Special Dispatch |3483 |January 3, 2011
Egypt/Minorities in the Middle East/Democratization and Reform in the Middle East
Coptic Editor of Egyptian Weekly Pens Scathing Denunciation of Egyptian Regime, Society
Following the January 1, 2010 massacre at the Church of the Two Saints in Alexandria, Hani Shukrallah, an Egyptian journalist of Coptic origin and the managing editor of the Egyptian Al-Ahram weekly, published a scathing op-ed on Al-Ahram's English-language website, under the headline "J'accuse."
In it, he accused the Egyptian regime of failing to combat Islamist extremism, and of even nurturing Salafist Islam in the hope of undermining the Muslim Brotherhood.
He also condemned Egypt's "supposedly moderate Muslims" for growing more and more bigoted and hostile towards the Christian community and of applying a double standard: loudly condemning any Western measure they perceive as anti-Muslim, while turning a blind eye to the flagrant persecution of Christians in their own country. Finally, he condemned the liberals and intellectuals, both Muslim and Christian, for keeping silent in the face of the violence against Christians.
The following are excerpts from the article, in the original English:[1]
The Condemnations of the Violence are Mostly Hypocrisy, and Will Be to No Avail
"We are to join in a chorus of condemnation. Jointly, Muslims and Christians, government and opposition, Church and Mosque, clerics and laypeople – all of us are going to stand up and with a single voice declare unequivocal denunciation of Al-Qaeda, Islamist militants, and Muslim fanatics of every shade, hue, and color; some of us will even go the extra mile to denounce Salafi Islam, Islamic fundamentalism as a whole, and the Wahhabi Islam which, presumably, is a Saudi import wholly alien to our Egyptian national culture.
"And once again we are going to declare the eternal unity of 'the twin elements of the nation,' and hearken back [to] the Revolution of 1919, with its hoisted banner showing the crescent embracing the cross, and giving symbolic expression to that unbreakable bond.
"Much of it will be sheer hypocrisy; a great deal of it will be variously nuanced so as keep, just below the surface, the heaps of narrow-minded prejudice, flagrant double standard and, indeed, bigotry that holds in its grip so many of the participants in the condemnations.
"All of it will be to no avail. We've been here before; we've done exactly that, yet the massacres continue, each more horrible than the one before it, and the bigotry and intolerance spread deeper and wider into every nook and cranny of our society.
It is not easy to empty Egypt of its Christians; they've been here for as long as there has been Christianity in the world. Close to a millennium and half of Muslim rule did not eradicate the nation's Christian community, rather it maintained it sufficiently strong and sufficiently vigorous so as to play a crucial role in shaping the national, political, and cultural identity of modern Egypt.
"Yet now, two centuries after the birth of the modern Egyptian nation state, and as we embark on the second decade of the 21stcentury, the previously unheard-of seems no longer beyond imagining: a Christian-free Egypt, one where the cross will have slipped out of the crescent's embrace, and off the flag symbolizing our modern national identity.
I hope that if and when that day comes I will have been long dead, but dead or alive, this will be an Egypt which I do not recognize and to which I have no desire to belong."
"I Accuse the Host of MPs and Government Officials Who Cannot Help but [Bring] Their Own Personal Bigotries [into] Parliament"
"I am no Zola, but I too can accuse. And it's not the bloodthirsty criminals of Al-Qaeda or whatever other gang of hoodlums involved in the horror of Alexandria that I am concerned with.
"I accuse a government that seems to think that by outbidding the Islamists it will also outflank them.
"I accuse the host of MPs and government officials who cannot help but take their own personal bigotries along to the parliament, or to the multitude of government bodies, national and local, from which they exercise unchecked brutal, yet at the same time hopelessly inept, authority.
"I accuse those state bodies who believe that by bolstering the Salafi trend they are undermining the Muslim Brotherhood, and who like to occasionally play to bigoted anti-Coptic sentiments, presumably as an excellent distraction from other more serious issues of government."
"I Accuse the Millions of Supposedly Moderate Muslims Among Us... Who've Been Growing More and More Prejudiced"
But most of all, I accuse the millions of supposedly moderate Muslims among us; those who've been growing more and more prejudiced, inclusive, and narrow-minded with every passing year.
"I accuse those among us who would rise up in fury over a decision to halt construction of a Muslim Center near ground zero in New York, but applaud the Egyptian police when they halt the construction of a staircase in a Coptic church in the Omranya district of Greater Cairo.
"I've been around, and I have heard you speak, in your offices, in your clubs, at your dinner parties: 'The Copts must be taught a lesson,' 'the Copts are growing more arrogant,' 'the Copts are holding secret conversions of Muslims', and in the same breath, 'the Copts are preventing Christian women from converting to Islam, kidnapping them, and locking them up in monasteries.'
"I accuse you all, because in your bigoted blindness you cannot even see the violence that you are committing [against] logic and sheer common sense; [you cannot see that while] you accuse the whole world of using a double standard against us, [you are] wholly incapable of showing a minimum awareness of your own blatant double standard."
"I Accuse the Liberal Intellectuals, Both Muslim and Christian"
"And finally, I accuse the liberal intellectuals, both Muslim and Christian who, whether complicit, afraid, or simply unwilling to do or say anything that may displease 'the masses', have stood aside, finding it sufficient to join in one futile chorus of denunciation... even as the massacres spread wider, and grow more horrifying.
"A few years ago I wrote in the Arabic daily Al-Hayat, commenting on a [an article by a] columnist in one of the Egyptian papers. The columnist, whose name I've since forgotten, lauded the patriotism of an Egyptian Copt who had written that he would rather be killed at the hands of his Muslim brethren than seek American intervention to save him.
"Addressing myself to the patriotic Copt, I asked him a simple question: where does his willingness for self-sacrifice for the sake of the nation stop? Giving his own life may be quite a noble, even [a] laudable endeavor, but is he also willing to give up the lives of his children, wife, mother? How many Egyptian Christians, I asked him, are you willing to sacrifice before you call [for] outside intervention? A million, two, three, all of them?
"Our options, I said then and continue to say today, are not so [few]... that we are obliged to choose between having Egyptian Copts killed, individually or en masse, and running to Uncle Sam. Is it really so difficult to conceive of ourselves as rational human beings with a minimum of backbone, so as to act to determine our fate, the fate of our nation?
"That, indeed, is the only option we have before us, and we better grasp it, before it's too late."
[1] English.ahram.org, January 1, 2010. The text has been lightly edited for clarity.
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