Cairo Magazine - Keeping the peace

State security massed outside Alexandria's Mar Girgis church—and the two mosques that flank it—on 28 October.

Issandr El Amrani

As Friday prayers come to an end in the middle-class Moharram Bey district of Alexandria, hundreds of Central Security riot police cordon off streets in a four block radius around the two mosques that lie on either side of the church. They allow people to return to their homes in small groups, blocking every part of the normally busy thoroughfare in neatly aligned rows. They carry gas masks and cartridge guns in addition to the standard-issue batons and shields. Others wield pump-action shotguns. At major intersections and in front of the church, light armored vehicles with gun turrets serve as a nerve center for plainclothes commanders. There has been no repeat of the 21 October riot that left three dead and more than 150 injured.

It was never clear what sparked the previous week’s riot, but the state seems intent on preventing such events from recurring. In Alexandria, political leaders and ordinary citizens give widely differing accounts of how protests over a play led to violence and death.

For Ali Abdel Fattah, a spokesman of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the organization’s leaders in the Mediterranean port city, the violence was the result of political maneuvers ahead of the parliamentary elections. According to Abdel Fattah, the CD containing a filmed version of the play I Was Blind but Now I Can See, which was performed only once (over two years ago), was distributed in the neighborhood to sabotage the candidacy of National Democratic Party Candidate Maher Khilla (one of only two Copts running for the party). Khilla announced that he would step down last week in protest at the violence, but was later told by the ruling party leadership not to run anyway. In a common variant of the story, one of his rivals in the race (which will be held on 20 November) distributed the CD to incite Muslims against Copts.

Abdel Fattah says that security forces may have participated in the affair, with the goal of blaming the Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has seized the opportunity presented by the sectarian riots to run a candidate in the district.

“The Christians go to the state for protection, and then they both spit in our face,” says Abdel Fattah, who says he saw the play and found it insulting. But he says he wants to help repair sectarian relations and that the governor of Alexandria, Abdel Salem Al Mahgoub, had asked him to sit on a “Council of the Wise” composed of members of different religions and political tendencies.

But for many others, the Muslim Brotherhood is part of the problem. Among the many rumors surrounding the riot’s cause is the story that a flyer was distributed in the neighborhood condemning the play on behalf of the Brotherhood. The flyer reportedly included the group’s slogan, “Islam is the solution.” Some commentators on the affair, even if they don’t think the Brotherhood is directly responsible for the incident, believe that the group is to blame for the politicization of religion in the country. “What would be the reaction to a political slogan like ‘Christianity is the solution?,’” asked Nahdet Misr columnist Ramzi Zaklama in a recent editorial.

The ultra-secular left is also blaming the politicization of religion. Abdel Halim Qandil, the editor-in-chief of Nasserist weekly Al Arabi and a leader of the Kifaya movement, gestured to the increasingly political role of Pope Shenouda III: “Pope Shenouda III is not innocent, because he has transformed the church from a spiritual institution to a political one. The pope has given the impression that Copts are protected by the person of Hosni Mubarak rather than by their citizenship. Hence the confusion between religion and politics.”

Mohammed Badrashin, an independent MP for a nearby district in Alexandria, suggested that paranoia about Copts’ political role escalated the crisis. “The US backing of minorities in the Middle East has given the Copts a different way of dealing with the majority—it’s given them confidence and power,” Badrashin said, adding that it was “a minority” of Copts who thought this way.

The government’s worst fear, a crisis on the international level, could be looming. The UN Committee on Human Rights’ Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion, Asma Jahangir, has requested permission from the government to visit Egypt to investigate. Jahangir, a Pakistani lawyer who recently completed a report dealing with issues of conversion and the religious rights of detainees, is highly regarded on the international stage.

A few days earlier, Suleiman Gouda, a columnist for the independent daily Al Masri Al Youm, suggested that the government’s incompetence in handling the crisis would encourage foreign intervention. “Aside from the president’s declaration, there has been no reaction from the ministries that are concerned, or from the prime minister,” Gouda wrote, adding that this was tantamount to “an indirect invitation to Mr. Mehlis to come to Alexandria”—a reference to the UN envoy who is investigating Syria’s involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

Coptic groups abroad had warned that another riot was scheduled for after Friday prayers on 28 October as well as 1 November, the last day of Ramadan. In a press release distributed to US newspapers, Mounir Dawoud, the president of the New Jersey-based International Christian Union and American Coptic Association, said Muslims were planning “the death of Christians and the continued destruction of churches throughout Egypt.” Dawoud accuses security services of “giving the green light to the mob” to attack the church, while the release says it fears “impending ethnic cleansing of Christians in Egypt.” The organization will be holding a protest outside the United Nations in New York City next week. A French Coptic organization was also due to hold a protest in front of the Egyptian embassy in Paris on 31 October.