By Rania Al Malky
CAIRO: National unity, citizenship, democracy, rule of law, social fabric… the list can go on ad nauseam.
Indeed nausea is what many in Egypt are feeling right now. Nausea at the sight of the blood-splattered walls of a church, where lingering bits of flesh are a stark reminder of a heinous crime. Nausea at the empty rhetoric, the vacuous slogans, and the ostrich-like reaction to everything that goes wrong in our country.
When a suicide bomber blew himself up in front of the Al-Qeddesine Church in Alexandria, killing 23 and wounding over 90 in the first half hour of New Year’s Day, it was as if history was repeating itself. A year ago, on the eve of Coptic Christmas — just like today — six Christians walking out of a church were shot down in the Upper Egyptian city of Nagaa Hammadi. The murder case has been in court ever since — even though the three prime suspects were apprehended within three days of the crime.
Today, the massacre is on a scale we have never witnessed before. Twenty-three innocent souls were murdered in cold blood, their deaths fuelling a violent reaction by Egypt’s Christians — not against their Muslim neighbors, friends, or colleagues, but against a government that has failed us all.
Christians and Muslims are asking the same questions: Why didn’t the government step up its protection of churches in response to an open threat posed by Al-Qaeda in Iraq — less than two months ago — to retaliate for the church’s alleged incarceration of two female Coptic converts to Islam? Why is the Nagaa Hammadi case still in court? Why hasn’t the government announced a day of national mourning? If investigations reveal that this was indeed an act of terrorism, then why has the Minister of Interior not been dismissed? Wasn’t the previous interior minister, Hassan El-Alfi, removed from his post instantly when foreign tourists were murdered by a terrorist attack in Luxor in Nov. 1997? Why is Egyptian blood cheaper than foreign blood?
It was a struggle putting pen to paper since news of the attack broke out. How many times can one condemn, deplore, lament, castigate, denounce, or admonish? For how long will the government continue to lend a deaf ear to the real threats, both internal and external, to our national and social security? Why is our security budget dedicated to stamping down calls for democratic reform or respect for civil, human and social rights?
Yes, the Egyptian government has failed us all, but it has failed the Christians among us more. Unfortunately, the official attitude towards this massacre via the government’s media machine has made it almost impossible to say so openly. If you acknowledge that Egypt’s Copts had been singled out in this attack, then you are “fuelling sedition,” “undermining national unity,” and “helping disintegrate the seamless social fabric of Egypt.” Hence, you’re immediately branded an enemy of the state.
Therein lies the danger of what is happening now. It is true that this attack was very likely masterminded and orchestrated by “foreign elements” targeting Egypt’s political and economic security, but we cannot deny that the only reason they were able to realize this goal was because they found fertile ground for it here.
Egypt 2011 is not the Egypt I grew up in. People have changed, mentalities have regressed, and pernicious ideologies have infiltrated the hearts and minds of the underprivileged majority, whose dire economic and social circumstances have turned them into ticking time bombs, ready to blow themselves up because they have nothing to live for.
I spent part of my childhood at a boarding school in Alexandria, where it was unthinkable to ask your classmates if they were Muslim or Christian. I never knew who was what. But today, visit any public school in Egypt, and you’ll see a microcosm of the country as a whole: children labeling, judging and segregating each other according to their religion. Even among the more enlightened among us, you’d be surprised at some of the xenophobic attitudes this crisis has unleashed.
On Facebook, an entire discussion was launched about whether or not it’s religiously acceptable to draw a picture of a cross and a crescent side by side! How deplorable that someone would even think to question that under the current circumstances. If anything, it reveals that a deep-seated resentment of others has become endemic in our society, and the angry reaction of Egypt’s Copts reveals that this resentment has no religious boundaries. It could be manifesting itself in the form of peaceful protest today, but this may not be the case tomorrow.
Violence only breeds violence. Egypt’s government must be warned that without serious introspection and a rigorous overhaul of how it has been handling the issues affecting the Coptic community, then the meek lamb will turn into a raging lion. And there will be no stopping it.
Rania Al Malky is the Chief Editor of Daily News Egypt.
