By Amira Salah-Ahmed
CAIRO: Al-Qeddesine Church (Church of the Two Saints) is just blocks away from my family’s home in Alexandria, Egypt, where I spent endless days and nights among relatives and friends feeling soundly safe.
For decades, we’ve lived alongside our Coptic neighbors in this part of the Mediterranean city known for many things: its history and culture, sense of humor, beaches, seafood even — not violence, and certainly not the kind of sectarian strife that inspires random terrorist acts killing tens of innocent lives.
Muslims do business with Coptic shop owners on the streets surrounding Al-Qeddesine Church, stride comfortably along the same sidewalks as random pedestrians whose religious affiliations are irrelevant, accept well-wishes during Ramadan and Eid and exchange greetings on Christmas and Easter.
There is no history of deep-rooted sectarian tension here, ask any of the community’s residents. Christians and Muslim, for years have lived peacefully side-by-side, like in countless communities around Egypt — and this is nothing new.
It’s no wonder then that a bomb going off in front of Al-Qeddesine Church in the first hour of Jan. 1, killing 23 people and injuring more than 90 worshippers who emerged from mass, came as a sinister surprise to a nation forced to begin the New Year grieving innocent lives.
Ask any Egyptian on the street and their reflex is shock and disgust at the gruesome attack. Condolences to the victims’ families can never be enough. Any Egyptian, whether Muslim or Christian, will forever be scarred by the memory of this violence. Memories of last year’s unresolved Nagaa Hammadi Christmas Eve shooting are still fresh in our minds as are those of the Omraneya clashes — and all to what end?
My parents phoned several Coptic friends after the incident, one of whom had left the church with his family minutes before the bomb went off. His car, parked under his home near the church, was wrecked in the ensuing protests that broke out immediately after the attack. He’d already received numerous calls from Muslims and Christians in the community concerned for his safety.
Other Copts living in the area shared similar stories, all echoing the same sentiment: This is an attack against all Egyptians. No true Muslim would perpetrate such violence.
Emotions are flying high — rightfully so — as well as accusations pointing the blame at extremist groups or foreign entities attempting to harm Egypt’s stability.
At protests everyday around the country, demonstrators are unequivocally denouncing any attempt to create a rift between the two main religions that make up Egypt’s national fabric, heritage and history. Denouncing attempts to allow terrorist acts to take over our streets. Even the nation’s highly divided opposition has come together in a rare show of force to condemn the attacks and call for unity.
What’s surprising is that solidarity protests are met with violence by the nation’s own security forces, causing clashes that in this context can easily be misconstrued as sectarian. Who does this serve?
No Egyptian, regardless of religion and no matter what our differences may be, sees any justification for this sort of violence. No amount of sectarian tension has existed to foretell this kind of fatal attack. Whoever committed this crime knows exactly where to further widen the existing cracks in our society to create a full-blown chasm, and this is what we must fight against.
In a commentary that ran in Daily News Egypt titled “A united Egypt can defeat any enemy,” Firas Al-Atraqchi wrote: “While the security of all Egyptians ultimately falls on the shoulders of the government — and I believe that security forces were grossly incompetent in preventing the tragedy still unfolding in Alexandria — the role of outside forces should not be so quickly dismissed.”
I wholeheartedly agree and it is vital that we recognize this as a likely explanation. The idea of foreign entities attempting to cause an Egyptian implosion is neither far-fetched nor laughable, nor is it a clean and easy explanation for what happened, nor does it exonerate the government from responsibility. On the contrary, it is the toughest one to swallow. We should not discredit this possibility by brushing it aside as mere conspiracy theorizing.
One need only look at our regional neighbors to see the foreign motivation — even if carried out by domestic hands — behind these kinds of attacks at such sensitive timing. Like any crime, the most likely suspect is the one with the most to gain. What does the average Egyptian have to gain from this kind of attack? Nothing.
But what could be more convenient than a destabilized Egypt wrangling with sectarian violence as an impending referendum is set to split neighboring Sudan in two? What could further discredit its mediation leverage in the stalled Mideast peace process than an inability to keep its own house in order? What could take the attention off of the numerous and pressing regional crises?
These are questions we must continue to ask regardless of what any rushed investigations into the attacks will show.
And if not an entity foreign to the country then surely one that is foreign to common sectarian rhetoric. One that is foreign to the communities in which these violent acts take place. That Egypt’s Christians are a minority subjected to the kinds of discrimination that this label carries is a fact. That sectarian strife will terrorize Egypt’s streets and communities — this cannot be accepted as the status quo.
It is our duty as Muslims to support grieving Copts and join them in denouncing the attack; this is the Egypt we all know. Chants at protests have largely been ones for solidarity and national unity — if only they would be allowed to go on peacefully by the suffocating security cordons.
Plain-clothed thugs planted conspicuously among average citizens in order to disseminate disinformation and rile the hundreds of crowds while giving state security a helping hand in quashing protests and kettling demonstrators must not be allowed to egg on the very kind of sectarian rifts that were bred and stoked to tear apart the unity of Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Pakistan and Yemen.
As a Muslim, Egyptian, Alexandrian, I refuse to let history be rewritten or our future forcibly drawn in blood.
Instead, let us heed calls to celebrate Christmas by joining our Coptic neighbors for midnight mass on Jan. 7, stand together and cement the nations’ fragile fabric.
Amira Salah-Ahmed is the Business Editor of Daily News Egypt.
