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12 | THE TABLET | 5 February 2011


the communities’ fortunes. Then there is the gender imbalance. In some commu- nities, more men than women leave, often leading Christian women to marry Muslim men. This further fractures the Christian population and diminishes it, with implica- tions for property rights and the education of children. In Egypt, some 15,000 Christians have “converted” to Islam to obtain a divorce. Given that Eastern Christians are mainly from the Arab world, their fate has been closely linked to the destiny of Arab nationalism. This seemed favourable to Arab Christians: Arab identity united Muslims and non- Muslims into a single group and the proclaimed ideal was secular. But Arab nation- alism reflected the social developments which brought the small Muslim middle class to power and Arabist discourse invoked the umma, the community, appealing to a Muslim vocabulary and hence to an ideology that never abandoned its reference to Islam. The ambiguities of this discourse and the


practice of the new political elites, almost exclusively Muslim, were aggravated by the failure of Arab nationalism after the Six Day War in 1967. In Egypt, the affirmation of state Islamism was soon reflected in successive constitutions under President Anwar Sadat, who sought Islamic legitimacy: the Islamic law, called “a source” of the 1971 Constitution, became “the main source” of the 1980 Constitution. Sadat went so far as to depose the Coptic Patriarch Shenouda III in September 1981, exiling him to a monastery in the Wadi Natrun. Islamism in student associations, unions and the media came before the active Islamisation, originally by a tiny minority, of organisations, that were swift to take on the Copts. The waves of violence which began in the 1970s came to their first peak in 1981, before growing again since 1990-1992 in Middle Egypt: fires in churches or pharma- cies run by Copts, and even sectarian mur- ders, are one of the aspects among others of Islamist opposition to the regime.


At the same time, the Copts have almost disappeared from the Egyptian political scene: at the 1987 elections, they still had nine (out of 458) elected deputies, but none since. Copts appointed to parliament on party lists are few, which is surprising when the community had within its number a former United Nations Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali. In the emerging political climate of Egypt, the Copts will be certain to mark its depth and meaning by their ability to partic- ipate and engage politically.


It is all too easy to be the bearer of bad news about Christianity in the Middle East. The


A Coptic Christian cleric shows the damage in a church burned in a clash in 2008 between Muslims and Christians at the Abu Fana Monastery near the city of Minya, Egypt. Photo: CNS


last 100 years of their history has witnessed a profound series of crises from displacement by war, genocide and inter-religious conflict, to loss, emigration and exile. Against this background, Christians have tried to resettle and build anew. They have been able to make a significant cultural, polit- ical and economic contribution to Middle Eastern society. Some observers have suggested that there


is a “Christian barometer” which provides the world with an accurate measurement of the political atmosphere in the Middle East. Progress towards freedom, particularly reli- gious freedom, in the Middle East can be gauged by focusing on the status of the large Christian minorities. Most are highly educated and multilingual


Arabist discourse invoked the umma, the community, appealing to an ideology that never abandoned its reference to Islam


and have studied and worked in Europe and North America where they also have a large diaspora. The theory goes that as the Middle East becomes more free and prosperous, linked to the West and hospitable to minorities and women, the higher the probability that the Christians will continue to live in and even return from abroad to countries like Lebanon, Egypt and Syria. And should things get worse, if the Arab countries they live in are losing their com- mitment to political, economic and religious freedom, then even more of them would tend to emigrate from the Middle East. It is difficult at this stage to discern which


direction the Arab “street” will take following these recent upheavals in the body politic of the Middle East. As Louis Gardet, the great Thomist, influential Catholic scholar of Islam and follower of Charles de Foucauld, reminded Christians and Muslims many decades ago, there is a need to create a city “where the tem- poral remains charged with religious values”, and to be seen to “participate in the same humanity”.


■Anthony O’Mahony is reader in theology and the history of Christianity, Heythrop College, University of London.


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