The normally tolerable Muslim-Christian mix proved combustible in 2005. Gihan Shahine pieces together a tale of tense ties A state-church confrontation over the alleged conversion to Islam of Wafaa Costantine, a priest's wife, got the year rolling. The tension hasn't stopped since then, much to the detriment of inter-religious harmony in a nation that is predominantly Muslim. The way the church and the government handled -- perhaps mishandled -- the Costantine issue seemed to have had serious repercussions throughout the rest of the year. When the church exercised pressure on the government, mobilising Copts in mass protests, Costantine was quickly found by the police and returned to the church. The problem, notes Sameh Fawzi, the managing editor of the weekly Coptic newspaper Watani, is that the "Coptic problems are addressed through the church and state security, which should not be the case." The "Coptic dossier", he said, is usually dealt with as a security, not political, issue, even though Coptic issues should be put on the political agenda and addressed by the nation's political secular elite. The recent deadly riots in Alexandria over a church play that allegedly defamed Islam were a case in point. Entitled I was Blind and Now I can See, the play tells the story of a Christian who converts to Islam and is disillusioned. The clashes over the sudden appearance of CDs featuring performances of the play left three dead and 60 wounded. It was the worst such incident since sectarian fighting broke out in the small Upper Egypt village of Kosheh in 2000, leaving 19 Coptic Christians and one Muslim dead. The violence immediately cast a shadow on the parliamentary polls where Copts were hoping to boost their poor representation. Only one of 50 Coptic candidates who ran in the parliamentary polls won a seat. In contrast, the Muslim Brotherhood won six times more seats than in the outgoing parliament, forming the largest opposition bloc. The poll results further boosted Coptic fears that a growing sectarian environment was sweeping the country, where voters cast their ballots according to religious rather than political affiliations. Many Copts have also expressed fears that the Brotherhood's rise to power will ultimately turn Egypt into a conservative Islamic state where Copts will be treated as second-class citizens. "First we were fighting for our rights of citizenship, but now we feel our very existence is at stake," Fawzi said. It was these kinds of worries that catalysed a controversial mid-November conference about the alleged persecution of the nation's Copts, which concluded with calls for greater US pressure on Egypt and restrictions on Washington's aid to Cairo. The conference, held in the US, uncovered connections between expatriate Copts and some of the staunchest proponents of regime change in the Arab world, including former Israeli officials and the key architects of the Iraqi war. Michael Mounir, a Coptic activist who leads the Washington-based US Copts Association (USCA), was among those who made repeated pleas to Congress to use US aid and trade to penalise Egypt for alleged discrimination against Copts. Much speculation has centred on Mounir's recent visit to Egypt. According to Fawzi, the way Mounir was received "sent an alarming message that foreign pressure is the only way to get the government to address Coptic issues." Many see a connection between Mounir's visit and recent government attempts to pre-empt Coptic anger. President Mubarak appointed five Copts to parliament and issued a decree facilitating regulations concerning building and restoring churches. Many Copts welcomed the steps while arguing that the improvements remained inadequate, and even cosmetic. Fawzi argued that the five Coptic MPs were "politically neutral", and "not actually concerned with the Coptic dossier". The new church regulations are likely to address bureaucratic hindrances related to the restoration of old churches, but Fawzi and others noted that they would not necessarily ease restrictions imposed on building new ones. They would also still fail to resolve fundamental inequality between the construction of mosques and churches in Egypt. At the same time, many Copts would also concede that some improvements have had an effect. It is easier now to obtain permission to build churches, Coptic Christmas has become a national holiday, and Copts hold a number of cabinet-level portfolios. The Orthodox church has also managed to launch a satellite channel called Agaphy. But are the recent improvements no more than piecemeal solutions that do not actually provide fundamental remedies to core Coptic issues? Egypt's Orthodox community still complains of alleged discrimination in the workplace, restrictions on church construction and reports that young Christian girls are being forced to convert by Islamic extremists. In fact, allegations of forced conversion were high on the agenda of the US-based conference, despite the fact that police investigations could not confirm a single case. President Mubarak stepped into the fray last week, ordering an immediate investigation into the disappearance of two young Coptic girls named Christine and Mariam, who were believed to have been subjected to forced conversion. Mubarak's intervention was in response to an episode of a TV talk show that was looking into whether such cases were the result of forced conversions, or love affairs. Prominent Coptic thinker Gamal Asaad argued that it was precisely these kinds of issues that complicate matters, providing expatriate Copts like Maurice Sadeq, a lawyer and an advocate of Coptic rights, with an "extra card" to play. According to Asaad, Sadeq "asks those seeking immigrant visas to claim they are discriminated against in their homeland and gets huge sums of money in return." Asaad has consistently warned that expatriate Copts have their own agenda, which does not necessarily serve Egypt's Orthodox community and also provides the US with a card to use in pursuing its thinly masked imperial interests in the region. Those plans, he said, include dividing the region into sectarian entities, as is the case in Iraq, Sudan and Lebanon. "Now some US institutions are testing the waters towards establishing a country for Copts in the Delta under the leadership of the Orthodox Church," Asaad insisted. Known for his critical stance towards the church, Asaad said it was actually "helping out with those plans, by assuming the role of political spokesman for all Copts." The volatility of the resulting socio-political atmosphere makes Fawzi pessimistic about the future. "In the absence of root solutions for Coptic issues," he said, "you can only expect more sectarian rifts to occur in 2006."
