectarian” or a “liberal and secular” organization that will or will not seek political power, depending on who is asked. Unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, which is still officially unrecognized in Egypt, the new movement will register with the Egyptian Ministry of Social Affairs to obtain legal status. The announcement came at a time of growing sectarian tensions and protests following incidents such as an attack by bearded Islamists on a Coptic woman in the Cairo suburb of Ma’adi for not wearing a veil (al-Masry al-Youm [Cairo], July 7).

Though it is only being activated now, the idea for a Christian Brotherhood movement was first advanced in 2005 by Coptic lawyer and activist Mamdouh Nakhla, the director of the Kalema Center for Human Rights (Cairo) and political analyst Michel Fahmy. The two were later joined by Amir Ayyad of the Maspero Youths Union for Free Copts, who played an important role in organizing the group. According to Fahmy, the movement was activated after the election of Muslim Brotherhood member Muhammad al-Mursi as Egypt’s new president to “resist the Islamist religious tide… We created our group to create a balance in the Egyptian political scene.” (al-Arabiya, July 5; Bikya Masr [Cairo], July 5).

Mamdouh Nakhla

Mamdouh Nakhla described some of the goals of the new movement in a recent interview with a pan-Arab daily (al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 7). Noting that the political model of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has been very successful in Egypt, Nakhla insists that the Christian Brotherhood (CB) will follow this model, at times almost slavishly – for instance, the CB’s political wing will be called Hizb al-Adala wa’l-Hurryiya (Justice and Freedom Party)in imitation of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Ḥizb al-Ḥurriya wa ‘l-Adala (Freedom and Justice Party).  The CB will also be led by a “Supreme Guide,” just as in the MB.  According to Nakhla, “We have been convinced by the Muslim Brotherhood’s success in coming to power, particularly as this group is still officially illegal. This is why we intend to implement this same idea, utilizing even the same hierarchy and positions, which may even have the same names…” The Coptic activist even suggests an alliance with the MB could be possible:

We are prepared to politically ally with them and take part in elections with them on a joint list, which could be called the “Egyptian Brotherhood” list. We may support their presidential candidate in any future elections, on the condition that presidential and ministerial posts are shared between us. Therefore, if they were to win the presidency then the vice president would be a member of the Christian Brotherhood, whilst if they form a government, ministerial portfolios would be shared between us, each according to their [parliamentary] proportion.

Ahmed al-Deif, a political adviser to the new Egyptian president, said in late June that al-Mursi was considering the appointment of two vice-presidents, a Copt and a (presumably Muslim) woman (Egypt Independent, June 26). The idea, however, ran into opposition from Egypt’s Salafists, who oppose such appointments but would permit the appointment of a Copt as a presidential adviser (Egypt Independent, July 2). The main candidate for a Coptic vice-presidency is Dr. Rafiq Habib, a Coptic intellectual who is vice-president of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, the leadership of which describes him as “a valued and very much respected member” (Ikhwan Web, August 10). Nakhla notes that Dr. Habib has joined the Muslim Brotherhood “and is promoting their views; in fact sometimes he is even more unwavering in this than the members of the Muslim Brotherhood Guidance Bureau themselves!” (Al-Sharq al-Awsat, July 7).

While reaction from the Muslim Brotherhood is still forthcoming, Nakhla does not expect any opposition to the Christian Brotherhood from that quarter: “They cannot object to this idea, for if they object, then this means that they must dissolve their own organization.” Surprisingly, Egypt’s Salafists have expressed no objections to the new movement; according to Salafist Front spokesman Khalid Sa’id: “As long as they [the Christian Brotherhood] work within a legal framework, in accordance with their religion and their faith, and aiming for the country’s interests, there is nothing wrong with it” (al-Arabiya, July 5).

Egypt’s Grand Mufti Ali Guma’a has urged al-Mursi to address the fears of his Coptic “brothers” as part of an effort to form a consensus based on the “common, national, Egyptian civilization” (Al-Masry al-Youm [Cairo], June 27). So far, al-Mursi appears to share the Mufti’s opinion, meeting with interim Coptic pope Bishop Pachomius only two days after being declared the victor in Egypt’s presidential election.

The new president’s outreach efforts stand in contrast to the heated days of the two-stage election, when al-Mursi and other members of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party accused the Copts of “betraying the revolution” by voting exclusively for Air Force General and former Mubarak administration prime minister Ahmad Shafiq, despite ample evidence that the Coptic vote was split between a range of candidates (Egypt Independent, May 29). Like the Muslim Brotherhood, the Coptic Orthodox Church remained aloof from the momentous events of last year’s Egyptian revolution, unable or unwilling to split from its traditional cooperative approach to the Mubarak regime.

This article first appeared in the July 12, 2012 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor.

Al-Qaeda Cell on Trial as Ethiopia becomes a Religious Battleground?

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Andrew McGregor

May 31, 2012

Ten Somalis and one Kenyan are currently under trial in Addis Ababa for their alleged involvement in an al-Qaeda bombing plot after weapons and training manuals were seized in the Bale region of southeastern Ethiopia last December. The Kenyan, Hassan Jarsoo, has admitted his role in the alleged plot, but the others, who allegedly include several members of the army of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, have denied their involvement. Six of the defendants are being tried in absentia (Walta Info Online [Addis Ababa], May 20; Africa Review [Nairobi], May 22; AFP, May 18).

Ethiopia is one of the earliest homes of both Christianity and Islam, with its 85 million people being roughly 60% Christian and 30% Muslim. These communities have traditionally lived in harmony, but in recent years Ethiopia’s Orthodox Christians and Sufi-based Muslims have come under destabilizing pressure from external sources, primarily from American backed Christian evangelists and Saudi/Kuwaiti backed Salafists. Both of these trends have caused dissension in the religious communities by describing traditional Ethiopian forms of worship as deviations if not outright heresy and insisting that their adherents must convert to these new, more fundamentalist forms of worship. Ill-considered intervention by the central government has only inflamed the situation, and the result has been a growing wave of religious violence in a nation that has prided itself on religious tolerance. 

Islam arrived in Ethiopia even before it had firmly established itself in Arabia, as the Prophet Muhammad urged his persecuted followers to flee Mecca in 615 and take refuge in northern Ethiopia, where he promised they would find protection from its just king and his Christian followers. While many returned when Mecca became safe for Muslims, there is some evidence that others stayed in Ethiopia, founding the first Muslim community in Africa. The first muezzin (prayer-caller) in Islam was the ethnic Ethiopian Bilal ibn Rabah (a.k.a. Bilal al-Habashi), one of the Prophet’s closest companions. The Ethiopian city of Harar is regarded in some traditions as the “fourth-holiest city in Islam,” with mosques dating back to the 10th century and over 100 shrines.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told parliament in April that the government was “observing tell-tale signs of [Islamic] extremism. We should nip this scourge in the bud” (Reuters, May 10). In response to fears of an incipient Salafist movement to establish an Islamic state in Ethiopia, the government is attempting to make a little-known and non-threatening Islamic sect known as al-Ahbash the dominant form of Islam in the country, a solution that has inflamed Sufis and Salafists alike.  The Ahbash movement was founded by Abdullah al-Harari (a.k.a. Abdullah al-Habashi, 1910-2008), a Harari scholar of Islam whose views were regarded locally as divisive, resulting in his being forced to leave for Lebanon in 1950. Al-Harari founded al-Ahbash, also known as the Association of Islamic Charitable Projects, in the 1980s. Ethiopian Salafists have complained the government is importing Ahbash imams from Lebanon to teach local Muslims that Salafism is a non-Muslim movement (OnIslam.com, April 29).

Abdullah al-Harari

The leading Islamic religious authority in Ethiopia is the Islamic Affairs Supreme Council (IASC). Salafists no longer participate in the Council, which is in the process of having its representatives replaced by government appointed members of the Ahbash sect. Even authorities such as Dr. Ali Jum`ah, Grand Mufti of Egypt and Professor of the Principles of Islamic Jurisprudence at Cairo’s al-Azhar University, charge the movement with having “strange deviant views that have never been expressed by any Muslim sect, group or movement,” including the free intermingling of the sexes, unrestricted cooperation with non-Muslims and the issuing of fatwa-s that contradict the Koran and Sunnah. Salafists and orthodox Sunni scholars also charge al-Ahbash with allowing intercession with the dead (saint-worship), overlooking the need to observe the five pillars of Islam, declaring Salafist-favored scholars such as Ibn Taymiyah, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab and Sayyid Qutb to be kuffar (infidels) and obscuring their true beliefs by failing to commit them to print (OnIslam.net, April 22). Seven Muslims were killed and scores wounded by Ethiopian police in late April when security forces surrounded a mosque in the Oromia Region in an attempt to arrest Salafist Shaykh Su’ud Aman following protests against the government’s efforts to impose Ahbashism (OnIslam.com, April 29; VOA, May 21).

As in many other parts of the Islamic world, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have built numerous schools in underserved regions while Ethiopian workers have found employment in the Arabian Peninsula, where they have been exposed to highly conservative forms of Islam that differ greatly from those traditionally practiced at home. The religiously-inclined can find employment in Saudi-sponsored mosques in Ethiopia after taking advantage of generous scholarships to study Salafist Islam in Saudi Arabia. Local imams suffer from an educational and financial disadvantage in countering the Salafist scholars.

To offset the growing Salafist influence in Ethiopia, the United States Embassy in Addis Ababa attempted to have two works by Khalid Abou el-Fadl, a Kuwaiti Islamic scholar who teaches in the United States, translated into Amharic, Oromo and Somali, but were unable to find translators willing to undertake the work. The failed effort was part of an attempt to use “cultural programming” to turn “public opinion against activists who seek to overturn the existing order and import a brand of Islam that breeds conflict through its corrosive teachings that run counter to more orthodox interpretations of the Koran.” [1]

The Shrine of Shaykh Nur Hussein

In the Bale Region of Oromiya, dozens of Sufi shrines were reported to have been destroyed by Salafists in the 1990s before the Salafists turned their attention to the Shaykh Nur Hussein shrine, a religious center built around the tomb of a 12th century holy man. The shrine is the site of several important annual celebrations and, most importantly, has become a site of pilgrimage, an unforgivable violation of the Salafist code of Islamic worship, which only permits pilgrimage to the holy cities of the Hijaz in western Saudi Arabia. As part of its campaign to counter the Salafist trend, U.S. officials financed a major restoration of the shrine in 2007 at the same time Salafists were trying to force its closure (Ayyaantuu News Online, November 10, 2011). [2]

Local Muslims in Amhara Region then sought U.S. funding for restoration of the 18th century Jama Negus Mosque in Amhara Region, a project which had been denied funding from Gulf State NGOs on the grounds it had not only become a place of pilgrimage, but was also the center of annual celebrations of the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday (Moulid al-Nabi), which are also banned in the Salafist creed. [3]  Salafists despise the Jama Negus mosque as an alternative center of pilgrimage and Moulid celebrations, leading the Gulf States to refuse financial assistance to its physical rehabilitation and creating an opening for the United States to sap support from their Gulf State allies in the battle for “hearts and minds” in Ethiopia by providing reconstruction assistance. [4]

The introduction of non-Orthodox Christianity by Protestant missionaries has also created often violent dissension in both the Christian and Muslim communities. Evangelical Protestant churches and the homes of some evangelical Christians were burned down by in the town of Asendabo in southwest Ethiopia in March, 2011.  Residents of the dominantly Muslim region were incensed by rumors that members of the Pentecostal churches were using pages of the Koran as toilet paper (Radio Netherlands Worldwide Africa, March 20, 2011). Thousands were displaced in violence Prime Minister Zenawi blamed on a sect known as Kawarja. In Bale Region, a group of 17 Ethiopian Christian students were assaulted last year after they attempted to distribute Bibles to local Muslims (Ethiopian Review, March 2, 2011). There have also been Muslim attacks against evangelical Christians in the southern Ethiopian city of Besheno in November, 2010 and May 2011 (AsiaNews, May 2, 2011).

Notes

1. Wikileaks, U.S. Embassy Cable, 09ADDISABABA1675, July 15, 2009; U.S. Embassy Cable, 08ADDISABABA3230, November 26, 2008. The books in question were The Great Theft: Wrestling Islam from the Extremists (2005), and The Place of Tolerance in Islam (2002).

2. Wikileaks, U.S. Embassy Cable, 08ADDISABABA3230, November 26, 2008.

3. Wikleaks, U.S. Embassy Cable 09ADDISABABA1672, July 15, 2009.

4. Wikileaks, U.S. Embassy Cable, 09ADDISABABA1675, July 15, 2009.

This article first appeared in the May 31, 2012 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Monitor

After Pharaoh: The Future of Islamist Militancy in Egypt

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Andrew McGregor

An Address to the Jamestown Foundation Annual Terrorism Conference, December 8, 2011, Washington D.C.

Gazwa al-Sanadiq – “The Conquest of the Ballot Boxes”

Egyptian militancy has reached a turning point following the national elections. Many former militant groups and other potential militant formations have been coopted by electoral success as they will now sit in the parliament they once threatened with violence. It is reasonable to ask if such groups are prepared for the long and difficult work of forming policy through consensus and writing legislation to see such policies through. Nothing in this process will match the instant gratification of producing a short list of demands and striking state targets in an effort to force compliance in the name of Shari’a and Islam. Nonetheless, religious movements that once damned democracy are now pursuing it as an unexpected pathway to power, urged on, in part, by youth factions that want immediate change even if it means dumping decades-old policies of abstaining from party politics.

So far, religious-based militancy in Egypt has proven to be a sure path to self-destruction or exile. The general public distaste for renewed religious and political violence on the scale seen in the 1990s precludes the adoption of violence by any groups seeking serious public support. The Islamist victory certainly reinforces the irrelevance of al-Zawahiri’s al-Qaeda movement, which through decades of indiscriminate slaughter has never been able to achieve the results gained by peaceful demonstrations and political organization. A leading Salafist ideologue, Dr. Najih Ibrahim, has said of al-Qaeda: “Their aim is jihad, and our aim is Islam.”

The Egyptian Revolution took all of Egypt’s Islamist factions by surprise, leaving even the well-organized Muslim Brotherhood caught off guard and without an immediate plan of how to best exploit the political unrest for its own benefit. In the end the movement’s conservative leadership found itself completely at odds with the movement’s youth wing, which took to protests in Tahrir Square and elsewhere against the wishes of the leadership.

While the radical Islamists of nearby Somalia still denounce “the degrading values of democracy,” Egypt’s Islamists have accepted democracy as a kind of revelation, one that revealed its potential in the March constitutional referendum, in which Islamists deployed enough voters to swing the decision their way.

Under the military regime, Egypt’s courts have approved the existence of numerous religious-based political parties, despite a ban on such groups in the existing constitution. Often with little more than a new name for their political wing, the Islamist movements have exploited this new tolerance of formerly banned groups to form a powerful political alliance. The question is how long can an alliance between the Salafist parties and the Muslim Brotherhood last. These two broad factions have numerous political and religious differences that account for a basic lack of trust. The electoral success of the Salafists seems to have actually widened the gulf with the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Since a leadership turnover two years ago, the Muslim Brotherhood is now in the hands of a highly conservative leadership that would prefer to explore the possibilities of government even if this means meeting with American diplomats or working with the Egyptian military rather than antagonizing it.  Their triumph at the polls was, after all, the triumph of the reforms that changed the movement from a Qutbist revolutionary movement to a grassroots, social welfare organization willing to assume political power in incremental stages.  Though this approach has caused several rifts in the movement, it has still proved essentially correct, as witnessed by the election results. The catastrophic failure of the Qutb model has been replaced by the model of the Turkish Justice and Development Party. Nevertheless, the former leaders of the movement are watching to see whether the current leadership falters under the pressure they will face to initiate reforms in the Egyptian state.

Dr. Muhammad Badie – Leader of the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt

Though the Brotherhood has pledged not to run a presidential candidate, there will inevitably be pressure within the movement, given their electoral success, to skip a stage in the Brotherhood’s long-range plans and run a contender for the post. At the moment the Brothers are trying to persuade the military to approve a new government in which the chief power will lie in parliament rather than the presidency. Should this fail, it will increase pressure on the movement to enter the presidential contest. In the meantime, however, the Brotherhood’s cooperation with the military may backfire if Egyptians begin to view the movement as a collection of opportunists.

Brotherhood and Revolution

If the Muslim Brotherhood assumes a sober and even centrist stance as a responsible presence in government, this may allow the Salafists and fringe Islamic extremists to promote themselves through populist opposition to a conservative movement that, even if willing, will be unable to meet all the expectations of post-revolutionary Egypt.

The ever-pragmatic Brotherhood will not necessarily team up with the generally inflexible Salafists to dominate Egypt’s new parliament; a coalition with willing Liberal groups might be more likely, which could give the new government a more moderate and open tone. The Brothers have observed how the Islamist government of Turkey has managed to reconcile its own beliefs with continued cooperation with the West, to the point of maintaining its role as a vital NATO ally. At the best of times, Egypt is highly dependent on Western aid; with its currently shattered economy, there is little hope that an Islamist government could cut ties with America and the rest of the West unless Saudi Arabia and the Gulf nations were ready to step up and make up the financial shortfall that would follow. There are, however, no indications that this will happen in the immediate future.

The Salafists

Salafists have traditionally avoided participation in the political process. There is little doubt they will begin to disassociate themselves from the Muslim Brotherhood and let the Brothers’ inexperience at governance cause the Brotherhood’s followers to drift away to less-nuanced alternatives that promise quick solutions through a stricter observance of Islamic principles.

The Main Salafist Parties

  • Nour (“Light”) Party
  • Asala (“Fundamentals”) Party
  • Islah (“Reform”) Party
  • Al-Fadila (“Virtue”) Party
  • Al-Bena’a wa’l-Tanmia (“Building and Development”) Party (Political wing of al-Gama’a al-Islamiya)

The Nour Party

The Nour Party has formed a coalition with three other Salafist parties; Asalah, Fadilah and Islah, enabling it to win nearly a quarter of the available seats and pose as a major rival to the Muslim Brotherhood. Army spokesmen have denied that General Sami Anan held talks this week with al-Nour Party officials regarding the creation of a new government. Imad Abd al-Ghafour, the chairman of the Nour Party, has suggested that his party may form a parliamentary coalition with the Muslim Brotherhood, but the Muslim Brotherhood is more likely to cooperate with liberals and secularists than their Islamist rivals in the Salafist parties.

One economic sector that may be threatened by the new realities in parliament is the vital tourist sector, an important source of hard currency and a lifeline for millions of Egyptians. The Salafists, however, do not look at tourism as an economic bounty, but rather a social and health threat caused by the spread of Western immorality and diseases such as AIDS. For the Salafists the great works of the ancient Egyptians are of no interest as they are works of the jahiliya, the age of ignorance that preceded the introduction of Islam. Potential bans on alcohol and mixed bathing would further devastate the tourism industry.

The Egyptian Military

The first priority of the military is preserving their privileges. The officer corps leads a comfortable life in luxurious officers’ clubs financed by their interests in a large segment of the Egyptian economy. For nearly any new government, a re-examination of military control of much of the nation’s industrial sector would be a top priority; however, it is entirely possible that the military has made a deal with the Muslim Brotherhood to overlook these privileges while the military does nothing to impede the Brothers’ political progress.

While the Army has attempted to be Turkish-style “Guardians of Democracy,” they still sent a strong message to the Egyptian people that their privileges are untouchable when they killed over 40 people in Tahrir Square last month who were protesting the military’s attempt to limit the constitutional authority of future governments over the military. The resignation of Egypt’s military-appointed cabinet that followed was not a promising start for the new Guardians of Democracy.

Though it continues to control the country, the Army is clearly displeased by the criticism it is now receiving. The discomfort of the ruling council has been seen in previously unheard-of activities by the army’s commander, Field Marshal Tantawi, who has gone so far as to take to the TV to explain that the army was not seeking power and even donning civilian clothes to mix with protesters in Tahrir Square. The Army has much at stake, including the annual $1.3 billion dollars it receives from the US for maintaining the peace with Israel. Tantawi and other military figures are also mindful not to end up in court facing charges like their late leader, Mubarak, and will take great measures to ensure their immunity from prosecution.

The military has been buffeted by hostile winds in recent weeks, but increasingly it has the upper hand as Egyptians demand a return to stability. A democratic transition is impossible without the military’s cooperation, and this will come at a price – immunity from prosecution, a continued military presence in the national economy and a constitutional clause removing the military from civilian oversight.

Egypt’s Coptic Christians

Shaykh ‘Abd al-Salam, Nour Party: “The best the Christians have ever been treated was under Islamic rule.”

The Coptic revolutionary youth began ignoring the traditional non-confrontational directives from the Coptic religious leadership in the last few years. Coptic protests against the regime preceded those of Tahrir Square. While many Copts are alarmed at the escalating levels of sectarian violence, many of the youth have pledged to remain and fight for their rights as Egyptians, in the streets if necessary. The Coptic youth have already demonstrated they are no longer easy prey for Muslim mobs and have no interest in seeing the jizya tax on Christians revived. Some observers have noted that systematic discrimination against the Copts would result in two types of response: clashes in the streets and mass emigration.

International Repercussions

Egypt will also be tested internationally in the coming years. A conflict over water with Ethiopia and possibly Sudan is looming yet we know almost nothing about Salafist or Muslim Brotherhood views on issues like this. The West appears to be interested only in how an Islamist government would affect relations with Israel, but Egypt has other neighbors and faces foreign policy challenges that will leave the Islamists scrambling to form positions based on Islamic principles. This is not likely to be a pretty process for groups almost entirely focused on domestic issues and will possibly open the doors for serious divisions within the larger Islamist movement.

Israel

Problems with Israel include a controversial natural gas deal, Gaza, restrictions on Egypt’s military presence in the Sinai and the 1979 peace treaty.

The Muslim Brotherhood is looking for amendments to the 1979 peace deal rather than outright revocation. A similar position is held by most of the Salafist groups. Even if a more radical position was adopted, it would immediately run into some serious realities, including the sure loss of Egypt’s military subsidy from the United States, something not desired by the military. Although nearly all Egypt’s military exercises are focused on “an unnamed country to the northeast of Egypt,” the hard fact is that unlike the battle-hardened army that took the Suez Canal in 1973, the modern Egyptian army has not been involved in any serious fighting in the last four decades and the Air Force is no more likely to meet success against Israeli jets now than it was in 1967 or 1973.

Nonetheless, should Israel and/or the United States attack Iran, it is possible that some elements of the Islamist majority in parliament will flex their new-found muscle and access to the state’s armed forces to agitate for military retaliation of some sort.

The Sinai

The pipeline supplying natural gas to Israel and Jordan has been hit by gunmen eight times since the revolution began, leading Israel to begin seeking alternative sources of fuel. A policeman was killed just two weeks ago at a building used by al-Takfir wa’l-Hijra (Excommunication and Exodus), a relatively new militant group using a recycled name. Al-Takfir’s leader, Muhammad al-Teehi (Muhammad Eid Musleh Hamad) was arrested last month along with 16 other suspects, but the continuing grievances of the Sinai Bedouin and the cooperation of some members of their community with smugglers and Gazan militants suggest that the violence in the Sinai is far from over. Israel is constructing a massive 240km fence along its Sinai border with Egypt to counter Egyptian and Palestinian militants, Bedouin smugglers and African migrants trying to enter Israel.

Limits on an Egyptian military presence in the Sinai dictated by the 1979 peace agreement with Israel have hampered Egyptian efforts to cleanse the region of militants. However, some Israeli politicians have suggested that a greater Egyptian military deployment in the Sinai must be regarded as an act of war. Major General Uzi Dayan, the former head of the Israel National Security Council, has recently proposed a third way, urging the creation of an Israeli counterterrorism intervention force for deployment in the Sinai when necessary. Needless to say, this idea is unlikely to receive approval from any political movement in Egypt.

Conclusion

The massive social transformation taking place in Egypt is of the type that usually takes decades to sort out. The upsurge in Islamist political support may just be a phase in this transformation, leaving the possibility open that spurned Islamists might return to militancy. For now, however, the Islamist Parties must make a major change from small, highly disciplined cells designed for armed activities and the larger, less controllable composition of a political party pursuing a democratic process where numbers count. Egypt faces major economic, security and environmental challenges that will not be dealt with by a parliament obsessed with questions of appropriate dress for women and the evils of gender-mixing.

Islamists will focus on the constitution, the key to Egypt’s future direction. There is little question that the Islamist believe their electoral triumph will give them a strong position in the 100 man panel that will revise the constitution, but the Armed Forces have said they will select 80 of the 100 members. The constitutional fight is sure to turn ugly relatively quickly.

Meanwhile the Salafists will be inevitably transformed by their venture into politics, previously a long-taboo realm for the followers of the Pious Ancestors. Though they have eagerly and surprisingly taken to party politics, some residual distaste for mixing politics and religion was expressed when most of the Salafist parties agreed that preachers should not stand for office. The political transition will be hardest of all for the Salafists, who have the least political experience and are the most likely to be intolerant of views differing from their own rather inflexible beliefs. They will, in addition, be hard-pressed to restrain some of the more militant elements of the Salafist movement.

To be honest, there was very little reason to vote for many of the non-Islamist parties in the Egyptian election. They were poorly organized, had not had sufficient time to determine policy or platforms, and would likely have been hard-pressed to draw on sufficient talent to run a government if they did win. In the midst of the social, political and economic chaos that is currently engulfing their country, Egyptians turned to those who could say with confidence that they had the answers to these problems. Nine months after the rush of excitement that came with the overthrow of Mubarak, Egyptians are now tired of the seemingly endless round of strikes, disruptions and demonstrations. The Brothers’ motto is “Islam is the Solution.” The Egyptian public seems willing to give the Islamists a chance to prove it.

Egypt’s al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah Accuses Copts of Establishing a Parallel State

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Andrew McGregor

June 18, 2008

A recent round of violence between Egyptian Muslims and Egypt’s ancient Coptic Christian community has raised fears of a return to sectarian violence. Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah, formerly one of Egypt’s most dangerous Islamist terrorist groups, has weighed in on Coptic claims of persecution, claiming in a June 10 statement that the Copts were using the incidents to create “a parallel state,” suggesting that “many men of the Coptic Church have become, together with their churches, enmeshed to the marrow in political activism.”

Deir Abu FanahDeir Abu Fanah – Attacked in May 2008 (Photo – Andreas Paul)

The statement went on to claim that Church leaders were “seeking protection behind its walls to proclaim from behind them their mutiny against the state and rebellion against it” (al-Hayat, June 11). Even some Copts have suggested that the flow of funds from the successful Coptic diaspora has enabled the church to assume responsibility for aspects of their community that were once the sole domain of the state (al-Araby, January 6, 2005). The Egyptian Copts, led by 84-year-old Pope Shenouda III, are the largest Christian community in the Middle East and comprise an estimated 10 percent of Egypt’s population.

Once best known for its involvement in a number of spectacular incidents of terrorism, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981 and the massacre of 58 foreign tourists and three Egyptians at Luxor in 1997, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah has not only accepted the legitimacy of the Egyptian state, but has now emerged as one of its most vocal defenders. After the movement renounced violence in 2003, 1,000 leaders and members of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah were released from Egyptian prisons. Nearly 1,000 more were set free in 2006 as prominent leaders of the group apologized for their violent activities.

There were concerns in August 2006 that al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah had reverted to its former militancy when al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri released a video claiming that al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah had decided to join al-Qaeda. One of the movement’s leaders, Muhammad al-Hukaymah, appeared in the video to confirm the claim. In response to al-Zawahiri’s statement, al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah leaders in Egypt issued a complete denial of the al-Qaeda leader’s claims, stating that they “contradicted reality.”

On May 31, 60 to 70 Muslim villagers attacked a prominent Coptic monastery in Middle Egypt, home to a substantial number of Egyptian Christians. Police took three hours to arrive from the local police station two kilometers (one mile) away. A foreign-based Coptic website has accused police of “complacency or even complicity” in the attack (unitedcopts.org, June 4). Although the violence at the fourth century monastery of Deir Abu-Fana (St Epiphanius) was supposedly a result of monks building a government-approved fence through fields claimed by local Muslims, aspects of the attack suggested more sectarian motives. The attackers targeted the Church of Pope Kyrillos, destroying icons, bibles and the altar before setting the building on fire. Three monks were abducted, tortured, forced to spit on a representation of the cross and pronounce the Muslim profession of faith. One attacker was killed in what the police described as “an exchange of fire,” thought the monks do not carry arms (al-Jazeera, June 1; Watani News, June 8).

In previous attacks on Copts, the police have routinely claimed the perpetrators were either mentally deficient or acting from purely criminal rather than sectarian motives. The governor of Minya Province described the attack as “a fight between two neighbors and nothing else” (AFP, May 31). In the protests that followed, Copts took to the streets chanting: “With our blood and soul, we will defend the cross” (Middle East Times, June 2; The Peninsula [Qatar], June 2).

In another incident two masked men on a motorcycle killed four Copts in a Cairo jewelry shop (al-Arabiya, May 28). The murders were at first described as part of a robbery, but it later turned out that nothing had been stolen from the shop (Middle East Times, June 2). This incident was followed by another in southern Egypt, in which a Copt was stabbed to death by his Muslim neighbor. Though it appeared the murder was the result of a long-standing dispute, Copts again took to the streets in protest, throwing rocks at police cars and injuring three policeman (AFP, June 6).

Egyptian writer Ahmad al-Aswani suggests that the latest round of violence “is an attempt to terrorize Egypt’s Copts, and to force them either to emigrate from the homeland once and for all, or to convert to Islam to protect themselves and their families” (Aafaq.org, June 7). Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyah reminds fellow Egyptians that “Egypt is a state indivisible by two … it is the throbbing heart of Islam and Arabism, and no one has managed to change this fact … so let no one come today and tempt you to try to tamper with this fact and seek to change Egypt’s Islamic, Arab face” (al-Hayat, June 10).

This article first appeared in the June 18, 2008 issue of the Jamestown Foundation’s Terrorism Focus