CAIRO: Egypt’s beleaguered Coptic Christians, who saw two from their community killed in clashes with police last week, fear growing discrimination despite the Islamist opposition having been wiped out in the last parliamentary elections.
“We are talking about discrimination not just from the government,” said Emad Gad, a political analyst for Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. “The government has succeeded in Islamizing society … they are using religion to get the support of ordinary people.
“We are living under a fanatic bureaucratic system. Just to fix a church window you need permission from the government. If you want to build a mosque you can get permission in no time.”
Egypt very recently wrapped up a general election runoff that tightened the ruling National Democratic Party’s (NDP) grip on power. The Muslim Brotherhood, previously Egypt’s largest opposition group, was wiped out in a first round that was marred by accusations of widespread fraud.
However, some are fearful that Islamist influences will rise from within President Hosni Mubarak’s NDP itself.
A Coptic opposition candidate running for the secular Al-Wafd party accused the NDP of fraudulently claiming her seat shortly after she had been declared the winner, and blamed “extremist” Islamic elements inside the NDP.
“For sure this was due to an anti-Coptic faction within the NDP … a Wahabi Salafist current,” said Mona Makram Ebeid, referencing a strict version of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.
Sectarian tensions have been rising in Egypt ever since Muslims set fire to homes owned by the family of a Christian man who was rumored to have flirted with a Muslim girl last month. Recently threats have also been made against Copts by a faction of Al-Qaeda based in Iraq.
Days before the elections’ first round, bloody clashes erupted in Cairo’s Talibiya district between Coptic protesters and police over the refusal of local authorities to allow them to turn a community center into a church.
Coptic Christians comprise up to 10 percent of Egypt’s 80 million predominantly Muslim residents, and have been the target of sectarian attacks in the past. Clashes between Coptic Christians and the police are rare, however.
During the last clash with police, two Coptic demonstrators were killed and dozens of others were wounded. More than 160 demonstrators were arrested, including children as young as nine.
Muslim residents of the area chanted anti-Coptic slogans during the clashes, and hurled rocks at the demonstrators.
Nagib Gobrael, a Coptic activist and human rights lawyer, said he was saddened and disappointed by the government’s “very aggressive” response to the Talibiya protests.
“They used real bullets,” said Gobrael “And with these bullets, they killed two people.
“The NDP has been promising that they will change things for 15 years. They repeat those promises before the elections take place. They promised, for example, that they would change the law governing the right to build churches. And this never happened.”
But Gobrael believes discrimination goes far beyond that.
He said that the education system is entirely Islamic, with no reference to Coptic culture. Gobrael added that Copts are often barred from attaining senior government posts, that Muslim authors are not punished for publishing inflammatory anti-Coptic articles, and that Muslims are prohibited from converting to Christianity.
A report released by the US State Department last month also complained about the state of religious freedom in Egypt, the singling out of religious minority groups such as Christians, stating that they “face personal and collective discrimination.”
Political science professor Mustafa Kamel Al-Sayyed agreed that there is a popular Islamist trend sweeping Egyptian society and that the Copts have good reason to feel marginalized.
But he also argues that the Islamization of society does not come from the government, as demonstrated by its severe crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood in the run-up to the legislative election.
“I think it is an expression of a trend that affects many Muslim countries … it is a threat not just to the Copts but also to people who do not agree with the ideas of the Islamists,” Al-Sayyed told AFP.
But others fear that the Mubarak government has allowed this trend to pervade the nation.
“Discrimination against the Copts is systematic and comprehensive in Egypt,” said Gad. “You find it in government bureaucracy, in the courts, in the police, and in the universities.”
A court hearing is due later this month in the trial of three Muslim men accused of killing six Copts in southern Egypt in January as they emerged from mass on the eve of Coptic Christmas.
Gad said he thought it unlikely that the outcome would be satisfactory.
