As they await the selection of their new pope, Egypt's Christians are increasingly uncertain about the future, writes Dina Ezzat Hani Abdallah is a teenager. He arrives at his new school. He enters his class and takes a seat. The first teacher enters and greets the students, only to say, "I take it we are all Muslims in this class, thank God!" Having looked around to see no opposition to this statement, Hani, who has just left the house after making a short prayer before the cross on the wall of the family's living room, decides to keep silent. After all, if the teacher is unaware that Hani Abdallah is in fact Hani Abdallah Girgis, then there is no point in bringing it up now. Hani decides that when it comes to his school, his teachers and his classmates, he is a Muslim. This is the story of film director Amr Salama's proposed film Lamoukhza ("Sorry to say it, but..."). Salama's script dissects the agonies of a teenager who feels almost obliged to pretend that he is a Muslim so that he will feel accepted. In the script there are many details about the struggle that Hani Abdallah has to go through when pretending to be a Muslim: removing the cross and picture of the Virgin Mary from the living room wall when receiving friends, memorising verses from the Quran that he can refer to while talking to friends and so on. The hardest part of the ordeal, perhaps, is when Hani hears his friends referring to other Coptic students in a pejorative way. "Lamoukhza, these kids are Copts," a friend tells him one afternoon. In Egyptian dialect, the word lamoukhza is used mainly among the economically and culturally underprivileged segments of society, ahead of a reference to items or matters considered unbecoming. A common expression is lamoukhza gazma ("just a pair of shoes"). Throughout the film script, Hani shares much with his peers. It is only at certain moments that he feels different and perplexed. "This is the message that I want to get across: we are all human beings. It doesn't matter what names we carry or what religion we follow, we are all human," Salama said. A HISTORY OF CONTROVERSY: Salama, a film director whose name is forever associated with the film Asmaa about an AIDS patient in Egypt, presented his script for the approval of the censorship authority three years ago. It has been rejected over and over again. "Before the 25 January Revolution the script was rejected. But the same thing happened after the revolution," Salama said. Last month, he tried again. "This time, I did not get a flat no. I have not been given approval yet, but I was promised the script would be passed eventually," he said. Salama has never had a proper answer to his questions as to why the script has not been approved. The overall line of the censorship is that Lamoukhza accentuates or even exaggerates "civic strife". "Basically, they argue that we don't have an issue with Muslim-Coptic relations in Egypt, or that Copts and Christians in general in Egypt don't have any problems," Salama said, adding "but of course Copts do have problems." For Salama, as for many of the Copts from different age groups and socio-economic backgrounds who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly, the "civic strife" started in Egypt in the second half of the 1970s under the rule of late president Anwar Al-Sadat. The latter, in his attempts to weaken leftist leanings across a wide spectrum of socio-political circles, opted to promote Islamist, including militant Islamist, groups. However, according to Sinout Shenouda, who is in his early 50s, a condescending view of the Copts had been present even before Sadat, though it was a sentiment that Sadat and his associates used to marginalise the left and to incite strife. It was in the late 1960s under the rule of former president Gamal Abdel-Nasser that many Copts consider the days when their citizenship rights were best observed. It was during this period that Shenouda did his military service. At the time Shenouda was a prominent member of his unit and he was well appreciated by its head, a Muslim officer, whose name, Mohamed, was as strongly indicative of his religious belonging as was Shenouda of his. Mohamed liked Shenouda very much and took him to many important and sometimes confidential meetings. At the outset of every one of these, in what amounted almost to a refrain to Shenouda's ears, he used to say, "this is Sinout Shenouda -- he is lamoukhza a Copt, but he is an excellent soldier nevertheless." "He said it half-jokingly, but he did not really need to say it because my name left no room for speculation," Shenouda recalled. Shenouda's experience was an individual one. Today it is much more widespread. "SORRY, BUT...": Kirolos Fayez arrived at his school in the poorer neighbourhood of Ain Shams in Cairo at the beginning of this academic year only to discover that the strictly Coptic class that he had been attending since his first primary year and throughout the following eight years was no longer there. The students were no longer isolated in a classroom of their own. Instead, they were distributed among the eight classes of the last preparatory class upon the initiative of a new head of the school, a Muslim, who had decided it was not a good idea to keep the Copts "separated" and that it would be better to include them among the other children. For George Fadi, the cousin of Fayez, who attends another school in the same neighbourhood, which includes a good part of the Coptic population of east Cairo, his Coptic class was not dissolved. Instead, a few Muslim students were sent to join them as the other non-Coptic classes were overwhelmed with some 70 students each. Fadi was hurt, he said, when he heard one of the newcomers not wanting to join the class and begging to know why he was being punished, since "lamoukhza, the class is full of Copts." "We are happy together, at least as long as we are not insulted. If they want to keep the classes this way, that is fine, and if they want to have others joining us, then that is fine too, but we shouldn't be insulted," Fadi said, his eyes looking at the ground at the end of an unpleasant school day. The sense of victimisation that is being more and more vocally expressed in many Coptic quarters, especially those on the less-advantaged end of the socio-economic spectrum, goes way beyond forced separation in schools or the piercing looks that fall straight onto the uncovered hair of a woman living in a poorer neighbourhood where the vast majority of women are predominantly Muslim and thus, by the norms of today, are veiled. Such looks fall, too, on the crosses tattooed onto the wrists of Copts holding onto the straps of a packed bus or tram. THE CHALLENGE OF EQUAL CITIZENSHIP: According to Coptic activist Rami Kamil, the challenges facing Copts in Egypt today are many. Equal citizenship, Kamil argues, is top on the list of the challenges facing Copts today, and this should be egalitarian at least if fully equal citizenship is impossible to gain. "Copts today are not just faced with the by now traditional and typical forms of discrimination, such as denied access to certain jobs, but they are also faced with direct attacks, both verbal and physical. They are faced with attacks at churches and with attacks that aim to humiliate or physically hurt them," Kamil said. In November 2010, only a few weeks before the outbreak of the 25 January Revolution, a group of Copts entered into a confrontation with riot police as the law-enforcement forces were trying to demolish a church under construction in the Giza neighbourhood of Omraniya, citing problems with its authorisation. In a country where the construction of churches is the fruit of much lobbying and paperwork, unlike that of mosques, families have opted to initiate the construction of churches even while the paperwork is being processed. In recent years, this has become the de facto practice by which many churches have got to be built and receive worshipers. Sporadic incidents of complications, including the unease felt by Muslim residents of the same neighbourhoods, have been reported. However, since the incident of the Omraniya Church, where the real instigator was suspected to be a police officer who had encouraged radical residents to attack the church, the anger of some radicals against the constructions of churches has been violently expressed by residents of the neighbourhoods concerned. The pattern of attacking churches reached a new height on the eve of the 25 January Revolution, when the entrance of the Two Saints Church in the once-cosmopolitan city of Alexandria was bombed by a suspected car bomb, killing or wounding over 30 worshippers exiting the church after mass on New Year's Eve. This was the most serious attack since that of Nagaa Hammadi three years earlier in Qena, when a thug associated with a local member of the then ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), headed by ousted former president Hosni Mubarak, gunned down seven worshipers exiting a Christmas Eve mass. "When we went to Tahrir Square and throughout the 18 days of the revolution, there was none of this violence, none at all. There were no 'Copts' and no 'Muslims': we were all just Egyptians who had come together from all backgrounds to pursue a joint cause -- to remove the dictator. Sadly, not long after that the sense of oneness slowly eroded," said Mina Nagui, a political activist attacked during the "Friday of Anger" demonstration, when he was carried out of Tahrir Square in search of medical help by Muslim and Coptic friends. Today, Nagui, like Salama among the faces of the 25 January Revolution, is saddened by the way things have gone. Both Salama and Nagui identify the loss of a common cause as a prime catalyst for the end of the short-lived sense of unity enjoyed during the revolution. "However, it is one thing to be divided and quite another to be attacked. Today, Copts are being attacked and so are their churches. For me this is heartbreaking, not just as a Copt but above all as an Egyptian who had been hoping that this country would move forward and become a better place for all its citizens," Nagui said. According to Kamil, who has been documenting anti-Coptic attacks since Hosni Mubarak stepped down on 11 February 2011, attacks against Coptic targets -- individuals as well as places -- "have been increasing in a shocking fashion." THE MEASURE OF THE PROBLEM: A report issued earlier this month by the Egyptian Initiative for Individual Rights (EIIR) offered a sad picture about the fate of Copts during the transitional period that started on the evening of 11 February 2011, when the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) took over, until the day President Mohamed Morsi was officially inaugurated on 30 June 2012. According to the report, most of the violations to which Copts have been subjected have been either instigated or at least tolerated by the military police, which was helping the then, and to a large extent still, poorly equipped and managed national police to live up to its responsibilities. Accounts shared with EIIR researchers reveal that across the nation and under varied circumstances individual Copts and churches have been attacked while the military police have either turned a blind eye or have got directly involved in the attacks. The carnage of 9 October 2011, better known as the Maspero Massacres, remains the most shocking of all the ordeals that Egypt's Copts have gone through during the transitional period, when army personnel and vehicles targeted and attacked Coptic demonstrators who had joined a march from Shobra, the traditional residential area of Cairo's Copts, to the Radio and TV Building on the part of the Nile Corniche named after French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. "The harshest part was not just the awful scenes of the squashed bodies of young men underneath army vehicles, although that was very harsh because the Copts have done their military services and lost their lives defending the country during the war years," said Eveline Hamdi, a Heliopolis resident in her early 60s. For Hamdi, the most traumatic part of the Maspero experience was the news presenter on Channel One of state-run TV calling on "the honourable citizens of Egypt to run to the rescue of the Armed Forces of Egypt that are under attack from the Copts." "When I heard this, I could not believe my ears, though I knew that as Copts we have been looked upon with suspicion by the state, especially during recent decades," Hamdi said. "But it is one thing to have an unwritten rule excluding Copts from serving in key intelligence offices or at airport security and it is completely another to suggest on national TV that the Copts are a group apart from the rest of the nation and that they are attacking the army when they were simply going on a peaceful march." The true details of how the carnage at Maspero started remain unrevealed to this today. An internal military investigation found three soldiers guilty of crimes that caused them to be sentenced to three years behind bars, but not much more has been offered by way of transparency. It is standard procedure that army matters, especially investigations, are not revealed to the public. However, according to Coptic researcher Nader Shukri given the magnitude of this event, which involved civil targets, information should have been made public. IMPUNITY? The apparent impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of the Maspero Massacres, like that accorded to those responsible for the other attacks that targeted demonstrators during the transitional period, is totally unacceptable, said a statement issued on the anniversary of the carnage by Strong Egypt, a political party headed by former presidential candidate Abdel-Moneim Abul-Fotouh, an "excommunicated" former member of the Muslim Brotherhood. "By any account the Maspero carnage was one of the worst, if not the worst, crime that took place under the rule of the SCAF, and the fact that those responsible for it remain unpunished is totally unacceptable," said Mohamed Osman, head of the political committee of Strong Egypt. According to Osman, impunity of this sort is unacceptable in a country that rose up to remove a dictator. It is particularly unacceptable when it causes serious and hard-to-heal rifts in a diverse society. "This diversity should be celebrated and respected," Osman said. "Those responsible for crimes of this sort must be brought to justice." Osman said that in this context an end to impunity would help eliminate the existing tolerance of religious discrimination. "But at any event, religious discrimination is something that is bigger than any particular incident, and it needs to be addressed properly through legal channels," he added. Strong Egypt is currently preparing a proposal for a body that would combat discrimination on the grounds of religion. The party aims to promote this proposal in the next parliament, should its candidates be elected. For Ishak Ibrahim, head of the freedom of faith section at the EIIR, "punishment should not only include the perpetrators, but also those who ordered the attacks," whether those at Maspero or any of the other crimes that the Copts have been subjected to from January 2011 to the present. The firm application of the rule of law, activists argue, Coptic or not, is the real answer to an issue once called the "Coptic file" and now being referred to as the "Coptic problem". In its report, the EIIR criticised the failure of the state prosecution to act promptly against such attacks, or its counting on the heads of families or notables to sort out differences that could develop into confrontations. The failure of the state to act, the EIIR report said, was inexcusable, given that the penal code allows the state prosecutor to pursue litigation whether or not a dispute has been settled through informal mediation. It is this marginalisation of the rule of law, argues Heba Morayef of the Cairo office of Human Rights Watch, an international NGO, that has allowed not just the perpetuation of crimes against the Copts to continue, but also the aggravation of these crimes. RECENT ATTACKS: On 29 January 2011, as the nation celebrated the return of long-missed scenes of civic cooperation in Cairo's Tahrir Square, a group of unknown assailants attacked and demolished the small Rafah Church in Sinai attended by a number of Coptic families who had long been living on the eastern borders of the country. The news was received with dismay by a public opinion that perceived the attack to be a final attempt by the then-sinking Mubarak regime to redirect attention and to split national ranks. Father Mikhail of the Rafah Church said that at the time it seemed that this attack belonged more to the past than to the future, which many hoped would see a new beginning for Muslim-Coptic relations. Yet, only a few weeks ago, the church was again attacked by a group of jihadists, who also threatened the Coptic families, demanding that they leave Rafah or be killed. Although the attack came within the wider context of violent acts by jihadi groups, with which the state is firmly at odds over border security, the attack against the Coptic families this year recalled memories of similar threats of eviction that were made against a group of Coptic families living in the village of Dahshour last summer in the wake of a neighbourhood dispute that turned violent, leaving one Muslim man dead. For Morayef, the matter boils down to a basic demand to put law and order in place, to show zero tolerance for sectarian violations and to introduce fair laws that secure the rights of equal citizenship for all. "The elected president should make these matters a priority," she said. In Kamil's assessment, President Morsi, a former leading figure of the Muslim Brotherhood and former head of its recently established Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), is not making such issues a priority. "In fact, I would say that the curve of anti-Coptic violations has been considerably on the increase since Morsi took over," Shukri also said. Shukri was not suggesting that Morsi had been giving the green light to anyone to launch such violations, but he was saying that Morsi had not been doing what an elected president should do, which is to go beyond the rhetoric and to give basic citizenship rights to all citizens. "I voted for Amr Moussa in the first round of the presidential elections, and I was confident that he would make it to the second round, and that if he got to the second round against Mohamed Morsi it would be Moussa who would win," said Hamdi. The daughter, sister and wife of army officers, Hamdi was convinced that were he to be elected president Ahmed Shafik, a military man chosen by Mubarak as prime minister during the first week of the 25 January Revolution, would only be an extension of the "semi-military rule" that needed to be changed "in line with the demands of the revolution". When it turned out that Morsi was running against Shafik in the second round of the election, "after the shock of Moussa coming fifth," Hamdi, "without thinking twice, voted for Shafik." "I could not have voted for Morsi -- political Islam is out of the question for me as a Copt who knows what these groups think and say about us. I did not want Shafik, but I was afraid that if I did not vote for him Morsi would win," she said. Like Hamdi, Fahima Mounir, a resident of Shobra, was "scared of the idea of an Islamist president." However, Mounir, a housewife in her early 60s, did not agree with Hamdi when it came to Shafik. "People were going around saying that the Copts wanted to have Shafik because he would imprison those who went to Tahrir. This is what my grandson Nader told me. I thought about it and decided to boycott the second round altogether, because I did not want people to say that the Copts were against the revolution. This is not true. Nader and Mariana [a granddaughter] were in Tahrir every day until Mubarak fell," Mounir said. Hamdi and Mounir, however, were both in tears when the victory of Morsi was announced. Using almost identical phrasing, the two women said they did not know what the victory of Morsi would mean for the Copts of Egypt. "My family has been living here in Shobra for generations. I could never think of leaving Egypt, although two of my sons have American and Canadian passports. I don't want to leave. I want to die here," Mounir said. ISLAMIST CHALLENGES: The rise of political Islam is a challenge that the Copts have been confronted with. For many Copts who spoke to the Weekly in the wake of the attacks that have been unfolding throughout the close to two years since Mubarak stepped down, the rise of political Islam meant a deterioration in their rights. That said, it is not true that for Copts all shades of political Islam are one and the same. The Salafis, who rarely make an effort to conceal their condescending perception of the Copts as "lesser believers" or outright infidels, says Shenouda, are certainly not welcomed by the vast majority of the Coptic population. "How am I supposed to feel with people whose preachers attack me and whose leaders consider me to be a second-rate Egyptian," asked Mirna Fouad, an Alexandria University student. "I am not saying that every Salafi hates and despises Copts, because I know young Salafis that attend university with me who are not like that. However, the fact remains that this is the general attitude of the Salafis towards us." Prominent Alexandrian Salafi figures who were asked by the Weekly to share their position on the Coptic concerns declined to offer clear answers or to be quoted on their clearly inegalitarian views of their fellow citizens. In the words of one, "Egypt is a Muslim state, and the rights of Copts should be protected but only within the limits agreed to by Islam. This excludes many of the things they are demanding." Equal rights for the construction of houses of worship and to job opportunities and professional promotion are among the key demands of the Copts. On record, Hamdi Hassan of the Muslim Brotherhood in Alexandria said that "Egypt is a country for all Egyptians, and Islam is not designed to promote discrimination but to protect rights. President Morsi when he was elected said that he would be a president for all Egyptians, and he particularly spoke to calm the fears of the Copts." However, such positive policies have yet to be implemented by the president, argued Shenouda. "It is good that he said these things, but we need to see the practice and not just hear the words." According to Ayman Al-Sayyad, an adviser to President Morsi, a good part of the reason Morsi has not delivered firm enough signs of his commitment to honour his promises to the Copts has had to do with the failure of the relevant state bodies to act promptly. These bodies, Al-Sayyad said, were the hostages of a long-adopted culture of "act upon presidential orders only", and they could not or would not take the initiative. Realistically speaking, Al-Sayyad believes that the attacks that have been unfolding against the Copts will not go away overnight. This, he argues, is not related to the Islamist identity of the president but instead is due to the many on-the-ground challenges that need to be addressed, especially the need to adopt a culture in which fellow citizens accept that they share some things in common but not everything. "We need to stop talking about the commonalities between Muslims and Christians. We need to say to ourselves, yes, we disagree on some things related to our respective creeds, but that we will work together with these differences within a framework of mutual acceptance," Al-Sayyad said. According to Al-Sayyad, the establishment of such a culture would be feasible under Morsi's presidency. After all, he argued, it was Sadat, not an Islamist president, who promoted the civic strife to serve a narrow political agenda. "To my mind, the problem we have today is not one that is really related to political Islam at all," Al-Sayyad argued. "The report on the first major outbreak of civil strife that occurred in the late 1970s under Sadat, when there was no political Islam as such, or at all, blamed the state for the crisis." However, for many Copts today, the state and the Muslim Brotherhood have become one and the same thing. LIVING UNDER THE ISLAMISTS: Shukri and Kamil argue that it was already bad for the Copts under an Islamist-controlled parliament that, even before it was dissolved last summer by the Higher Constitutional Court over discrepancies in the electoral law, had declined to consider draft bills on the promotion of equal rights for all citizens and had instead acted to suspend initiatives in that direction. One oft-cited example is the uproar created by some Islamist members of the Shura Council, the upper house of the parliament, over the decision of the Ministry of Education to include verses from the Bible in the social studies curriculum for high schools. The initiative was originally put forward under Mubarak in order to strike a balance between the increasing number of Quranic verses included in the Arabic-language curriculum. Ultimately, the Ministry of Education had to bow to parliament pressure, and instead of pulping the textbook, which had already been distributed, "on the basis that it would be very expensive to print new books this year," it issued orders to schools to drop the part including the Bible verses, promising to print new books for the next academic year without the verses from the Bible. "This was an issue that was brought up not just by the Salafis in parliament, but also by the Muslim Brotherhood," Shukri said. According to Shenouda, the Muslim Brotherhood members of parliament had declined to cooperate with "liberal MPs on a set of proposals designed to be introduced into parliament to end the promotion of an anti-Coptic culture, or, for that matter, any anti-minority discrimination." "The Muslim Brotherhood is not very egalitarian when it comes to us, but they are certainly better than the Salafis," said Sami Ghali, a retired civil servant living in Zamalek. According to Ghali, the fact that a member of the Muslim Brotherhood was elected president is bound sooner or later to lead to a better approach by the now over 80-year-old Islamist group towards its fellow citizens. "The Muslim Brotherhood used to be a more modern and moderate entity in a sense than what we see now," said the 74-year-old Ghali. "What you see now from the Muslim Brotherhood is what you see from society in general: the strong influence of the Islam of the Gulf, which is different from the moderate Islam of Egypt that we have always lived with and have had no problems with." Ghali believes that it would be "unrealistic" to expect things to go back from what they are today. Indeed, he argues that it would be "silly" to expect political Islam to disappear or to be easily defeated. "They have the support of the masses, and if we want to be serious we need to make sure that we have the right version of political Islam in Egypt that shows respect for all citizens irrespective of the inevitable differences of creed," he said. It is this right concept that prompted Ghali to vote for Abul-Fotouh in the first round of the presidential elections. "My preference would have been for Amr Moussa, but then I thought that the attacks against Moussa were very strong from the Islamists and others. Accordingly, I thought the best bet would be to look forward and support an Islamist who was moderate and who was showing an intention to modernise." According to Osman, the political line of Strong Egypt is also not really about political Islam as such. "I am not comfortable with that title: we subscribe to the Islamic culture for sure, and that is reflected in many things, but what we are up to in this party is politics with an eye on the interests of the entire nation." The fear of political Islam seems to be more obvious in the less economically advantaged rather than at the better-off end of the Coptic spectrum, although there is no clear defining line. "But you could safely say that the shrinking of the number of middle-class Copts is not helpful," Kamil said. A COMMUNITY UNDER ECONOMIC THREAT? The shrinking of the Coptic middle classes is a function of the shrinking of the middle classes in Egypt in general, but it is also a function of the high rates of emigration among Copts, especially during the last years of Sadat's rule and those of Mubarak. This was prompted by economic reasons essentially, but there were also fears of deteriorating status for the Copts under the rule of the Islamists. "The numbers of Copts emigrating over recent years have been exaggerated," said a source at the Coptic Church. "The average remains the same." During the past few months, suggestions have been made that since Mubarak stepped down over 100,000 Copts have left Egypt. However, sources who spoke to the Weekly said that the number was between 20,000 and 30,000, close to the average annual figure. Cairo-based diplomats from the embassies of countries that are the most sought-after for Coptic emigration said that the increase monitored since the revolution had been one of a greater demand for visas and immigration papers. "People want to feel secure that they can go when they feel they need to go or when they have to go, but it almost ends there," said one diplomat. The fears of many Copts are not just related to the rise of political Islam, however. Instead, they are related to the fact that this rise has been happening at a time when the Coptic Church has been deprived of the pope who was at its helm over the last four decades. The death of Pope Shenouda III in March was a huge shock to many Copts, who had for four decades left their worries to the pope to address on their behalf, acting as an interlocutor with the state. Next Sunday, a new head of the Orthodox Church will be elected. The debate on the list of five nominees has reflected many Copts' sense of fear and confusion. Many have been hoping for "a strong pope", who will be able to speak firmly for the rights of Copts. However, others have been worried about the appointment of a too-radical figure who may ignore the calls for modernisation that have been gaining ground in many Coptic quarters. "What we should hope for is a pope who can provide spiritual guidance for Copts in a time of hardship, but we should not be looking for a pope who acts as a political leader for the Copts," said Shenouda. He added that the decision that the Copts had made when they decided to join the 25 January Revolution was not just about protesting against injustice, but was also about demands for the "re-integration of the Copts", who had for decades lived "almost literally behind the walls of the Church". Before the 25 January Revolution, many Copts had deliberately chosen to withdraw from public life, and when there was a Coptic grievance it was the pope who brought it up with the state. This was the case during the attacks against the Coptic villages in Upper Egypt in the 1990s under the rule of Mubarak and during the Maspero Massacres under the rule of the SCAF. In Shenouda's view, this approach has proven erroneous as it has served those who wished to project an image of the Copts as uninterested in the wider national interest. "This image should be put behind us once and for all, and the Copts, in their capacity as citizens and not as Copts, should pursue their rights through the system. This is not the easy way, but it is the right way," he argued. TOWARDS A NEW POPE: The character of the next pope of Egypt's Copts will in many ways help decide whether or not he will encourage Copts to pursue further integration or whether he will want them to retreat behind the walls of the Church once more. Another defining factor, Shenouda argues, will be the character of the country's new constitution. According to Shenouda, Shukri and Kamil, if the current draft of the constitution is adopted, then it is unlikely that the Copts will feel they are being excluded from society. The text of the draft constitution keeps intact Article 2 of the previous 1971 constitution, which stipulates that the "principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation." In a previous constitution, it had been stipulated that the principles of Sharia were "a" and not "the" main source of legislation. For many Copts, however, the proposed wording is more reassuring than the "rules of Islamic Sharia" -- diverse readings of Islamic law that even Muslim ulemas [scholars] disagree about -- as proposed by the Salafi groups. Also reassuring for the Copts, at least for practising ones who follow the Church, is the introduction of an article in the constitution that allows non-Muslims to base their personal status codes on their religious precepts. Leading figures of the Coptic Church have welcomed this article. The draft constitution also stipulates the freedoms of faith and worship. "This is all very good, but beyond these articles when one gets to the details there are endless traps that could strip the good articles of their content," Shenouda said. Particularly worrying is the repeated inclusion of a line that suggests that personal freedoms should be "in line with state-approved regulations". "These words are catastrophic because they could mean that there would be regulations, for example, to constrain the construction of churches further or to suggest that no crosses could be put on top of churches. Some Salafis have said that this cannot be allowed in a Muslim country," Shenouda said. According to Shukri and Kamil, the worst thing about the current text is that it lacks definite language on the combat against religious-based discrimination. "The committee that drafted the constitution had an overwhelmingly Islamist majority, and I mean Islamist and not Muslim," Shenouda said, adding that "this committee is not representative of the real Egypt, in which the majority of the population is Muslim but not Islamist." Shenouda cited the withdrawal of many liberal politicians from the committee in order to protest against what they saw as "Islamist hegemony". He said that if the cause of national unity is to be served, "a new drafting committee that is more representative of the Egyptian population should be put together to draft a new text." If not, Shenouda fears that the message sent to many Copts, like to other minorities, would be one of almost legal victimisation. While there is no consensus about the number of Copts in Egypt, the Church estimates that they represent a little under 20 per cent of the population. A recent census put the estimate at less than five per cent, however. "The difference is that in the Church we count all Copts who have Egyptian nationality, whether or not they live in Egypt," one source at the Orthodox Cathedral said, adding that irrespective of numbers, the rights of the Copts "should be acknowledged and respected, in deeds and not just in words."
