Copts Strive to "preserve" early Christian Legacy
nick cobb
Christian legacy
Pope visit coming amid strained ties with Muslims
Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt — Sun-sparkled dust wafts through the
studio near the Coptic
Orthodox Cathedral, along with the gentle clicking as
apprentices snap glass and
stone tiles into shards, then work the bright pieces into
their master's mosaic.
Artist Isaac Fanous is depicting the flight of the
Holy Family to Egypt in 126
square feet of simple, contemporary lines. But ancient
Coptic iconography is
evident in the way Joseph, Mary and the child Jesus are
grouped, the set of their
heads and feet, their wide, almond eyes.
"We must work; we must preserve our legacy," the
80-year-old Fanous says.
The will to endure has long characterized native
Egyptian Christians like
Fanous, whose Coptic church has survived Roman
persecution and Arab
conquest. Today, it faces uneasy — at times violent —
relations with the Muslim
majority in a country where the state religion is Islam.
Attention is likely to focus on such tensions this
week during a three-day visit
by Roman Catholic Pope John Paul II, who arrives Thursday
on a pilgrimage to
the home of a Christian community that is the largest in
the Middle East and one
of Christianity's oldest branches.
Tradition says St. Mark, writer of the second
Gospel, brought Christianity to
Egypt just a few years after the death of Christ. Copts
were once predominant
here — their name is the ancient name for all Egyptians.
Now they are estimated
at just 10 percent of Egypt's 64 million people.
The pope's visit comes against a backdrop of an
outbreak of shootings and
burnings early this year in el-Kusheh, 275 miles south of
Cairo, that killed 23
people, all but two of them Copts. The deadliest communal
violence in decades
was touched off by an argument over money between a
Coptic merchant and a
Muslim shopper.
Copts are generally free to pray in churches
redolent with incense and
resounding with ancient hymns, and to work and go to
school with other
Egyptians. But el-Kusheh has become a sobering symbol for
both Copts and
Muslims of simmering problems that could undermine
attempts to unify Egypt
into a mosaic of faiths and peoples.
Coptic Pope Shenouda III met with Egypt's top
Muslim cleric, Sheik
Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, to discuss el-Kusheh. President
Hosni Mubarak
urged Egyptians to preserve the country's "long history
of tolerance and
interfaith coexistence."
Mustafa El-Fiqi, a Muslim who is a writer and
Egyptian diplomat, argues it's
time to go beyond ecumenical meetings and expressions of
good will. He called
in a recent newspaper commentary for increasing the study
of Coptic history
and culture in Egyptian schools.
"In Egypt, (state schools) give courses in history
about the pharaonic era and
the Islamic era, but not the Christian era," says Fanous,
who knows proposals
like El-Fiqi's have fallen on deaf ears in the past.
In 1954, Fanous helped start the private Higher
Institute for Coptic Studies,
which awards undergraduate and graduate degrees in
history, art and other
fields.
Human rights groups and the U.S. State Department
have noted the lack of
attention paid to Copts in Egypt's schools, the scant
number of Copts in high
government posts and scattered reports of forced
conversion to Islam and
attacks on Copts by Muslim militants. But even the
harshest critics stop short of
accusing the government of systematic discrimination or
of attributing violence
to widespread hatred of Copts among Muslims.
"This is not a problem in every part of Egypt, but
it does exist, and must be
addressed," says Joseph Assad, Middle East religious
freedom research director
for the Washington-based Freedom House.
Over the centuries, non-Muslims in the Middle East
have had to pay special
taxes, ride donkeys while Muslims rode horses, and wear
clothing or colors that
set them apart. That tradition of stigma lingers in
Egypt, where a law dating
from the Ottoman era requires Copts, but not Muslims, to
get government
permission to build or renovate houses of worship.
Mubarak recently amended the law so that governors,
rather than just the
president, could grant permission, easing what had been a
serious backlog in
processing applications.
In another gesture to reassure Copts, the
cathedral's Christmas Mass has
been televised live across Egypt the past two years.
Milad Hanna, a Coptic author who has spent much of
his career campaigning
for greater political freedoms for all Egyptians,
attributes much of the current
communal tensions to the rise of militant precepts among
a minority of
Muslims.