WATANI International
15 May 2011
As the attack against the Copts of Imbaba was taking place, a string of events was brewing in the wings.
Burying the dead
At 4:00pm on Sunday, a collective funeral was held for four of the Coptic victims at the Church of Mar-Girgis (St George) in Giza. Presiding over the ceremony were Anba Yu’annis, secretary of Pope Shenouda III; and Giza bishop Anba Theodosius. The coffins were taken into the church in a procession headed by the deacons chanting the poignantly familiar, joyous Resurrection Melody: “Christ is risen from the dead. With His death He trod upon death, and to those in the graves He granted everlasting life.” The weeping of the mourners was punctuated with that thoroughly Egyptian sound of jubilation: the ululations of the women. Tears of grief at the loss of loved ones mixed with cries of joy at their being now in Heaven, at having been granted “to suffer for His name” (Acts 5: 41)
In his word, Anba Theodosius said this funeral marked not only the death of the victims, but that a ‘white revolution’ had turned into a ‘black’ one.
For his part, Anba Yu’annis offered words of comfort to those who had lost loved ones, pointing to the fact that 8 May marked the day of the martyrdom of St Mark who brought Christianity into Egypt and, for that, was martyred in the first century.
The other three Copts who had lost their lives were buried by their families in their respective home towns or villages.
“New Muslims” on Facebook
The ruling Military Council declared that the 213 persons detained due to the sectarian violence in Imbaba would have to be tried before a military tribunal, and face sentences that may amount to the death penalty. The damages caused by the violence, it was officially announced, would be remedied by the military.
The military warned, on its Facebook page, that it would beat with an iron fist all attempts to incite sectarian violence.
Yet Facebook boasts several pages and groups whose main purpose appears to be igniting sectarian sensitivities. According to Watani’s Milad Zaky, the 22,000-strong Alliance of New Muslims on Facebook has been calling on Muslims to move to rescue of the ‘Muslim women held captive by the Church’. “The Egyptian army which, in 1973, crossed the Bar-Lev Line stands helpless before a church in Imbaba in which a Muslim woman is held prisoner,” it urged. Never mind that the Salafi sheikhs had searched the church of Mar-Mina and found no woman held there.
Reconciliation in the cooking
Prime Minister Essam Sharaf postponed an official visit he should have begun on Sunday to the Gulf countries, on account of the sectarian crisis in Imbaba. The visit was of particular significance, since it was planned to attempt to attract direly-needed Gulf investment to Egypt’s heavily troubled economy.
“These incidents benefit neither Muslims nor Copts,” Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the grand imam of al-Azhar, said. He called for a meeting between Muslim and Coptic clerics and elders to clear the air, within the context of what he called ‘The Family Home’.
There were indications, particularly alarming to Copts, that Giza governor Ali Abdel-Rahman and high-ranking security leaderships as well as the military, were negotiating with Salafi leaders to hold a traditional reconciliation session with the Copts. Such ‘reconciliation’, once implemented, would place offender and victim on the same footing, and would implicitly deprive Copts of their legal rights.
Sunday morning prayers were held in Mar-Mina church in Imbaba, as well as in the church of the Holy Virgin whose altar escaped unscathed by the fire.
Coptic demonstrations
Sunday afternoon some 10,000 Copts, accompanied by moderate Muslims in support, marched from the Supreme Court in Downtown Cairo to the TV building in Maspero. Even though hardline Muslims clashed with them, they held their ground. They demanded full citizenship rights for Copts, and that culprits in sectarian violence cases should be brought to justice. The following day, however, there were reports that, following the hurling of stones and plastic bottles at the demonstrators from the top storeys of the TV building, the demonstrators harassed the workers entering the building and attempted to break into it.
On Wednesday evening, and following a meeting between Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and representatives of the Coptic protestors in Maspero, the PM announced the formation of a National Justice Committee to deal with sectarian or discriminatory incidents. He promised that a draft for a unified law for places of worship would be issued within a month, in addition to another for law criminalising discrimination and religious incitement. Offenders in incidents of violence against Copts in Etfeeh, Muqattam, al-Badraman, Abu-Qurqas and Imbaba would be brought to justice, Mr Sharaf pledged. He also promised that closed churches would be reopened and that the Maghagha bishopric church in Minya and the church of the Holy Virgin in Imbaba would be rebuilt. Furthermore, he said, demonstrations and gatherings in front of churches will be banned and the law banning the use of religious slogans during elections will be enforced.
Charged
Meanwhile, the woman on whose account the Imbaba violence had taken place, Abeer Fakhry, was interviewed on the Jamaa Islamiya website and said she had been imprisoned by the Church in Imbaba and was being forced “through a priestess” to revert to her original Christian faith. When the riots erupted, she said, a nun set her free to get rid of her, and she took a tuk-tuk to some unknown place and escaped. Most Muslim comments on the website hailed Abeer’s story as an eye-opener, Copts’ comments found it too ridiculous to stand even the slightest scrutiny. Several priests commented to the media that the interview was full of too many flagrant falsities not least among which is that there are no woman priests in the Coptic Church. Fr Freig of Mar-Mina’s wondered why, if Abeer escaped her Imbaba prison because of the rioters outside who had come to her rescue, she never went out to these rioters to tell them they had succeeded so brilliantly.
The military prosecution charged the Muslim Yassin Thabet, the husband of the Muslim woman convert who had allegedly been held by the Church, and the Coptic Imbaba resident and coffee-shop owner Adel Labib with inciting the violence. Labib was accused of being the “brain behind the events” by persuading the Copts to attack the Salafis, and firing the first shot.
The general feeling among Copts was that a Copt was being charged just to balance accounts and to appease the Islamists. “How could Labib have incited the violence?” a Coptic woman who asked for her name to be withheld told Watani. “Who would have incited the violence? The 20,000 or so hardline, armed Islamists who came to the neighbourhood screeching slogans against Copts, or a man who supposedly persuaded the Copts to take action against such a threat?”
Salafis not responsible
Several major Cairo dailies, including the State-owned al-Ahram, the independent al-Masry al-Youm, and the mouthpiece of the liberal Wafd political party al-Wafd, ran front-page stories that said the Salafis were not responsible for the Imbaba violence against Copts. They blamed Muslim outlaws and the Copts for inflaming the riots. Add to that the allegations that it was the Copts—not the Salafis or the army, as testified by eyewitnesses—who used firearms; in addition to that old false, totally unsubstantiated allegation that Copts were stockpiling arms in their churches and monasteries; the Copts sensed that they were being very effectively framed.
Inciting against Copts
It is a well-known fact—and there for all to see—that Salafi and hardline Islamic websites carry an abundance of material which flagrantly incites against Copts. These websites use the harshest language to describe Copts as apostates and their pope as “filthy”, accuse them of stockpiling arms to wage war against Muslims, torturing Muslim women converts and holding them captive in churches and monasteries. Such written articles or videos usually end with a fiery call to Muslim men to run to the rescue of Islam and Muslims; otherwise, they would be no ‘men’.
Sixteen Salafis who spoke on such videos were detained for investigation by the prosecutor. The news generated feelings of comfort among Copts, even though it was not yet clear how the matter would be handled.
Criminalised for self-defence
None of the journalists or Salafis who claimed the Copts were the attackers in Imbaba bothered to answer the question of why, in the first place, the Salafis had gathered in Imbaba around Mar-Mina’s on Saturday 7 May in such huge numbers—an estimated 20,000-strong? And why were they shouting Islamic slogans and accusing Christians of being enemies of Allah? And why did they hurl fireballs and Molotov cocktails at Mar-Mina’s and at Coptic houses? And, finally, how could this behaviour not be described as aggression?
Could the Copts be criminalised for self-defence against such fierce aggression?