Christian-Muslim Relations in Egypt: Politics, Society and Interfaith Encounters 9780755624416, 9781784532031

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For Lena Marie Karup Hansen and Hans Flemming Lindberg Hansen with respect, gratitude and love.

LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS

Table Table 1.1. This is a table of essential concepts and thinkers: the table gathers essential concepts and explains the connections between the thinkers used in the book. Courtesy of the author. 49 Figures Figure 1.1. This illustration shows how the attitude towards another person is the product of the dynamics that construct society. Source: courtesy of the author. 48 Figure 2.1. This illustration shows how Egyptian society was divided into a centralised regime and different local networks of power dispersed throughout society. This illustration furthermore functions as the basis for later illustrations. Source: courtesy of the author.

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Figure 2.2. This illustration shows how Egyptian society was divided by financial and religious differences and how the clientelist system worked to incorporate the different parts of society. This illustration focuses on the legitimising function of the Azhar, Coptic Orthodox Church, and other institutions. Source: courtesy of the author. 102

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Figure 2.3. This illustration shows how the Muslim Brotherhood functioned as the opposition to the regime by gathering support from the various local networks of power. Source: courtesy of the author.

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Figure 4.1. This illustration shows how official dialogue was intimately connected to the socio-political dynamics of Egyptian society, involving the Azhar, the Coptic Orthodox Church, and the regime. Source: courtesy of the author.

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Figure 4.2. This illustration builds on the earlier figures to show the direction of social dialogue, opposite to official dialogue, with the periphery of society trying to influence the dominant parts of society (through institutions such as the Azhar, the Coptic Orthodox Church, parliament and the trade unions). This underlines how social dialogue functions according to the social structures described in Chapter 3, where the oppositions attempt to influence the clientelist system from the periphery of the established power structures. Source: courtesy of the author. 173 Figure 5.1. This illustration shows the aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood as the centre of Egyptian post-revolutionary, socio-political life up until the 2013 revolution. Source: courtesy of the author. 225 Figure 5.2. This illustration shows how the 2013 revolution has led to a dichotomised Egyptian society without a mediating voice. Rhetoric places the military as the saviour of the general population from the Islamists, who are mostly depicted as violent extremists and labelled terrorists except for the Salafi Nour party, that has sided with the military. Source: courtesy of the author. 227

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am first and foremost indebted to my parents, Lena Marie Karup Hansen and Hans Flemming Lindberg Hansen, for all their help and support throughout the work on this book. If it had not been for them, this book would never have been written. In terms of academic support, no one parallels that provided by my thesis supervisor from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, Katherine Zebiri. Her patience with my struggles in form and content is reflected throughout the book. The list of people to whom I owe academic gratitude is long, but I would like to mention Mark Sedgwick, David Thomas, Jørgen Bæk Simonsen, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Bishop Mouneer, Bishop Thomas, Minlib Dallh, Ole Birk Laursen, Rasmus Grøn, Cornelis Hulsman, Wael Farouq, Andrea Zaki Stephanous, Elkomos Philopes Eprahim Hanna, Giuseppe Scattolin, Christiaan van Nispen tot Sevenaer, Lissi Rasmussen, Cosimo Zene, Salwa Ismail, Ole Birk Laursen, Preet Kaur Virdi, and Jennifer Griggs, for their help, comments and discussions on my topic and/or writings – and for their help in academic placement, without which there is rarely any academic work. The list of colleagues, friends, and family with whom I have engaged in endless discussions of philosophy, religion, society, and politics – and who have been essential in maintaining a feeling of belonging during my life as an international citizen – feels infinite, but I should at least mention my three wonderful sisters, Hanne, Irene, and Kirsten and their families, Michel, Junko, Charlotte, Maria, Samuel (Michael), Rasmus, Michael, Mumtaz, Reham, Torben, Klaus, Thomas, Anne, Jeanne, Iman,

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Hany, Sahar, Hala, Morteza, Ehaab, Radwa, Shereen, Alistair, Paul, Mark, Arngeir, Dorte, Maj-Britt, Christa, Chiarastella, Lise, Lea, and Marie. I am excited to have such talented, wise, and generous friends in the different corners of the world. A special thanks to my brother-in-law, Lars Karup Nielsen, for all his work on the illustrations, to Ian Thorpe for his work with the copy editing and to my editor Maria Marsh for her sterling work. Last but not least, I am grateful that Harald Nielsen and Agnete Holm hired and trained me in the noble art of religious dialogue in 2004 and gave me ample time and resources to learn from and influence (however little) religious dialogue in Egypt, while studying language, culture, religion, politics, and society – the beginning of the journey that eventually resulted in this book.

INTRODUCTION

_ ¯ r) between Muslims and This book examines how dialogue (hiwa Christians is conceptualised in Egypt and discusses what theoretical framework is needed to understand varieties in practices of dialogue. Using the definitions of practitioners of dialogue and people influencing interreligious relations, the book analyses religion as an active participator in creating meaning in society and the resulting identities that separate society into different groupings, and uses this as a basis to describe their relations and how these relations are managed. In contrast to much other work on dialogue, this book engages with political and sociological theories on Egyptian society and uses these to understand why dialogue is what it is in Egypt. The term “dialogue” is used differently in Egypt, and includes diplomacy between religiously defined social groups, the exchange of religious beliefs, the attempt at conversion, and social work. What distinguishes dialogue in Egypt, when compared to much dialogue in the West, is the near absence of faith issues in most dialogue initiatives aimed at improving relations, as talk of faith issues is most often felt only to lead to heightened tensions. The term “dialogue” does, however, also cover practices aimed at converting the “adversary” in dialogue, and then faith issues are addressed. The people involved in dialogue vary depending on the type of dialogue with which they are engaged. Religious diplomacy is conducted by highlyplaced representatives of institutions such as the Azhar and the Coptic

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Church, but also by representatives of local networks of power in the countryside and in the poorer areas of Cairo. People in opposition to the established political and religious institutions propagate a form of social dialogue; dialogue as the exchange of religious beliefs is primarily done in peripheral groups involving youth distanced from the institutionalised expressions of religion, and is as such a rare endeavour, and dialogue as social work is often found among Western minority churches.

Outline of Chapters Chapter 1: Dialogue as the Negotiation or Navigation of Intergroup Relations The first chapter constructs a theory that enables an understanding of the diversity of dialogical initiatives found in Egypt. To this end, dialogue is defined as the navigation and negotiation of social identities, which entails four variables that determine the nature of the dialogue initiatives: (i) the construct of the society in which the dialogue takes place; (ii) how social groups position individuals with or against each other; and how these variables build (iii) cognitive structures and (iv) emotional patterns, which together constitute attitudes towards one’s own group and other groups and their members. The theoretical approach focuses on social identity theory from social psychology, and relates this to sociological and philosophical thinkers to be able to explain the different dimensions of dialogue in society. Pierre Bourdieu, Alex Honneth, and Ferdinand To¨nnies are first used to establish an understanding of how societies are built through the interplay of different societal groups, the more intimate of which are termed “Communities of Interpretation”, a term coined by the author. This is then integrated with the social identity approach from social psychology, in the end providing an understanding of how dialogue participates in the establishment of societal groups, the relations between groups, and how dialogue is a tool for the negotiation and navigation of the identities of these communities of interpretation. Chapter 2: Politics, Religion, and Society in Mubarak’s Egypt This chapter provides the historical and societal background knowledge needed to understand what religious dialogue is in Egypt in 2010. It introduces the three major religious institutions and movements in

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Egypt with an impact on religious relations – the Azhar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Coptic Orthodox Church – starting with the revolution in 1919 and ending in 2010. The first half of the chapter traces the development of the Azhar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Coptic Orthodox Church. The Coptic Orthodox Church is described by its revival through the Sunday School Movement and development into a political unit. The Muslim Brotherhood is described as a pious movement that became the major political opponent to the recent regime of Hosni Mubarak. The Azhar is more briefly described, focusing on its development into a field for the negotiation of legitimacy of rule of the country between the Azhar and the Islamic groups (including the Muslim Brotherhood). The second half of the chapter describes Egyptian society as divided into two classes of people: the people who have enough resources and opportunities and are protected by the regime, and the people who only have few resources and opportunities and who struggle to feel secure in their lives. The regime is described as governing these two groups of people differently: the people who are protected by the regime are motivated by their privileged situation, and the people who are not offered security by the regime are to some extent co-opted through other means such as religious legitimation, clientelist structures, or coercion. Religion is described as playing at least three roles in this system: (i) cooptation: the Coptic Church is co-opted through negotiations between the president and the Pope and their associates; (ii) legitimation: the Azhar is used to legitimise the rule of the regime as religiously sound; and (iii) delegitimation: the Muslim Brotherhood seek to delegitimise the rule of the regime as religiously unsound, focusing on the lack of social justice in Egyptian society. Religion then plays a significant role in delimiting socio-political affiliation.

Chapter 3: The Interpretation of Muslim– Christian Incidents Incidents occurring between Muslims and Christians are divided into “everyday incidents” and “grand events”. The everyday incidents take at least two forms: systemic incidents (not to be confused with systematic incidents) and personal incidents, which are incidents actively and consciously occurring between two distinct persons or groups of people. The everyday incidents are likely to happen to most of the individuals of the Christian minority in some form or other.1 On the other hand, grand

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events are defined as violent and only happening to a few members of the minority. Describing and categorising incidents sheds light on the dynamics between the religious minorities and majorities in Egypt and how these incidents are understood differently by different parts of the Egyptian population. At the end of the chapter, the level of awareness of the problems facing the Christian minority will be discussed. The discourse of national unity is central to understanding interreligious relations and how incidents are interpreted, as this discourse is used both to overcome and gloss over problems arising between Muslims and Christians in Egypt.2

Chapter 4: The Dialogical Navigation and Negotiation of Egyptian Society Three discourses of dialogue are described as fundamental to dialogue in Egypt: “boxing match dialogue”, “official dialogue”, and “social dialogue”. Boxing match dialogue is defined by the interviewees as the attempt to convince people about the superiority of one’s religion. Official dialogue is defined as building on the political structures of society, where people’s religious affiliation enables the regime to negotiate with religious institutions to legitimise their rule. Two examples of social dialogue can be seen on the periphery of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Orthodox Church, where progressive thinkers believe that dialogue should deal with social injustice, uniting the Egyptians in dealing with the ills of society (such as a malfunctioning juridical system and corruption). Smaller religious entities (minority churches) and groups of people (the youth) engage in less authoritative dialogue initiatives. These initiatives are described as alternative discourses of dialogue contesting the way dialogue is conducted – and by this the participants are either positioning themselves in society as productive and valuable members thereof (for example minority churches) or as progressive enclaves of young people striving to improve relations between Muslims and Christians, as this has been identified as a major problem in society by the youth in Egypt. Chapter 5: Egypt and Dialogue in a Time of Revolutions Chapter 5 discusses the impact of the 2011 revolution on religious dialogue in Egypt. It discusses how dialogue has been influenced by the renegotiation of social order; political renewal and continuation after the

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revolution; Muslim– Christian relations following the revolution; and what new dialogue initiatives the revolution has spawned. The basic argument of the chapter is that the revolution has led to socio-political restructuring and social and financial instability that has influenced Muslim – Christian relations significantly. The societal position of Christians as represented politically by their church societies is being questioned: Christian church societies are still seen as political entities, but as part of the political debate questions are being raised as to whether Christians should be recognised as legitimate political players. This has led to a number of Muslim– Christian incidents on the one hand, while – on the other hand – the more open debate has also led to a number of dialogical initiatives striving to secure the Christians a place in the new socio-political order.

Conclusion The conclusion provides an overview of the findings of the book: it discusses the discourses in Egyptian society pertinent to dialogue, how the construct of Egyptian society influences dialogue, and it compares the described dialogue initiatives to a typology of dialogue initiatives, which enables comparison with dialogue initiatives in other countries.

Theological Theory and Religious Dialogue Philosophy of religion with a focus on the truth value of other religions currently dominates the theological field addressing religious dialogue. This book shifts the focus from concepts of religious truth to relations between different religious groupings by shifting from philosophical to sociological methods. According to David Bosch in his comprehensive, magisterial work on Western Christian missionary efforts, Transforming Mission, up until the Enlightenment other religions were by and large seen as falsities that should be combated through evangelisation (Bosch 1991, 474–89). This notion was, however, contested during the Enlightenment by a number of people who debated whether Christianity was the sole bearer of religious truth (Hospital 2007). This discussion was conducted within the discipline called “theology of religion”, where a major theme was the truth value of other religions that eventually became the basis of the dominant typology of dialogue in Western, Christian theology

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(Exclusivism, Inclusivism, and Pluralism) coined by Alan Race in 1983 (Race 2001). This focus on the truth value of other religions can be likened to Berger and Luckmann’s concept of “system maintenance” (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 147–62). The socially constructed reality needs maintenance when it can no longer be taken for granted; when Western Christians started taking other religions seriously as possible paths to truth during the Enlightenment, they needed to answer the question of how they as Christians with access to divine salvation should relate to different religions with the same ultimate claim.3 Alan Race later revisited his typology with the book Interfaith Encounter: The Twin Tracks of Theology and Dialogue (2001). Here Race points out that the attitude towards other religions varies from the negative to the more positive and is central to the understanding of dialogue, where a positive attitude is equated with being tolerant towards the truth value of other religions (Race 2001, 1). This dualism in attitudes is the framework within which the theological approaches to other religions through the ages have been shaped according to Race, linking attitudes to the approach to truth values in religions. According to Race, the typologies with a more negative attitude towards the truth value of other religions are either “Exclusivism” or “Inclusivism”, where inclusivism is more positive than exclusivism, but both find the ultimate truth in Christianity – the more positive attitude is termed “Pluralism”. Race believes that the present period demands a positive attitude towards the plurality of the world in order to avoid conflict. The exclusivists claim that the Christian revelation and the structure and message of the Bible are unique and superior to those of other religions (Race 2001, 24). The inclusivists also claim – as the exclusivists – a special status for their own religion for all of humankind in the salvific plan of God, but they differ as they do see some benefit in other religions as stepping stones to the fully-revealed truth found in Christianity. In the words of Race, “elements of religious value and truth springing from God’s universal presence in creation and history are necessarily embodied in tradition. Therefore other traditions per se can be vehicles of Christian saving grace” (second italics added) (Race 2001, 26). The other track, positive to the truth value of other religions, is pluralism, which fully acknowledges other religions as paths to salvation – whatever form that salvation may take. Pluralism has been caricatured by many according to Race; it has been equated with flat relativism, where “equally good” is

INTRODUCTION

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understood as indifference to the choice of one religion or another. This is, however, not how Race (2001, 31) understands it: “if the issue of plurality is approached from the perspective of the transformative purpose for which the religion exists, then a different possibility in the theology of religions becomes available”. The point of religion lies in the access to truth that enables people to live better lives, not in being superior to believers from other religions. The differentiation of Race has been extensively used and discussed within theology, and one of the influential voices in this debate is Paul F. Knitter with his book Introducing Theologies of Religions (2002). He writes about different models of theology, which are differentiated, as in Race’s book, according to truth claims. What Knitter brings to the discussion, apart from a more detailed approach in general, is a differentiation between modernist and post-modernist forms of pluralism, whereas Race primarily focuses on the modernist pluralist approach. Knitter’s interesting discussion of the impact of postmodernism on religious dialogue opens up new possibilities of accepting other truth claims, as all truth claims will necessarily be based on the knowledge that is tied to a specific experience and tradition. Against this background, peace can be made with the idea of radical difference between religions. Knitter pinpoints this as follows: “Truth is plural not singular because (a) all human experience and all human knowledge are filtered, and (b) the filters are incredibly diverse” (Knitter 2002, 175). Resonating with Ludwig Wittgenstein, theology immersed in recent hermeneutical theories then opens up to the idea of religions being something like different languages, which not only enable communication but partially build the worlds they are trying to communicate. Placing dialogue as the latest (emerging) addition to a long tradition of interaction between religions, as Bosch did, makes it obvious why academic work on dialogue would focus on the questions of salvation and the truth value of other religions – as the tradition by and large dictates the rejection of any ultimate truth value of other traditions. The problems pointed out by this book are twofold: (i) that this focus on the cognitive approach to dialogue ignores other fundamental variables essential to the formation of religious relations, and (ii) that the link Race assumes between attitudes (which are fundamental to action in society) and the perceived truth value of other religions is not necessarily present. Elaborating on these problems: (i) while “theology of religion”

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asks some fundamental questions, it might not be possible to answer them without addressing cognition as a social issue, because knowledge is only one part of the process of group formation and thus the formation of attitudes and knowledge. This is not understood in the sense that all theory about dialogue needs to apply sociological methods, but in the sense that sociological insight tells us that we cannot really understand someone different from us unless we engage with them socially and continuously in our attempt to understand them and their truth value. For example, to understand Islam, learning Arabic and reading the Qur’an (or learning the dogma of Islam) is a futile endeavour if it is not done in tandem with prolonged proximity to Muslims and their narratives about Islam. This is needed to break into the life forms of the religious other, to use Wittgenstein’s vocabulary. Religions are thus understood in this book as interpreted and lived locally – any “translocal” endeavour of religious interpretation is likely to result in one of two things: (a) abstract formulations of faith, or (b) differentiated faith communities. For faith formulations (a) to be usable across socialhermeneutical barriers and larger local entities they are formulated in the abstract. What is likely to happen is that the words being interpreted might stay the same, but assume different meanings in different contexts; or (b) the religion starts sub-dividing according to social divisions into different faith communities. Related to this is the other objection to Race’s typology, that (ii) in the parts of the world where the pluralistic access to the concept of truth is uncommon, you primarily find exclusivist and inclusivist theologies. Yet there are many dialogue initiatives that can be said to be pluralistic on other variables than the cognitive, such as pushing to improve social conditions or placing the political cognitive structure above religious cognitive structures in dialogue.4 As will be obvious in Chapter 1, these other variables are as essential to the formation of attitudes as cognition. This will be further demonstrated when describing the different types of dialogue in Chapter 4. A criticism of dialogue as an exclusively theological endeavour is clear in the writings of the Danish theologian Lissi Rasmussen and her book Diapraxis and Dialogue between Christians and Muslims (1997, my translation), which has been influential to this book as an eye opener, even though my theoretical approach is somewhat different. Rasmussen’s discussion of the concept of dialogue has its basis in her fieldwork in Tanzania and Nigeria, where religious dialogue is focused on improving

INTRODUCTION

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relations between Muslims and Christians, not through discussions of the legitimacy of the other’s religion as a religion, but by working together to improve each other’s livelihoods, which in turn can lead to considering the other religion legitimate. Based on her extensive experience in Africa and Denmark she coined the term “diapraxis”, adeptly defined as follows: Dialogue only becomes meaningful when rooted in a common praxis. Dialogue is disclosed in “diapraxis”. It is only by sharing our lives, struggles, and pains together, by working together creatively looking for change that we can deal with our theological differences meaningfully. (Rasmussen 1988, 1) Diapraxis is, in the definition of Rasmussen, a very broad field, encompassing the general promotion of the dignity of fellow human beings, the sharing of common experiences and activities, social and political involvement, and common worship, prayer, and meditation (Rasmussen 1997; 1988). In this book, the concept of diapraxis is used more narrowly, as will be obvious in Chapter 4. This book asks some of the same questions as Rasmussen, but answers by drawing on political science, sociology, and social psychology to deepen our understanding of religious dialogue as a tool for managing interreligious relations. Now this theoretical framework will be elaborated.

CHAPTER 1 DIALOGUE AS THE NEGOTIATION OR NAVIGATION OF INTERGROUP RELATIONS

The meaning of the concept of “dialogue” is disputed and some argue that the multiple uses of the term obscure its meaning, and other concepts, such as “Muslim– Christian relations”, are preferred. This book sees the concept of dialogue as a signifier in the discursive response to growing regional and international pluralism: it features a discussion on how growing pluralism and other communities should be approached, and the common determinant in this debate is the term dialogue. If other concepts are used, then they are likely to adopt a similar plastic meaning that allows for the discussants to have a term placed at the centre of the discussion. In other words, the term signifies the discussion of how pluralism should be approached and consequently what interreligious dialogue should be, as much as the activity involved in dialogue. In this book, the concept of Muslim– Christian relations is used to describe social dynamics and how other communities are imagined, while religious dialogue is used to refer to the different ways in which different communities try to influence these relations. The multiplicity of the term dialogue is thus the topic of the book. This chapter is a theoretical discussion of what religious dialogue is, enabling the later examination of the practice of religious dialogue in Egypt. As the introduction outlined, current theological thinking primarily utilises philosophy of religion to understand the differences between dialogical practices; applying this theoretical framework to the

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Egyptian setting is found to produce an impoverished understanding of what dialogue is in Egypt. Dialogue deals with more than how the other religion is thought (cognitive structures); religious relations permeate all of society and are negotiated in multiple ways. The first task of this book is consequently to outline a theoretical framework that can be used to understand the richness of methods, aims, and goals of dialogue and how these have social relevance. To this end, existing theological thinking has been bracketed to allow time and space to delve into other theories. In this regard, the following definition of dialogue is helpful: Religious dialogue is a tool for the negotiation and navigation of intergroup relations within and between groups having religion as a significant delimiter. People gather as social beings in communities to feel safe. Part of what makes people feel safe is that we participate in an interpretation of the world that enables us to function in the world together as a community. Because of this, belonging and interpretation of the world are directly connected. The reason for joining these communities of interpretation is consequently positive, but as several communities exist they might confront each other. This confrontation can feel like or actually be a threat to the physical existence and the interpretation of the world of the confronting communities. Based on this, the variables found to be important to research in dialogue are: (i) the socio-political structuring of society into social categories, (ii) the social positioning of individuals through social identities, and how these influence (iii) emotional patterns, and (iv) cognitive structures ordering the access the world and divinity. (i)

The socio-political structuring of society: recent thinkers from political science and sociology understand societies as constructs (Laclau 2007; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992) comprising different groups. The fluent structures of society define the relationship between religion and politics and between different groups in society and contingent identities – and consequently also the societal fabric religious dialogue consists of: dialogue thus differs between regions of the world.

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(ii) The social positioning of individuals through social identities: the Social Identity Approach (Postmes and Branscombe 2010) looks into the dynamics of intergroup relations; people react to other people, not only based on their personal relation to these people, but rather based on how the person understands him- or herself as part of a social group (social identity) compared to the social groups of other people (Tajfel 2010b, 80 – 1). In so far as people identify with religiously defined groups, and religious dialogue is influencing relations between two groups in society, social psychology can shed light on many of the dynamics by which dialogue functions. Dialogue thus also differs within a country depending on the needs of the participating social groups. (iii) Emotional patterns and (iv) cognitive structures: people group together because they are social beings who need to belong to a group to feel at peace with themselves and to feel that they have a place in the world (Turner 2010a, 260– 7; Honneth 2006; White 2001, 139). These groups help define how other groups are understood (Race 2001; Knitter 2002) and what feelings they provoke based on the relations between groups (Mackie, Devos, and Smith 2000; Mackie and Smith 2003). If religious dialogue aims to influence relations between religious groups, one therefore needs to look into both emotional patterns and cognitive structures, as these define the attitude of a person towards another person or group (Pettigrew 1998). These four variables will structure the theoretical chapter as well as the book in general. Chapter 2 explains the socio-political structuring of Egyptian society relevant to understanding the role of religion in Egyptian society and Egyptian dialogue initiatives. The third chapter focuses on emotional patterns and cognitive structures and how they have materialised into behavioural patterns. The fourth chapter then describes how dialogue (the negotiation of social positioning) is conducted in Egypt, and how it relates to socio-political structures and attitudes. Finally, the fifth chapter discusses the relevance of clientelist structures after the revolution in 2011 and consequently the adaptation of prerevolutionary dialogical endeavours. Now, after a brief discussion of the relation between religion and politics/society, each of the four variables essential to the understanding of dialogue will be explained theoretically.

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The relation between religion and society/politics This book deals with religious dialogue as a social phenomenon, but this is only possible if religion is understood as having social relevance. Before we can progress to looking into the theoretical framework of the book, we will therefore first need to discuss how religion is conceptualised in relation to society and politics. The contemporary distinction between religion and society is often connected to the idea of separation between church and state. On the one hand, drawing on Max Weber, the state is often defined as the human community, which, as one central feature of the state, lays claim to a monopoly on legitimate physical violence in society (Chavura 2011, 72). This eventually led to the myth of states that are completely separate from religion, which is especially evident in the theories of John Rawls (Chavura 2011, 82), where whatever religion is left in governance eventually will disappear as progress advances. Martin Luther has a similar distinction between the “two swords”; while the carnal sword preserves peace and justice, the spiritual sword provides a means of salvation (Lerfeldt 1967, 174–81), though he believes the carnal sword is in place to protect the interests of the spiritual sword. Despite this relatively sharp theoretical distinction, the separation of state (and society) and religion has always been negotiated in different ways. The separation of state and religion is a human distinction settled with the purpose of managing the influence of different social entities, which is obvious when looking at the extent to which these entities are defined differently around the world, now and throughout history (Barbalet, Possamai, and Turner 2011). The social importance of churches and other religious communities leads to social significance and therefore to political relevance (Zrinscak 2011, 167), even in societies where there is a sharp theoretical distinction between religion and society/politics. Analytically it is prudent to start deliberations from the idea that there is no difference in “reality”; the notions of the religious, social, economical and political are notions academics and practitioners use to understand reality through distinction: This means that, instead of using generic notions of religion and the state that purport to be valid for all times and places, I prefer to focus on the social processes whereby the meanings of these terms

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are generated, attributed, deployed and contested in particular social and cultural contexts. This allows me to work with rough and ready definitions that merely identify the outer limits of common usage. (Beckford 2011, 43) With these words, we are in the analytical realm of discourses (Howarth 2000; Fairclough 1993), where the construction of reality is the human endeavour of finding a way in life (Wittgenstein 2001, 42; Das 1998). Looking at discourses means trailing how people dynamically use their language, leading to meanings arising, instead of normatively assuming a certain inflexible structure of reality. Religion and society are consequently concepts that move with time and the development of human reality. The relation between religion, society, and politics in Egypt of relevance to this book will be described in Chapter 2.

Religion and sociology It is the fundamental human need for belonging and a sense of locatedness that is the connecting point between religion and society – or theology and sociology or social psychology in this book. While specific dogmatic (i.e. doctrinal aspects) or religious (i.e. the practice of a religion) content has little bearing on this book (and when it does it is as a cognitive structure producing either a positive or negative attitude towards others, depending on the context), it instead focuses on how religion and religiosity influence relations between groups. Religion is an extraordinarily suitable carrier of identity because religious communities often define the contours of social groups, as succinctly formulated by Jeffrey R. Seul: In all their multifarious expressions and dimensions, the world’s religions answer the individual’s need for a sense of locatedness – socially, sometimes geographically, cosmologically, temporally, and metaphysically. Religious meaning systems define the contours of the broadest possible range of relationships – to self; to others near and distant, friendly and unfriendly; to the non-human world; to the universe; and to God, or that which one considers ultimately real or true. (Seul 1999, 558)

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If religions make for stronger identities than other groups, such as political groups, then it also follows that the dangers of this identity producing negative relations – under circumstances conducive to negativity – is equally high. Religious groups function by the same principles as any other group (Jackson and Hunsberger 1999, 510), and the knowledge of the group is influenced by its social relations to the same extent as any other group with similar structures and functions in society. This does not mean that being an efficient carrier of identity is the sole function of religion; it is merely the focus of this book as it is believed to further research in and attempts at dialogue. Whether religions have certain structures fundamental to the communication of spirituality is not essential to this book, where the focus is on religion as a social reality. It is, however, tentatively suggested that knowledge of spiritual life can be likened to a religious language, which is developed locally.1 In the vocabulary of Wittgenstein, all knowledge is formulated in language – and, from the perspective of sociology, is as such a social endeavour. Jean-Francois Lyotard (2001) points to the very centre of Wittgenstein’s second philosophical phase, when writing that Wittgenstein’s major contribution to philosophy is that all knowledge is formulated in language (Wittgenstein 2001, 90). While Lyotard, drawing on Wittgenstein, signals the beginning of a new paradigm of thinking termed “the Postmodern” in his influential book (Lyotard 2001), it does not mean a complete break with all aspects of “Modern” thinking. Wittgenstein is in fact building on the ideas of Immanuel Kant, known as the father of modernism, in so far as he separates between “das Ding an sich” (the thing in itself) and “das Ding fu¨r mich” (the thing as it appears to me) – “das Ding an sich” being unreachable to human understanding (Kant 1996). A major difference between Kant and Wittgenstein is that while Kant talks about a universal (i.e. interpersonal) access to “das Ding fu¨r mich” through reason, Wittgenstein is describing understanding as something more local through language and communication: with language at the centre, understanding becomes a way of finding your way in the world (Wittgenstein 2001, 42; Das 1998), and this way is built between people through communication (Wittgenstein 1995). Wittgenstein’s focus on language as the basis for understanding clarifies how knowledge of one’s own group and other groups is something situated locally within a community, from where the world is

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interpreted. This is fundamental to understand the connection between knowledge and social dynamics elaborated in the rest of this chapter. The main interest of Wittgenstein is in the formation of knowledge as an integrated part of the formation of language. It is obvious from Philosophical Investigations (Wittgenstein 2001) that this is something done within a community, but he does not elaborate much on the impact of the surrounding society and the individual as a social being on the formation of language. This is, however, at the very centre of Foucault’s theories, where one finds a focus on the relationship between knowledge and power. In his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, Foucault (1995) points to knowledge not being insight found in a power vacuum, but something produced as a result of power relations in society (Rouse 2005). Foucault understands knowledge as the product of the dominant power-creating norms, which increases the productive value of the individuals for society, and empowers people who strive to stay within the settled norm and thus remain politically manageable (Foucault 1995, 138; Lindgren 2007). The agent behind this power is, however, not fortunate individuals or groups in terms of power (Rouse 2005, 112), but it is the average citizen him- or herself who propagates a specific body of knowledge, defining what is the norm and tolerated in society and who the deviants are: who cannot be allowed by society and are thus ostracised, for example by being declared a criminal or insane in extreme cases (Foucault 1995, 194; Ritzer and Goodman 2003, 589). Normalisation consequently becomes a central concept to the power structures of society: “normalization becomes one of the great instruments of power . . . indicating membership of a homogeneous social body but also playing a part in classification, hierarchisation and the distribution of rank” (Foucault 1995, 184). Spirituality “in itself” (the thing in itself) is then not necessarily a social construct, but spirituality “for us” necessarily is, using Kantian terms. Human knowledge is built between people in communities in the attempt to understand and act in the world together. This would explain why apparitions of the Virgin Mary are more likely to be interpreted as such by Egyptian Protestants than Danish Protestants. It also explains why some people are non-religious and others are religious, and why some are Muslims and some Christians: these are different communities interpreting the world in an attempt to find their way in life. Each of these communities of interpretation then constitute a social entity,

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which will appear alien to both their own interpretation of the world and the social entity – some of these communities of interpretation will appear as a threat at times, to the extent that we feel compelled to defend ourselves and our way of life. The negotiation of these relations between the communities of interpretation is what is termed “dialogue” and what will be explored in this book. It would, however, be too much of a detour to focus on the question of spirituality specifically – it is sufficient to indicate that the formulation of spirituality can also be seen as a local endeavour partaking in the general attempt to navigate reality. The interpretation of theology and dogma (how religion is actually lived, thought, and how it influences the interpretation of other communities) is understood as part of the local, social interpretation of the world, making it possible for people to live their lives with other people in communities as social beings. It should be underlined that religion being defined as part of general social dynamics does not necessarily lead to the conclusion that the contents of religion are entirely settled by humans with no interference of divinity. It would be close to solipsism, believing the world does not exist independent of human thought, if it is brought to mean that sociological thought unveils religion as a social construct with no place for divine interference; sociology merely traces the sociological aspects of religion, but can hardly comment on issues alien to its perspective. However, it does mean that religion (religion for us, but not necessarily in itself) does not have a settled meaning without variation, which necessitates looking into the differences in belief within all religions leading to different approaches to other religions. The sociological background for the differences within a religion then becomes crucial to the study of dialogue, as religious dialogue is precisely the negotiation of attitudes towards other religions that takes place in society. Having defined the approach to religion and society, it is now time to discuss the crucial role of groups in the construction of society.

The Socio-Political Structuring of Society Investigating social relations from the perspective of groups, each group can be seen as its own magnetic field. Society as a whole is constructed by the network of magnetic fields, each of which attracts some fields while

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keeping others at a distance – this process of pushing and pulling groups in society shapes each group in relation to the other groups. The groups are thus never isolated entities functioning independently from the rest of society, but always changing depending on the growth or decline of other groups. It follows that relations between groups become central to understanding groups and their knowledge about themselves and each other and how they change over time. The theoretical interest of groups to the analysis is that the constellation of groups in a society – how one group is distinguished from another – determines what role religion has in society and if or how religious dialogue takes part in the construction of society, and consequently if or how religious dialogue has any social relevance; if religion is a social signifier then social groups will distinguish themselves by religion and religious dialogue can become a social phenomenon. But in a (likely utopian) society where people do not think twice about the religion of the people they engage with, religious dialogue is not likely to be a social phenomenon, but rather based on spiritual curiosity – which can even be considered a minimum of religious social distinction in as far as the curiosity is distinguishing the person as different from me and mine. As groups are the central perspective of the book it is necessary to define the use of the word. Groups vary in size from smaller entities of, in principle, a minimum of two people (To¨nnies 2002), through nations (Anderson 2006), to, in principle, humankind as opposed to other categories and groups such as animals, aliens (primarily found in movies depicting alien invasions, which unite humankind in a struggle for survival), or God and other divine beings. The basic difference between a number of random people and a group of people is that a group of people are people who feel as if they belong to the group; it is this feeling of belonging that defines groups (Tajfel 2010c, 98). Hogg and Vaughan (2005, 276) sum up the effects of people belonging to groups succinctly: The groups to which we belong determine which language we speak, what accent we have, what attitudes we hold, what cultural practices we adopt, what education we receive, what level of prosperity we enjoy and ultimately who we are. Even the groups to which we do not belong, either by choice or exclusion, have a profound impact on our lives.

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To Hogg and Vaughan’s list, what people know about themselves and people from other groups and how they act towards these is added here. Any given person is typically part of an array of different groups, depending on the complexity of the person and society. Some of these groups overlap with or are encompassed within bigger groups and their respective identities; a person can also participate in two groups that are in direct contradiction – though this can lead to identity problems for this person. The basic distinction between the groups a person is part of, relevant to this book, is inspired by To¨nnies and his Community and Society from 1887 (To¨nnies 2002).2 To¨nnies distinguishes between two types of societies producing two kinds of human relations: the pre-industrial rural type, which he calls “community”, and the industrial type called “society”. To¨nnies points out the difference between the two concisely: “All intimate, private, and exclusive living together, so we discover, is understood as life in Gemeinschaft (community). Gesellschaft (society) is public life – it is the world itself” (To¨nnies 2002, 33). To¨nnies imagines the village as the ideal of the “community”, where the relations between people are centred on the close and familiar, more specifically blood, place, or mind – leading to the following corresponding categories: “It is, therefore, possible to deal with (1) kinship, (2) neighbourhood, and (3) friendship as definite and meaningful derivations of these original categories [blood, place, and mind]” (To¨nnies 2002, 42). It is obvious that the relations in To¨nnies’s community are based on proximity – if not physical closeness or kinship, then similarity in thought. “Society” on the other hand is signified by distance and the individualisation of people. People do not interact “naturally” as they do in the community, where people are connected as a matter of course because they were born and live together, but rather in a calculated way to optimise their position in society. According to To¨nnies, society became a reality with the rise of capitalism and the growth of cities, which ultimately created a society where the personal is no longer possible in the same way as it was in the community: In the conception of Gesellschaft, the original or natural relations of human beings to each other must be excluded. The possibility of a relation in the Gesellschaft assumes no more than a multitude

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of mere persons who are capable of delivering something, and consequently of promising something . . . In Gesellschaft every person strives for what is to his own advantage and he affirms the actions of others only in so far as and as long as they can further his interest. (To¨nnies 2002, 77) To¨nnies goes on to describe the societal relations as based on the struggle of all people against all in the grasping for profit in this rather bleak understanding of society and capitalism. While To¨nnies is highly relevant to this book, it differs from his theory in a number of ways. The main difference is that To¨nnies speaks of community and society as concepts signifying two different time periods (Falk 2007), where one takes over from the other as capitalism changes human reality. However, there is some debate as to whether To¨nnies actually believes this, and some scholars argue that it is possible to speak about community and society as contemporary phenomena (Falk 2007; Loomis and McKinney 2002). This book uses To¨nnies’s distinctions for relations, rather than types of societies. The community type of relations is more personal, based on trust, similar to well-functioning family relations (Loomis and McKinney 2002, 7). Within the community type of relations it is a priority to defend the people encompassed within the community, and authority is meant to guide and educate rather than to be used for selfinterest (To¨nnies 2002, 39 –40). As To¨nnies describes it, the society type of relations is, in contrast to the community type of relations, based primarily on the attempt at personal gain. In society, people do not necessarily care for mutual gain in relations, as authority is used to attain personal benefits. The society type of relations is then an “every man for himself” type of relations (To¨nnies 2002, 64– 5). When interacting in the society type of relations, people base their trust on contracts (To¨nnies 2002, 71), instead of the concord found in the community type of relations. To¨nnies, using the village as an ideal type of community, understands community relations as based on necessity (because of the limited amount of possible relations in a village); this book emphasises choice between different groups to a larger extent, even though necessity still plays a role, for example through kinship, in some types of relations. Community and society types of relations should be seen not as singular types, but rather as poles of a continuum, where you

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at the community pole would find typical family and friend relations, to relations where people are often reduced to their functions, such as a cashier, at the society pole of the continuum. While To¨nnies (and others such as Cooley (Loomis and McKinney 2002, 14)) is describing the community type of relations primarily as face-to-face relations, this book uses the concept of community for potentially much larger groups, such as, for example, the Coptic Orthodox Church, which has approximately six million members and is clearly not a village or an independent nation because these members are scattered all over Egypt and the world, but often interact with the trust of familiarity. The usage of the concept of community for larger groups is seen in Benedict Anderson’s book Imagined Communities (Anderson 2006), in which he describes the feeling of nationality as based on a feeling of community close to the definition of To¨nnies: It [the national community] is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of the fellowmembers, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion . . . In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined . . . Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. (Anderson 2006, 6–7) What keeps these larger groups of communities together is therefore not direct familiarity, but rather a number of other factors, such as the school system teaching the construction of history of the specific area, the national press, maps defining national belonging, or local languages. Anderson also points out how communities are defined negatively by what they are not, for example compared to neighbouring countries. It is obvious that there are differences between a family and their intimacy and the intimacy created by national unity. It is also clear that while a person might feel a fellow citizen to be close to him or her, the very same citizen might be an enemy in everyday life within the nation (the obvious example of this from literature would be Shakespeare’s story of Romeo and Juliet). The identity of a group is furthermore relative to

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what or who it is compared with. An Egyptian Christian speaking with a Danish Christian about national history, morality or politics might emphasise national unity and in this imply distance between the two speaking; the same two people might emphasise national disunity when addressing religious belonging and in this imply proximity between the two. This is obvious in what is called identity and salience in social psychology, which will be explained in more detail later in this chapter. The primary interest of this book is, however, not groups, but the relations between groups and how dialogue is a tool to influence these relations. Using To¨nnies’s terminology, Bourdieu provides an excellent tool to explore relations between groups and their capital-like nature in “society”, but to expound on relations as they appear in “communities” the work of Axel Honneth and his concept of recognition are interesting. This will now be explored.

The external relations of a group: societal relations and the negotiation of capital Bourdieu understands society as split into classes of people who establish their position in society in relation to other classes of people. It is, however, not the actions of people that are Bourdieu’s central concern. The contestation of societal positioning is conducted in fields that are understood as battlegrounds where the definition of normality is fought over, leading to social status for the victors. Individuals act in their everyday lives according to the fields, incorporating the way of the fields into their habitus, thus constructing their personalised access to the field. Bourdieu is building on a Marxist understanding of society as class-differentiated (Wilken 2006, 46), but he is elaborating on (and breaking with) these ideas by adding societal values other than the financial one (Rey 2007, 35), such as cultural capital, which allows for the penniless artist or academic to enjoy a high status in society, which is not possible if the focus is only on economic capital. These three concepts are thus central to Bourdieu’s theory: Field, Habitus, and Capital. In this book, Bourdieu is used to explain how religion is one of many factors delimiting societal groups from each other (see Chapter 2), but also to explain how relations between religious groups can be explained sociologically (see Chapter 4).

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Field The most central of Bourdieu’s concepts when it comes to relationality is the concept of field, defined as the battlegrounds where social positioning (as well as social relationality) is fought over (Wilken 2006): I could twist Hegel’s famous formula and say that the real is the relational: what exist in the social world are relations – not interactions between agents or intersubjective ties between individuals, but objective relations which exist “independently of individual consciousness and will”, as Marx said. In analytic terms, a field may be defined as a network, or a configuration, of objective relations between positions. These positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in their determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions (domination, subordination, homology, etc.). (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 97)3 The concept “objective” refers to relations that are not (consciously and subjectively) defined by individuals, but constituted by “the social”. The number of different fields is only limited by the complexity of a society, and can be as diverse as the political, artistic, philosophical, religious, or literary fields (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 105). The fields arise wherever people strive to achieve social recognition drawing on what is perceived as valuable within the specific field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 100). One of the more elaborate examinations by Bourdieu was conducted on “taste” and how taste differentiates society into various social entities (Bourdieu 2007; Ja¨rvinen 2007, 350). Or from the perspective of people; people adjust their taste to the taste of their field and that in turn differentiates people into different social groups. Fields are never isolated entities functioning independently from the rest of society, but always changing depending on the position of other fields. The relations between fields are central to understanding the fields themselves, but it is equally important to see them against an

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all-encompassing meta-field or field of power, which is a reinterpretation of the concept of “state” in modern industrial states (Rey 2007, 45; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 111–12). The major battles within and between fields are often fought in this meta-field because the modern state holds power over “symbolic violence”, which shapes the norms and opinions of people through, for example, the school system and correctional systems, building a certain version of social reality (Wilken 2006, 92–3). These struggles function according to rules (or doxa) specific to an individual field, determining how people are supposed to interact and struggle for dominance in this field ( Ja¨rvinen 2007, 359). Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic violence resonates with Foucault’s concept of power linked by the concept of “normality”, which is imposed not necessarily by authoritative figures but also people themselves.

Habitus There is no space for individuals independent of the social in Bourdieu’s theories; values are not constructed on any notion of independent individualism, but against the backdrop of how society places these individuals within a network of possible societal positions (Ritzer and Goodman 2003, 520). Bourdieu does, however, maintain the idea of individualism by introducing the concept of habitus. Habitus is what enables people to utilise the possibilities of fields, and push the boundaries of these fields by redefining them (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 120; Wilken 2006). Bourdieu (2005, 57) offers a definition of habitus in The Logic of Practice: Produced by the work of inculcation and appropriation that is needed in order for objective structures, the products of collective history, to be reproduced in the form of the durable . . . the habitus, which is constructed in the course of an individual history, imposing its particular logic on incorporation, and through which agents partake of the history objectified in institutions, is what makes it possible to inhabit institutions, to appropriate them practically, and so to keep them in activity . . . reviving the sense deposited in them, but at the same time imposing the revisions and transformations that reactivation entails.

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In this passage Bourdieu is writing about the institutions of society (those “reproduced in the form of the durable”), but the quote adequately describes the relation between field and habitus, as fields are precisely “objective structures, the products of collective history” (Ritzer and Goodman 2003, 522). While fields are objective structures that demarcate the possibilities of a society, the habitus is the (mostly unconscious) appropriation of these structures and the rules of the field (doxa) by the individual to gain a feel for the field and thus to be able to function in society (Ja¨rvinen 2007). The habitus (micro) is therefore the practical sense of the social world (macro), which enables people to function in this world and partake in the struggles in the fields. The relationship between micro and macro aspects of sociological theory, as highlighted by Bourdieu, is generally applicable to the theories utilised in this book.

Capital While the field is the space in which people struggle over social positioning guided by the practical sense of the individual induced by the habitus, capital is what the struggle is for. This is where the benefit of Bourdieu’s thoughts for this book becomes obvious (see also Chapter 3): Bourdieu talks about three fundamental categories of capital (Ja¨rvinen 2007), which each incorporate a multitude of sub-categories: economic, cultural, and social (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 118–19). Economic capital is straightforwardly material possessions. Cultural capital is various forms of knowledge or information, in the sense that holding the authority to interpret the world elevates your position in society. This is independent of whether the interpretation is for example religious, scientific, or artistic. It is obvious how this form of capital is relevant to this book. Social capital is the connections a person or institution holds authority over, can draw on, or in some other way activate to its advantage (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 120). Clientelism elevates the role of social capital in the definition of religious discourse in Egypt as explained in Chapters 2 and 4. Bourdieu transplants the logic of economic capital and how it helps position people in society to understand how an array of different things influence the social standing of a person or institution by generalising the logic of capital, but changing the carrier of value to matters less tangible than economics (Ja¨rvinen 2007). Central to understanding how

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Bourdieu does this is the concept of symbolic capital, which is the exchange value of a capital in a specific field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Wilken 2006, 49). The value of capital changes from field to field. The value of individuals or institutions in a field is determined by the amount of capital it holds and what the capital is worth in the specific field. Different forms of capital then have different exchange values in each field. An example from this book could be how a politically relevant field arose between the Azhar, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the regime in contesting who should be the legitimate interpreter of Islam in Egypt before the revolution. Political/religious capital was used by the Muslim Brotherhood to delegitimise regime-friendly Shaykhs at the Azhar by pointing to the social responsibility of Islam. At the same time the regime tried to delegitimise the Muslim Brotherhood as religiously unsound fanatics, who were out to destabilise the God-granted authority of the regime. In this sense, religious capital and political capital are intertwined and exchangeable (also see Chapter 2). Capital can also function as an “admission fee” to a field, if a person wants to claim any status in a given field (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 107). An example is how participation in the military in Egypt is political capital, as it provides access to an influential network (social capital) with easier access to political life, but because adhering to the Muslim faith is an admission fee to access higher positions in the military, religious capital (a form of cultural capital) becomes part of the equation as well. Bourdieu’s conceptual framework can be applied to understand how religious capital was part of the symbolic struggles of Egyptian society, which is what will be done in Chapters 2 and 3, but Terry Rey’s (2007) criticism of Bourdieu’s work on religion opens up an interesting discussion, which can propel us into the next section of this chapter by highlighting what Bourdieu is and is not used for in this book. While Rey believes that Bourdieu has a lot to offer the analysis of religion, it is also obvious that he finds Bourdieu’s research – specifically on religion – reductionist: But whatever good that religion has contributed to humanity is seemingly of no interest to Bourdieu. Likewise, his work pays virtually no attention to spirituality as the widespread human

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phenomenon that it is, to say nothing about mystical experience. (Rey 2007, 5) One of the major reasons for this, according to Rey, is that God, for Bourdieu, is but a socially constructed illusion, and religion is an ultimately unnecessary system of symbolic meaning that serves chiefly to perpetuate social domination by duping people into accepting their stations in society as somehow being natural or, worse still, divinely sanctioned. (Rey 2007, 6) This leads Bourdieu, according to Rey, to interpret the decline of religious expression (Rey 2007, 57) in the West culminating in the 1980s as a sign that religion is redundant. As there have been several obvious expressions of religious protest of the abuse of power – for example the Liberation Theologians of South America or Desmond Tutu in South Africa – and since religion is still clearly important to many, Bourdieu’s analysis of religion seems highly flawed. But this does not mean that Bourdieu is useless to this book, as his general theoretical tools remain helpful. Religion is therefore not seen as having some predetermined function or destination in society, but rather as “a discursive tradition that links past, present, and future in a variety of ways” (Starrett 1998, 7). This is exactly what Gregory Starrett (1998) analyses in his Putting Islam to Work: Education, Politics, and Religious Transformation in Egypt. Although his book is analysing another level of religion in Egypt (i.e. religion in social micro-dynamics) to this book, his work is interesting as it treats religion as part of the general fabric of society – much as you would describe culture as having the potential for a variety of discursive formations, only limited by what Foucault calls episteme and the actuality of discursive formations. A good example of one such analytical fragment is: Just as advertising in capitalist societies works not so much by building loyalty to particular products, but by reinforcing the advantages of consumption in general, so religious messages in public space largely exert general rather than specific effects. (Starrett 1998, 229)

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Rey also laments that Bourdieu does not explain how religion plays a positive role in history and how spirituality is a part of people’s lives. This is no doubt partly because Bourdieu sees religion as an illusion. But it is also believed to be because Bourdieu’s framework of thinking is primarily a tool to understand the construction of society, making the theories of Bourdieu of less use in understanding, for example, spirituality as part of a person’s life. Bourdieu’s theories are helpful in understanding the social value of a phenomenon and how it is used to gain standing in society, but less so in understanding the social meaning (or worth) of this phenomenon and how this meaning differs between groups. To understand the social meaning of a phenomenon (religious or otherwise) other conceptual tools are more effective, such as Honneth’s concept of recognition. Bourdieu’s limited ability to describe what Rey is asking for is also partly because he focuses exclusively on the social evaluation of groups to understand why people partake in them, and in doing so overlooks that people also become part of groups because they are social beings and need cohesion with others.

The internal relations of a group: community relations and recognition Alex Honneth disputes the idea of society as solely based on a struggle for societal gain – whether the gain is straightforwardly financial in Marxist terms or symbolic, as set out in Bourdieu’s thoughts (Honneth 2006, 128; Willing 2006, 8). Instead he sees society as based on a struggle for recognition, where recognition is a moral claim of belonging in close relations and in society. The infant first discovers itself when reflected through its parents in the experience of love, where the infant discovers its worth and position in a community. Later in life, the same pattern is duplicated on a broader level, when the adult finds its societal worth by having rights in society and by feeling solidarity towards the rest of society, inducing the urge to function as a productive member of society. These three levels of recognition are then essential for a person to feel good about him- or herself: love, rights, and solidarity (Willing 2006, 10). When Honneth writes about love, he is not defining it as the erotic relation between two people, but more broadly as the glue in erotic

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relationships, friendships, and in the relation between parents and their children (Honneth 2006, 130). It is in loving relationships that people realise that they need other people to satisfy the basic social need as humans: another person recognising you provides immediate emotional satisfaction, as it fulfils the need to exist as a social being. This, simultaneously, distinguishes the two people as two confronted individuals, as they are not able to fulfil the social needs by themselves. There is therefore a balancing act between dependence and independence in this type of personal relationship, as the individuality of the people involved needs to be maintained for the relationship to produce the needed recognition. The infant needs to liberate itself from symbiosis with the mother, but once this is done the presence of unquestioned love from the parents generates confidence, which later in life enables the child to forge successful emotional ties to other people (Honneth 2006, 142– 3; Willing 2006, 12). Honneth finds the similarity between love and the feeling of having rights in (and thus belonging to) society in their mutual mechanism of recognition (Honneth 2006, 147): we only know our rights in society if we understand our own duties in society. In other words, we have to recognise others and their rights before we can demand recognition from others and rights for ourselves. There is a balance between asserting oneself as a member of a community and allowing others to be part of the same community: the freedom and right to partake in society and enjoy its benefits is then dependent on accepting society as a community where all people enjoy the same rights and benefits. Belonging to a community, being protected by rights in the community, and partaking in the benefits of the community are forms of recognition that situate an individual within the community and produce confidence in the life and future of the participating individual (Honneth 2006, 155). This goes for smaller communities, but also for a nation as a community (Honneth 2006, 156). The dignity of a person is connected to membership in a community as a free individual with rights and demands. People are, however, not only defined by their rights and demands in society, but also by their contribution to society. This is based on a feeling of solidarity, where people take on the responsibilities of being a productive member of society as it gives them a feeling of value; a value that is determined by the system of reference of the particular country or community (Honneth 2006, 164). This value is hierarchically

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determined in all societies, making some societal positions more prestigious than others and leading to a struggle for recognition, which Honneth underlines as the connecting point between his theory and that of Bourdieu. Honneth does not understand society as individuals claiming their individual rights. Individuals partake in groups, which then struggle for recognition in society on behalf of the members of the groups (Honneth 2006, 165, 170– 1, and 210–11), and with this the notions of recognition and belonging are added to Bourdieu’s struggle for status (Honneth 2006, 170 and 213). Societal changes are explained as a product of a struggle for recognition based on a normative demand for recognition (Honneth 2006, 127; Willing 2006, 8). Governments are consequently only recognised as legitimate by the people, who feel that they are provided social space to be able to belong in their own groups – and in broader society, where they need to be recognised as legitimate citizens. With Egypt being continuously more divided along religious lines, the question of societal belonging has in part become a religious question. The less the regime provides its citizens with the feeling of partaking in the responsibilities and benefits of the country, the more people seek other places of belonging, such as their local networks (see Chapter 2) – and the more the regime needs other paths to legitimacy. In Egypt people sought places of belonging in their religious networks; religious discourse consequently became the obvious path to legitimacy of the regime, which in turn left out people who were not part of the majority religion. Based on this, the negotiation for societal space is placed at the very heart of some types of dialogue in Egypt, as will be obvious in Chapter 4: some types of dialogue are best described as political negotiations of the societal position of the involved groups. These types of dialogue were often based on the society type of relations. Other types of dialogue would break down prior societal delimitations and build a community from the participants, who consequently could function according to the community type of relations. This also explains some of the dynamics of discrimination: as pointed out in Chapter 3, many of the things we do as a majority to feel part of our group can feel like discrimination to minority groups, who do not partake in the feeling of belonging that the activities of the majority group sustain.

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Summary Bourdieu describes society as constructed by different competing groups, striving to gain an edge in society and life; Honneth sees himself in opposition to this “everybody’s fight against everybody else” and bases the construction of society on people’s need for recognition, which ultimately is their need to belong. To¨nnies argues that the intimacy of agrarian societies and communal villages has been exchanged for impersonal cities, where interactions between people are based on contracts instead of trust. I believe that people relate to some people with the trust and intimacy of family, while they relate to others in a more impersonal, contractual way – and that both of these approaches to other people are the foundations of society. To¨nnies’s two approaches to life are seen as contemporary phenomena: as social beings we need to belong to groups, where we only feel at home in so far as we are recognised as belonging by ourselves and the other members of the group (community type of relations). But the establishment of these groups that promote our need to belong also potentially provokes contractual relations, competition, and at times hostility towards other groups and people from other groups (society type of relations). The 2011 revolution underlined the thoughts of Honneth as applicable to Egyptian society, as one of the major reasons for the people to revolt was that they felt humiliated under the rule of the Mubarak regime, with no rights and no prospects of jobs, i.e. no possibilities of functioning as productive members of society (Honneth 2006, 211). The aftermath of the 2011 revolution was an example of Bourdieu’s thoughts: there was no overarching system (or vision of a system) that people trusted and the revolution collapsed into the struggle of groupings over influence (see Chapter 5). Chapter 4 will show how the two different types of relations also influenced how dialogue was conducted; some types of dialogue were based on a contractual approach to other religious groups, where relations between Muslims and Christians were negotiated between the leaders of communities (society type of relations). Other dialogue initiatives aimed at breaking down the religious delimitation of social groups by establishing smaller groups of Muslims and Christians, who could identify as belonging to the same group (community type of relations).

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The Social Positioning of Individuals through Social Identities This chapter has so far focused on sociology and philosophy, as these theories provide an understanding of how groups define the societal structure in which dialogue takes place, determining the role of religion and consequently dialogue in society. This section will now look at social psychology theories of social identity and self-categorisation that analyse how relations between groups are negotiated as a social phenomenon. While Henry Tajfel initiated social identity theory, John C. Turner expanded it with his self-categorisation theory; these two combined will be referred to as the social identity approach (Postmes and Branscombe 2010). The following depiction of the social identity approach is primarily based on the writings of these two, Tajfel and Turner, which will be elaborated with reference to other relevant theories when describing Muslim–Christian relations and dialogue in Chapters 3 and 4. To Tajfel, groups are of key importance in understanding people as social beings (Tajfel 2010d). His theory about social identity is based on the conceptual tripod of (i) social categorisation, (ii) social identity, and (iii) social comparison (Tajfel 2010e; Turner and Reynolds 2010, 16). The tripod is used to elaborate on the basic assumption that “individuals (at least in our culture) prefer a positive to a negative self-image” (Tajfel 2010e, 67)4: (i) a person categorises society into groups along demarcations salient to a specific society to organise and bring order to society (social categorisation); (ii) the person situates him- or herself in society by identifying with a specific group (or a number of groups), leading to various degrees of attachment to the group (social identity); and (iii) the person will attribute value to her- or himself according to the value attributed to the group she or he identifies with, i.e. social comparison (Tajfel 2010b, 80 –1; Haslam et al. 2010). In categorising people, we tend to focus on what springs to mind when faced with a person, group, or situation, i.e. we focus on what is “salient” (Hogg and Vaughan 2005, 61). Salience can be based on a number of different things, such as repetition during upbringing or vivid displays such as violence. Anything can be salient and spawn social action depending on the situation, but historically race, religion, colour, and culture have been major salient features in most societies, often leading to discrimination. What is also interesting is that in all of these

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cases there is nothing intrinsic to the features making them salient – the salience is determined by the need to determine differences between social groups, i.e. to categorise in order to understand our relation to our social surroundings. To understand social identity, Turner’s distinction between personal and social identities is enlightening. Social identity covers membership of various formal and informal social groups, i.e. social categories such as gender, nationality, political affiliation, religion and so on. Personal identities cover specific attributes of the individual such as feelings of competence, bodily attributes, personal tastes (Turner 2010b, 211; Haslam et al. 2010, 342; Hogg and Vaughan 2005, 125). As noted earlier, Bourdieu (2007) also pointed to the social value of taste, and Honneth (2006) situates feelings of competence in the social setting as well, so the distinction between social and personal identities should not be understood as independent from each other. So far the theory does not differ much from Bourdieu’s basic theory, but what is interesting is that Tajfel details the social mechanics of intergroup relations, while Bourdieu focuses on the construction of society. The social value given to a person by affiliating with the group through social identity is essential in explaining why people are in groups, according to Tajfel, leading to the following consequences: (i) a person will remain in a group if it contributes positively to his or her social identity; (ii) if a person can improve his or her social identity by leaving one group and entering another then he or she will do so, unless he or she is prevented or leaving goes against some fundamental value; and (iii) if it is impossible to leave a group that does not contribute positively to the social identity, then the attributes of the group will either be reinterpreted to make it acceptable or justified, or the group will be accepted for what it is and its members will work for social change; (iv) no group exists alone. Its boundaries and values are defined and interpreted against or with other groups (Tajfel 2010f, 121). Tajfel furthermore distinguishes between two extremes of social behaviour with the two poles: interpersonal and intergroup. If individuals find themselves in a group with low social standing, which they have the freedom to leave, they are likely to act as individuals and leave their group to progress in society through what Tajfel and Turner termed social mobility. If individuals, however, find themselves in a group with

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low social standing from which they do not have the freedom to leave, then they are likely to act as a group and progress in society through what Tajfel and Turner termed social change (Tajfel 2010a; Haslam et al. 2010). Once a societal group is realised as a minority through social comparison, Tajfel points to two psychological correlates that will help a minority stay acquiescent: “the perception of the system of inequalities as being stable or legitimate or both simultaneously” (Tajfel 2010a, 151). Even if governance is seen as illegitimate, this will often only lead to action if it is seen as unstable. The situation in the Egypt of 2010 provides an example of social identity theory so far; the situation was more complex than just a minority against a majority. In terms of power, the majority was primarily fortunate Muslims with access to means of power, i.e. the military, the regime, and the financial sector (the financial sector was also to some extent accessible to Christians). There were at the same time two minorities divided into different groups (relevant to this book): less fortunate Muslims and Christians, both of whom saw the regime as relatively stable, but illegitimate – leading to struggles for social change (i.e. group-based attempts to gain higher status). In the dichotomisation of the regime and the Islamic movements, Islam was used to legitimate both sides, leading to an “official Islam” (the regime) and the “Islamic movements” or “Islamists” (for example the Muslim Brotherhood) – the Azhar being an important site for this ideological struggle, with the leadership backing the regime officially and several professors and some students backing the Islamic movements. While there was a similar dichotomisation between Christians and Muslims, strengthened by the Christians often not seeing Muslim rule as legitimate (i.e. installed by God), the Coptic Church participated in the dichotomisation between Muslims as they were able to negotiate a somewhat better position by accepting the regime as more legitimate than the alternative Islamic movements. Consequently, both the Muslim and the Christian minorities used what Tajfel called a creative approach to gain legitimacy as minorities (Haslam et al. 2010). The Muslim minority presented their Islam as just and legitimate, and the Islam of the majority Muslims was seen as unjust and illegitimate. The Christians, on the other hand, not being part of the identity of the majority religion, distanced themselves from society at large by isolating themselves in their religious community (Tajfel and Turner 2010). Within their community, they

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were free to project an image of their religion as the true one, reflecting positively on their social identity and thus their self-image even though they were a minority (Tajfel 2010a). By 2011 the government was seen as unstable and illegitimate, leading to the revolution, which will be described in Chapter 5. The question pertinent to this book is therefore whether this insight into the social mechanics of intergroup relations has an impact on religious dialogue in Egypt, and this will be answered in Chapter 4, where the different dialogue initiatives are described and analysed. Although the positive attraction of belonging to a group without necessarily involving social comparison was recognised by Tajfel (Tajfel 2010b, 80; Tajfel 1978, 429), this was seemingly not integrated into his analysis. This is the same criticism as was directed towards Bourdieu earlier. Bourdieu focused on social values and the negotiation of these to explain social groups and how they function in society. Turner did, however, incorporate social cohesion into social identity theory by placing social identity before social cohesion and not vice versa, also making social identity theory compatible with the thoughts of Honneth (Turner 2010a, 267): We may not form a group with individuals we like so much as like people because they belong to our group . . . Under conditions where group membership is salient, we perceive or stereotype ourselves and others in terms of the common or criterial attributes of the categories to which we and they belong . . . This would be intragroup rather than interpersonal attraction since it would not arise from idiosyncratic similarities between individual persons. (Turner 2010b, 216) From this we can conclude that it might be easier to shift salience from one identity marker to another in a dialogue initiative to allow for intragroup attraction, than it is to confront two warring groups on the identity that creates strife. But it should be noted, from the Egyptian experience, that salience is likely to shift back when entering real life, and that consequently it is important to address the problems between the groups. The problems should not, in other words, be ignored. This theme will be elaborated in Chapter 3 when discussing the discourse of national unity in Egypt.

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Turner highlights several characteristics of intragroup (community) relations: (i) the perceived similarity of members; (ii) mutual attraction between members or social cohesion; (iii) mutual esteem; (iv) emotional empathy or contagion; (v) altruism and cooperation, and (vi) attitudinal and behavioural uniformity. There is also evidence that, as group membership is made salient, perceived intragroup similarity and intragroup liking tend to be enhanced... self and others are evaluated favourably in terms of common group membership even when own and others’ individual performances were detrimental to the group outcomes... others’ goals and needs can become motives for one’s own behaviour... and conformity to group norms increases without direct social influence from others. (Turner 2010b, 218) It should be obvious how Turner’s addition is what Honneth is to Bourdieu: cohesion or recognition is added as a corrective to the focus on the contestation of social space and value. Integrating the social cohesion model into social identity theory, Turner then saw people grouping together not just to gain social standing, but also because they are social beings, who need to belong to a group to feel at peace with themselves and to feel that they have a place in the world (Turner 2010a, 260–7; White 2001, 139). Marilynn B. Brewer succinctly sums up the integration of cohesion into social identity: “social identification is the product of the search for inclusion and differentiation, rather than a consequence of the search for self-esteem” (Brewer 2001, 22).5 A summary of Egyptian socio-political history in the twentieth century exemplifies how important cohesion and emotions such as trust and hope are to the evolution of political and social circumstances (Turner 2010a, 265). In the first quarter of the twentieth century Egyptians were united against the British colonial power. Mosques and churches became platforms of political agitation against the invaders. The hope for a free Egypt was invested in a group of people who later formed the Wafd party and led Egyptian politics for years. In the 1930s the people felt that the Wafd had betrayed their hopes for a free Egypt by compromising in the negotiations with the colonial administrators, and it became obvious that the Wafd was representing the landed

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bourgeoisie at the expense of the poorer classes. At this point religious affiliation fulfilled many people’s need to find hope for the future, as the mixture of piety and politics of the Muslim Brotherhood called for reform of the country, which they believed would lead to the country rising from the ashes. Also, as religious groups entered the Egyptian political scene and divided Egyptian society by religious identities in the violent and turbulent 1930s and 1940s, the Coptic Orthodox Church became a safe haven for Christians. The religious political movements lost impetus with the revolution (1950s and 1960s), as hope was invested in the long-awaited revolution, which incorporated the religious institutions into its structure (especially the Azhar). The religious identifications did, however, return in the 1960s, when people started losing hope in the revolution. Sadat (1970s) explicitly played the religious card as a major political pillar of legitimacy, which eventually backfired, with numerous demonstrations and violent clashes as the religious movements commanded people’s backing in pushing for social justice, directly against the politics of Sadat. In this process, the Coptic Orthodox Church was thoroughly alienated from the regime and parts of the broader society, and many Christians felt that they needed to turn to the church as a place of safety. Many of the same patterns continued during the rule of Mubarak, with the major difference that the Church, which by this time was a consolidated unit of people, was co-opted by the regime, and the Islamic movements alienated to some extent. In 2011 the hope that the regime would secure the lives of the average Egyptian was gone, together with the feeling of the regime being stable, and people poured into the streets, joining the Arab Spring. The postrevolution period has been marked by distrust in an inclusive political structure combined with a high level of distrust in opposing sociopolitical entities. Political infighting based on clientelist structures is shaping attempts at producing a governing entity that is legitimate for the majority of the population.

Summary As outlined here, social identity theory examines the mechanics of social relations and thus brings detail to the sociological and political theory described in the first part of this chapter, especially considering Brewer’s (2001) comment that people do not necessarily identify (in the sense of social identity) with all the groups they partake in, i.e. some groups are

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more influential and intimate to the participants of the group than others – the more influential are called “communities” in this book. Furthermore, not all relations to outgroups are necessarily hostile or evaluative, unless people are placed in a situation where negative emotions or the struggle for social value are present. Social identity theory provides theories that give us details about the social psychology behind dialogue initiatives. While this section was focused on the founders of the theory, Tajfel and Turner, Chapter 4 analyses different dialogue initiatives as social phenomena drawing on a variety of different thinkers from social psychology. In so far as religion is a social phenomenon helping people to feel that they belong to a social group, it functions according to the same dynamics as other groups in society. These dynamics are not necessarily the same throughout history, but theories from social psychology have showed themselves as very adequate in explaining the access of the interviewees to religious dialogue. This section then explained the “how” of dialogue (dialogue as the societal negotiation of groups), but not the “about what” of dialogue, which is the focus of the following section. Dialogue in Egypt is part of a socio-political game, where the political distribution of power is determined by semi-official relations. There is then a material side to some types of dialogue in Egypt, which will be further elaborated in Chapters 2 and 4. The following section will, however, theoretically sustain an understanding of the concept of “attitude” as the combination of cognition and emotion, as attitudes very often lie at the heart of what dialogue is about. Attitudes are not just understood as the aesthetic appreciation (or disapproval) of a religion different from one’s own, but most often as determining how other societal groups are perceived and treated. This is now the theoretical focus, but it will gain descriptive attention in Chapter 3, where discrimination in Egyptian society is addressed.

Attitudes: Emotional Patterns and Cognitive Structures The first third of this chapter outlined the relevance of groups to the construction of society, while the second section gave details about the mechanics of intergroup relations. This section looks into the emotional patterns and cognitive structures produced by group membership and

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relations to other groups. Emotions and cognition are then not understood at the individual level as a person addressing their surrounding reality, but as a social endeavour allowing group members to function in the world together by establishing attitudes toward one’s own group and other groups. Already To¨nnies (2002, 48) points to how understanding arises in communities as part of the formative process of the group based on the proximity of people: We may now establish the great main laws of Gemeinschaft: (1) relatives and married couples love each other or easily adjust themselves to each other. They speak together and think along similar lines. Likewise do neighbours and friends. (2) There is understanding between people who love each other. (3) Those who love and understand each other remain and dwell together and organize their common life. Language is central in this formation of understanding between people. The way of looking at the construction of knowledge is straightforward, and can be phrased in the terminology of Wittgenstein: communication furthers the building of a similar life form; intimacy, trust and the interpretation of the world are inextricably intertwined. To¨nnies (2002, 48) explains further: “language . . . [sprang] from intimacy, fondness, and affection. Especially from the deep understanding between mother and child, language should develop most easily and vigorously.” Communities are Communities of Interpretation, from where its participants learn to understand the world together, to be able to relate and act together. The reason for living in communities is not only to be able to protect oneself against other communities or dangers in general, thus creating fear of these other communities, or to gain an edge over other people in social competition, but also (and primarily) to positively function together as a community in cohesion (Anderson 2006, 141). This affects how knowledge is built in the communities; things positively related to the community and its identity are positively interpreted and things negatively related to the community and its identity are negatively interpreted. Things neutral to the community and other groups in society can be interpreted in accordance with the society at large. In this sense emotions are fundamental to knowledge:

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love and trust build positive knowledge; fear and hate promote negative knowledge of other people or communities.6 Pertinent to this book, To¨nnies’s rural villages are then exchanged with Wittgenstein’s ancient (and less tangible) “cities”: Our language may be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses . . . to imagine a language means to imagine a life-form. (Wittgenstein 2001, 7) These “cities” are the cognitive framework of the communities we partake in. Understanding of the world is formed primarily in these settings where the identity of a community is founded. These become communities of interpretation from where the world is understood in the attempt at navigating reality. The focus is shifted from To¨nnies’ intimate relations to Wittgenstein’s linguistic communities, and we can conclude that the formation of language, knowledge of the world, and cohesiveness with social groups is inextricable. When To¨nnies speaks of understanding, it is unclear whether he includes “knowledge” in his definition of the word. As he equates understanding with concord between people (To¨nnies 2002, 47 –50) and as he was living at a time when knowledge, especially scientific knowledge, was distinguished sharply from the subjective by many, it is unlikely that he would equate understanding with knowledge, as is done in this book. With a number of contemporary thinkers such as Calvin Schrag (Schrag 1992) and Nicholas Rescher (Rescher 1995) removing the separation of knowledge and the subjective, it is, however, feasible to use To¨nnies in this sense. As Wittgenstein points out, knowledge and truth are the human attempt to get our bearings in the world, in order to be able to function in it (Wittgenstein 2001, 42). Knowledge is therefore not necessarily knowledge of how the world actually is, but one possible way of gaining access to the world. Interpreting as a group makes it possible to function in the world together. Fundamental to this book is pinpointing how the relationality of knowledge between people and social groups influences the concord between these people and vice versa, and, in the end, how this builds dialogue. The concept of

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knowledge is approached from a sociological perspective and can as such explain aspects of society at large such as everyday types of knowledge, mythology, or science (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 110). Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality has been influential in understanding the concept of knowledge. However, it would be beyond the limitations of this book to explain this at any length. Most pertinent to this discussion, Berger and Luckmann’s focus on sociology of knowledge delimits something similar to the communities of interpretation with their concept of “significant others”: “Subjective reality is thus always dependent upon specific plausibility structures, that is, the specific social base and social processes required for its maintenance” (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 154– 5). A major benefit of the approach of Berger and Luckmann is that they refrain from any judgment of the knowledge they are describing, which makes them directly relevant in descriptions of the perspective of the bearers of a given knowledge – any “plausibility structure” can only be analysed by its own logic if the goal is to understand how the world comes together for the individual or society analysed. If the analysis is conducted based on any other logic, it will appear strange (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 179). This can also be used as a criticism of Bourdieu’s somewhat limited access to the religious perspective, which was seen as dying and therefore becoming superfluous as a plausibility structure (using the phrasing of Berger and Luckmann) as was pointed out through Rey’s criticism of Bourdieu (Rey 2007). This underlines the fact that dialogue between groups and cultures needs to understand the lives of the people approached, if understanding of their plausibility structures or knowledge is the aim of the dialogue. It is therefore emphasised that this knowledge – our understanding of another group of people and their beliefs – is never neutral, but built by the relations between groups. It was just pointed out that communities can be seen as basic hermeneutical units from which other communities are understood, depending on their relationship with each other. Nations and cultures do, however, develop languages and knowledge on a broader level as well – and this knowledge is fundamental to the framework within which communities develop their perspectives. This broader level can be explained by Foucault’s episteme (Foucault 1994), which delineates what can and cannot be thought within a cultural setting (see earlier in this chapter for an elaboration of the concept of episteme). While

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Egyptian Muslims and Christians are Egyptians, think within the same cultural framework, and share much of the same morality that differs from large parts of the West, many Egyptian Muslims and Christians are also alienated from each other by their history. Applying To¨nnies’s vocabulary, while Egyptian Muslims and Christians belong to the same society, to an even greater extent they still belong to different communities. Communities of interpretation therefore produce attitudes based on both emotional patterns and cognitive structures by which the members of the communities can navigate society. The relation of emotional patterns and cognitive structures to social identity theory requires some explanation.

Cognition Addressing social cognition in his 1981 article “Social Stereotypes and Social Groups” Tajfel focuses on stereotypes, which have the function of simplifying the world to be able to make sense of it and make effective action possible (Tajfel 2010g, 193). Social stereotypes can, however, be rooted in groups, and, as such, are not just about ordering the world, but also about ordering it from a certain perspective. Tajfel connects these perspectives to social comparison: stereotypes sustain social identity as positive by depicting possible social competitors negatively. Value judgements (prejudices) are thus added to the simplified descriptions of stereotypes, and can then be used to justify actions against people from an outgroup (Tajfel 2010g, 202). Underlying this approach to social cognition is Wittgenstein’s concept of language games allowing for language to be built locally (Tajfel 2010g, 194). The results of Tajfel’s approach to social cognition are summed up succinctly by Turner: This explanation modifies the normal usage of stereotyping . . . we are suggesting that stereotyping is as applicable to ingroups (and the self) as outgroups... that stereotypic characteristics include evaluative status or prestige, emotional experiences, needs and goals and attitudinal and behavioural norms. (Turner 2010b, 218) Understanding stereotypes as social cognition incorporates the social psychological concept of “schema”; the knowledge we have about other people (and groups) is not only based on our own experiences with these

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people, but also – if not more – on different “schema” which are common in a society for people to be able to function together and understand each other. The schemas are categorised into types, which can only be briefly enumerated here: person schemas (personal knowledge about specific people), role schemas (societal roles, as professors, students, and cleaners), scripts (how to act in society in specific situations, such as queuing up, attending a lecture, eating in public, or a football match), content-free schemas (how to act in society to optimise your standing), and self-schemas (identity or self-categorisation) (Hogg and Vaughan 2005, 50– 1). Texts such as Turner (2010b) and Turner and Oakes (2010) argue more broadly about general cognition in line with Berger and Luckmann (1967), keeping in mind that: “to say that individual perception of the world is socially mediated is not to say that the world is socially constructed” (Turner 2010c, 277). Cognition is further described thus: it is the shared social identity of group members that makes it possible for them to produce socially validated knowledge, shared beliefs about ways of perceiving, thinking, and doing that we assume to be appropriate in terms of the demands of objective reality. (Turner et al. 2010, 295– 6)

Emotion More recent research elaborates on the role of emotion in social identity. Nyla R. Branscombe, Bertjan Doosje, and Craig McGarty (2003, 50) explain the basic link between self-categorisation theory (i.e. Turner’s contribution to social identity theory) and emotion: Self-categorization theory helps explain the experience of groupbased emotion by rejecting the assumption that the self can be equated with the individual. The scope of the self can measurably extend beyond the individual psychological entity to include group memberships. In short, emotional responses to social events depend on how the self is categorized. “Self” is here understood as the identity of the self. This focus on emotion in social identity leads to Intergroup Emotion Theory (Devos et al. 2003; Mackie, Devos, and Smith 2000). Individuals not only feel

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guilty on behalf of the group, but also build patterns of emotions according to how these are constructed in the group and between groups. Branscombe, Doosje, and McGarty point out that white Americans feel guilt towards African Americans, and that there is little guilt felt among white Americans towards Mexican Americans for past and present transgressions simply because there is focus on the transgressions against the former, but not the latter, providing a good example of how emotions towards a group of people are constructed according to salience, circumstances, and social relations. Diane M. Mackie and Eliot R. Smith define it more generally as follows: “negative [or positive] affective responses become associated with groups through a conditioning mechanism ultimately leading to the responses becoming automatically activated as part of the mental representation of the group” (Mackie and Smith 2003, 2), intimately linking cognitions, emotions, and action tendencies (Mackie, Devos, and Smith 2000) into what here is termed “attitudes”. Mackie and Smith (2003) see the recent focus on emotions in social psychology as an opportunity to move beyond a classification of emotions as merely “positive” or “negative” and to research a variety of emotional responses, such as happiness, trust, hope, aggression, disgust, or hate, and consequently open up a deeper understanding of intergroup relations.

The relationship between emotion and cognition Justin Storbeck and Gerald L. Clore (2007) provide an explanation of the relationship between emotion and cognition. They argue that even though emotion and cognition occur in different areas of the brain, they are part of the same process in evaluating the world. They differentiate between processes, noting that some processes provide the basis for motor functions. These include for example evaluating the actual steepness of a mountain, where it could prove fatal if our foot – eye coordination was to be influenced by the emotion of over-confidence. But emotions provide the background for the evaluation of actions such as whether or not to climb a mountain while tired (negative emotion) or to engage with a group of people that seem threatening (also a negative emotion). In the latter cases emotion is an integrated part of any evaluation leading to actions or attitudes towards others; positive emotions generally prompt people to go ahead with their endeavour, while negative emotions make people more likely to stop what they are

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doing. For the purposes of this book the relationship between emotion and cognition contributes to the understanding of how extensive cognitive systems are elaborated. If an outgroup is perceived as threatening, a community is likely to produce negative knowledge about it and negative attitudes towards it.

Summary The combination of emotion and cognition is attitude. The function of attitudes is to provide a pattern for immediate action without the need for pause to think the situation over, which of course is essential in everyday situations, where we need our actions to be automated as we cannot stop to think every time we have to act. But attitudes are not necessarily accurate because: (i) they will not always fit the situation they are applied to, as they might be preconceived, judging an individual according to the group of people this individual comes from; (ii) some attitudes are stronger in memory or experience than others (more salient), and might as a result overshadow weaker attitudes towards a complex object, which evokes several attitudes; (iii) the entity judged by the attitude might have changed without the attitude changing with it; or because (iv) attitudes are more likely to result in action if they are somehow associated with the social group people partake in (Hogg and Vaughan 2005, 166– 71). Attitudes arise through direct experience of socially significant objects, groups, events or symbols, but also through interaction with other people – especially people from within the same group – who then provide models by which attitudes can be shaped (Hogg and Vaughan 2005, 172–5). Attitudes therefore primarily arise in what is termed in this book communities of interpretation. Communities of interpretation (and social movements) are in some countries mainly frameworks for emotional belonging (Brewer 2001) and cognitive order (Berger and Luckmann 1967; Tajfel 2010c), while other societies base their power structures more directly on these social networks. Northern European societies have a tendency to the former, while southern European and many developing societies have a tendency to also base their power structures more directly on social networks – analytically this is assigned terms such as clientelism (Kettering 1988), paternalism (Abercrombie and Hill 1976) and corporatism (Ayubi 2006), as will be explained in the following chapter. But one way or another, communities of interpretation

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do have political relevance in all countries as they permeate societies and have a direct impact on political actions, as people vote depending on their social identities. It could also be claimed that the welfare states of Northern Europe are indeed national communities of interpretation, which work to the extent people trust and identify with them. The interest of the concept of community for the analysis of Egyptian society is that groups are very visible in political life, relying on clientelism (Ayubi 2006); local networks of power, often centred on Islamic groups and the Coptic Orthodox Church, are part of the political system in Egypt. As described in Chapter 2, these communities became the space where large parts of the Egyptian population could secure their lives financially, find their authorities, practise their faith, socialise, discuss and elaborate their worldviews, relate to people from other groups (positively and negatively) – all factors essential to the practice of dialogue in Egypt, as will be shown in Chapter 4.

Conclusion In my first book about dialogue (Hansen 2009), I pointed out that our understanding of the actions of another person is based on our understanding of the intentions of this person and not the actions themselves: To understand acts as the acts of a person, these actions need to be interpreted. The attitude towards the person who performed these actions is crucial to the interpretation of his or her actions. All actions can thus be interpreted positively or negatively; what matters is how we view the intentions behind the action . . . You would, for example, think that offering a gift to another is a positive thing, but it can also be perceived negatively if it is seen as an attempt to grease the other’s palm. If a person is not in another’s good graces, not even extraordinarily good behaviour can change this perception on its own. This is because we do not interpret based on the actions of a person, but on the intentions we believe lie behind these actions. (my translation and italics; Hansen 2009, 90–1) Our understanding of what other people do to us is based on our attitude towards them; our understanding is not based on the being of the other

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person, but on our relation to them – this chapter underlines the social character of this relation.7 The theory of this book gives depth to the understanding of what attitudes are and how they come to be as part of the general social dynamics. The fabric of society determines if and how religion is important as a delimiter in social belonging. Society is constructed by groups, and people belong to a group when they gain recognition within it, which is the reason for people to enter groups. But belonging to a group also positions the individual and his or her group in relation to other groups in the pattern that is society. The status of the group is determined by the position of the group in the pattern of its society, which is determined by any number of things that have social value; Bourdieu mentions three categories of overarching values: economic, cultural, and social capital. In negotiating these three types of capital, society’s values arise and position groups in relation to each other, enabling people to function in the world in relation to other people. Social psychology has been used to give us details about how these relations between groups work. In Chapter 4, dialogue will be analysed as partaking in the social mechanics influencing the relations between groups. Sociology is therefore used to explain how dialogue is determined by the social fabric of a country, while social psychology is used to analyse the “how” of dialogue; how dialogue negotiates social positioning and belonging. But there are two further variables, describing the “what” of dialogue: social positioning provokes emotional patterns and cognitive structures, which enables people to react towards people from other groups. For dialogue to have an effect, it consequently needs to address emotional patterns, cognitive structures, or both – either by addressing these directly or influencing the construct of society or group relations. Emotional patterns and cognitive structures help us navigate through the world together in our communities; we interpret the world as a communal endeavour, pooling our resources to build an understanding of the world that empowers us to live in it. But this understanding is not just of the world, but also of other communities; emotion and cognition together define the attitudes towards other people and their groups. Attitudes are important beyond how we think of another person as they determine our actions towards these people – and how we interpret their actions towards us.

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OTHER GROUP

TIO GROUP RELA

GROUP A Person A

NS

GROUP B

Attitude Cognitive

Personal structures relation Emotional

Person B

patterns

SOCIETY

OTHER GROUP OTHER GROUP

Figure 1.1 This illustration shows how the attitude towards another person is the product of the dynamics that construct society. When we approach another person, this person is defined by our understanding of the belonging of the person. The group of the person is defined by the position of the group in relation to other groups. Whatever we think or feel about this other person is filtered through our attitude, built up by the relation of our group to the group of the other person. These groups are defined differently depending on their own self-understanding, but also depending on what becomes salient as an identity “border guard” between the social groups; the identity guard is whatever is salient, including for example religion, politics, sports, sexuality, food preferences, etc. All communication between people or groups of people is filtered through attitudes. As Chapter 4 will show, dialogue influences these border guards by sustaining, bridging, or contesting them. If the aim is to contest the border guard, this will often be done by disqualifying the identity guard as such by superimposing another identity marker, by adopting a pluralistic approach to the identity marker, or both. Source: courtesy of the author.

Source: courtesy of the author.

Discourse Discourse

Medium 2 Medium 1 Micro

Life form Individual

Episteme Fields of other “classes” Fields of own “class” Habitus

Meta field

Relationality and capital as fundamental to society

Power and knowledge

Language building knowledge

Love

Society Community(ies)

Society

Outgroups Ingroups Individual

Relationality, cohesion, and cognitive structures

Society vs communities

Recognition as fundamental to society Rights and solidarity

Social Identity

To¨nnies

Honneth

THE

Macro

Bourdieu

Foucault

Wittgenstein

Table 1.1 This is a table of essential concepts and thinkers: the table gathers essential concepts and explains the connections between the thinkers used in the book.

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Sketching the relations between the concepts introduced in the theoretical chapter will not only promote clarity, but also make sense of the connections made. The concepts differ partly because they have different functions in each theoretical framework, but also because they describe various levels on a societal scale – these levels define Table 1.1. At the micro end, you find the individual; society is at the macro end. In between the two are different expressions or functions of groups in society. The basic distinction between medium 1 and 2 is between the more intimate communities and the more impersonal relations on the society side (using To¨nnies vocabulary). When describing groups, this book uses the concepts of communities, ingroups, and outgroups. The concept of community adds differentiation to the concept of ingroup, as some ingroups are more intimate, command a greater part of the identity of a person, and are more influential towards development of cognitive structures and emotional patterns. The community type of relations is found within communities and ingroups, while the society type of relations is found between outgroups. Life form is used to describe cognitive structures and emotional patterns grown in the community resulting in a particular access to general social knowledge; discourses belong to the general knowledge base of the wider society (episteme) without any concrete or identifiable root in a single group, but also commanding cognitive structures and emotional patterns. Bourdieu’s concept of capital has been very influential in understanding how social value is construed and influences social relations, in the end providing an understanding of society as a whole. Honneth adds the idea that people partake in society not just to be competitive, but also (and primarily) because they are social beings needing to feel recognised. Honneth differentiates between different types of recognition according to the level of society to which they correspond; the individual needs interpersonal love to feel recognised, just as he or she needs rights and solidarity to feel like a recognised member of society. Finally the concept of communities of interpretation is used to denote communities from which life forms arise. In this sense the different concepts have been used to encompass the influence of both society and community (using To¨nnies’s vocabulary) on the development of relations between groups.

CHAPTER 2 POLITICS, RELIGION, AND SOCIETY IN MUBARAK'S EGYPT

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an understanding of Egyptian society up until the revolution in 2011 that will provide the reader with knowledge of how religious dialogue is constructed as part of this society. The social function and the societal position religious groups have are fundamental to the type of dialogue the groups will pursue. This necessitates an historical survey of the three major religio-political influences: the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Azhar institution, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The second half of the chapter will describe the involvement of these institutions and religion in general in Egyptian society and politics in 2010. Chapter 5 will discuss what happened after 2011.

Introduction to the Major Religio-Political Influences in Egypt The Azhar, the Coptic Orthodox Church, and the Muslim Brotherhood all have an institutional structure, but as will be obvious they are also – to varying degrees – part of broader religious movements. As a major political player, the Muslim Brotherhood has had a great impact on the general field and is thus of interest, even though it had relatively little direct impact on religious dialogue up until 2010. This impact has, however, not deteriorated with the 2011 revolution that left the Muslim Brotherhood politically strengthened, as will be explained in Chapter 5.

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The Azhar The Azhar institution is one of the leading Muslim voices for Sunni Muslims worldwide, the interest here is, however, the influence of the institution in Egypt, how it is part of the political dynamics of Egypt, and why some people still have faith in the possibilities of the institution in spite of talking about it with apathy because of its ties to the regime. Around the turn of the nineteenth century it was clear to most Egyptians that the presence of the British colonial power in Egypt was primarily to the benefit of the British. The King was outmanoeuvred by the foreign power and to a large extent became a political puppet. His primary path of influence was using his authority over the unruly people, whose revolts were a nuisance to the British power, and over the institutions ranging from labour unions and political parties to the Azhar. The demonstrations of labour unions were physical and could be dealt with as such, as happened in 1919 when British soldiers clamped down on the demonstrators in a bloody show of force. But the influence of the Azhar was more subtle; the British educational system was, for example, used as inspiration for reform that the British in principle supported (Gesink 2010, 8), but the Azhar argued for the education of people to strengthen the population and ultimately reach independence from foreign influence. This period is essential in understanding why Egyptians today, from the most traditionalist to the most progressive, both in religious and political matters, look at the Azhar if not as an active political force, then as a slumbering giant important politically and to dialogue. It is believed that the Azhar could influence matters positively for the people if awoken, which is why the influence of the Azhar in this period will be briefly described, focusing on Muhammad ‘Abduh, who was repeatedly referred to in my interviews. ‘Abduh was a key Azharite figure at the turn of 20th century Egypt, influencing society at large, and is considered one of the fathers of modern Egypt in the religious setting. Throughout the nineteenth century, Egypt had been modernising the country, starting with Pasha Muhammad Ali. The progress had been enormous, from digging the Suez Canal to introducing long-fibred cotton, making Egypt one of the leading cotton producers in the world (Ayubi 2006, 102). The problem was, however, that the cotton was benefiting the English spinning mills more than it benefited Egyptians,

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as Egypt was tied to primary production, leaving them dependent on the secondary and tertiary production of England. This rendered Egypt indebted to and controlled by the British and fuelled the debate on how to gear the country towards independence, a debate that had been ongoing since Pasha Muhammad Ali’s time. Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (a reformer and major inspiration to ’Abduh) and ‘Abduh focused on religion as the route to awaken the Muslim nations and strengthen them against foreign domination (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 9). They both saw Egypt as stagnating due to what they saw as endless imitation of prior scholars (taqlı¯d) instead of applying the human faculties (ijtiha¯d) to uncover what the holy texts had to tell modern man, and they believed that Egyptian society and Islam would once again flourish and be able to overpower the influence of the colonialists by adopting some of the principles of (Western) Enlightenment, which they believed were already inherent to Islam.1 By pushing to reform the Azhar they sought to plant the seeds of reform in the country, urging their Azharite followers to engage in political and scientific life, for example as journalists, to reach the ordinary person (Gesink 2010, 77). The Azhar was in their vision the birthplace of the truly enlightened and politically engaged Muslim, who would have no problems throwing off the shackles of the West and regaining power. The most tangible use of the Azhar as a place of renewal of the Egyptian spirit leading to empowerment and independence was, however, during the 1919 revolts, where the Azhar became the centre of protests against foreign domination as the British could not attack the insurgents in a holy place (Brown 2012). For the first time in the history of the Azhar a Coptic priest, Qommus Sergius, preached at its pulpit (V. Ibrahim 2011, 58). This marked the beginning of Christian– Muslim unity as a political nationalistic tool, which would be used repeatedly thereafter. Coptic Christians, who had not benefited much from Christian colonial rule and had seen many of their church members convert to Western Christian denominations, stood side by side with Muslims and demanded the departure of the foreign colonial power (R. M. Scott 2010, 138). In the years surrounding World War I, Copts and Muslims demonstrated with banners intertwining cross and crescent, and priests and Shaykhs agitated together in churches and mosques against the foreigners (Nispen tot Sevenaer 2004, 25). The rhetoric of national unity

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was grounded in the Pharaonic past of the country, and the differences between Muslims and Christians were less important than the unity of the population against the colonialists. This struggle led to the proclamation of Egypt’s independence in 1922, though the British maintained their mandate over the country. In the negotiations of the new Egyptian constitution, Islam was made the religion of the state by all the dignitaries involved in the negotiations, including three Copts, and the Muslims were anxious to ensure freedom of worship and equality for the minorities. Reserved seats in parliament for Copts was a more controversial issue, as most Copts and Muslims were convinced at the time that religion would play no role in determining elections, and that only the skills of the person should be important (Nispen tot Sevenaer 2004, 26; Hassan 2003; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 144). This was the case in the elections of 1924, when the Copts won more seats than the reserved percentage would have guaranteed them, but this was to change with time. The revolution in 1919 (Kra¨mer 1998, 37) and the decade of the 1920s still stand out in the minds of many Egyptians as a period of superb Muslim –Christian relations (Baker 1990, 164; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 144), comprising the idea of tolerance and acceptance as part of the very nature of Egyptians (Nispen tot Sevenaer 2004). However, it can be contested whether this feeling of unity between Muslims and Christians was in fact present to the degree argued by some Egyptian and foreign scholars now (V. Ibrahim 2011, 60). Hassan (2003, 33) notes that at the turn of the last century the struggle of the Copts had primarily been a struggle for equality; they had gained prestigious positions in society, guaranteeing them a high level of tolerance in spite of their status as a minority during the previous century under Pasha Mohammad Ali and his successors. Gaining these positions, they became an accepted part of society on an equal footing with Muslims, with a clear identity as Egyptians. Egypt did, however, see religious tension just a few years before the revolution (Starrett 1998, 65; McCallum 2008, 67; R. M. Scott 2010, 40). But this does not change the view of this period as a period of unity between Muslims and Christians, which is now being used as an example of the nature of Egyptians as peace-loving (Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011) and feeds a discourse of national unity, which will be described in Chapter 3.

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Political cogs of the revolution The Azhar was thus active in discussing the welfare of both the people and the nation, which in ‘Abduh’s time was highly agitated against the foreign presence in the country. This was, however, to change in the 1920s when the secular Wafd party dominated the political scene, sidelining the Azhar with slogans such as: “Religion is for God, Egypt is for all” (Skovgaard-Petersen 2007, 18). During the interwar period, the state educational system had outgrown the religious educational system of the Azhar, leading to fewer students speaking on behalf of their alma mater when working in the public system after graduating (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 13). The Islamic societies had gained a stronger voice in society than the Azhar that to a large extent was relegated to a reactionary approach, following the discourse established by the Islamic societies (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 79), including the Muslim Brotherhood. In this period the Azhar lost power and influence, leaving it weakened when the revolution started in the 1950s. In the 1950s, the hope of the Egyptian people was invested in Nasser and the revolution of the Free Officers. He had been part of the demonstrations of the frustrated lower middle class against the ruler and the foreign powers in the 1930s (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 3) and was part of the Free Officers, a group that seized power through a coup d’e´tat in 1952, uniting the strength of the Egyptian people against the British colonialists with the aim of empowering the country through modernisation and social revolution. After internal power struggles among the Free Officers, Nasser took power in June 1954. The revolution was effective in channelling the initial enthusiasm and backing it received when the country was relieved of the burden of colonialism. The institutions backing the revolution were stripped of independent political influence and each received their position of influence within the revolution (Kassem 2004, 13). There had been ongoing discussions on reforming the Azhar since the time of ‘Abduh, but only minor changes had been made. Under the revolution, reforms were implemented swiftly (Sika 2012, 64). Up until the revolution, the Azhar was funded by different religious endowments (awqa¯f), which over time had been given to sustain professors, students, and for the care of the buildings of mosques, schools, and universities (Skovgaard-Petersen 2007, 63). On top of this, a portion of government funding – considerable compared to the existing endowments – was

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allotted to the Azhar, but the finances of the institution came under the control of the revolution. While the Grand Imam remained the head of the Azhar, the institution came under the administration of the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Ayubi 2006, 211), and the Azhar was divided into five institutions: the Supreme Council, the Islamic Research Academy (aiming to purify Islam from foreign elements and fanaticism and to promote Azhar as an international institution), the Islamic Culture and Missions Department (the executive arm of the Islamic Research Academy, in charge of publication, translation, preaching and missionary efforts), the University itself (now teaching religious studies, but also Business and Administration, Engineering and Crafts, Agriculture, and Medicine), and the Azhar Institutes (primary and secondary religious institutions affiliated with the Azhar) (Zebiri 1993, 26– 31; Skovgaard-Petersen 1997, 185; Zeghal 1999, 374). The Azhar maintained its former influence in society, for example through their broad network of schools all over Egypt (Starrett 1998), which gained influence in the 1970s and 1980s as the poorer parts of society could not afford other universities, but could then base their hope for social mobility on the Azhar (Starrett 1998, 80, 105, and 116). Through these institutions the Azhar was given authority in a range of fields, such as supervising the teaching of Arabic and Islam in public schools,2 controlling preaching in official mosques, and censoring media and publications. The institution was thus given a lot of influence that it did not have before (Zeghal 1999, 375), but at the same time the revolution dictated a reformation of the system of teaching, forcing nonreligious branches of the educational system, such as engineering, on the Azhar. The Azhar was turned into a more conventional Western-style university, and the president of the nation now possessed the power to appoint the leader of the Azhar (the Grand Imam), and also held the balance of power in the Supreme Council (Zebiri 1993, 27), which demonstrated the power of the revolution over the institution. In the beginning, many saw the revolution as the first step towards a resurgence of Arab unity against the West, which was all the legitimation the new regime needed, but as the hopes of a united Arab nation were crushed by the defeat by the Israelis in 1967, the charisma of President Nasser was no longer enough and he turned to the Azhar and religion to explain why they did not prevail as the first Muslim armies did (Zeghal 1999, 381; Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 44). As will be

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described in more detail later in this chapter, Islamic rhetoric in politics was sustained by the Azhar, which was incorporated into the revolution and continuously used to legitimise the regime. This alienated the leadership of the Azhar from the Muslim Brotherhood, which in turn was condemned for creating division ( fitna) in both religion (Islam) and nation (towards the Christians) (Skovgaard-Petersen 2007, 61). During the reign of Sadat, the country of Egypt was split into “haves” and “have nots”, with the regime governing parts of society and suppressing the rest (see the second half of this chapter). In an atmosphere like this an institution such as the Azhar had to choose either to represent one of the parties or to withdraw from political life. The Azhar chose the latter to the extent possible for them, as they were from time to time pulled into political life and called upon to give legal rulings ( fatwa¯s) in support of the politics of the regime, to legitimise them in the eyes of the people (S. Ibrahim 2002, 69). The clearest example of this was when the Azhar rubber-stamped the peace with Israel in the late 1970s. The Azhar has also been involved in more everyday cases such as legitimising Western-style banks in Egypt and setting up groups of Azharite Shaykhs travelling the country to promote moderate Islam over radical Islam (Starrett 1998, 183; SkovgaardPetersen 2007, 93). As a result of this, radical Islam was at times defined as any political opposition, often in the shape of the Muslim Brotherhood (Starrett 1998, 97 and 105). The regime controlled a number of mosques through the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 89), ensuring that Shaykhs educated at the Azhar and paid by the Ministry were placed in central mosques; but many private mosques were controlled by firebrand preachers poised against the regime (Gaffney 1995, 47).

Struggling for independence As time passed, opportunities for a greater degree of independence opened up to the Azhar, especially in the 1990s. Zeghal (1999) argues that this was a process that had already started with Sadat in the 1970s. The Azhar was only useful as a tool to legitimise the regime in so far as they had influence among the people. The more the regime encroached on the Azhar, the more they lost their legitimising power among the people (‘Awadi 2004, 121), who did not feel represented by the regime or anyone associated with the regime. As time passed, the potential

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oppositional power of the Azhar weakened in the minds of the people. They instead moved closer to the alternatives to the power of the regime such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their mixed focus on piety and social justice, thus diminishing the political use of the Azhar for the regime. As the regime had few other places to turn for religious legitimation, they were forced to loosen their grip on the Azhar, which showed its growing independence from the regime through some rulings contradicting its policies (Albrecht 2007, 172). The Muslim Brotherhood, realising that the Azhar was not only a source of what they saw as “pulpit parrots” of regime policies, but also a sleeping giant that could be awoken against repressive rule (Albrecht 2007), made inroads into the Azhar; in the beginning among the students but later also among the professors (Starrett 1998, 175), and the Azhar became an ideological battleground for these political entities. The self-empowerment of the Azhar was not only in opposition to the regime, but also built on the rather extensive privileges they received as part of the governing system. For example, in July 1993 the Azhar asked the General Assembly of the Board of Fatwa and Legislation of the State Council to define the role of the Azhar as the censors of audio and audiovisual productions. The Assembly answered in February 1994 that it was the exclusive right and responsibility of the Azhar to judge the religious content of all audio and audio-visual productions in Egypt to protect public order, morality, and the higher interests of the state, arguing that Islam had been the religion of the state since 1923, the principles of Sharia the main sources of legislation since 1971, and since 1961 the Azhar had been the highest academic authority: for the protection, study, clarification and publication of the Turath, and bringing the Islamic message to all people, and aims to present the truth of Islam and its influence in the progress of propagating and refining civilization and securing nations. . . the Sheikh of Azhar is the Grand Imam and is the final arbiter in all religious matters and those employed in studying the Qur’an and Islam. The conclusion was that the Azhar was to assess the Islamic content of audio and audio-visual productions in Egypt to protect public order, morality, and the supreme interests of the state (Muna_zz_ amah al-

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_ ¯q al-Insa¯n 1994, 24 – 8). The authority of censorship Mi_srı¯yah li-Huqı was, however, not limited to audio-visual material, but also applied to artistic and intellectual productions in general (Ismail 2006a, 63). There are cases of the Azhar banning books and condemning their authors as non-Muslims, resulting in the killing of these individuals, as radical elements of society interpreted the condemnation of the Azhar as a licence to kill them (Ismail 2006a, 73). The struggle for independence with the aim of restoring faith in the Azhar as an institution is at the very centre of the type of dialogue in which the Azhar engages. As described in Chapter 4, official dialogue is a powerful tool in Egyptian society negotiating between religiously defined social groups. It builds on the authority of the institutions involved to promote positive relations between groups of Muslims and Christians through representative meetings, where the leaders of the institution meet on behalf of their followers. But to be able to command authority to a degree where people feel they are being represented, the institution and its leaders need to have legitimacy (Turner 2005). Azhar’s diminishing authority among the people thus reduced the possibilities of official dialogue, as will be described in Chapter 4.

The Muslim Brotherhood The description of the Muslim Brotherhood focuses on how the organisation developed to be based on both religious and political foundations, both of which influenced the position of the organisation in Egyptian society, whereby it became the only real organised opposition to the regime by holding the hopes of the people that the regime was unable to fulfil. A side-effect was the creation of at least two growing schisms between groups of Egyptian society: one schism between the Muslims focusing on social justice and those who were not, and another between Muslims and Christians. The schism between Muslims and Christians was not necessarily intentional, especially not for the new generation Muslim Brothers of the beginning of the twenty-first century, who at times publicly promoted the Coptic cause as part of their political programme. The description of the Muslim Brotherhood has many facets, as it is a dynamic organisation changing according to circumstances. It is, however, necessary to look into some of these different images of the Muslim Brotherhood, as they were all in play in the construction of Egyptian society and in the current discourses about the Muslim Brotherhood.

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The Muslim Brotherhood and the Wafd Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, was, in the 1920s, concerned that non-Islamic, secularist, and libertarian currents emboldened by the Turkish revolt would weaken the influence of religion in Egypt. He took part in discussions of how Islam should affect society, discussions that were common in the Azhar at the time of ‘Abduh (Mitchell 1993, 5), Banna was inspired by a follower of ‘Abduh, Rashid Rida, and his conservative salafiyya movement (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 10). Banna was frustrated as he felt that nobody at the Azhar shared his fears and will to act on them (Mitchell 1993, 9). Banna therefore decided to act on his own and established the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928. Through teachings in mosques, homes, and clubs the organisation grew steadily in the first years in Isma’iliyya, and already in 1930 they had built a first mosque with a school and a club attached. When Banna moved back to Cairo in 1932 the first Cairo branch was established and it quickly became part of the established Islamic circles there (Mitchell 1993, 13). The Muslim Brotherhood grew quickly, as people were losing faith in the secular Wafd party, whose interests were with the settled elite, and because the Muslim Brotherhood used the same rhetoric as the Azhar had done under Afghani and ‘Abduh; the country needed to renew its spirit through Islam to grow strong (SkovgaardPetersen 2007, 45; Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 39). With this, Banna was in accord with a new wave of literature locating the problems of the East in the mindless adoption of not only the science, but also the morality and culture of the West. Biographies of the Prophet Mohammad were bestsellers, and it was believed that the strength of the East would soon prevail as the power of the West was crumbling because of its lack of morality and religion (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995). The depression of the 1930s had a great impact on the Egyptian economy as it was dependent on the English spinning mills (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 1). The Wafd party had its foundations in the new upper middle class, with leadership from the higher echelons of society, and was initially backed by Egyptians from all parts of society in their hope for an independent Egypt (Farah 2009, 31; Terry 1982, 85), although there were no formal ties between the Wafd and the worker movement (Beinin 1981, 19). But as the people felt that the Wafd party betrayed this hope and because the interests of the leadership, being landowners and bourgeoisie, did not correspond with those of the vast

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masses of poor workers and peasants (Beinin 1981, 20; Ayubi 2006, 107), the lower parts of society became disillusioned with the Wafd party and their nationalism based on the Pharaonic past (Terry 1982, 266). The general population felt the parliament was burdened by corruption and only benefited the large landowners and the new upper middle class (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 3; Beinin 1981, 21). As the 1936 treaty between the Wafd and the British High Commission was seen by many as a betrayal of the national dream of real independence (Terry 1982, 235; Zollner 2009, 11), the people searched for alternatives to the Wafd party. Furthermore, as massive parts of the rural population started migrating to the major cities to find work, they also brought their way of thinking, which was estranged from the secularism of the 1920s, instead building on their Arab and Muslim heritage (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 14). One of the big issues of 1930s Egypt was the matter of foreign Christian missionaries (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 65). Though not many Muslims actually converted, stories abounded of forceful conversions that agitated the population at large. As the Muslim Brothers were the only ones reacting to this perceived foreign threat, it launched the organisation as a nationwide grassroots organisation working on issues close to the hearts of the population, which the Azhar often could not address because of their political implications (Skovgaard-Petersen 2007, 49). These were determinant reasons for the tremendous growth in the 1930s of the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups espousing anti-Christian and anti-Jewish ideologies and opposed to the secular Wafd ideology (Hassan 2003, 48; Ayubi 2006, 107). The founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hasan al-Banna, maintained publicly that it was a Muslim duty to treat Christians well, but at the same time he believed the level of political influence held by the Copts in a Muslim country was against the teachings of Islam. The Copts felt a growing negative attitude against them as this trend of Islamism became more and more widespread (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 101). Some public debate in the 1940s pinpointed the Muslim Brotherhood or their followers as the instigators of widespread attacks in different parts of the country (V. Ibrahim 2011, 88; Kra¨mer 1998; 39), though this might have been political rhetoric rather than reality, as it is not possible from the available academic literature to ascertain whether this was the case. With the rise of the Islamic movement, Islam became a public endeavour, as coffee houses, schools, shops, universities, offices, factories,

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clubhouses, barracks, bus shelters, and street corners were made into religious sites through the performance of prayer and preaching (Gaffney 1995, 25); prayer mats made the ground they covered specifically Muslim. This had a profound impact on Christians, who saw the sites of their everyday lives turn into places reserved for the practice of something they could not be part of. Even though Banna did not speak out publicly against Christians, the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamic movement would lead to fear among Christians who to a large extent were unable to take part in these movements. With World War II, the Brotherhood became one of the most important political players in Egypt, based on the diversity of its membership. The members came from all groups of society, and had a well-founded base in some of the politically powerful groups such as civil servants, teachers, and students (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 16). Many college graduates had not found the jobs they had hoped for, and found an outlet for their discontent in the Muslim Brotherhood (Gershoni and Jankowski 1995, 18). By then the organisation was well settled in Cairo with its headquarters, its own press and a series of lectures, and was strong enough to take part in the power struggles of the country, while the Wafd was the most influential of the other contesters. The relationship between the Wafd and the Muslim Brotherhood varied from one of alliance to one of enmity according to the political climate of the time, but they remained two distinct political groups, both vying for power, the Brotherhood at times being prohibited as an organisation (Mitchell 1993). The Free Officers launched their revolution rather unexpectedly, and the Brotherhood – who already had contact with the Free Officers through Anwar Sadat – supported the new rulers in the first years of the revolution. But this Banna was not to experience, as he was shot dead in 1949 (probably by the security police in retaliation for the assassination of the president, for which Banna was blamed), which was one incident among the many violent attacks and riots dominating Egypt prior to the military coup d’e´tat of the Free Officers in 1952 (Mitchell 1993).

The Muslim Brotherhood and the 1950s revolution: Same goal, different ideologies Even though the Brotherhood had actively participated in the revolution (Mitchell 1993, 103; Zollner 2009, 25), their positive relationship with the Free Officers was short-lived. The revolution only recognised one

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legitimate power, and the Brotherhood, who had lost support from the broad masses since the revolution had great mass appeal, was relatively easily dismantled and its members imprisoned, to the extent that the Brotherhood was close to extinction. This was not only a matter of the balance of power, but also the fundamental ideology of the two movements. The Brotherhood repeatedly chastised the Free Officers for not basing governance on Islam; the revolution repeated the slogan used by the Wafd in the 1920s: “Religion is for God, the nation is for all” (Mitchell 1993, 112). At the same time, the regime started a campaign against the Brotherhood, questioning the Islamic validity of the organisation, and promoting the Islamic quality of the revolution. The Azhar was used to publicly denounce the heresies of the Brotherhood (Mitchell 1993, 143). By 1954 the Muslim Brotherhood was already outlawed and some of its members imprisoned (Mitchell 1993, 125). The hope of the people in the revolution slowly faded during the 1950s and more so in the 1960s, when people did not see the promises of the revolution fulfilled and many of the Free Officers were absorbed by the settled elites. As the hope for a better future faded, the Muslim Brotherhood was the only other national organisation the people could place their hopes in, as all other political entities had been absorbed into the revolution. The response of the revolution to the resurfacing of the Muslim Brotherhood was swift and heavy-handed. Leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood were rounded up, tortured, and imprisoned (Zollner 2009, 38). In the prisons some members were radicalised, such as Sayyid Qutb, who was executed in 1966 but remained a major ideological influence on radical, aggressive groups (Zahid 2010, 88; Zollner 2009, 45; Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 76). This process accelerated when Egypt lost Sinai to Israel in 1967. Other Muslim Brotherhood members imprisoned under the rule of Nasser were revisiting their stance on political activism and decided to disavow violent means when participating in political life (Zollner 2009, 45). In the late 1960s the Muslim Brotherhood officially renounced the radical writings of Qutb (Mitchell 1993, 89), and strove to gain influence through peaceful means (El Houdaiby 2012, 132); the more radical elements separated and formed their own groups.3

The regime and the Islamic Movement While Nasser was a charismatic person who had developed an Arab brand of socialism, directing the hopes of the people towards the

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revolution, and who in many ways became the symbol of the pan-Arab dream, Sadat was not an ideal of the people or the Arab world (Baker 1990, 80). Under the threat of the leftist groups ready to take power from him, Sadat had to legitimise his rule on different grounds than Nasser, and for this the Muslim Brotherhood and other religious groups imprisoned by Nasser in the 1960s were an obvious choice (S. Ibrahim 2002, 36), legitimising Sadat as the “believer president” (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 21; ‘Awadi 2004, 37).4 Not only did these religious groups have a popular following, they also cut across social classes (Hassan 2003, 105), potentially backing the regime in spite of Sadat removing many of the benefits installed by Nasser for the poorer parts of the population. These religious groups had been persecuted and marginalised during the reign of Nasser, but they had previously had a popular following and were gaining power after Nasser lost Sinai in the war with Israel. Sadat freed them from the prisons and installed them in student unions (Skovgaard-Petersen 2007, 82), which quickly became a basis of their political influence. This relationship was boosted after the 1973 war with Israel, when Sadat won back Sinai. Enthusiasm was, however, soon to cool as Sadat started his “Open Door Policy”. He built up his power based more on a Western model, made peace with Israel by recognising it as a state, and invited in capitalism as the financial paradigm of the state (Baker 1990, 244). Nasser had situated Egypt between East and West in the Cold War, benefiting from both sides while retaining a specific Middle Eastern identity, but Sadat now chose sides and opened the country to foreign Western investors, which quickly showed itself to benefit a select group connected to the regime rather than the general population (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 161). The reason for turning to capitalism was not only based on Sadat’s personal inclinations (Soliman 2011, 28), but also for example on the fact that the country was in dire economic straits because of an oversized state mechanism and unprecedented inflation. With the open door policy, Egyptian society became increasingly divided between those who were beneficiaries of regime policies and those who were left to find hope and security in their local networks of power and wealth distribution. During Sadat’s rule the subsidies benefiting the poorer part of the population were systematically addressed in an attempt to remove them. For the most part, he was successful in doing so, apart from a few that were especially important to

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the people, such as food subsidies, but also free education, and job security for anyone graduating from university (Farah 2009, 51 –2), which was the foundation for the hopes of social mobility of the poor. Sadat’s policies also allowed for large numbers of Egyptian workers to travel to other oil-rich Arab countries, from where they sent home earnings to their families; these quickly oustripped most other forms of income in the country (Baker 1990, 107). These workers did, however, also bring home a radicalised version of Islam, which eventually spread to other parts of society. The installation of the Muslim Brotherhood and other more extreme Islamic groups in student unions led to clashes with Christian students and attempts to remove the “pulpit parrots”, who were preachers often trained at the Azhar and who were felt to represent the wishes of the regime (S. Ibrahim 2002, 13). Already in 1972 fights broke out on the outskirts of Cairo, where Christians had illegitimately used a private home as a chapel. People were injured and the chapel was burned down. In 1974 the first attack on the regime took place when an attempt was made to take over the military academy. President Sadat’s visit to Israel for peace negotiations in 1977 further alienated the Islamic groups from the regime in Egypt. By 1980 the Islamic groups controlled major crowds in several of the larger mosques, where they could preach their programmes. The publications of the Islamic groups also flourished and multiplied, advocating the destruction of institutions that stood between the people and Islam (Hassan 2003, 106– 7). In much of this rhetoric the Christians were “dhimmı¯s”, protected people, who paid a special tax and who were prohibited access to the army and government, which were the two major institutions of power and influence. In all of this the dividing line between the moderate Muslim Brotherhood and other more violent religious groups was difficult to make out for much of the population, and was probably also the case for the organisation itself, as the 1970s was a chaotic and violent time for many involved in this kind of religious politics (Ansari 1984; Baker 1990, 256). Many Islamic groups moved in to take over power in universities, often bullying fellow students and professors; things considered forbidden by religion, such as liquor stores, were destroyed, and sometimes Christian stores were robbed, with these actions being legitimised by religion (Naguib 2009, 111; Gaffney 1995, 82). Officially the Muslim Brotherhood did, however, to a large extent succeed in steering clear of all these problems,

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but their image suffered greatly and this damage lasted until 2010 (Ansari 1984). This is also reflected in the writings of some prominent analysts, such as those of Saad E. Ibrahim, writing in 1981, who believed that the Muslim Brotherhood’s condemnations of violence were only tactical and provincial, until the organisation could rebuild and consolidate itself (S. Ibrahim 2002, 47), though he seemed to be more confident in the nonviolent nature of the Muslim Brotherhood when writing in 1995 (S. Ibrahim 2002, 71). Many of my interviewees felt that the Muslim Brotherhood showed its true face in this period, but failed to distinguish between the Muslim Brotherhood and other more radical groups. This tainted image of the Muslim Brotherhood would later help the Mubarak regime tie the Coptic Orthodox Church to the regime by denouncing the political opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood as violent and fanatical. Mubarak chose to continue the policies of Sadat – both the cordial relations with the West and the financial programme, which was increasing the divide between rich and poor – and then eventually to alienate the Muslim Brotherhood from the regime after a honeymoon period at the beginning of his rule (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 21; Albrecht 2007, 138). At this point religious differentiation was an established part of society, making it necessary for the president to turn to the Azhar for legitimisation against the Muslim Brotherhood (‘Awadi 2004, 59). As the gap between rich and poor steadily grew, the division between the Muslim Brotherhood on the one side, and the regime legitimised by the Azhar and in alliance with the Coptic Church on the other, continuously grew as well. However, this political constellation did meet a lot of criticism from both Muslims and Christians. Society was thus delimited according to religious belonging, both between Muslims and Christians, but also between different groups of Muslims. Parts of the dynamics between the Coptic Church and the regime were called Official Dialogue and will be described in Chapter 4. In the 1990s the radical groups escalated violence to hitherto unseen heights as very public places were bombed, killing scores of tourists and Egyptians. Public opinion immediately turned against these groups, legitimising the regime’s use of extreme measures to clamp down heavily on them (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 23). By the late 1990s the regime had wiped out most of the groups, leaving the rest reconsidering their position (Naguib 2009, 112). But the violent attacks of the radical

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groups had also given the regime the opportunity to hit the Muslim Brotherhood hard as they conflated them with the radical groups in the media (Wickham 2002, 214). This was a blow the Muslim Brotherhood was still trying to recover from in 2010.

“A new soul in the heart of this nation”: the organisation of the Muslim Brothers My Brothers: you are not a benevolent society, nor a political party, nor a local organisation having limited purposes. Rather, you are a new soul in the heart of this nation to give it life by means of the Qur’an. (Mitchell 1993, 30: letter from al-Banna, 1942) The scope of the Muslim Brotherhood was not only political or social. It was meant to renew the Muslim soul of the Egyptian people, and then – building on this foundation – it was believed that Egypt would naturally grow into an affluent society in which social justice would be innate. The organisation was concerned with building society from the bottom up, and to this end they built schools, medical centres and printing houses, and focused their mission on all aspects of life, including physical training, the family, morals, the role of women in society, science, culture, and also cared for foreign students at the Azhar, who later became ambassadors of the movement in other countries (Mitchell 1993). The organisation originally grew from preaching at clubs and cafes against what was seen as the evils of Western influence. Examples of Western influence were found most clearly in the shape of the colonists and in the neighbouring country, Israel. Both were felt as an evil to be prevented through preaching rigorous work and upright living, and blowing a new vitalising spirit into the Arab people. The Muslim Brotherhood was a pious movement that, although it had already entered politics in the 1930s, traditionally focused on maintaining the organisation and its functions as a pious revival movement. In the 1970s there was another trend towards political activism, as part of the Muslim Brotherhood began to focus more and more on what they saw as their political responsibility. The old guard focused on preaching against moral laxity in society (Ismail 2006a, 63), was opposed to this new political trend and, especially during times of regime crackdowns on the organisation,

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tried to pull the organisation away from politics, as they argued that it would only lead to schism in society (Zahid 2010, 91 and 103). The above quote by Banna illustrates the development of the Muslim Brotherhood very well. While the new generation wanted to give life to the nation by instilling social justice into the foundations of the rule of the country, and pushing the organisation towards clear-cut political participation, the old guard wanted to instil this life through preaching. The focus for the new generation shifted from accentuating piety to accentuating social justice, opening up new paths of interaction between Muslims and Christians, in so far as they both focused on the lack of social justice (Zahid 2010, 94 –5). The relations between the Muslim Brotherhood and more radical groups have at times been closer than at others. It can largely be said that there was a split in the 1960s between radical trends and Muslim Brothers seeking change through peaceful means, and a division in the 1970s resulting in people focusing on piety and people focusing on social justice coexisting within the organisation (Ansari 1984, 406). Both the split in the 1960s and the division in the 1970s led to tensions within the organisation and in their public image; many people sceptical towards the Muslim Brotherhood equated the former extremist tendencies with the pious trends and the people focusing on social justice, especially because parts of the pious trend in the Muslim Brotherhood agitated against Christians in the 1970s. At the beginning of the twenty-first century this trend was still highly missionary in its approach to Christians (Naguib 2009, 108–14). Examples of the mistrust of the Muslim Brothers are legion, but Robert Springborg highlights one from the 1980s, when some people believed that Brotherhood-influenced businesses were providing financing for arms for the Muslim Brotherhood (Springborg 1989, 49). One of the interviewees, an educated young man who belonged to the more pious trend in the Muslim Brotherhood, illustrates a pious approach to societal issues very well: The primary focus of the Muslim Brotherhood is on the Qur’an and the Sunna. It is targeting practical life with an open mind by listening to the guidance given by the Qur’an and the Prophet (PBUH)5. . . The Muslim Brotherhood is primarily based on bringing up the young, good Islamic education, taking care of women and their freedom, taking care of the elite and the thinkers,

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workers and farmers and others. The aim is eventually to become a good Muslim person, in a good Muslim family, in a good Muslim society with an Islamic state. An Islamic country with an Islamic Caliph . . . It is a new spirit of letting go of ignorance and accepting the light of education and knowledge of Islam. The primary focus of this young man was working towards living in a country where people were treated well and where people were treating each other decently based on religion. A Muslim Brother from the new generation will be used as an exemplar of social dialogue emphasising social justice in Chapter 4, leaving further elaboration here redundant. The focus of the Muslim Brotherhood on the needs of the average Egyptian was what won the hearts of many Egyptians, especially as the regimes of Sadat and Mubarak steadily withdrew from basic social responsibilities, leaving these to NGOs that were often hindered in their work by the need of the regime to prevent any of them from using the influence they gained from helping people to their political advantage (Zahid 2010, 60; Hamid 2014, location 33 per cent). The Muslim Brotherhood is one of the more influential of these, even though they have not been able to attain the title of an NGO as the NGOs are controlled by the regime. The Muslim Brotherhood entered the spotlight because of its very efficient and prompt efforts following the 1992 earthquake (‘Awadi 2004, 149– 53), when scores of houses were levelled, leaving people without shelter and food. The Muslim Brotherhood was immediately on the scene, using its influence in the trade unions (also called syndicates in Egypt) to provide tents and food and embarrassing the regime in the international environment and in the eyes of the people (S. Ibrahim 2002, 72). The regime fell into further disrepute because they responded to the timely efforts of the Brotherhood by tearing down their banners on tents to prevent them from gaining political momentum from the catastrophe (Zahid 2010, 120), and later by prohibiting fundraising or the distribution of goods by organisations other than the Ministry of Social Affairs or the Red Crescent (Kassem 2004, 114). This social work by the Muslim Brotherhood was helping to build up their political base, as the hopes of the people were directed towards those they trusted would help them when needed. And as bread was becoming continuously more expensive, tragedy became more and more

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an everyday phenomenon in the lives of the poor, who consequently pushed for change. Ever since Nasser’s time, the Azhar had been used to legitimise the regime against the Muslim Brotherhood, but this was a two-way street. As the Muslim Brotherhood gained influence among the people, it was no longer enough to be Azhar-educated and have intimate knowledge of the Qur’an and Sharia. It was also increasingly necessary for a Shaykh to have something to say on social justice in order for people to listen to him (Starrett 1998, 62 and 172; Gaffney 1995, 35).

The Islamic Movement and the Muslim Brotherhood The influence of the Muslim Brotherhood gained the trust of the people not only through their own activities, but equally, if not more, through their religious image. The Muslim Brotherhood was associated by many with other groups or individuals fighting for social justice, even though these were distinct from the Muslim Brotherhood, as Islamic social justice was for many synonymous with the Muslim Brothers. In general, carrying the Muslim colours came to inspire trust (Starrett 1998, 213), which the regime and their social institutions, such as the hospitals, no longer did (Sullivan and AbedKotob 1999, 32). The general Islamic trend in the country made Islam a cornerstone in the construction of general discourses ordering the everyday lives of people (Starrett 1998, 192). It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the Muslim Brotherhood as an organisation, and the Muslim Brotherhood as the political spearhead of an otherwise amorphous movement. The exact number of members of the organisation is unknown to the author, but in 2010 an estimated 30– 40,000 were part of a well-structured organisation throughout Egypt (Zahid 2010, 171). The logo used by the Muslim Brotherhood was, however, utilised by various hospitals, politicians, businessmen etc., as it helped both charities and business to gain the trust of the people. Some charities were in fact run by the Muslim Brotherhood – or the Muslim Brotherhood tried to gain influence over them, as they were building political capital (Ismail 2006b, 75). In this way there was an Islamic movement influencing most aspects of the lives of many Egyptians, and while the Muslim Brotherhood was a relatively small organisation, they were one of the biggest organised influences on the discourses adopted by this Islamic movement.

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The Islamic movement, as we shall see later in this chapter, was a fertile ground for recruitment for the Muslim Brotherhood, and to some extent overlapped with the Muslim Brotherhood as a political movement. This was especially true in poorer areas based on local networks of influence built to secure the lives of people not protected by the regime (Ismail 2006b; Singerman 1997; Wickham 2002). Baker writes about a new Islamist centre, which was politically active, opposed to violent means in politics, open to dialogue and inclusive towards minorities, including the Copts (Baker 2003; R. M. Scott 2010). These moderates were working both within the new generation of the Muslim Brotherhood, but also as individuals and even as dissidents from the Muslim Brotherhood, as with the Wasat party experiment in 1996, consisting partly of people who found the Muslim Brotherhood too rigid. The Muslim Brotherhood was illegal as an organisation, political or otherwise. This is not to say that people automatically got arrested for being members of the organisation, but rather that the members of the organisation were recognised as political actors who were not affiliated with or accepted by the regime, which led to prosecution if they were too vocal. The organisation and its members were, however, participating in Egyptian public life, using an array of different routes to access it. This will be described later in this chapter as a part of the social dynamics. The Muslim Brotherhood influenced political debate from the periphery of direct political influence as the most powerful opposition to the Mubarak regime – and it is in this capacity that the Brotherhood would influence religious dialogue, as will be obvious in Chapter 4.

The Coptic Orthodox Church The primary aim of this section is to describe how the Coptic Orthodox Church gained an identity as a “church of martyrs” living in an alienating society and how this became the basis of an organisation involving many aspects of the lives of many Copts (Khawaga 2004a, 187; Galal 2009). The church changed in the course of the twentieth century from being a loosely-knit network of churches to becoming a national society of clergy and laypeople, seen as a haven of safety for the Coptic minority in Egypt. As the Christian portion of the population lost faith in the regime and general society, many turned to the church to secure their lives and livelihoods. The resulting structure enabled

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the Pope to enter informal politics and speak on behalf of the Copts, resulting in a specific notion of dialogue referred to as “official dialogue” in Chapter 4. The Coptic Orthodox Church is specifically Egyptian (Khawaga 2004a, 172). According to the chronology of the church it dates back to Mark the Evangelist, who founded the church as the first in the world. This is still a core part of the Coptic identity: it sees itself as the root and truth of Christianity. Remaining true to the faith has had its costs; the church sees itself as a persecuted church of martyrdom, which has withstood the assaults of heretical movements – both Christian and Muslim – at the cost of the lives of its believers (V. Ibrahim 2011, 4). This identity of the church as persecuted is kept alive through rituals and commemorations of the sufferings of the church (Hasan 2003, 17). It is especially visible in the veneration of the saints and their actions against historical oppressors, where these saints have shown the strength and truth of the church and their faith even at the cost of their lives. The Coptic identity is torn between two fronts: the Christian but decadent West (Martin 2004, 17) and the falsity of Islam; they see themselves as Christian, but not decadent – and Egyptian, but not Muslim.6 This split identity also leads to scepticism among some Egyptian Muslims towards the Christians, as they are seen as agents of the West (Stephanous 2012, 46). The precise number of Copts in Egypt is hard to determine partly because of a lack of statistics, but also because these numbers are highly politicised (Stephanous 2012, 119). The numbers vary between 5 and 20 per cent; an estimate of 6 –10 per cent seems likely. Some recent scholars estimate the number to be as low as 5 –6 per cent (R. M. Scott 2010, 8; Hulsman 2013a, 71 –2). The dispersion of Copts in the population varies greatly. In Shoubra, a district of Cairo, there is an estimated 30 per cent of Copts (Hassan 2003, 18 –19). In “Garbage City”, a low-status part of Cairo consisting of garbage collectors, the Christians are in the vast majority, which enables them to have their religiosity on display in the streets; consequently you can find crosses and pictures of the Pope and saints decorating the walls of houses. The highest concentration of Christians in Egypt is found in the Upper Egypt regions of Asyut and Minya and in Cairo (Nispen tot Sevenaer 2004, 24). Christians are represented in all economic strata of society, with a relatively high percentage among the upper and middle classes,

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working especially in the area of finance, though many Christians are among the poor of society. While the Copts are overrepresented in higher education and the prestigious professions, they are underrepresented in government-appointed positions of authority (Hasan 2003, 18– 21) and in the military. The Copts are clearly marked as Copts, especially by the widespread use of tattoos of crosses on the wrists and other visible parts of the body. Among some Copts this still carries the significance of averting evil spirits and the evil eye, though this is no longer a widespread belief. The tattoos have started to spread among Christians of other denominations than Copts. Some Christians have not only one cross, but several on various parts of their bodies. As tattoos otherwise are generally frowned upon by the mainstream of society, this is likely to be a symbol of a heightened sense of identity as Christians. The use of the cross was earlier in decline (Meinardus 2002, 265), but it is gaining momentum as a physical sign of religious belonging similar to the re-emergence of the hija¯b for Muslim women (Starrett 1998, 91).

The beginnings of the Sunday School Movement The Coptic Church was shaped by a reform movement starting at the beginning of the twentieth century called “The Sunday School Movement” (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011), prompted by the presence of Christian foreign missionaries (V. Ibrahim 2011, 27). While the Western missionaries found few followers among Muslims, they drew more members from the Coptic Church. The Coptic clergy was not in a position to compete with the foreign missionaries, who were welleducated, organised, and funded. The healing practices of the Coptic priest, performed with the cross and candles and building more on religious superstition than on religion and medicine, was contrasted with the hospitals of the Catholic Church situated among the needy. Coptic priests were recruited from the lower classes with little or no education, and with a low salary they were offering their healing services for money and living off church collections. Being a priest consequently held low status, often on a par with beggars, which in turn resulted in no recruits among the upper classes. The foreign missionaries offered hospitals, superior schooling, and Western-style services. In the liturgy, the hymns and sermons in particular seemed new and modern compared to the traditional liturgy of the Coptic Church. At the same time, many

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lay Copts did not distinguish between one denomination or another, as their religious identity primarily found its identity-border in relation to Muslims (Hassan 2003). The reforms had already started in the nineteenth century with Pope Kyrillos IV in 1854 (V. Ibrahim 2011, 21), but in the twentieth century the need for reform was felt among the educated laity, who, inspired by the Western model, pressed to institute the role of the deacon, who would teach, preach, help the poor, and assist the priests. This position was filled by laypeople. The Sunday School Movement was started in 1918 at a time of intense anti-colonial agitation by Habib Girgis, who started collecting children on Sundays to teach them the rites, history and practice of the Coptic Church. In the 1930s the movement began holding meetings in universities to recruit Coptic students. By the early 1940s it had grown to 42,000 students working for reform (Hassan 2003, 71 – 6). The movement had divisions within itself, but cutting across these divisions the focus was to renew the church by introducing sermons, reviving the cult of the saints and the old hymns of the Coptic Church, and resurrecting the Coptic language. A number of initiatives started, including opening up to the West by becoming a member of the World Council of Churches, even though this was a very controversial issue within the reform movement itself (Hassan 2003, 97– 9). Church attendance was low, both in cities and the countryside, primarily because of the lack of competent clergy, but this was remedied by groups of the movement from Giza travelling around the countryside with a checklist to encourage people to attend church, read the bible, and pray regularly. To address the problem of uneducated clergy, many educated young people with great fervour for the revitalisation of the church were consecrated priests overnight. These introduced sermons into the Coptic service, building the identity of the churchgoers as Coptic Christians with close ties to the church. Spiritual values were applied to mundane problems in sermons, extending the understanding of the religious beyond the traditional borders of how church was understood – and contradicting the secularism of the Wafd party. Retreats to monasteries were planned, where the Copts had the chance to live a holy life for a few days, providing centres of development and education (Rowe 2009, 118) and strengthening them to return to their normal lives in sharp contrast to the life in the monastery (Martin 2004, 20). This revitalised the monasteries, where the monks

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had earlier been seen as beggars: they now became role models and spiritual guides, and the young visitors to the monastery left with a sense of admiration and often with a vocation towards the monastic life (Galal 2009; Hassan 2003). During Nasser’s rule, Egyptian society was in many ways turned upside down. He struck a blow against the landed bourgeoisie, as he nationalised much of their land and distributed it among peasants with no land. He nationalised a number of industries, opened up universities to everybody, and guaranteed state employment to everyone attaining a college degree (Farah 2009, 36; Baker 1990, 90). This diminished many of the pre-revolution networks of power and secured popularity among the masses (Kassem 2004, 13), even though some of the Free Officers strengthened the elite, as many of the leaders of the revolution eventually merged with the landed bourgeoisie to form a new upper class. The land reform also aimed to unlock some of the wealth accumulated by the landed bourgeoisie, and to direct them to invest in industry in the attempt to modernise the country and sustain its growing population, which was predominantly dependent on agriculture in the 1940s (Beinin 1989, 72; Alexander 2005, 54). The Arab Socialism championed by Nasser affected the individual Copt in various ways. The percentage of Copts among land owners (and other businesses) was disproportionately high, which meant that the Copts were more affected by the land reforms as a group (Beshai 2004). Furthermore, many of the trades and positions as bureaucrats, which were traditionally populated by a higher percentage of Copts than Muslims, now became more generally accessible as education became more and more widespread (Galal 2009, 114; Nispen tot Sevenaer 2004, 28). Other parts of society were changed in a permanent way. For example, the Coptic Community Council (al-majlis al-millı¯) or millet system was dissolved, as it was considered a power entity of the old regime by the revolution. The community council system was founded in 1454 and used in a variety of Middle Eastern countries, although the function of the millets differed between regions. In Egypt, the Coptic minority was represented directly through this body. In the seventeenth century power was transferred from the clergy to the Coptic nobility in the Egyptian Coptic millet (R. M. Scott 2010, 29) and thus consolidated laypeople’s influence over the Coptic community (V. Ibrahim 2011, 33).7 Many members of the millet were part of the Wafd party and represented the

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Copts in political life. Consequently, as the council was dissolved in the 1950s more power was placed with the Coptic Orthodox Pope (Hassan 2003). The road was then paved to cement the reformation of the Coptic Orthodox Church with the Sunday School Movement when Pope Shenouda III was installed in 1971, but also for the church to later function as part of the clientelism prevailing in society (Ansari 1984, 398).8 An alleged attempt on the life of the president by the Muslim Brotherhood in 1954 resulted in heavy crackdowns on the Brotherhood, which in turn benefited the Coptic Church as the president needed his rule legitimised by the various institutions of the country. He promised that a new cathedral would be built, as well as 25 churches each year, though the churches were never actually allowed to be built (Hassan 2003, 103–4). The relationship between the regime and the Coptic Church was, however, more one of negotiation than assimilation. This was partially because Egypt as a whole was motivated by a pan-Arabic dream under the rule of Nasser, but the Coptic Orthodox Church was distanced from this idea with its clear Muslim underpinnings. They instead based their identity more on the Pharaonic past, which was abandoned as a national identity after the Wafd party had diminished. This distanced the church even further from the leadership of Nasser when he used clear Islamic rhetoric in explaining the crushing military defeat in the Six Day War in 1967 (Gaffney 1995, 84; Makari 2007, 55; ‘Awadi 2004, 35; Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 160). The new initiatives of the movement were somewhat problematic for the church establishment. There was resistance, with some priests thrown out of the church, and there was conflict connected to the election of bishops. Some of the initiatives of the movement were not understandable for all of the old guard of the church, and as these initiatives cost money they were often viewed as extravagant. The Sunday School Movement was finally established when Pope Shenouda III was installed in 1971 from the ranks of the movement. He represented one of the more conservative parts of the movement, which strove to revive Coptic religious heritage by building on the ancient church legends to reaffirm the Coptic identity (Hasan 2003, 93). From this point on, the road was paved for the movement to implement their ideas of revitalisation and become the locus of the identity of many Copts throughout Egypt. In the 1970s, Sadat still tried to win over the Islamist groups, for example by easing censorship. These attempts were unsuccessful and

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another assault on the regime was made in 1977 (Hassan 2003, 107) followed by more unrest in the late 1970s between Christians and Muslims, including the bombing and burning of church-related buildings and the killing of Christians. While the majority of the population and the regime frowned upon these incidents, the lack of action against the perpetrators generated disillusionment in relation to the regime’s protection of Christians. Eventually the Pope of the Coptic Church publicly chastised the president, who suspected the Coptic Church of agitating against him abroad and accused the Pope of wanting to set up a separate Coptic state with the Pope as head. This eventually led to the placement of the Pope under house arrest in one of the monasteries. Worse than the house arrest was a speech by the president in 1981 igniting some of the worst interreligious violence in modern times in Egypt (S. Ibrahim 2002, 98; Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 163; R. M. Scott, 73). The Christians responding by also taking up arms marked the incident in 1981, and the violence escalated beyond anything usually seen.9 By this time the president was criticised by most of the Islamist groups and the incident in 1981 provided him with an excuse to come down hard on all those who had spoken out against him (Hasan 2003, 105– 10), eventually leading to his assassination by a person who had links to one of the radical Islamist groups. The relations between the Coptic Church and the regime during Sadat’s rule were not always strained. A group of Copts, primarily from the upper echelons of society, and some of the old-guard clergy, feared that the confrontational strategy of the Pope would lead to more violence and entered into an alliance with the president. The president set up a committee selected from these during the house arrest of the Pope. These Copts believed that politics should be left to the politicians and that the task of the church was to take care of the souls of the Christians and their wellbeing in society without engaging in politics (J. H. Watson 2000, 99). However, the Pope’s stance against the president had earned him the undying trust of the majority of Christians, who found hope in his partly successful approach to their situation as a continuously more repressed minority in the country (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 164). While the Copts who made an alliance with the president were rich and had a lot to lose, the majority of the Copts supporting the Pope had nothing to lose and found no hope in negotiating with the regime. The Pope became the champion of these people in their everyday struggles to

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navigate a society differentiating between Muslims and Christians (Hassan 2003, 108– 13). This bears witness to a diversity of voices within the Coptic Church, even though the Pope had the clearest voice. When Mubarak ascended to power in 1981, he was not faced with much political challenge to his presidency, but he was faced with a number of increasingly difficult social problems (Farah 2009, 40 –1). There was disillusionment with the ideologies of both Nasser and Sadat; the victory of Israel, which occupied Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian territories, dampened the dream of Arab power, nationalism, and unity, and Egypt was left heavily indebted by the policies of Sadat. As consumption rose, production was unable to keep up with the spending of Egyptians, leaving little or no faith in the political system. The relations between the Pope of the Coptic Church and the regime were not improved until the Pope was released from his house arrest in 1985. From then on relations became more cordial (Khawaga 2004a). In his reinstatement speech, the Pope spoke of embracing the Muslims as brothers and called for reconciliation. Mubarak’s rhetoric – unlike Sadat’s – was not directed against the Church and there was no public suspicion over the faithfulness of the Copts as a whole to the nation. This, combined with Mubarak’s crackdowns on the Islamic groups following the assassination of Sadat and during the 1990s, went a long way to re-establishing the relations between the church as an institution and the regime, though not much was done to prevent the skirmishes between Christians and Muslims, which more often than not ended to the disadvantage of the Christians (Hassan 2003). Mubarak’s politics changed the strategy of the Pope from confrontational to diplomatic; the Pope had now become the strongest voice of the Copts in relation to the regime (Hassan 2003, 113–14; Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 167). During Ramadan and Christmas the Church held large gatherings that included Muslim dignitaries, the Coptic schools included Quranic verses in their textbooks, and the Pope had a direct link to the Minister of the Interior in the event of violence against Christians. In dioceses, bishops could complain directly to the governor. With the change of politics, the regime and the Coptic Church had a common enemy in the radicalised Islamic groups (which in their eyes often included the Muslim Brotherhood), enabling them to work together, and this also helped relations between the regime and the Western world. Already from the mid-1980s the Coptic Church had set up the Committee of

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National Unity to improve relations between Muslims and Christians by emphasising the problems of the Christian minority through meetings with prominent Muslims (McCallum 2008, 80). These initiatives were not, however, seriously implemented until the mid-1990s when the regime was presented with serious threats from the Islamic militant groups. The militant groups were no longer only targeting Christians, but the population at large, including police officers, high officials, state infrastructure, and tourists, in order to destabilise the revenues of the regime, leaving scores of innocent Muslim bystanders dead (Hassan 2003, 116– 17). The violence was suddenly striking close to home for the average Egyptian – Muslim and Christian. The Pope succeeded in changing the Church’s strategy by building on examples from the history of the Coptic Church, where incidents of hardship and martyrdom were abundant, to underline the Church as a haven for the Copts. Furthermore, Coptic rites emphasised Christians as reborn into a spiritual kinship, softening the allegiance towards local power structures based on families and strengthening ties to the nationwide community of the church (Hassan 2003, 67). Much of this was also due to the charismatic personality of the Pope, which appealed to Copts across the country and was witnessed during his bible study on Wednesdays in the Coptic cathedral (Rowe 2009, 117), where Christians, young and old, gathered to seek his guidance. But the Pope was losing some of his earlier undying allegiance from the Copts the closer he moved to the regime. Especially during the later years of Sadat’s presidency, the Pope had become popular by defying the president, who the average Christian felt did nothing to protect them and improve their lives, but as the Pope moved closer to power under Mubarak, he was associated with the politics of the president, which did not benefit the poor.

Creating social space for the Copts The reform of the Coptic Orthodox Church had the effect of isolating the Copts from the rest of society, as it created a space where Christians felt safe, without the need apologetics for which they felt a growing need in their everyday lives (Galal 2009, 181). The movement started out as a reaction against foreign missionaries, but eventually saw itself as a bulwark against growing Muslim aggression. But the reform movement was not only facing society in general; they also had to overthrow the old

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guard of the Coptic Church itself. When Shenouda became Pope, the reform movement had changed the church from being a loose conglomerate of churches in which the bishops would often reign supreme, to becoming a top-controlled, hierarchical organisation (Hassan 2003, 113). This changed the power structure and dynamics of the church radically, which could not be done without some level of resistance from the people who lost influence (i.e. bishops) and the people who followed them. The reform was a reform of the church inside-out. The ideas of the reform were standardised throughout the church by placing the reformers in key positions in the administration, which was modernised and centralised. The bishoprics were subdivided into a larger number of dioceses, which allowed for the Pope to install his own people in the new positions, thus diminishing the influence of the old bishops. The administration of the monasteries, which also became centres of education for laypeople in the reform movement, was placed more directly under the aegis of the Pope. The educational level of the priests was heightened tremendously, but within the mindset of the reform movement. Laypeople were absorbed into the church and given positions of authority – positions that were increasingly difficult to find in broader society for Christians – which ensured the effectiveness of the administration and projects of the church and elevated it from consisting primarily of people from the lower echelons of society to the middle class, which in turn heightened the status of the church and the people working within it. From the beginning, the reform movement was built on deacons (a layperson ordained to work in the church), who often protested against the established order of the church, and their work. The Pope had himself been a deacon, and now the position of the deacons was elevated and given authority within the church, which tied another group of laypeople closer to the church. The order of the deacons was systematised and they were rotated between different bishoprics, which ensured that their allegiance was to the Pope and not the local bishop (Hassan 2003). What tied the larger mass of laypeople to the newly developed hierarchy of the church was to a large extent the new and effective social engagement of the church, which went beyond mere almsgiving to developing the possibilities and abilities of Christians to face life, including in the poorer parts of Egypt (Sedra 1999, 227). The church

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became a place where Christians felt secure from harassment, but also an institution in which they could hope to find a brighter future (Khawaga 2004a, 181), which was also witnessed in the way different forms of Coptic media compensated for the feeling of invisibility in general society (Iskander 2012, 56). This was especially important after the developmental discourse of the regime changed from Nasser’s Arab socialism in the revolutionary 1950s to the discourse of Sadat in the 1970s and of the Mubarak era, where development was thought of as charity, building up the authority of the president as benefactor and fuelling clientelism, as will be discussed now. Disappointment as citizens of Egypt was replaced by hope for the future as Christians within the Coptic Orthodox Church (Hasan 2003, 150).

Governing Egypt: Clientelism and Coercion While the first half of the chapter focused on the history of the major Egyptian institutions and organisations, how these were related and shaped the contemporary discourses of what it means to be Muslim or Christian, this chapter looks into some of the dynamics of Egyptian society in 2010 and how the different power structures were interacting according to a pattern determined by religious and societal affiliations. Looking into these dynamics, it is necessary to look at the basic understanding of Egyptian society as dependent on clientelism10 (Marfleet 2009, 23). The regime of Hosni Mubarak controlled society through different methods depending on people’s position in society and which groups they were part of; the clientele of the regime was controlled with the carrot (Farah 2009, 7) and those not benefiting from the patronage of the regime were controlled to a larger extent with the stick (Springborg 1989, 136; Albrecht 2007, 16; Soliman 2011, 63). The Coptic Church had its own system, negotiating its position in society directly with the president, although some Copts interacted with the rest of society in multiple ways not necessarily dictated by the Church leaders. Clientelism is to some connected to pre-modern societies, giving it a somewhat derogative feel when used about contemporary societies. This is, however, not the case, as clientelism is arguably present in most contemporary societies in one form or another (Abercrombie and Hill 1976, 413; Ayubi 2006, 169). Some forms of clientelism are also encouraged in the West, such as art patronage. James C. Scott (1962)

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argues that clientelistic structures in developing countries are the equivalent of interest structures in Western politics. Modernity and clientelism are therefore not necessarily contradicting terms (Lemarchand 1972). Nazih N. Ayubi (2006, 168) also posits that clientelism is not intrinsically part of Middle Eastern culture, but that Egyptian society has taken shape through history and that the current shape can change. Clientelism was also addressed in my interviews as important to dialogue. For example, one of the interviewees, a Coptic intellectual, talked about a system of corruption that he felt needed to be addressed by dialogue if relations between Christians and Muslims were to improve (see Chapter 4). This was described as equivalent to the concept of wasta, ˙ which means connections (Singerman 1997, 164), and is used to denote a social glue equivalent to clientelism (Albrecht 2007, 21 and 52). Many Egyptians felt that it was difficult to progress in life without it. Soliman (2011, 24) points out that a state is always the sum total of public institutions and their formal and informal rules and conduct; it is obvious that a single informal political dynamic such as “clientelism” cannot fully explain Egyptian society. However, while Soliman has an interest in “the sum total of public institutions” underlying the authoritarian rule of Egypt from the perspective of political economy (Soliman 2011, 3), this book focuses on clientelism (Soliman 2011, 27) as essential in order to understand how power is channelled to (or contested by) religiously demarcated groups of society – and to understand how some of the dynamics between these groups are termed “dialogue” in Egypt (see Chapter 4). That being said, clientelism is central to the Egyptian state and its influence on society. This is evident in the magisterial work of Ayubi, Over-Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East, in which he underlines how clientelism is essential to understanding his central concept of “corporatism” (Ayubi 2006, 28 and 33). Ayubi argues that because in Egypt the notion of the individual and the class structure are weak, this kind of society is characterised by dispersed, fluid groups (Ayubi 2006, 35), such as “tribal confederations, national fronts, populist coalitions, ethnic consociations, etc” (Ayubi 2006, 33). The way for the state to maintain power is therefore to co-opt these groups by tying their prosperity to the prosperity of the state (Ayubi 2006, 24– 35). In a corporatist system, clientelism legitimises the regime as

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the guarantor of welfare and justice (Ayubi 2006, 32). Also, the concept of clientelism, as described by the other authors used here, covers many of the aspects Ayubi terms “corporatism”. Furthermore, Soliman’s description of the Egyptian state as a rentier state goes well with this way of thinking, as rentier income provides the means by which the state can perpetuate its dominance through clientelism (Soliman 2011). Co-optation of disparate groups is thus central to the Egyptian sociopolitical system, and it should be noted how this corresponds to the theoretical approach adopted in Chapter 1.

Clientelism Egypt in 2010 was structurally a democracy. It had a president who was elected through votes gathered throughout the country among people from all walks of life, a parliament, a judicial system, and a police force. These structures were shaped during the revolution in the 1950s and amended repeatedly thereafter to ensure the influence of the president through clientelism and repressive means.11 From the revolution in the 1950s to the revolution in 2011, Egypt saw three presidents, none of whom stepped down from office at the end of a pre-determined period, but who either died of natural causes, were assassinated, or ousted by the people. Both the extended periods in power of the presidents and the reasons for their rule being terminated bear witness to the Egyptian political system, although nominally a democracy, being a dictatorship. This does not, however, mean that the structures of a representative democracy were of no importance to society, as they became the structures by which the regime governed the country (Albrecht 2007, 26; Roniger 2004, 358) and by which dialogue was shaped. Fundamental to clientelism is the patron – client relationship, whereby a patron earns the allegiance of clients by somehow improving their lives through favours, and the client secures the patronage by somehow backing the patron in society, thus enhancing their status, political influence, etc. The favours involved might have pecuniary value, but this is rarely the case (Abercrombie and Hill 1976, 414). Clientelism only thrives in places where power and/or wealth is unevenly distributed (Weingrod 1968, 378), making it possible for a few to become the personal distributors of this power and wealth. This in turn increases the power of the patron, as he or she can build a large following that can be mobilised for elections, riots, protection, etc.

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It is essential for clientelism that the institutions of the system are only loosely tied together and that the regime is centralised at some distance from parts of the population (Weingrod 1968, 382). Clientelism is not a system of governance on its own, but arises as part of systems whenever gaps between the rulers and the ruled arise. People seek to fill these gaps by seeking favours from those who have access to power in the country, in order to gain access to the distribution of the wealth of said country (Ayubi 2006, 168). In the words of Carl H. Lande´ (1983, 448): In modern political systems it should not be difficult to distinguish dyadic addenda from their institutional hosts. The operating rules of modern organizations are quite different from those of the mutual-aid dyad. The contrast between the two should be especially easy to observe in the developing countries, where the presence of many dyadic relationships makes these stand out against the alien backdrop of imported political institutions.12 Clientelism is therefore a mechanism potentially present in any system that has gaps in its governance, as people will try to make up for the dysfunctional system by taking in the dyadic addenda (Lande´ 1983, 447) as “a kind of plastic filler, capable of being poured into the shifting crevices of social structures, and serving as a kind of all-purpose moral cement” (Gouldner 1960, 175). If clientelism shows itself to be tenacious, it will merge with the system of governance to the extent that they become identical (Lemarchand and Legg 1972, 155). In Egypt, clientelism had been part of the system from before the revolution in the 1950s, and continued to be an integral part of the government and the concept of governance after the revolution (Kassem 2004, 12). In the Egypt of 2010 the major political gaps were between countryside and city, rich and poor, Muslims and Christians, and between different strands of Muslims. As described in the first part of the chapter, the gap between Muslims and Christians as well as the gap between different strands of Muslims had been growing since the 1930s, and the division between rich and poor became a national schism following the politics of Sadat and Mubarak; the schism between countryside and city is not within the scope of this book. These gaps were both bridged and contested; the regime tried to bridge the fiscal

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gap through clientelism in an attempt to control the population without any real attempt to change the structures of society to the benefit of the poor, while the economic gap was contested by the opposition as something that the regime should abolish instead of bridge, this being most clearly voiced by the Muslim Brotherhood. In this sense, the financial gap was also a gap between different Muslim groups in society. The gap between Muslims and Christians was bridged by both the regime and the leadership of the Coptic Church from 1985 onwards, as bridging this gap consolidated the authority of both towards their communities. Much dialogue addressed the gap between Muslims and Christians, as Chapter 4 will make clear. The regime was able to govern 5– 10 per cent of the population through negotiations with the Pope and his closest co-workers (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 160), and the Church leadership, in representing the church politically, became the patron of the Coptic Orthodox part of the Egyptian population (Sedra 1999, 228) and secured more tolerable lives for the Copts. Patron – client relations in Egypt were rarely directly between the president and the population, but between the president and a number of brokers who then would be in contact with a larger part of the population, constituting a system of patronage ideally reaching from the president to all the citizens of the country (Kassem 2004; Kettering 1988; Powell 1970, 418; Ayubi 2006, 184). Clientelism was fundamental to the political system, as the leading political party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), was the base of power for the president. The distribution of the wealth of the country by the president or his party became a personal favour granted by the regime to the fortunate among the people (Weingrod 1968, 379). This system of clientelism is essential to understanding dialogue, as religion is an important factor in differentiating society into different groupings. Consequently, dialogue can work to both bridge and contest these gaps in society. In Egypt, the different types of dialogue are the language and tools by which some of the different groupings of society communicate. Dialogue then is not just discussions about religious issues. The system of patronage was the reason why some people saw the only valid aim of dialogue as uniting against the injustice in society; others saw dialogue as a means to further strengthen the ties between the religious institutions representing different parts of society. This will be developed further in Chapter 4.

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Governing Egypt: Clientelism and Coercion Clientelism helped the regime incorporate the people needed to govern Egypt into the administration and upper echelons of society, including the commercial part of society which kept the governing and moneymaking machine going. This part of the population enjoyed relative safety and freedom voiced through different channels, such as the legal system, the parliament, the police, the Azhar, and the trade unions; other parts of the population benefited less, but still somewhat, from the student unions, subsidies, schools, emergency aid, development, jobs, or the public system.13 These institutions gave some of the population the possibility to feel represented, protected and heard as subjects of a legitimate rule (Soliman 2011, 55), or to be given possibilities for the future. All of them functioned in different ways and had different goals. They were controlled by the regime but enjoyed a level of autonomy to be able to function as spaces that would ideally make part of the population feel integrated and secure. These different channels will be briefly addressed; those of particular relevance to this book will be more thoroughly explored. While the regime functioned as a patron for parts of the population, it also had the possibility of using coercion both against those not benefiting from the patronage of the regime, and against people from the clientele if they were to act decisively against the regime. The channels through which coercion took place were primarily the police (especially the much-feared security police) and the military (the latter primarily during major uprisings such as the 1977 bread riots (Baker 1990, 118)). These actions were partly supported by emergency law and military courts. To simplify the description of the system of patronage, the different manifestations of clientelism will be divided into the following groups: the regime as benefactor, the regime as protector/source of fear, paths of participation, and legitimising institutions.

The Regime as Benefactor If there had been any faith in the political system, the vote would have been of major value as political capital as it would have incorporated the population into the system of governance. Had this been the case, the politics of the regime could have been termed machine politics, where

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the political system is focused on incorporating the population by shaping legislation and by the distribution of public wealth for the benefit of the population through pork-barrel legislation providing inducements for support of the regime for certain parts of society.14 Although this was actually carried out for a select part of society it was not done for the major part of society, to some extent leaving the regime as “an oligarchy based on coercion more than a machine relying on votes” (J. C. Scott 1969, 1145).15 The people who benefited from the regime and those who did not will be treated separately in this section as “the Elite” and “the General Population” for clarity (Lesch 2012, 29), but it should be seen as a gradual spectrum from the ruling elite to the very poor of society, where people have continuously less influence within and less benefit from the patronage of the regime. Although there was a clear gap between rich and poor, many would benefit at least somewhat from the system of patronage, leading to the possibility of acquiescence in spite of great poverty. A system of patronage only works if both parties in the dyadic relation give and receive something. The transactions of major political capital in the Egypt of 2010 were the distribution of public wealth and the dream of social mobility on the one hand, and contributions to the growth of the society and/or not rioting on the other (Singerman 1997, 245; Marfleet 2009, 31; Kassem 2004, 111).

The elite The elite consisted partly of a select group of politicians and businessmen (and of highly positioned officers from the military and police, but these will be treated in the following section). Through their participation in politics or through their access to the regime, these businessmen could gain either knowledge that would enable them to earn money, contracts directly with the regime, or other exclusive benefits making them the elite of society (Naggar 2009, 35–45; Farah 2009, 25; Denis 2006; Soliman 2012, 57). While some would be handed influential positions, such as provincial governorship, from where they could take control of the resources of the country (Kassem 2004, 11–49), others were given favourable contracts, for example when the regime was privatising industry. Springborg points out that this privileged part of Egyptian society held a significant amount of power, at times to an extent where they could influence the politics of the regime (Springborg 1989, 50–63).

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The other part of the elite was the upper middle class, who primarily came from state-funded universities and sought employment either in the public or private sphere. While well-paid public jobs placed the upper middle class directly under the patronage of the regime (there were huge variations in public salaries (S. Ibrahim 2002, 106; Soliman 2011, 72)), the people working in the private sphere were co-opted through other means such as trade unions, as will be shown. There was a huge difference between the very rich and the upper middle class (Naggar 2009, 34– 50), but the differentiation here is between people who lived secure lives sustained by the regime and those who were struggling both to sustain themselves and live with the regime, which was also apparent when S. Ibrahim was writing in 1987 (S. Ibrahim 2002, 85). To form an impression of the part of the middle class incorporated into the elite, Eric Denis is enlightening: “The region of Greater Cairo includes a limited number of middle-class families; not more than 315,000 families’ current expenses exceed LE 2,000 per month (US dollars 350 in 2005). And these are counted as the 9.5 percent most wealthy” (Denis 2006, 52). This differentiation will define the difference between the upper and lower middle classes in this book – 9.5 per cent belonging to the upper middle class or upper class.

The general population The role of the state changed dramatically from Nasser in the 1950s to Sadat in the 1970s and Mubarak. There was a change in mentality from the population being able to demand security from the state to personal security primarily being the responsibility of the individual, who had to work his or her way into the favour of the regime to benefit from its patronage (Zahid 2010). Everybody in the population was in principle guaranteed bread through subsidies (Soliman 2011, 56) and the chance of an education in schools and universities, in a system which left it up to the individual to work his or her way into a good position in society. This dream of social mobility was essential as it provided the possibility of placing the responsibility for poverty with the poor and not the regime (Tajfel 2010c, 112; Tajfel and Turner 2010, 178; Haslam et al. 2010, 346). This was the basis of the change in thinking about development as well. Under Nasser, the state took responsibility for developing the people with the aim of developing the country as a

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whole; this was changed under Sadat and Mubarak to a focus on charity. Charities chaired by the wife and son of Mubarak were counted as part of the social security network of the country, positioning the president and his family as the benefactors of the country (Ismail 2006b, 66 –95) – although the size and activities of the charities did not justify the claim. Recognising the political importance of NGOs, the Ministry of Social Affairs maintained strict control of them (Singerman 1997, 247; Zahid 2010, 59 –64; Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 25). The president was furthermore, in principle, the patron of the many public workers employed by the state in the public system (Singerman 1997, 260), including police officers, municipality officers, street sweepers, postal workers etc., even though 95 per cent of the 5.8 million state employees were considered poor or extremely poor by World Bank standards (living on 2 or 1 dollars a day respectively) (Naggar 2009, 49).16 The regime-guaranteed jobs were furthermore unable to keep up with the growing demand, leaving them of little value as political capital. To some, the public jobs even felt like a showcase of the injustice of the regime because of the low salaries. As Egypt expanded, the poorer parts of society were not provided with any alternatives for living other than informal housing areas not supported by the regime. The infrastructure of these places was built up by its inhabitants as the regime took no responsibility for them. The focus was primarily on establishing essentials such as water and electricity; luxuries such as high schools were scarce, if present at all. Tutoring classes and clinics could be established, for example connected to mosques, at the initiative of the residents. All this made the regime’s guarantee of education and job security for graduates more of an ideal than a reality, and gave the residents of these poorer areas the impression that there was no state working for them (Ismail 2006b). In the negotiation of these infrastructural needs municipality officers became “brokers” between the regime and the people. Since encounters with the regime through the municipality officers was problematic for citizens in poor areas, and the system of justice did not reach these areas in any positive way, the political capital of the regime in the distribution of wealth was weakened, which in turn led to the notion among the disenfranchised of alternative governance, where people gathered together in local networks to secure their lives (Ismail 2006b, xxxiii). This also made it easier for the contesters of power to the regime to build

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LOCAL NETWORKS OF POWER

Figure 2.1 This illustration shows how Egyptian society was divided into a centralised regime and different local networks of power dispersed throughout society. This illustration furthermore functions as the basis for later illustrations. Source: courtesy of the author.

up political capital. As these local networks of power were to an even greater extent determined by religion, they were essential in creating distance between believers from different faiths (see Chapter 3). According to S. Ibrahim, the losers under Mubarak’s governance were the working class, urban poor, the young, and the lower middle class, together making up the vast majority of the population – the educated youth with no jobs being the most sensitive (S. Ibrahim 2002, 171), i.e. most prone to rioting (Soliman 2012, 58).

The Regime as Protector / Source of Fear The police and the military both had two roles among the population; one as protector and one as a source of fear. While much research focuses

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on the latter, the former was essential in sustaining the Mubarak regime as well. The separation between the two roles was to a large extent the line dividing the population in two. Those who felt and were protected by the regime, and those who were not – though it can be argued that some of the people from the protected part of the population still felt insecure, as they were well aware that they were living by the mercy of a personal ruler and his arbitrary system of justice, including the police. They were reminded of this if they criticised the regime (Dawla 2009, 130). This dividing line was also more or less the line separating the people who had enough (or were extremely rich) and those who had to struggle to have something. The role of the police in Egyptian society can be gauged by the fact that police funding was higher than the combined funding for health and education (Dawla 2009, 128). The regime protected the part of the population that had already gained from the regime financially from the part of the population that had little or nothing. This was obvious in the well-to-do areas, where police patrolled the streets and one had to pass police checkpoints at night to enter the rich areas. It was even more obvious in the compounds outside Cairo that were walled and patrolled, closing the area off to the general population (Osman 2012). The elite inhabited protected ghettos inside and outside Cairo (Mahdi 2009, 5). The part of the population protected by the police was also, as long as they did not stray from the beaten political path, ensured a fair trial if it came to it, as will be discussed later. While the police was protecting the upper part of society, it was turned against the rest of the population from which the elite needed protecting (Denis 2006, 51; Stork 2012; Lesch 2012, 18). As explained by Ismail, the latter had no guarantee of fair trials or protection from arbitrary police action (Ismail 2006b). Huge areas of Cairo were built without permits (Mahdi 2009, 6) and governed locally. While the positive presence of the regime was very limited as described above, the negative presence was very real through the presence of the police. The interference of the police was not based on the investigatory legal system but on a culture of fear, where the inhabitants of poorer areas could not feel safe from the police or their huge networks of informants, who had been either bought or intimidated. People who refused to inform or people who were deemed of suspicious character risked being imprisoned for years. Family members might be arrested to force a person to inform

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and torture was widespread (Sherry 1992; Dawla 2009, 120–35). People were randomly arrested on false charges in order for police to force whatever they knew out of them (Ismail 2006b, 139–60). Police work in these areas was most often not to ensure the safety of its inhabitants, but to prevent actions against the regime by the inhabitants. This daily humiliation and obvious display of state superiority alienated many of the inhabitants of the informal housing areas and drove them to seek settings where they could feel empowered and safe. These were found, according to Ismail (2006b, 96 –128), in religious groupings, where young men were welcomed as preachers and guardians of conservative Islam (Hamid 2014). This will be elaborated upon later. The military had a less visible role than the police. It was a safeguard of the regime against a coup d’e´tat, and was called upon during periods of unrest, the most well-known of which was the 1977 bread riots, when Sadat was close to losing control when he tried to abolish bread subsidies (Farah 2009, 42). In 2007 when workers in al-Mahalla al-Kubra (the largest industrial city of Egypt) boycotted work to protest their wages and large parts of the country threatened to follow them in their protests (Beinin 2009a, 85; Albrecht 2007, 125), Cairo was flooded with police and al-Mahalla al-Kubra with military forces (Mahdi 2009, 8). But learning from the experience of 1977, the regime also used the military in other ways; in December 2007 the Ministry of Social Solidarity surprisingly cut the subsidies for bread (Marfleet 2009, 17) and the international wheat prices soared in 2008, forcing a large number of subsidised bakeries to close down. This was a catastrophe for the poor, as they were dependent on the cheap bread from these bakeries. Knowing that bread was essential to appease the people, the regime built a number of wooden sheds around Cairo from where they sold cheap bread baked in military bakeries (Bush 2009, 66). This not only provided the people with bread, but also placed visible markers of the clientelist system all over the city, as the bread was clearly provided by the patronage of the regime (Beinin 2012). Apart from this, the military was primarily involved through the military courts, where the regime could also try civilians (Kassem 2004, 40) away from the public eye. The reason the police and military were willing to provide these services to the regime is that officers, as part of the system of patronage, were provided with a secure life (Nassif 2013) including:

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state-financed study-abroad programs for police and military officers, subsidized housing, cars, electrical appliances, groceries, medical care, and leisure facilities. In addition, the tradition started by Nasser to reserve the presidentially appointed posts for retired police and military officers as provincial governors has been preserved by Sadat and Mubarak. (Kassem 2004, 42)17 And the military functioned as an independent financial entity, which produced immense wealth for its leaders as long as they remained apart from other political entities (Bruneau et al. 2014, 18; Kandil 2012, 182), such as the government and the presidential party.

Paths of Participation (or Representation in Authoritarian Clientelist Systems) The system also had channels through which the people could voice their needs and frustrations within an established and controlled framework. These were semi-democratic structures reaching different parts of society. There were trade unions representing professionals, student unions representing students, who were a traditional source of the venting of discontent in Egypt, and the parliament, which enabled people from both inside and outside Cairo to have a voice through their representatives. Rather than a source of “real” democracy, this was a way for the people to be part of the system of patronage and participate in the distribution of national wealth. These institutions functioned as hubs for brokers (Kettering 1988) between the regime and the people distributing some of the wealth of the country, either through brokers who represented a group of people delineated geographically (the parliament (Kassem 2004, 35)), or brokers who represented a certain profession (the trade unions). As will be obvious later in this chapter, these paths of participation became the channels through which the Muslim Brotherhood, as a decisive voice of opposition, challenged the rule of the regime – and thereby negotiated relations with different societal groups, including the Coptic Orthodox Church, which functioned as a legitimising institution.

Parliament The parliament was controlled by the regime (Kassem 2004). For example, during elections the police was helpful in barring access to the

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polls in critical areas, only allowing NDP supporters to vote; unwanted politicians had their immunity from prosecution revoked and could be dismissed from their position in parliament; and most legislative bills were suggested by the regime and often rushed through to ensure that they were passed. The regime thus controlled who was in parliament (a majority of these being members of the NDP) and ensured that the distribution of wealth would in the end build up the political capital of the regime (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 153; Kassem 2004). This system was not unlike the experience of clientelism in other countries, where members of parliament are elected by their constituency to bring home pork-barrel deals for the area in the shape of – for example – schools, roads, or jobs (Rothstein 1979, 33; Kassem 2004, 79). The broker would benefit from this, for example by knowing what land would be used for public construction, enabling them to lay claim to the area before prices went up (Keefer and Vlaicu 2007; Lesch 2012, 26). In this sense political life and parliament were building up the clientele of the regime by tying the population to the regime through the members of parliament, who became brokers between the regime and the wider population (Ismail 2006b, 51; Singerman 1997; Lemarchand and Legg 1972, 7 and 155), constructing clientelist hierarchies (Marfleet 2009, 24; J. C. Scott 1972, 96). As Alex Weingrod writes, the new men of influence became political men (Weingrod 1968, 384).18 The parliament did not only consist of the very rich and influential of the country, but it also happened that especially successful businesspeople on a local scale from the areas of informal housing rose to have a seat in parliament. These and other people running for parliament would primarily secure their votes from the informal housing areas by presenting themselves as the benefactors of the local people by distributing food and clothing on public holidays (Singerman 1997, 170), and ideally by being available in the local areas to the people living there.

Trade unions While these political brokers were catering to a group of people delineated geographically, trade unions could work to secure the lives of people within a specific trade, in line with what Frances Rothstein (1979) explains. The members of the trade unions in Egypt elected a board, which could represent the interests of the members to the regime and secure them retirement funds, clubs for the members etc. (Zahid

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2010, 105; Stephanous 2012, 182). As trade union membership was limited to people from within trades, they were specifically working for the Egyptian middle class, ensuring special treatment and better security for this part of society (S. Ibrahim 2002, 166). Furthermore, trade unions took on political significance when they went beyond securing for example social clubs and retirement funds for their members, carving out space in society for their members to function. This is especially obvious for the Bar Association (lawyer’s union) which on several occasions fought for the authority of the courts against the regime’s encroachment, to the benefit not just of the judges, but also the general population, as the courts then became a firewall against the arbitrary actions of the regime (Baker 1990, 46 – 78). This point can, however, be overstated, as the regime still had the upper hand in most trials of political value and could resort to the military courts, where the normal law of the country had no authority. Student unions were traditionally the hub for protests in the country. These young people were seen protesting and sometimes initiating revolts throughout the twentieth century. They had a revival during the 1970s, when the Islamist current gained a foothold in society, primarily through the student movement. This path of participation was, however, thoroughly eradicated by the Mubarak regime after the assassination of Sadat. The labour unions were not paths of participation, as they were coopted by the regime (Bishara 2012, 84) already under Nasser to a degree, where they were identical with the regime. Concessions were consequently seen as given by the goodwill and patronage of the president. Workers on the other hand were left without legal channels of participation as a group as they often felt that they were not represented by the unions, and had to initiate strikes on their own whenever their grievances reached a level where they could no longer be contained (Shafei 1995; Beinin 2009b; Bishara 2012). The labour unions were then primarily used to apply the decisions of the regime on the workers and to mobilise workers’ support for the regime at the ballot box (Beinin 2009a, 68; Kaufman 1974, 295; Rothstein 1979).

Legitimising Institutions Had the regime of Mubarak been built on machine politics the benefits gained from the distribution of the wealth of the country would have

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gone far in legitimising the political system (J. C. Scott 1969), but as the majority of the wealth was distributed to a minor part of the population and the rest of the population felt the presence of the regime as positive only to a very limited extent, the regime had to seek legitimacy through other channels focused on legality, the media, education, and religious conventionality. Common to all four was that they all needed some level of independence from the regime to be able to provide legitimacy, as an institution seen as being part of the regime would lose any legitimising grip on the population. The focus here will be on religious institutions, the judicial system (showing the difference between local areas and the governmental institutions), schools (providing an example of how religious legitimising is implemented), and leave out the media (as relatively little data has been found on the topic that is relevant in depicting the clientelist system).

The legal system The judicial system of Egypt in 2010 was relatively free, giving the upper middle class the feeling of being somewhat protected from arbitrary rule and thereby imbuing the regime with some legitimacy (Albrecht 2007, 168). Even though the regime did dictate some verdicts, the courts did at times rule against the will of the regime (Baker 1990). It is, however, important to note that the influence of the courts only extended to a select portion of the population; the rest did feel the arbitrary nature of the rule of the regime. It is also important to note that cases the regime wanted to hide from public view were brought before the military courts, which convened in seclusion and with no possibility of appeal to the normal courts (Kassem 2004). The influence of the judiciary was in other words permitted by the regime, rather than the other way around (Wickham 2002, 224; Albrecht 2007, 166). The judiciary was furthermore an independent entity of power within the clientelist system, rather than a neutral function in a judicial system. Many judges wielded personal power and influence as a group by presiding over the function of justice. The courts were thus primarily an institution for the elite of society; the poorer parts of society felt that they gained little in terms of legal protection from addressing the authorities with their grievances. Their experience was that the police would arrest arbitrarily without resolving the matter at hand or involving the courts. Instead, they had their own

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local courts (maja¯lis ‘urfiyya) in their neighbourhoods, where men of esteem would arbitrate between the parties of a conflict, varying from simple quarrels to disputes over ownership of buildings and businesses. In these circumstances, the legal system could be used as a threat, which might make the other party yield, but not as an institution in place to protect the population (Ismail 2006b, 33 –46). To these people the national courts were not seen as a resort of legal protection, bringing safety to the general population and in turn political capital to the regime, but rather as something of little importance to them. The local men of esteem who constituted local courts when needed gained their authority from their influence in society. For their ruling to be followed they needed to have influence in their area, which they gained by sharing some of their wealth with the people of their area through, for example, schools, or by having a reputation as a religious and just person, but also by having connections to the police, who then in turn could ask these men of esteem for backing. Some of these men of esteem would consolidate their power by running for parliament, connecting the regime to the local networks of power through parliament. In this way the system of patronage found alternative routes into the areas of the disfranchised, where the institutions of the “democratic” system would not reach (Ismail 2006b, 48–52; Singerman 1997). These local men of esteem with significant local influence would also often be the people involved in official dialogue, as described in Chapter 4.

The Azhar With the defeat of Egypt in 1967 by Israel, the Azhar played a major role in legitimising (‘Awadi 2004, 59) the rule of the dominant power as a system of patronage in Egypt (Albrecht 2007, 56). Also, during the reign of Mubarak the regime called upon the Azharite ulama to support the regime (Ismail 2006a, 31). Their ties to the regime were formalised, in particular through the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which administered much of the funding for al-Azhar and mosques in Egypt, to the effect that the Azhar educated the Shaykhs for the regime-controlled mosques (Soliman 2011, 56 and 65). Both the Grand Imam of the Azhar and the Grand Shaykh of the country were connected to the Azhar and appointed by the president.19 From Nasser’s time there was a struggle between the ideology of the regime and that of Islamic movements trying to delegitimise the rule of the regime (Toronto and Eissa 2008,

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29; Ismail 2006a, 59). Dominance over the religious discourse was important and there were cases where the regime cleared out mosques to install more regime-friendly Shaykhs (Hulsman 2013a, 26). As the mosques were not only places of worship but also often the hub of an array of social care and activities, such as medical centres and sports activities, they became of great importance in building up political capital in the local networks of power. It is also important to highlight the dynamic nature of the religious apparatus at the disposal of the regime through the Azhar, which to some extent could match the dynamics of Islamic movements. The regime could influence the political content of the Friday prayers through the Ministry of Religious Endowments, but their influence was not only restricted to specifically religious spaces. The ministry also had mobile preachers at their disposal who could cover several mosques that did not have their own preachers. During the week these mobile preachers would preach at schools, clubs, community centres, factories, offices, army bases, and prisons (Gaffney 1995, 27 – 49). Furthermore, the regime allotted more space for religious shows and messages in regime newspapers, radio, and television (Ismail 2006a, 66). The schools taught the official version of Islam supervised by the Azhar, but this was often hindered by teachers who espoused another version of Islam (sometimes inspired by the Muslim Brotherhood) (Wickham 2002, 154). The channels at the disposal of the Azhar were actually or potentially of importance to the official dialogue involving the Azhar (see Chapter 4). The official version of Islam that legitimised the regime was propagated through these diverse channels and rubber-stamped by the Azhar; the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups propagated their own version of Islam, each trying to delegitimise the other by contesting their respective orthodoxy (Ismail 2006a, 63).

Schools and universities As noted, religious teaching (for Muslims; Christians had their own classes) in public schools was supervised on behalf of the regime by the Azhar. Analysing teaching materials therefore uncovers the image the regime wanted to project as upholders of orthodox Islam, protectors of the general population against violent extremists, and protectors of Christians (Toronto and Eissa 2008) – all three presented in such a way as to legitimise the actions of the regime. It can, however, not be taken as

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a necessary indicator of the attitudes introduced to the population through these teaching materials, partly because teachers might have influenced what was taught in another direction (Toronto and Eissa 2008, 48), and partly because some of what was taught was in stark contrast to the obvious reality and how this reality was discussed in society in general (such as a textbook promoting the freedom of speech). The struggle between the ideology of the regime and the Islamic movements described above was also fought in schools, and is visible in the teaching materials, partly through a positive definition of true Islam and Islamic behaviour and a negative definition of the errors of religious militant behaviour, encouraging in the pupils an acquiescent attitude towards the regime (Toronto and Eissa 2008). As this has already been addressed elsewhere, it is of more interest to observe that the regime was actually promoting an attitude of tolerance towards Christians, at least in the materials used in schools, despite what a number of Muslim and Christian interviewees claimed. These school books pointed out that Christians and Muslims lived peacefully together at the time of the Prophet and that there was no compulsion in religion, encouraging respect for all religions and people. Islam was, however, promoted in exclusivist language as the only true and superior religion, and this James A. Toronto and Muhammad S. Eissa interpret as contradictory to the respect and peaceful relations otherwise promoted in textbooks. This could be a foreign interpretation of “exclusivist language”, as religion most often by definition is exclusivist in Egyptian institutional settings, without this necessarily discouraging intentions of peaceful coexistence. In general, truth claims about religion were unidirectional among the Egyptian interviewees for this book and questions of peaceful coexistence were addressed through a mixture of secular discourses (see Chapter 4), discourses of “gentlemen’s contest” (see Chapter 4), discourses of magnanimity toward “the lost”, or by adapting the religion of the other into a history of religions legitimising some dissent, the latter seemingly being the discourse promoted in the textbooks with Islam as “the seal of religions” (Toronto and Eissa 2008, 38).20 On a critical note, Toronto and Eissa point out that the textbooks did not address many of the thorny issues of society, which again and again set one segment of society against another. These could include the building of churches or conversion (Toronto and Eissa 2008, 34), topics that are further developed in Chapter 3. The regime might have avoided

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these thorny issues because it would otherwise have risked losing political capital among people of another conviction than the one chosen: other religions were addressed in a range, from Muslims who saw no space for people who think differently within religion, to people for whom the belief of a person was of importance only to the believer himor herself.

The parallel patronage of the Coptic Orthodox Church The Coptic Orthodox Church, catering for the spiritual needs of its members but also representing the Coptic population politically, was established by the Sunday School Movement and Pope Shenouda III as a top-down controlled institution (Galal 2009, 242; Vogt and DoornHarder 2004, 145; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 147). This was made possible by making the Church address the needs of its members, sustaining a system of patronage (Sedra 1999, 228; M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 156). According to Hassan (2003, 152): In most dioceses, the relationship between individual and church is not just pastoral but resembles a citizen-state relationship. Even though his relationship to his church does not carry with it the same element of compulsion as does the state-citizen counterpart, the demands made by a Copt on his church are similar. He expects it to not only cater to his spiritual needs but also to help him with educational, occupational, housing, and medical problems.21 The church had centralised the church structure (Hassan 2003, 128), involved the laypeople through social work (Hassan 2003, 150), created positions for laypeople within the church and placed them directly under the Pope (Hassan 2003, 131–2), and placed people loyal to the Pope in key positions such as bishoprics (Hassan 2003, 124). The continuously enlarged role of the laypeople also provided a large number of people ready to travel around Egypt to preach in even the most desolate areas (Doorn-Harder 1997, 237), promoting a feeling of belonging and unity among the Coptic people as separate from the rest of society. This tightly-knit group could be represented by the Pope politically (Hassan 2003, 113 and 118; Ayubi 2006, 190 and 194), exchanging protection and the possibility of building churches for political loyalty (Khawaga 2004a; M. Watson 1997, 248). This was underlined by a young Muslim blogger:22

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I recall during the 2005 elections reading a scan of a Coptic church newsletter that got sent to me by a Coptic friend, and its two top news bits were “Pope Shenouda declares in the name of all Copts in Egypt support for Mubarak for President” and right next to it “President Mubarak agrees on giving permits to building two new churches in Egypt”. Furthermore, a senior manager from the dialogue and development organisation, Coptic Evangelical Organisation for Social Services (CEOSS) agrees: “It is like a political negotiation. . . ‘I will allow you to build these things or do these things, but then we have an agenda which we would like you to do.’ There is a political game like with the Azhar”. The support for the regime and Mubarak was especially visible during the 2005 elections, when the Pope publicly supported the president, but also fired a priest who was outspoken about discrimination of Copts and supported an alternative candidate for presidency during the elections (Galal 2009, 222; McCallum 2008, 78; Iskander 2012, 81), and again in 2013 when the Pope publicly supported the military wresting control from the Muslim Brotherhood and a general assuming presidential power. The Coptic Orthodox Church was in this sense its own society within Egyptian society. But the relative isolation of Coptic society was also based on their role as a minority in the country. This came about not only by the reformation of the church itself, but also because of the growing discrimination the Copts were facing in everyday life, pushing them to turn to the church (Khawaga 2004b, 144). The discrimination will be dealt with in depth in Chapter 3. This move towards seclusion of Coptic Christians was further enhanced by a rising tendency among Muslims to identify with a religious grouping rather than with the ruling power, as they had little or nothing to gain from directing their allegiance towards the regime as individuals. This identification of a large part of the population with Islamic groups rather than the regime thus had the secondary effect of diluting identification with Christians as well, and this has been a primary factor in causing Christians to move away from a national identity towards a specifically Christian identity.23 A third factor pushing Copts towards seclusion was poverty, which also drove poorer Muslims to isolate themselves in religious networks able to help them to survive financially (Khawaga 2004a, 180).

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The hegemonic status of the Pope was, however, contested by 2010 (Galal 2009, 119; M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 159 and 170; Sedra 1999; Iskander 2012, 128). It was obvious that the Pope was on good terms with the regime, and this eventually undermined his authority. During Sadat’s time, when the Pope was outspoken against the policies of the regime and put under house arrest, he was the symbol of the everyday struggles of the Copts, but as he became more friendly towards the regime he lost this image as a champion of Christian interests among the struggling poor, and some started to see him as counteracting the reformation to which he had been so central. Actions meant to make the lives of Christians easier, such as the church arranging ifta¯rs (the feast breaking the fast during the Muslim holy month of ˙ Ramadan) – “The Church arranged ifta¯rs to invite people from the ˙ REGIME TRADE UNIONS THE AZHAR BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM

COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH

LOCAL NETWORKS OF POWER

Figure 2.2 This illustration shows how Egyptian society was divided by financial and religious differences and how the clientelist system worked to incorporate the different parts of society. This illustration focuses on the legitimising function of the Azhar, Coptic Orthodox Church, and other institutions. Source: courtesy of the author.

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government . . . in order to receive benefits for the church: to get licenses or to smooth relations with the regime” – were, according to the leader of an NGO focusing on Christian rights, placing the church clergy in an awkward position in relation to the poorer parts of the church. These poorer parts would eventually see the priests arranging these dialogical events (this will be described further in Chapter 4) as hypocrites, as many ordinary Copts felt that the regime did nothing to help Christians.

The Opposition A result of the political system described above was that the term “illegal” not only denoted criminals and their actions, but also organisations and people with notable political influence that were not either controlled or co-opted by the regime. It therefore comes as no surprise that the organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood was outlawed for being the only real opposition to the regime (Albrecht 2007, 81; R. M. Scott 2010, 49); that is, an opposition not situated within the oppositional space defined by the regime, a space consisting of what Philip Marfleet calls “Pointless Parties” (Marfleet 2009, 25). Holger Albrecht interprets the parties as having some influence, but an influence limited only to the fortunate few of Egyptian society and only in major cities (Albrecht 2007, 51 and 118); the parts of the population called “the elite” in this book. The Muslim Brotherhood for their part argued for their inclusion in the political game as a political party and for the holding of democratic elections, even though it is debatable whether or not they were actually democratically-minded or just politically opportunistic in demanding what would likely bring them closer to a position of power (Schiøtt 2008; Naguib 2009, 117; Hamid 2014, location 15 per cent).24 It is appropriate to see several trends within the Muslim Brotherhood, some of these being very democratically-minded, in line with the New Islamists described by Baker (Baker 2003), and others more in line with the authoritarian rule of the country (R. M. Scott 2010, 53). Free elections were, however, not held, pushing the Muslim Brotherhood to participate in politics through the structures of governance used by the regime (Zahid 2010, 65). This left the Azhar, the trade unions, the parliament, the schools, the legal system, development initiatives, the

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universities, and other influential institutions and organisations as battlegrounds in a tug of war for the political souls of the Egyptians. As has been shown, the regime functioned not only through coercion, but also through the distribution of the wealth of the country, paths of participation co-opting different parts of society, and by seeking political legitimacy through authoritative institutions. All of these built up the political capital of the regime and made it possible to control the population. As an oppositional movement the Muslim Brotherhood contested political legitimacy by focusing on social justice – a common political move according to Henri Tajfel and John C. Turner (Tajfel and Turner 2010, 178) – and the questionable political capability of the regime by showing their own effectiveness in working for the population in the various institutions described above. This also influenced how some members of the Brotherhood would think about dialogue, as is obvious in Chapter 4. Quoting Wickham on the Islamist movements and the Muslim Brotherhood: “To mobilize citizens into politics, it is not sufficient for movement leaders to tap into preexisting discontents; they must also generate motivations, resources, and opportunities for collective action” (Wickham 2002, 7–8). This was especially obvious in the Bar Association and parliament, which will provide good examples of how the Muslim Brotherhood functioned as the opposition and how this was suited to the particular political system of Egypt; but first it is necessary to revisit the Islamic movements within this context as the basis of recruitment and gathering of support for the Muslim Brotherhood. The part of the population not benefiting from the rule of the regime had to secure their lives through other networks. People turned to their families, neighbourhoods, and religious communities to build social networks (Singerman 1997, 133; Starrett 1998, 121– 3). Also, religious networks provided a setting where people would be valued and gain a sense of worth in a society that seemed not to appreciate their skills. This was particularly the case for the lumpen intelligentsia, the educated lower-middle class, who had the education to progress in life but not the opportunity. Faced with bleak prospects for jobs or a decent income, they could get status from the Islamic movements, where they could rise as preachers and protectors of the moral standards of their areas (Ismail 2006b). Also, the networks were channels for the distribution of favours and goods, securing work, helping with funds, health care, day care, and

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even promoting marriage opportunities (Wickham 2002, 153; Singerman 1997). These networks were not unified, but local and scattered all over Egypt with some or no affiliation with more organised national groups. But, as described before, the Muslim Brotherhood had a special status, as they were the only real opposition to the regime and the major Islamic point of entry into political life. This made the Muslim Brotherhood the obvious choice for a person from an Islamic movement with political aspirations either in the trade unions or parliament (Wickham 2002). And the Muslim Brotherhood standing out as a major player in the Islamic movements gave much of the population the idea that the hospitals, clinics, mosques, etc. built by the Islamic movements in general were in fact achievements of the Muslim Brotherhood, even though this was not always the case. Most of the trade unions were neglected when Mubarak ascended to power. The Bar Association was no exception as it had been disbanded by Sadat for criticising the peace with Israel, presenting a challenge to the new generation of the Muslim Brotherhood as they started managing the union. Through work in the trade unions, they succeeded in presenting the influential middle class with an image of the Muslim Brotherhood as dependable, non-corruptible, and effective (Kassem 2004, 112; Hamid 2014, location 25 per cent). This positioned the Muslim Brotherhood on the same side as the population in demanding improvements for their lives, depriving the regime of much of the political capital they otherwise would have received from the distribution of wealth, which normally would have kept the middle class complacent under the regime. Positioned in the trade unions, the Muslim Brotherhood arranged meetings about Egypt’s political situation and mobilised their influence to address social issues, such as helping the victims of the earthquake in 1992 (Zahid 2010, 112–26; Hamid 2014, location 25 per cent). With the Muslim Brotherhood harvesting much of the political capital from the unions in the 1990s, the regime counteracted their influence by enacting laws that in reality allowed them to dictate the election of the leadership of the trade unions (Sullivan and Abed-Kotob 1999, 127). At the same time the Muslim Brotherhood worked hard to ensure employment for young graduates and addressed issues themselves, instead of waiting for people to complain, and this “turned the associations into a showcase for concrete distributional initiatives targeted at the large pool of recent graduates at their base” (Wickham 2002, 191). This re-energising was not unique to

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the Bar Association, as trade unions in general were brought back to their former glory, not just focusing on the members of the individual unions but also attempting to generate a discussion on how the country as a whole could be invigorated (Baker 1997, 124). The Muslim Brotherhood faced difficulties in participating in Egyptian elections for parliament directly because they were an illegal organisation and religious political parties were not permitted to run for parliament. This was circumvented by running for parliament as individuals or through other secular political parties, which then gained TRADE UNIONS

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THE AZHAR BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM

COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH

Figure 2.3 This illustration shows how the Muslim Brotherhood functioned as the opposition to the regime by gathering support from the various local networks of power. Some of these local networks of power would not be connected to the Muslim Brotherhood at all, others would be directly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and others still would not be directly associated with the Muslim Brotherhood but their local leaders would function politically through the organisation. The three boxes inside the pyramid representing the regime are the institutions with a function in the clientelist system, such as the Azhar, the trade unions, etc., that provided grounds for the political struggle between the regime and the opposition. Source: courtesy of the author.

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from the political capital the Muslim Brotherhood enjoyed among the population. This enabled the Muslim Brotherhood to show themselves to be astute politicians who could run for parliament without recourse to politically unsound religious rhetoric. The Muslim Brotherhood, however, not only showed a new Brotherhood through politics, but also introduced a new generation of young, educated, professional politicians sensitive to the needs of the people they represented. The political competence of the Muslim Brotherhood was not only contrasted with the lack of interest in the general population of the regime, but also by the repressive counteractions of the regime against the democratic success of the Brotherhood (Zahid 2010, 97–104). This contrast continuously legitimised the Muslim Brotherhood while delegitimising the regime, both among the population but also among the other political parties, as the Muslim Brotherhood needed to work with and adapt to them to be able to enter politics. The Muslim Brotherhood did, however, also influence the general population on different levels apart from the influence they had in parliament and the trade unions. They had both direct influence and associated influence through their Islamic identity, which they used to legitimise clinics (S. Ibrahim 2002, 60), charities, neighbourhood networks, mosques etc. (Naguib 2009, 114). Many Azharite professors – outside the top leadership – were also members of or strongly influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood, as they lost credibility towards themselves and society if they did not address the discourse of social justice as a religious demand propagated by the Brotherhood. All of this earned the Muslim Brotherhood political capital in a setting where the regime gained a negative reputation on a daily basis through their coercive measures of control. With the obvious religious identity of the Muslim Brotherhood and their stance on social justice, the regime was forced to use these channels for legitimacy as well.

Conclusion The survey of religious institutions and movements and how they have been connected to political and social dynamics has highlighted a pattern in the level of religious and social affiliation in Egypt. In periods where the governing entity has given an enticing vision of the future and has taken steps to implement it, people have depended less on their affiliation to religiously-delimited groups for their general needs. When

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the governing entity has failed to produce a vision that the majority of the population could find hope in, people have turned to their local networks for belonging. The need to belong has consequently been decisive for the societal construct, which underlines the usability of the theory of Honneth described in Chapter 1. But in the periods where people have depended more on the local disparate networks, it has often led to competition between the religiously delimited groups. Because the delimitation in the local networks has been religious, it has led to religiously formulated, competitive dynamics that can best be described using Bourdieu’s theories, also described in Chapter 1. This leads us to the next chapter, where we will look into Muslim– Christian relations and the discrimination taking place against the Christian minority. This takes the shape of religious competition centred on the signifiers of wealth, territory, and people, using the theories of Bourdieu.

CHAPTER 3 THE INTERPRETATION OF MUSLIM—CHRISTIAN INCIDENTS

Before analysing the different approaches to dialogue, it is necessary to describe interreligious incidents, the interpretations of these incidents, and how these interpretations relate to the dynamics of Egyptian society. Describing the incidents gives an idea of what dialogue is up against in Egypt; how emotional patterns and cognitive structures alienate parts of the population from other parts based on religious belonging (see Chapter 1). The focus of this chapter will be on the negative incidents, but this should not be taken to mean that there only were negative incidents between Muslims and Christians in Egypt, as Chapter 4 on dialogue will show. As stated by the 2010 report of the American Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor: “Members of non-Muslim religious minorities officially recognized by the government generally worship without harassment; however, Christians . . . face personal and collective discrimination.”1 This harassment is, however, serious and needs addressing. Furthermore, sectarian issues in Egypt are highly politicised and sensitive and it should be noted, as J. H. Watson (2000, 94) states, that: “Any attempt to explain it is bound to appear partial and must be subject to the vicious polemics that generally characterize the sectarian debate in Egypt, but an attempt must be made.” The problems arising between Muslims and Christians are taboo to many Egyptians

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(Hassan 2003, 3; Ansari 1984, 397), and even though some incidents are addressed by some Egyptian media, there are no official Egyptian statistics or overall documentation on the topic. Indeed, admitting to discrimination in Egypt amounts to something similar to treason against the nation to many (Galal 2009, 140; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 158; Iskander 2012, 101), as when the Azhar in 2010 asked the Pope to deny the existence of any discrimination in Egypt after the Pope had recognised the American Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor report, pinpointing the discrimination taking place in Egypt against religious minorities. The Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reacted by stating “that Washington had no right to assess religious freedoms in the country” and “Al-Azhar considered the report ‘unacceptable interference’ in Egypt’s domestic affairs.” According to the data gathered, Egyptians tend to have rather extreme interpretations of the problems; while some interviewees gave the impression that there were very few or no problems for the Christians in Egypt, others gave the impression that the Christians are generally persecuted. “Persecution” is a word often used by Christians in Egypt regarding the problems they face (Sedra 1999). The word is used as part of the discourse of the Coptic Church as a “Church of Martyrs”. To deny Copts the use of the word would amount to denying them their identity, which is likely to provoke strong sentiments – bearing in mind that not all Copts partake in the discourses produced within the Church. The word has other connotations in the West, as the term is connected to the persecution of the first Christians by the Roman authorities, where the Christians were systematically eliminated by the authorities – and it leads many Europeans to think of the Nazi attempt at eradicating Jews during World War II. This is not the case for Christians in Egypt, who frame the word from their own – to some extent less extreme – historical experience of discrimination that rarely in their history has meant a prolonged and systematic attempt by the authorities to eradicate the Copts from the face of the planet. Furthermore, the term “persecution” of Christians is being used by relatively radical political currents in the West about Middle Eastern Christians to promote an understanding of the Western Muslim minority populations as suspect. As this book is addressed to Western academia, the words used have been chosen accordingly. The word “discrimination” has been preferred over “persecution”.

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Having surveyed a number of conflicts, Thomas H. Eriksen (2001) provides a tentative list of conditions common to identity-based conflicts: competition over scarce resources, visible inequalities (injustice), groups keeping to themselves for more intimate issues such as marriage (kinship as segregation), the presence of negative intergroup comparison, the past being evoked to ground group differences (in this case saints and martyrdom), political rhetoric involving identity rhetoric (of religions in Egypt), a clear distinction on who historically came first to the country, and the actual social complexity of society being reduced to a set of simple contrasts. Scarce resources and both fiscal and psychological needs, such as safety, are a fundamental reason according to many researchers, leading to discrimination and violence. Among the psychological needs, Staub lists: “the need for security, for a positive identity, for effectiveness and control, for connection to other people, and for a meaningful comprehension of reality and of one’s own place in the scheme of things” (Staub 2001, 160), echoing Honneth in Chapter 1. From the background chapter it is obvious that these conditions were met in Egyptian society to varying degrees, suggesting that Egypt was fertile ground for religiously based intergroup conflict and violence. The different kinds of discrimination will be categorised into two types of incidents – “everyday incidents” and “grand events” – to understand how the above two separate (and often contradictory) discourses on the mutual relations between Muslims and Christians could arise within the relatively confined national space of Egypt (one perspective not recognising any problems of discrimination, and another classifying Christians as persecuted).2 This distinction between the two types of incidents has been made according to how present they are in the lives of Christians in Egypt. If most Christians experience them personally as part of their everyday lives or as incidents at one point or another in their own lives or in the lives of those close to them, then they will be categorised as “everyday incidents”. If only a few of the Egyptian Christians experience the incidents themselves in their own lives and they are serious enough to potentially reach the national media, then they will be categorised as “grand events”. This distinction helps to explain how the grand events, although happening to only a few of the members of the Christian community, are felt as a mutual experience for most Egyptian Christians through the consolidation of an identity of

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suffering, based on the common experience of everyday incidents. The distinction between everyday incidents and grand events also explains how this identity of suffering of some 7 per cent of the population can remain relatively hidden to the remaining 93 per cent of the population: everyday incidents happening to most would foster a feeling of belonging to an oppressed minority which in turn would make the entire body of the Church feel affected by the grand events – even though these only happened to a few. With incidents multiplying in Egyptian society they could no longer be ignored and were explained differently by different Muslims and Christians. This was obvious in the discourses of “national unity” and “blame”. While the discourse of “national unity” is central for many of the interviewees in their understanding of themselves as Egyptians, the discourses of “blame” seemed essential for many of the interviewees in addressing the issues of sectarian strife and discrimination with the aim of maintaining the discourse of a nation in communion. These discourses will be addressed after looking into the incidents, because they are fundamental in connecting the actual incidents with the efforts of dialogue, as they potentially encourage reluctance to admit problems and thereby help maintain the status quo, or alternatively as they have the potential to break down negative definitions of religious identity against the religious other by superimposing a feeling of national unity. It has so far been argued that the religious divide in Egyptian society as it exists now has roots reaching back at least to the 1930s and 1940s, when religious groupings began influencing politics as political players in the system of clientelism. Since then, religious discourses have been integrated into the political discourse of a just rule, especially after the failure of Arab socialism and Nasser as an icon of hope in the 1960s. It has furthermore been argued that religious discourse being part of the political discourse has continuously segregated society along religious demarcations, and at times led to sectarian strife – especially in the 1970s (Khawaga 2004b, 144) – and that this reared its head again in the 1990s (Hassan 2003, 116– 17) and recently following the 2011 revolution. It is therefore important to point out before looking into the problems that the issues between Muslims and Christians have been growing, and that technological changes in the media have opened up possibilities for these problems to become public. Earlier the problems were fewer and would often not make it into the public domain. Many of

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the interviewees therefore grew up without being aware of many of these issues (especially the Muslims, who would not be informed through their religious networks), which is also a major factor in shaping their approach to the difficulties, including what can seem like ignorance about the issues. This does not, however, fully explain what seems to be a reluctance to accept the reality of sectarian strife in Egypt, and understanding this reluctance is central to this chapter, as will be evident in its second section.

Everyday Incidents Christians in Egypt experience problems to a degree where it is appropriate to talk about discrimination. The discrimination as part of everyday incidents occurs both on the systemic level and in actions between Christians and Muslims. As these are very different incidents in the lives of the Christians, they will be treated separately as Systemic Discrimination and Personal Discrimination.

Systemic Discrimination Systemic discrimination refers to discrimination that has become part of the system and as such permeates most of society (not to be confused with systematic discrimination). J. Helen Beck, Jeffrey G. Reitz, and Nan Weiner (2002) define it as follows: “[systemic discrimination] built into organizational structures and processes, and often involving informal activities and cultures, is by its nature difficult to identify”. Systemic discrimination contributes to an increasingly clear separation in society between religious or other identities. It should be noted that an act is not necessarily discriminatory by itself, but can become so through context. For example, using the Qur’an as the standard in the teaching of Arabic carries its own justification, and is only problematic if there are tensions in society that make parts of the population feel this as an imposition. If relations are generally good, most will not see single acts as discrimination, but as tensions grow, single acts become expressions of discrimination. There are therefore often two perspectives on acts perceived by some as discriminatory. The focus here will be on public schools and the dominance of the Egyptian soundscape,3 though the systemic discrimination is in no way confined to these.

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Other examples of systemic discrimination are inequality in jobs (Hassan 2003, 170– 1) and the marital laws, where a Muslim man is allowed to marry a Christian woman, but it is illegal for a Christian man to marry a Muslim woman (leaving the obvious gender issues aside, this also shows the importance of religion and family in defining societal groupings. The male defines the religion of the family as a unit, which is one reason why the male has to be Muslim in a mixed marriage). Public schools and the dominance of the Egyptian soundscape have then been chosen partly because they are issues affecting most people in Egypt, but also because the legal inequalities have been adequately covered by others.

Public schools4 As noted in Chapter 2, the official textbooks of Egyptian public schools treat Christians and Christianity with respect whenever Christianity is explicitly addressed – both in the description of Christians and Christianity, but also in questions in exams, where students are expected to describe the role of Christianity in Egyptian history positively. The question on Christianity in a history exam in 2010 was: “Mention the reasons for this historic event: The will among the Egyptians to believe in Christianity.” The answer to the question according to the textbook was: The Egyptians began to believe in this new faith, Christianity – do you know why? They found in it the principles of equality and justice, mercy and tolerance, charity and mysticism in this world, and the desire to ascend to heaven after death; these were the reasons. The content of the teaching of Egyptian Christian history is explicitly stated in the beginning of the fourth chapter: In this lesson we will learn about: . . .

The beginning of Christianity in Egypt and its tolerant principles The role of monasteries in terms of spiritual and cultural superiority The explanation of the word “Copt”

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Respect for other religions Respect for “others” The principle of not inflicting violence on others.

The cases include: . . .

Education for citizenship Human rights National unity.

This pre-Islamic history consisted of 30 pages of the textbooks on Egyptian history in middle school, and the teaching of Christianity was only a part of these, thus making up only a small part of the curriculum, but can only be said to be positive towards Christians. This is likely to have been possible because the description of Christianity focuses on preIslamic times, when, according to some Muslim teachings, Christianity was the best religious option. The positive approach to Christianity must, however, be weighed against the approach to Islam. While Christianity is described positively in history lessons and connected to teachings of tolerance and unity, Islam is imposed on Christians in classes on other topics as the preferable religion. This is apparent in the teaching of the Arabic language, where the Qur’an and sayings of great Muslims in history are used for Arabic language lessons. The manner in which Islam is connected to the Arabic language in the minds of the people preparing the teaching materials is explicitly stated in the introduction of the Arabic language textbook: It [language] is the fate of Man and his world, language is the limits of his world; it is loyalty and belonging, it is a culture and an identity, a country and characteristics; one who loses his language could possibly lose his country and his characteristics. The Arabic language is a poetic musical language and a language with great usability. God made it the language of the Holy Qur’an and described the Qur’an as delivered in excellent Arabic. For unit four, which teaches language through religious texts, the students are asked to:

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Deduce the main ideas of the lesson Recite the verse of the Qur’an correctly Know the importance of cooperation and the relationship with the other5 Write down the duties imposed upon a Muslim.

It becomes obvious that the students, including the Christians, are actually being given a religious lesson, where they are expected to gain intimate knowledge of a religion other than their own and actually learn central parts of it by heart, if they want to pass their language exams. It is furthermore obvious that the people writing the textbooks expect this to influence the “loyalty and belonging” and “culture and identity” of the student. The emphasis when it comes to identity is probably on loyalty to the country (and the regime), more than loyalty to religion. Being able to recite the Qur’an correctly and know the duties of a Muslim is consequently equated with being a good citizen.6 The problem is then that Egypt is explicitly seen as Muslim, leaving the Christian students with a feeling of not belonging to it, or at best being second-class citizens who are “allowed” to stay in the country (Hassan 2003, 174).

The dominance of the Egyptian soundscape Susan J. Smith (1994) laments that there has not been more focus on sound, when geography went from the study of physical landscapes to social landscapes. With the new move into social geography, “Landscape is now to be viewed not as a quantifiable record of the past but rather as a piece of art or a text, to be interrogated for what it tells us about its creators, their world, and ourselves” (Smith 1994). Looking at Egypt and the role of religious sounds in the country, Smith’s claim that “sound is inseparable from social landscape” is validated. Adapted to the setting of Egypt, an exploration of sound as a means of contesting physical areas and central to the building of identity and belonging (Smith 1994, 234) will elaborate on one manifestation of systemic discrimination. Looking into the everyday incidents signified by religious sounds in Egypt the most obvious is the five daily calls to prayer and the weekly Friday sermon. These are often not private events within the confines of mosques, but taking place in public; shops, pavements, and alleyways are used as sites for these religious events. This makes not only the call to

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prayer a public spectacle, but also the prayers themselves and the Friday sermon, which is broadcast through loudspeakers into the streets, where people are gathered for the religious rituals, the sound sanctifying the space for the period of the religious act, making it specifically Muslim. These religious sounds carry vastly different significance depending on who the receiver is. There are Muslims who fully appreciate and support the religious soundscape of Egypt, there are Muslims contesting it, foreigners appreciating it as exotic, and Christians, who vary from not really noticing to feeling alienated from and by the soundscape. Sounds are more than just a medium of communication. They are spatial in the sense that they can create a setting (Smith 1994) where people can feel at home, like guests, or even unwelcome. The call to prayer is a call into the religious community. During the prayers, the familiar rustle of clothes from prostration emanating from yourself and the surrounding people make you part of a community, where you can feel at home. The words of the prayers repeated by you and the people next to you, privately and yet in unity, situates your intimate hopes and dreams in a public setting. This is a community that can transcend not only the individual, but also potentially personal relations, as you can feel familiar to the setting even though the individuals of the community change, as long as the setting is adapted by the motions and sounds. The call to prayer therefore not only adapts some Muslims to their own mosques, but also grounds them in other areas, when they hear the call to prayer. This analysis of religious sounds also echoes the earlier quoted description of poorer areas by Singerman, Ismail, and Wickham, where the disenfranchised could feel empowered, an important member of a community, and at ease in the religious setting – as opposed to nonsanctified streets, where they were fearful because of the police (Ismail 2006b; Singerman 1997; Wickham 2002). Religious Muslim sounds are, however, not appreciated in the same way by all Muslims. Even though most people identifying as “Muslims” in Egypt believe in God, their practices are vastly different. To some, religion is the foundation of their beliefs and morals, but they find it difficult to tolerate the increasingly explicit religious public displays, including the call to prayer, as the volume is continuously increased. In 2003 and 2004 there was a vivid debate in Egyptian newspapers on the call to prayer and the Ministry of Endowment ended up suggesting

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unifying the call to prayer by only using certified callers. Serious efforts to implement this unification took place during Ramadan in 2010. Many protested the increased volume, and argued that they should be able to decide for themselves whether they wanted to pray during the night – without being forcibly awoken by Imams propagating their self-proclaimed authority by turning up the volume. This discussion was explicitly addressed by one of the interviewees, a young female Muslim, who describes herself as conservative: I think the Ministry of Endowment or someone should track and check each caller of prayer, because sometimes the men have tough and really obnoxious voices. When they encounter a not very pleasant caller of prayer, I would rather that they switch this mosque to the unified call of prayer system, and those mosques with soft and pleasant callers, they should leave them alone, I suppose. To many foreigners the call to prayer is part of the exotic (i.e. foreign or unusual) feel of a Middle Eastern country. A personal experience of Egypt as an unfamiliar country mixed with a lack of knowledge about the Christian population of the country can lead to the understanding that the call to prayer, as it is conducted, is “natural” to a country such as Egypt, as it is a Muslim country. Egypt is, however, not simply a Muslim country. It is a Muslim majority country with an indigenous population of Christians – that is if the identity and presence of the Christian minority is to be taken seriously. And the call to prayer, as it is conducted, is something discussed within the country by Muslims and Christians alike. The Christian understanding of the primarily Muslim soundscape of Egypt is diverse. It has not been possible to find any not in some way negatively affected by it. But the generally rather chaotic Egyptian soundscape offers oases where the volume is less pervasive. In these more affluent places Christians of any disposition towards Islam would feel less influenced by the Muslim sounds, and even though they might be within walking distance of the more chaotic areas of Cairo, they might be distanced from this whole chaotic, less affluent setting and not just the Muslim part of it. From this more neutral Christian approach to the dominating Muslim soundscape there is a range of varying opinions; in the worst cases Christians feel like refugees in their own country, as they

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do not feel like citizens of the Muslim soundscape. As will be shown, the reasons for this feeling of alienation are threefold: the difference in religious beliefs and identities (cognitive structures), the penetrating nature of sound combined with the oppressive usage of the sound, and the lack of an alternative Christian soundscape in which the Christians can feel at home in their public lives in Egypt. The basic reason for Christians to feel alienated from the Muslim soundscape is clearly that they are not Muslims, and as such are unable to fully participate in the world created by the Muslim sounds. This is not only an aesthetic loss; the communities constructed within the confines of the religious soundscape are the communities within which the poorer parts of the population sustain their lives, as has been elaborated earlier when discussing the clientelist system in Chapter 2. This separation of communities was even more obvious in the cases where the sounds carried a message of Muslim superiority over the Christian faith. Just as sounds make some people feel at home, it can make others feel like outsiders. Of equal importance is that sound by nature is less constrained by boundaries than other media. Christians could close their doors to Muslim slogans on banners and houses and turn off TV programmes showcasing Muslim preachers, but they were unable to block out the penetrating sounds of the call to prayer. This was also an issue for their Muslim compatrotes debating the issue of an oppressive religious soundscape in the newspapers. This particularly Muslim soundscape was then also forced upon Christians within the confines of their homes, an issue to which not all Egyptian Muslims were blind. Both foreign Catholic and local Coptic clergy explained that wherever they erected religious buildings, they would shortly thereafter find mosques surrounding them with their loudspeakers directed towards their buildings. This was especially stressful for Catholic clergy living in religious buildings, since they found it impossible to sleep for extended periods during the night. One of the theoretical points of this book, as was elaborated in Chapter 1, is that religion can be a signifier of identity in line with – for example – race. Off the record, some Christians spoke very negatively about the soundscape of some areas in Egypt, and one got the feeling that it was comparable to loudspeakers propagating white supremacy in a Western city. With loudspeakers directed towards religious Christian buildings, even these specifically Christian places of

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worship would often be dominated by the Muslim soundscape (Hassan 2003, 210). What made the soundscape of Egypt feel alienating to some Christians was also that traditional Christian soundscapes could actually be found in more remote places of Egypt. These Christian displays of sound were often gathering points for Christians from all over Egypt, such as in January 2005 in a village in Upper Egypt where they held the annual Christian mulı¯d (mawlid in classical Arabic: popular religious festival). The day started with throngs of people being transported across the Nile River on the local ferry, working overtime and loaded to the brim with cheerful Christians; dignitaries, including several bishops, were transported on a sail boat. When all were finally ferried across, the festivities started with a procession through the village until the dignitaries, including local Muslim and Christian authorities – a manifestation of what will be described as official dialogue in Chapter 4 – were placed on a podium facing a crowd of thousands of people. A series of floats with local school children paraded in front of the platform, depicting historical situations such as the journey of the Holy Family in Egypt, the Pharaonic period, and even Santa Claus (but not depicting anything Egyptian from the Muslim takeover of the country onwards). The soundscape of the place was clearly Christian in the spectacle of the mulı¯d, and this Christian soundscape was eased back into everyday life the next morning, when the village was awoken rather abruptly by a chorus of church bells greeting the day. This Christian soundscape was as dominating and intrusive as any Muslim soundscape in Cairo. Christians from all over Egypt took part in this mulı¯d. When asked why, they did not explain their participation by referring to the quality of the mulı¯d itself, but by stating that they were not allowed mulı¯ds in their own villages because the authorities feared that riots would erupt as a result. Furthermore, churches were not allowed to ring their bells, even though many of them were equipped with them, if they had a mosque situated within a certain distance (which was consistently the case, except in villages such as this one in Upper Egypt, which was 100 per cent Christian, and areas of historical importance, as church bells can be heard in the Mar Girgis area of Cairo). There was a very obvious and familiar Christian soundscape, and some Christians were willing to travel to experience it, but this was not permitted in a city such as Cairo,

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which also added to Christians feeling like refugees in their own country, being religiously confined either to their churches (which were surrounded by mosques) or remote villages for participation in a soundscape to which they could feel connected.7 A number of points have been made clear through these two examples of systemic discrimination in Egypt: (i) that discriminatory practices are taking place at a systemic level; (ii) that some discriminatory practices are not necessarily discriminatory in all settings, but become so in situations where tensions have arisen;8 (iii) consequently, that systemic discrimination is primarily visible to the Christian minority; (iv) that some discriminatory elements of institutions (such as the institution of Arabic language lessons in Egypt or the prayers) are primarily instituted as part of the political game between the regime and the opposition. In both these cases the institutions were heavily coloured by Islam being part of the governance of the country; in the case of school textbooks, the regime used them to propagate its rule and the appropriate behaviour of citizens under the regime, as something decreed by God. In the case of the mosques and some people imposing their Islamic soundscape on others, this was primarily instituted by some people’s need to find a space where they would feel empowered (Ismail 2006b; Singerman 1997; Wickham 2002), as general society did not provide them any feeling of worth. Secondarily – and sometimes in practice also deliberately – these practices became the reason why some Christians did not feel like citizens of their own country and secure in their own areas.

Personal Discrimination While the above-described systemic discrimination was enacted through individuals from the religious majority, it was not necessarily a conscious act by individuals. There is a grey area between systemic discrimination and clearly conscious discrimination.9 This is also because discrimination can be very subtle, as is the case when people do not directly discriminate against people from an outgroup, but instead favour people from their own community – discrimination is then found in the absence of positive sentiments towards outgroups, rather than in direct discrimination (Brewer 2001, 23). Some examples of conscious discrimination are Christian children being isolated in schools, some

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getting beaten up by their fellow Muslim students, priests being spat at, and some Christians claiming that their bribes need to be higher than those of Muslims when trying to obtain something through the public system, or that they are turned away because of their religion when addressing people holding official positions. The example of personal discrimination addressed here concerns the friendship between a Muslim and a Christian woman, and has been chosen because it highlights the segregation of Egyptian society along religious lines (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 149). The starting point of the example is positive, depicting the friendship between the two women who live in the lower middle class area of Ain Shams, Shereen and Dahlia (both pseudonyms). The positive part of the example represents an oftreproduced stereotype about Muslim–Christian relations in Egypt, while it also gives an example of how these friendships can no longer be taken for granted. The incident has furthermore been chosen because it shows that the move towards segregation comes from Muslims and Christians alike. The story was related by a third person, a young Muslim woman, and has been quoted at length to give a proper feel of the narrative: Shereen is an open-minded woman. She does wear a scarf, but that is not because she is narrow-minded. It is because her husband is jealous . . . She moved to the area when she married her husband and doesn’t really like the people there too much. They meddle in her business, and she really dislikes that. She does, however, like her neighbour. They think alike, and even look alike, so they get along very well. And since Dahlia thinks the same of the neighbours as Shereen, they stick together. They both have young kids and are a great comfort to each other in everyday life. When one has to go shopping or something like that, the kids go and play at the other’s, and they end up spending a lot of time together: so much so that the first name spoken by Shereen’s daughter was “Dahlia” . . . One day when Shereen is hanging her laundry on the balcony, her neighbour calls her from the opposing balcony. She is an old Muslim lady and speaks with a sweet voice to ingratiate herself: “I see that you are spending a lot of time with this Christian woman”. She goes on about the Christian woman being bad company for young impressionable minds such as those of her

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daughters, and how she should spend more time with Muslims, because this Christian woman might teach her about Christianity and Christian foods.10 When the old lady starts speaking about how the actions of Shereen are against Islam, it is too much, and Shereen blurts out that if the old lady was a true Muslim, she would deal with Christians exactly as she does, because this is the true path of Islam. The old woman is shocked and even more so when she is told to stay away from business that has no relation to her. Shortly after, Dahlia is addressed by a Christian woman living in a building nearby, owned by Christians. “Why do you spend so much time with this Muslim woman? Leave your kid with us when you go out; don’t trust these Muslims”. Dahlia is a very strong woman who does not shy away from confrontation. She straightforwardly tells the woman that she doesn’t know them [the Christian people living close by], but trusts her neighbour [Shereen], who deals with her kid in a good way and is a good person. Many points echoing the general impression from the other interviews can be drawn from this story. Some of the points have been drawn from the story as well as other interviews: (1) Some people with good relations to people from the other religion have to break with people from their own religion in order to be able to keep up the relationship (R. M. Scott 2010, 105). There is a forced choosing of sides, which shows the very real segregation in society. Once this segregation is in place it enforces the effects of social comparison, depersonalising people from the outgroup, resulting in what Brewer terms “universal stereotypes”: “Whereas ‘we’ are trustworthy, peaceful, moral, loyal, and reliable, ‘they’ are clannish, exclusive, and potentially treacherous” (Brewer 2001, 30). (2) A discriminatory attitude was present in Egypt in 2010. What is especially interesting in this example is how emotions are highlighted as a tool for the negative view of the outgroup. Brewer puts it succinctly: negative affect becomes associated with intergroup differences and, through a process of misattribution of arousal,

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intergroup anxiety is transformed into more virulent intergroup emotions of fear, hatred, or disgust. It is this emotional component that is postulated here to be the critical ingredient that turns intergroup comparison into intergroup antagonism . . . The emotions of contempt and disgust are associated with avoidance rather than attack, so intergroup peace may be maintained through segregation and mutual avoidance. (Brewer 2001, 32) Hatred and disgust are strong words that were only rarely reflected in the interviews, but most of the people interviewed were among the least aggressive parts of society. Many of the interviewees could, however, refer to these problems in some parts of the society. Muslim interviewees confirmed that Christians supposedly smelled weird or pungent according to many Muslims. (3) Personal relationships between people (or the formation of a community along demarcations other than the religious) can break down discrimination, but these personal relationships were interpreted differently in different interviews, ranging from genuine, to genuine but rare, to false. When one of the interviewees, a young Muslim, felt that her personal relationships with Christians include genuine friendships, no different from her friendships with Muslims, she was in line with all of the Muslims interviewed who were specifically asked this question. This was also the case for some of the Christians, such as a young female dialogue participant, but while a Coptic intellectual working for a secular state did have a number of genuine Muslim friends, he believed this to be a relatively rare feature among Christians. At the most negative end of the interpretations of friendships, we find a Coptic priest with a bleak view of Islam and Muslims. He divided Muslims into five different categories according to how far he believed different kinds of Muslims can be trusted: (i) The fundamentalists (or extremists / terrorists). These will have nothing to do with Christians. (ii) The utilitarians. They will momentarily deal with Christians, but only if it benefits them, and they still in their hearts hate Christians. Most Muslims belong to this category according to the Coptic priest. (iii) The employees. They have long-term dealings

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with Christians, but only for pay. Money makes them set their religion aside. (iv) The helpful Muslims. They will help anyone in need – Muslim or Christian – without demanding money in return. This is, however, often done with the ulterior motive of converting people to Islam. (v) The friends. There are Muslims who are genuine friends and can be trusted as such, but they are either secretly or have not yet realised that they are in truth Christians. (4) Discrimination works gradually from person to person to break the trust between people. As pointed out, the deteriorating relations between Muslims and Christians in Egypt is a historical process (Hulsman 2013a, 27). (5) Both Muslims and Christians contribute to the discrimination, but it has greater impact when coming from the Muslim majority, because the systemic discrimination and grand events against Christians exacerbate the experience of this type of discrimination. It is furthermore inflated by Christians often feeling that they are unable to respond to discrimination, as this might have severe consequences, leaving the Christian minority primarily with a passive–aggressive strategy of secluding themselves and feeling like victims. It should again be underlined that it was not only through incidents directly aimed at Christians that Christians felt excluded from Egyptian society. As Islam was increasingly used to legitimise specific political stances or societal belongings, this religious legitimation of politics also influenced the more affluent parts of society. This part of society led secure lives and often had little interest in showing its Islamic orthodoxy through political action. Adopting Islamic legitimation of their lives, they applied it to their consumption. In time people would buy Islamic elevators reciting the Qur’an, Muslim fridges, or Islamic nail polish, highlighting themselves as good believers through their consumption (Abdelrahman 2004). This growing trend in society was a constant reminder to Christians that they did not belong to the same extent as the majority group of believers, and alienated Christians from their compatriots.

Grand Events “Grand events” is the term used to describe major incidents that happen only to a small proportion of Christians. Among many Muslims and

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Christians these events are seen as something occurring far away, often in the countryside, even though they have taken place in both Cairo and downtown Alexandria. When confronted with this reality, they still framed it as distant by placing it in the suburbs or somewhere in Alexandria. The incidents seem to be an embarrassing part of their reality (a reality they would rather do without, but have to admit to as part of life in Egypt), but not on a personal level. Only one of the interviewees admitted to having taken part in some of these more violent incidents as an aggressor, but it was in his past and he refused to elaborate on it. There were, however, enough people in Egypt who would instigate the incidents, even though only making up a smaller part of the population, and enough who would stand aside, for the incidents to take place. Grand events are severe in their effects, and range from robbery, destruction of property because of property claims, destruction of property because of perceived offence, to killing.11 Most of these can be organised around a discourse of “religious dominance”, where the partakers of the discourse justify their actions through different “signifiers of strife”. The identified signifiers are fiscal dominance, church building, and conversion, or wealth, territory, and people. Apart from these three, which promote the sense of two communities in conflict, there are also other signifiers, which will be treated under “other provocations”.

Signifiers of Strife: Wealth, Territory, and People Fiscal dominance, church building and conversion (or wealth, territory, and people) were the three central signifiers of strife in Egypt – church building and conversion dominating the field (Iskander 2012, 19). They each in their own way represented social dominance, and what seemed to be a continuous battle was fought between some groups of Muslims and Christians to wrest dominance from the other. This became a very real part of politics, as politics was based on clientelism entangled with religion. With the church institution representing the Christians of the country, negotiations between the president and the Pope through pork-barrel solutions (see Chapter 2) not only promoted the wellbeing of Christians, but also enabled the Christian religion to maintain physical space in society (through the permission to build and repair churches, even though this was often

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not possible to implement). The Christian presence in Egyptian society was not only manifest in these negative events, but it was also present in the negotiation of and cooperation within the shared social space, heavily influencing how the concept of dialogue was construed, as will be made clear in Chapter 4. Bourdieu provides an excellent tool to analyse social contestation between groups (see Chapter 1). Of particular interest to this book is how the religious field was imbued with societal values (wealth, territory, and people) in the contestation of the value (or social status) of religious groups. For Bourdieu, social value is not predetermined but dependent on the specific field and how this is constructed through the relationality of the relevant social groups. The theory is that everything with value can be translated into symbolic value, an exchange value, making it potentially valuable to other fields as well – as far as the field allows. In this sense, religion or economics do not have any innate social value – but the value is determined by how the specific field is structured, whether intertwining or separating these elements. When talking about religion it can therefore also be relevant to address values traditionally seen as separate from religion. Between opposing groups in society the capital or status of the other group is likely to be perceived as a threat, whether this societal capital is religious or fiscal. Consequently, what is being perceived as a religious threat can be addressed as a fiscal issue and vice versa, as the value of a religiously defined group can be elevated by, for example, finances. These religious and fiscal capitals are then easily translatable between each other, but also easily translatable into political capital. It is clearly a concern for one young Muslim interviewee that the silent majority of Muslims and Christians are being pushed by fear, so that: “You hear Christians talking and saying: ‘Don’t buy from this guy, he is a Muslim. Just buy from the Christians so that we strengthen ourselves.’”12 It should be obvious from Chapter 1 that Tajfel’s concept of social comparison is close to Bourdieu’s idea of social value. Thierry Devos et al., however, add to the understanding of why violence occurs by addressing intergroup emotions; violence often occurs when an outgroup is perceived to have some illegitimate advantages that are hurting the interests of the community, leading to a feeling of threat. They distinguish between different threats: “realistic threats are related to issues of political power, economic resources, and the physical or

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material well-being of the ingroup; whereas symbolic threats concern group differences in morals, values, beliefs, or attitudes” (Devos et al. 2003, 114). Furthermore, Jim Sidanius et al. (2004) rightly argue with social dominance theory that theories such as social identity theory focus on the psychological aspects of social violence to the point of reductionism. They argue that we need a more holistic view of society to understand the factors pushing people to violence or discrimination. They find a major cause of violence in the way most people structure society into hierarchies, thereby favouring some parts of society while others are expected to take on less attractive duties and destinies. The system as such then legitimises some groups oppressing other groups. Sidenius et al. proceed to argue that these structural influences on intergroup behaviour have to be analysed in an interdisciplinary manner involving the specific history and societal organisation, and taking into account the individual and group psychological perspectives in play. Within the scope of this book, Sidenius et al.’s criticism of social identity theory has been taken seriously, though without utilising Sidenius et al.’s concept of structural influences. Going through the incidents between Muslims and Christians and focusing on the core issues behind the violence, a pattern emerges that indicates how the religious field was constructed by the people dominating the more aggressive Muslims and Christians – the Christians primarily being passive-aggressive.

Fiscal dominance: wealth When interviewed, a practising lawyer and member of the Muslim Brotherhood related a case to describe how Islam was being distorted into its own opposite because of current events. This story explains how ethics can be put aside by criminals and how a sense of integrity can be maintained during times of clashes between groups, and underlines the idea of religious and fiscal interests being intertwined in interaction between communities. Some poor people robbed a Christian jewellery [shop], and I was defending them [in court] because I consider them victims of society. When I asked them about their motive for the robbery, he

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said “[we did it] for the triumph of Islam”. So I asked him how Islam would triumph from him robbing a jewellery shop . . . He said that the money was legitimate for them, and that their actions were ordered by the Holy Qur’an to fight the Christians, and that the money were spoils of war. He quoted a lot of different verses about war from the Qur’an. I told him that those verses are only used during times of war against Christians and Jews . . . so every piece of scripture is to be understood according to its context . . . He wanted to establish that his actions were justified by faith, so he did not have to face the fact that he was poor and a robber. The story related by the lawyer illustrates the rationale that “a thief is a person stealing [from our people]” and “a hero is a person depriving the enemy [i.e. people from outgroups] of their means” (Ansari 1984, 415). This is a rationale that can be used when two groups of people have been distanced enough and dichotomised in their identities to a degree where the success of the other group is a threat to one’s own people – depriving the other of success can then be seen as an assurance of one’s own security. Once this rationale is in place and the other group of people are alienated enough, criminal acts are acts of war and justified. It seems that to some of the Egyptian population, this is the case. This is also what the lawyer seemed to overlook in his interpretation of the incident; that this robber believed himself to be in a situation similar to the one in the Qur’an, and that he felt he could justify his actions by drawing on the verses of the Qur’an justifying acts of war.

Church building: territory The construction of religious buildings required a permit in Egypt, but while this was relatively easily obtained by Muslims, it could take years or be postponed indefinitely for Christians. Since building owners could be granted a tax exemption if the building housed a mosque (Hassan 2003, 210), many took advantage of this system and private mosques mushroomed all over Cairo, the mosques sometimes consisting of as little as a few chairs, carpets, and loudspeakers. The physical presence of Islam was thus continuously – and especially during prayers – very visible; streets were crowded with religious places and worshippers often blocking pavements and alleys.

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Christians on the other hand were not allowed public displays of worship and their services were confined to religious places (Hulsman 2013a, 84). They were restricted in building churches, not so much in the wording but in the application of the law, as the officials implementing the laws often stalled the building of churches approved by the regime. Christians needed permits to build and maintain churches, leaving many of the buildings in a deteriorating state.13 When church building was allowed it had to be carried out in consideration of the surrounding Muslims: an examination of the distance between the proposed site and surrounding mosques, the distance to the nearest church of the same denomination and the number of Christians in the area [is needed]. The objections of local Muslim residents and businesses are also expected to be taken into consideration. (McCallum 2008, 72) While it is normal in most places of the world to consider the surroundings when erecting a building, what is taken into consideration varies greatly, and this is left open to interpretation in Egyptian law. Christians were in fact allowed public religious displays by law, but they were refused these as local authorities feared that this would lead to disorder and attacks from Muslims, unless they took place in specifically Christian areas as in some villages (an example was provided earlier) or Garbage City in Cairo. But religious buildings were not only places of worship; they were also symbolic manifestations of the religions and their influence and dominance in the country. Controversies about the building of churches can be likened to the controversies around conversion, as there seemed to be a very physical understanding of religion in some parts of Egyptian society. The believers themselves were manifestations of their religions, but so were the religious buildings, and the contest of religious superiority was fought not only over the souls of the people, but also the soul of the physical landscape. This could be seen in the cities, where mosques would crowd around churches (Hassan 2003, 210), but it was especially obvious in a newly-established Coptic centre of retreat situated in a remote location in the recently-irrigated desert close to the Nile Delta. Shortly after this retreat centre was established five mosques were built around it, even though there were very few people living in

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the area. The five calls to prayer a day were consequently very intrusive in this remote desert location, which was the aim of erecting the mosques according to the residents of the retreat centre. Christians would, however, build religious spaces, either after obtaining a permit from the state or more secretly in their houses. When secretly in their houses it would often be places for prayer in areas where there are no churches for Christians in an attempt to force the authorities to recognise the buildings, as it would be difficult for the authorities to tear down a religious building once erected (McCallum 2008, 73). However this was done, it was likely to provoke a reaction from parts of the surrounding Muslim population, and at times would lead to rioting, the torching of houses, and even killings. One example of rioting happened in 2008, when hundreds of Muslims attacked an unlicensed Coptic Church in a renovated factory in Ain Shams, resulting in injuries among Muslims and the police. The police arrested five Muslims and three Copts, but all were released without charges (US Department of State 2009). Other incidents lead to deaths, as was the case during a dispute over ownership of land at the Abu Fana monastery in 2008, when a number of monks were kidnapped, physically abused and allegedly submitted to attempts at forced conversion. One Muslim man was killed, several monks were injured, and property was destroyed. According to some human rights advocates a pattern is arising of governmental authorities detaining Copts following sectarian attacks and threatening false charges to blackmail Coptic authorities into desisting from demanding criminal prosecution of the perpetrators (US Department of State 2010).

Conversion: people If nations have citizens, religions have believers or followers. As has been described above, the success of a religion is translatable into economic capital and dominance over territory, but a marked signifier of success for a religion is the sway it holds over people, which is most easily recognised in quantitative terms (Hulsman 2013a, 80). A young Christian interviewee described how conversion was a major topic when discussing Muslim –Christian relations, building up fear of and distance from the other religion (McCallum 2008, 74). An Anglican cleric elaborated on the topic: “People cannot accept that it [the choice of religion] is a personal matter. Christians believe that converting to Islam

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brings shame to their family and their church. It is the same the other way around”. Of special interest is the interview with a professor in the religious department at the Azhar and a Muslim Brotherhood member, who was preoccupied by the conversion of Christians, not just in Egypt but all over the world. He had a homepage where he collected data about conversions taking place in different parts of the world and could even point out how many had converted to Islam in Denmark (the, to many Egyptians, unknown country of the author of this book).14 If thinking in terms of superiorities, the superiority of a religion or any other kind of belief hinges on its superior access to truth. In so far as people are meant to have access to this truth, it is a logical problem that some people do not choose to belong to the religion. This was explicit in the interview with the Azharite professor as well: The real Christians are the ones who believed in Jesus Christ and followed his creed up until the arrival of the Prophet Mohamed (PBUH). After this he lives and believes as a Christian and then converts to Islam. This is the real Christian. We Muslims believe in Jesus Christ and Christianity. We believe that Jesus was a prophet with a message from God like we believe with Prophet Mohamed (PBUH). But it is imperative that a real Christian will convert to Islam. To justify the lack of conversion, it becomes important to show how conversion is restricted. The following story related by the Azharite professor illustrates this point very well. When I was a member of the People’s Assembly I was called to a police station . . . I went there and found a priest, a young man, the chief of police, and the deputy chief of police. The chief told me that the young man wanted to convert to Islam, and said “I would like you to tell me if it is a real or false conversion.” I began speaking with the young man, and found him very acquainted with both Christianity and Islam. He did not want to convert because of a woman or because of money, but because of real faith. Then the police chief asked me to sign the papers allowing the young man to convert, and after this I went to say goodbye. After I

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had greeted them, the priest took the young man into his arms and held him very tight – and blessed his conversion to be a Muslim. He said, “Praise be to you, my son. I converted to Islam before you.” Of course I was amazed to hear this coming from a priest, and asked him, “Why don’t you take off this uniform of a priest?” He said, “I would be killed, if I declared my conversion to Islam.” He told me to come visit him at the church. A story such as this highlights the superiority of one’s religion by producing “evidence” that good Christians in reality would be Muslims if possible, and explains why there are people who are not Muslims (Griffith 2010, 78). Stories of forceful behaviour against converts from the opposite religion abound both among Muslims and Christians, and are used to explain how their religion is the one true religion, even though not all people follow this religion. Conversion potentially ignites riots and violence in Egypt involving not only the people directly implicated, but sometimes hundreds and thousands of other people. This is especially the case when stories of the abduction or rape of women followed by forceful conversion are involved. These stories about women being taken against their will are used not only by believers to justify conversions from their own religion, but also by the regime to explain why sectarian strife happens (blaming tribal mentality and blood feuds) as was the case of Naga Hammadi in January 2010 (described in more detail later). These claims of abduction and rape are, however, often unfounded, but used to cover up cases where women convert to Islam to obtain a divorce denied them by the Coptic Church, according to Arab West Report, or cases where young people fall in love and/or have sex despite belonging to different religions, according to a Muslim interviewee. It is not possible, based on the accessible material, to give an adequately supported assessment of whether these alleged incidents of rape and abduction happen more to Christians than Muslims, but as the Christians are in a vulnerable position they are likely to experience more incidents than their Muslim majority counterparts.

Other provocations All of the above three categories of signifiers of strife can be perceived as provocations. Some of the Muslim interviewees felt that Christians had

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no real need for their places of worship; they only built their churches to promote themselves, causing strife as a result. Many Christians felt that they were being overwhelmed by the numbers of mosques surrounding churches. Conversion and the difficulties imposed on converts by families and general society were seen as provocative and inflammatory. Apart from these signifiers there were, however, also incidents not immediately connected to the notion of territory, people, or wealth. These incidents arose from growing tensions among Muslims and Christians, leading to the provocations – but also to more and more people interpreting various incidents and events as provocations, potentially mobilising thousands of people. An example of this were the riots in Alexandria in October 2005, when Muslims protested a theatrical performance originally put on in a minor church, but later distributed on DVD. This inflamed a crowd of between one and three thousand people to gather outside the church. After a while, following threats towards the church, security forces dispersed the crowd using tear gas. Three Muslim protesters died in the violence, but no one was brought to trial (US Department of State 2006). In this case, news of a play performed in a small church and recorded privately had reached the public, eventually leading to riots (McCallum 2008, 77). It is not known exactly how insulting the play was – and if it actually was blasphemous – but either way, in a society without this level of tension, a majority population would be less likely to react to something that does not have direct impact on their lives – as was the case among other Muslims in Egypt partaking in other social groups and consequently also in other interpretational fields, determining their actions.

The Consolidation of an Identity of Suffering: Christian Solidarity As has been demonstrated, most Christians in Egypt had felt some level of discrimination at some stage or other in their lives. Most Christians could, if so inclined, have related stories about one or more of the abovelisted everyday incidents. Discrimination took place on several levels, through the educational system, the dominant Muslim religious manifestations, and on a personal level, where people felt they were subject to suspicions because of their different faith. This led many

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Christians to isolate themselves in what a Muslim interviewee called a “mental ghetto”, with their primary social setting connected to the church (R. M. Scott 2010, 71). This setting helped to secure not only their spiritual needs and a feeling of security and belonging in an alienating world, but also functioned, especially for poorer people, as the setting in which they could secure their lives, find jobs, and get married as described in Chapter 2.15 Furthermore, the Coptic Community had their belonging to the church community strengthened by Coptic newspapers delivering personal news (Iskander 2012, 31) and through transnational internet communication (Iskander 2012, 50). This brought Christians together in a feeling of belonging to a family stretching over the entire country, and whenever something more spectacular happened – such as grand events – Christians would feel that it happened to them, as they all felt like limbs of one spiritual body manifest in the institution of the church (Turner 2010b, 219). Many Christians consequently felt that they were being persecuted (Sedra 1999, 221). A young Coptic woman commented on how her church community in Cairo reacted to the incident in Naga Hammadi in 2010, when a number of people were gunned down upon leaving the Christmas celebrations in their church: In my church people were very upset; they didn’t even go out during the feast. Personally, I felt it could have happened to my sisters or my friends; it was just because we were not there. It happened because they were Christians, nothing else . . . People from my family who didn’t really care about the Church weren’t really affected. They just wanted to go out [and celebrate the holidays] because it was all the way over there [Naga Hammadi is relatively far from Cairo]. One of the Muslim interviewees believed that the constant feeling of alienation towards their Muslims friends and general society was significant to Egyptian Christians: “This fear is uncomfortable: the feeling that people constantly have negative ideas about you [the Christians], and that this can come out in [casual settings such as] a wedding”. This sense of unity was not just some imaginary notion of individuals, but something that had taken root in the body of the church through a feeling of solidarity, consolidating a community of interpretation (see Chapter 1). Whenever grand events took place, the tragedy of the

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incident would be disseminated through the network of the church and made real to all its members. Following the Naga Hammadi incident in 2010 priests and bishops from different parts of the country travelled to the village to show their solidarity (when the area was no longer closed down by the police), and returned to their own churches with a firsthand narrative of the incident. Demonstrations against the regime and the perpetrators ensued to protest the incident and the regime’s handling of it. The Pope ordered an extraordinary period of fasting and prayers for all of the Copts to commemorate the victims, and this order was spread not only through official channels, but also by young people texting on their mobile phones. In this sense the church served to bind its members tightly together, and nothing of this magnitude would happen in one part of the church without sending a shockwave through the entire church, substantially affecting the lives of Christians. While this gave a feeling of solidarity and safety it also induced fear in many Christians, who would not otherwise have felt the effect of the grand events, these events being remote from their lives. Importantly, it also consolidated the rule of the church authorities as they became the guardians of their flock, negotiating with the regime, which is the basis for much of the dialogue described in Chapter 4. The feeling of being part of the Coptic community was then nurtured by action for and with other members of the church, echoing Tajfel and Turner’s point that action within a group roots people in a setting (Tajfel and Turner 2010, 174; Tajfel 2010c, 104), which also explains why the family of the young Christian woman just quoted, who did not go to church, felt less affected by the Naga Hammadi incident. This is consistent with the findings of Yzerbyt et al.: Because human beings are fundamentally inclined to merge the characteristics of their self with those of the members of their group, they appraise the situations confronted by those people, experience feelings on their behalf, and manifest behavioural tendencies just as if they themselves were going through the episode . . . people’s reactions in an intergroup context can only rarely be traced back to events that they experienced for themselves. (Yzerbyt et al. 2003, 85) The findings of Yzerbyt et al. therefore not only suggest that parts of the Coptic Church were consolidated as a community (i.e. they had a high

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level of identification as Coptic Christians, according to Yzerbyt et al.’s vocabulary) in contrast to the rest of the society, but also indicate that Coptic Christians were not a fully homogeneous group on this point, as only some of these reacted strongly as members of the Coptic community (i.e. some identified less as Coptic Christians and presumably were more open to other identities found in Egyptian society such as the national identity) when incidents happened to members in other parts of the church. These incidents were often not met with a progressive and active urge to change things, as there was little hope that things could change, leading to a passive-aggressive attitude, not unlike the approach of many other minority groups. An illuminating description of a group in similar circumstances can be found in the psychological profile of the Muslim minority in India by Kakar: Their diatribes were often mechanical, lacking energy and that fire in the belly that leaves some hope for the transformation of various states of withdrawal into an active advocacy on one’s own behalf. One of the main refrains was that since the hukumat – used in the sense of rule, political authority, regime – was now of the Hindus, discrimination towards the Muslims was to be expected. (Kakar 1996, 128– 9) This identity of suffering was, however, not only fuelled by contemporary events and institutions, but also by the retelling of the past through stories about saintly heroes. Two of these narratives were especially present in Egypt in 2010: one about Saint Simon the Shoemaker legitimising the presence of Christians in Egypt, the other about Saint Girges (or George) showing a true Christian stance in the face of persecution. The importance of these accounts should not be underestimated. They were often the medium through which Christians would communicate and thereby build a specific understanding of their present situation and lives (Galal 2009, 202; Bingham-Kolenkow 1997). The situation of Christians was discursively settled in emotional patterns and cognitive structures determining the attitude towards the rest of society (see Chapter 1); faced with continuous alienation from the growing public expression of religion, Christians internally verified their position in society, for example through the story of Saint Simon the Shoemaker and other stories about saints.

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The story of Saint Simon the Shoemaker was commemorated annually in November through a three-day fast. All of the quotations used here have been taken from a publication telling the story of Saint Simon by a church dedicated to Saint Simon (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner 1994).16 Even though the wording of the story is quite modern, it is set in the tenth century. The story is likely to have been retold through the centuries, and the particular phrasing of the story is clearly debating contemporary issues. This story will be paraphrased to give a sense of this kind of narrative, closely following the phrasing of the book. In the beginning of the book the reader is assured that whatever tribulations he or she might be facing, they are from God and they hold meaning. Good will prevail in the end, which is why the reader should patiently give praise to God.17 The times during which the miracle of Saint Simon took place were described as turbulent, and: the feeling of security [was plucked] from the hearts of the Copts and made them take refuge with God as their only protection in such events. Some extremists had risen against the government and against the Copts, and announced their independence, while some of them plundered the homes of the Christians and took their women and daughters as booty. Chaos reigned in that city until some Copts . . . were able to contact the government and stop these insurrections. No doubt that these incidents had a great effect on the souls of the believers, for in calamities hearts are turned towards God and the people’s commitment towards God and the people’s commitment to the church increases. (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 18– 19) This is quoted extensively because it reflects the feelings of many Copts about present times. This story of the saint offers not only refuge in the belief of miracle workers, but also talks about how present times can be interpreted without having to address the issues directly and risk the interference of the authorities or riots from compatriot Muslims. The solution is clearly to seek refuge with God in the shape of the Coptic Orthodox Church, which has been tested through persecutions through the ages, and to allow the church to negotiate with the authorities. The hardships experienced by the Copts in contemporary times become a

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link in a chain stretching back through the ages, reassuring the presentday Christians that they will prevail. According to the story, the Caliph at the time of Saint Simon in AD 979 was fond of theological debates, with theologians of different faiths pitted against each other to show the truth of their own religion and the inadequacy of the other religion. One day he had ordered a debate between a Jew who hated Christians and the Pope, who deftly outmanoeuvred the Jew and humiliated him.18 The Jew could not respond, but instead he designed a malicious plot to take revenge and destroy the Copts altogether. When reading through the Bible he happened upon Matthew 17:20, stating that a Christian with faith the size of a mustard seed would be able to move mountains. This he related to the Caliph, who saw an opportunity to either get rid of Muqattam Mountain, which was too close to the castle, or get rid of the Christians once and for all; if the Christians were unable to move the mountain, they would not have any true faith according to their own scripture. The Pope was distraught and called for a fast to clear the minds of the Christians. During the fast the Pope had a vision of the Virgin Mary, who told him to go and find Saint Simon as the miracle would take place through him. Just before the miracle took place the Christians crowded together in front of the mountain praising God, with the Caliph and other Muslims watching. After the prayers they kept silent, and behold a great earthquake swept over the mountain, and at each worship the mountain was thrust down, and every time they stood up the mountain would rise up and the sun would be seen from under it... When the miracle took place, the caliph Al-Mu’iz panicked and feared, together with all the multitudes that gathered with him... When things calmed down once more, he said to the Pope, You have proven that your faith is a true one. (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 56 – 7) In the story the Christians are the triumphant victors, in stark contrast to their everyday lives. As Tajfel points out (see Chapter 1): “if it is impossible to leave a group which does not contribute positively to the social identity, then the attributes of the group will . . . be reinterpreted

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to make it acceptable or justified” (Tajfel 2010f, 121). After the story of the miracle, there is a poem written by the Coptic Pope in office in 2010, Pope Shenouda: The gates of Hell shall not prevail against you, So rest assured and relax, for the One crucified is with you. Ask about the time of Al-Mu’iz, for it [the time in which the story takes place] knows it out of experience; Ask it how faith you moved the Mokattam, A mountain that shook because of you, and you willed it, You could break it into pieces. You who forget, understand the heart of history. (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 61– 2) The poem points out the relevance of the story to Christians today, who might feel that the pressure of their tribulations is too much. And the book points out that they might be suffering, but this is willed by God, and that they can relax and rejoice in these tribulations, as they are not carrying their burdens alone, but in community with the Church and Christ. It should be apparent how both everyday incidents and grand events of discrimination became present in the lives of the average Christian, producing this identity of suffering. This was clearly radically different for the majority of Muslims. The average Muslim was not aware of any systemic discrimination, as the general presence of Islam in the public space was more natural and non-threatening, annoying at most (with the exception of major incidents targeting random parts of the population, but these did not seem to be a personal threat to most Muslims). They did not experience any explicit harassment of Christians personally, and would not get involved in any, and in cases where they actually contributed to some level of discrimination, this would be done as something felt to be justified. They did not have access to the narratives of suffering produced within the Coptic Orthodox Church, and the only link they felt to the incidents was that they took place in their country, but the average Muslim would never come close to a violent attack on Christians. All in all, most Muslims were either not directly exposed to the discrimination against Christians, or would not interpret the discrimination as such if they contributed to it or witnessed it, leading

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to the clear point a young Muslim woman makes: “The relation to the Christians is not bugging the average [Muslim] citizen.” Grand events did, however, make the difficult position of Christians clear to most. Locating the root causes of these grand events is of great importance in understanding the types of dialogue to which Egyptians would resort. As will be shown in the following section, these root causes existed alongside a general understanding of Egyptians, Christians and Muslims, as one nation with no real problems.

The Discourse of National Unity Most of the interviewees talked about some form of national unity (Sedra 1999; Makari 2007, 33) that went beyond the obvious fact that Egyptian Muslims and Christians were Egyptians (McCallum 2008, 62), even though they seemed aware of the obvious tensions in the country (Kra¨mer 1998, 43). Some of these interviewees seemed unwilling to recognise the growing divide in Egyptian society and preferred not to mention the problems (Iskander 2012, 100), even though most of them were actively engaged with some sort of Muslim –Christian dialogue (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007). In so far as problems and positive relations are social constructs, this can be a very effective way of avoiding problems (Transue 2007). If two individuals or groups of people are convinced that they are the best of partners and interpret problems between them as originating from another source, they are likely to stay partners as they can face their problems together. This can be seen as a definition of positive relations or friendships (if they are interpreted as social constructs), and this way of thinking is effective as long as there are no serious problems between the two partners. This interpretation of relations and problems is in line with Tajfel’s ideas on how to maintain positive relations between groups by having the minority group become more like the majority group (Tajfel 2010b, 89), in this case by underlining the shared nationality (see Chapter 1). But as soon as problems become too big to ignore and tensions arise in the relationship between the two, the strategy of not addressing issues is likely to exacerbate the problems (Galal 2009, 146). Tajfel formulates it this way: The perceived legitimacy of an intergroup relationship presents no problem for a social comparison theory, based on the assumption of

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similarity, when the groups are (at least potentially) of similar status on any status dimensions which are salient or relevant to the comparison . . . The difficulties arise when this kind of a stable and legitimate intergroup system begins to break down. (Tajfel 2010f, 127) If things are to improve between two groups, the first step is to acknowledge that there are problems, which becomes obvious when Staub (2001) points to two basic approaches to prevent further violence, based on his experience of more extreme circumstances: leaders need to offer positive and constructive visions for the future, and perpetrators need to be punished for victims to feel that they are taken seriously and that the system is just, leading to trust and hope – neither of which can be achieved without clear acknowledgement of the problems, and neither of which had officially been achieved in Egypt at the time of the study. This is also supported by Branscombe, Doosje, and McGarty when addressing “guilt”. It is unlikely that relations will be improved by apologies or reparations, if guilt is not acknowledged: We propose that there are two necessary conditions for members of a dominant group to feel collective guilt. The first is that they must self-categorize as a member of that group, although they need not highly identify with that group. The second is that they must perceive their group to be responsible for a salient illegitimate action or set of conditions that violates a moral value that the group currently subscribes to. Where these conditions hold, collective guilt will be augmented to the extent that there is a continuing status that has not been repaired, and there is a conflict among members of the dominant group about the nature of the past or ongoing relations between groups. (Branscombe, Doosje, and McGarty 2003, 54) Branscombe, Doosje, and McGarty interestingly go on to explain that the perception of guilt is higher among members of the dominant group with a low level of identification with the dominant group, but members of the dominant group with a high level of identification with the dominant group are more likely to dismiss any notion of collective guilt,

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defending their community against a tarnished reputation and the resulting lower communal esteem. This explains why the more progressive elements of Egyptian Muslim society who felt less connected to the general discourses were more critical towards the discourse of national unity and open to alternative approaches to dialogue (see Chapter 4). The lack of acknowledgement of the problems between Muslims and Christians might also originate from these problems arising as part of a process that might not be obvious to all, as described in Chapter 2, eventually leading a more united nation to divide along religious lines. According to popular discourse, Muslims and Christians vigorously protested against their occupiers together at the beginning of the last century, a unity that was hard to find at the time of the study. This, combined with a media that was strictly controlled by the regime (Elsa¨sser 2010, 137), goes some way to explaining part of the lack of knowledge about problems between Muslims and Christians. But a major reason for the discourse of national unity is likely to be found outside religious belonging. As Ayubi points out, the Egyptian regime was to a large extent dependent on populism to maintain its legitimacy. This had been the case ever since Nasser. The basic argument of Ayubi is that the regime needed to establish some sort of unity in a country based on strong communal belonging to be able to rule this otherwise disparate society. To this end, the discourse of national unity was an obvious remedy (Ayubi 2006, 209), and was propagated through schools, media, and the official religion (see Chapter 2). This further explains why it was on a par with treason to question national unity. Some of the televised meetings between Shaykhs and priests would actively ignore sectarian issues by reiterating the idea of unity as if it was actually present. This meant that the problems encountered by Christians were rarely addressed directly in the attempt to overcome them. But it did not mean that the social position of Christians was never spoken about. As will be obvious in Chapter 5, sectarian issues entered public debate to a much larger extent after the 2011 revolution. Before the revolution, the position of Christians was spoken about more indirectly. One case of this was the heated debate about the proposed amendment to article II of the constitution in 2007 (and to some extent also after the revolution). In 1971, President Sadat had underlined the Sharia as a source of Egyptian legislation in the constitution; this was

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reinforced further in 1981 when the Sharia was highlighted as the source of legislation (Hulsman 2012). As the constitution was being changed in 2007, this paragraph became the signifier in a discussion about the role of religion in Egyptian politics and society. The major issue of the debate was between secular-minded Muslims and traditionalist Muslims, discussing the role of religion in the Egyptian legal system (Hulsman 2012, 207). The position of Christians was used in this debate, in which many Christians sided with the secular-minded Muslims in arguing for a civil society, in which religion should not play a decisive role in determining the rights of citizens. One of the arguments against having the Sharia stated as fundamental to Egyptian legislation was that members of minority religions such as Christianity would not be full citizens and that they would encounter discrimination because of the law, as it legitimised the behaviour of fundamentalist Muslims. The debate had three major positions, with some arguing for the removal of the paragraph, some asking for a change to include a clause positive to Christians, and some wanting to keep it as it was (Atmaca 2012, 179). The third position had the most support by far, with one of the major arguments being that the Sharia would ensure religious freedom and a discrimination-free society. It would, however, be erroneous to assume that these discussions had any major effect to the advantage of seculars and Christians, as the majority of the population was unaware of the discussion (Casper 2012, 115), and as the majority of the people discussing it saw no problems for the Christians based on the legislation. While some Egyptians, especially some Christians, saw the root of the problems as national towards 2010, this was not the case for all. Since a strategy for identifying problems between different groups of society is essential in order to understand how these problems should be addressed – for example in dialogue – this section will briefly look into the discourses of “nation” and “blame”. The primary aim will be to give a sense of the idea of national unity and the different narratives of blame.19 This book has argued that there were very real divides growing in Egyptian society, and that these divides were partly financial, religious, and geographical (see Chapter 2). One of the interviewees, an Azharite professor, is interesting because he was associated with both the Azhar and the Muslim Brotherhood and was explicitly protesting the social

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order and actively involved in converting people from Christianity, yet he maintained that there was no divide in Egypt and that the people were one. In the beginning of the interview he addressed the nonexistence of a financial or geographical divide (though admitting to difference): “The Egyptian people are all one tissue of unity. Coherent, loving, friendly. There is not a big distance between the elite and the public. The elite are from the villages and brought up among the public”. Later in the interview he was asked about relations between Christians and Muslims: The relations between Copts and Muslims in Egypt are very solid, and the best that can be spoken about. What is happening now is a bubble used by the media. It is just waves on the surface of a lake that is very calm. I was brought up in the countryside where we had fields side by side with the Christians. So we were neighbours, and shared in the agricultural affairs. We spent some time together in the evenings, and worked together and supported each other. If you passed by us, you would not have been able to recognise who was the Muslim and who the Christian. This is the case for all Egyptians, everywhere in Egypt. 4,000 villages are living in peace. What is happening is like car accidents: it is natural that there is a clash. But they are isolated bubbles. The professor then addresses discourses of blame to understand the root of the incidents, which will be addressed later. Some of the formulations in this quote were repeated over and over in various interviews, for example that Christians and Muslims were indistinguishable in Egyptian society, which was taken as proof that there was no divide in society between Muslims and Christians – and this in spite of the fact that for example Christians tattooed with crosses and Muslim women veiling were on the rise (see Chapter 2). This was not only the case for Muslims but also most Christians, such as the higher-level cleric from the Anglican Church, who started the interview by describing relations between Muslims and Christians in a way similar to the Azharite professor, but later in the interview discussed the development of Muslim–Christian relations in Egypt and said: “Christians and Muslims co-existed in a wonderful way in the past. But

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they did not grow in their understanding of each other, they just coexisted. They were not prepared for the age of polarisation in which we live today”, pointing in the direction of a national discourse of internal peace, repeated even in connection with the incidents taking place throughout the country to keep up the identity of an internally harmonious society. As formulated by a progressive Catholic monk working in the field of Islamic Studies: The general impression might not be true. There is this kind of propaganda, which is very common here in Egypt: “Christians and Muslims live together peacefully without any problems and whatever problems there are, are coming from outside”. According to my experience this is a very superficial impression . . . For the Christians it is a question of survival. To be accepted you cannot be polemic, so they try to put out [gloss over] differences – as how many clashes happen. The Pope tries his best not to have a general confrontation between the Muslims and Christians . . . The government – the Muslims – uses it as propaganda outside Egypt to save face.20 I visited several villages in Egypt between 2004 and 2010. Some of the visits were connected to trips arranged with a dialogue organisation. During these trips Christians and Muslims would reproduce the above narrative of no real problems being present in Egyptian society between religious groups. But upon visiting a village again and speaking Christian to Christian, the narrative was changed: the fear was obvious and the perceived problems many. Furthermore, the narrative of the Azharite professor fails to explain why incidents and grand events take place at regular intervals in Egypt. The state explanation for the incident in Naga Hammadi in 2010 was that a Christian man raped a Muslim woman. This clearly will stir some feelings, but if the village had in fact been as harmonious as the Azharite professor described, then this supposedly confined incident would have been dealt with through either the unofficial local or the national judicial system. Instead, it fuelled existing tensions, escalating into the burning of property and the killing of a large number of people. It can be argued that the Azharite professor was just ignoring – or was ignorant of – the existence of discrimination against the Copts to

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maintain the discourse of national unity (R. M. Scott 2010, 80 – 1), and this might partially be the case, but this cannot be the case when addressing the fiscal divide, because he placed himself among the poor and those critical of the social order. He had a poor upbringing, during which his father died early, and he was raised by his mother. He was living in a lower middle class part of Egypt, even though his position at the Azhar was of high status. When it comes to finances he placed himself among the disenfranchised and he was aware of the problems the poor were facing, and yet he maintained that there was no divide in the population. It seems he perceived the Egyptian people through an idealised prism, a discourse that placed whatever problems might arise outside an idealised core called “the Egyptian People”. This prism clearly incorporated both Christians and Muslims, rich and poor, and farmers and city dwellers within its perspective, living coherently, lovingly, and amicably together. The interviews gave the sense that this prism was very closely connected to a positive self-image of both Muslims and Christians.21 With the increase of violent incidents and open disputes between religions, this prism could, however, not stand alone but had to have a series of supporting narratives. These narratives varied according to who used them, as different people positioned themselves differently in relation to the groups being assigned the blame, keeping their community’s morals intact (Branscombe, Doosje, and McGarty 2003, 57). A few examples will be highlighted here addressing some of the core narratives: the West, the media, church-building, conversion, the regime, and social issues. The first examples place the blame squarely outside Egypt,22 but as we progress the issues are increasingly situated within Egypt, thus confirming the existence of problems between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. Many of the Muslims focused on international satellite channels as a major problem and instigator of strife in Egypt.23 Father Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest who had fled Egypt because of issues of conversion, was especially pinpointed as a major problem. He was known to all of the interviewees as outspoken and radical, focusing on the conversion of Muslims and very negative in his interpretation of Islam (Rowe 2009, 120; Elsa¨sser 2010, 145). But some Christians felt that he was telling the truth and that in the end he was doing what Muslims were doing to Christians all over Egypt every day. A progressive Copt also mentioned

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the satellite channels as a major problem, but he focused on the Saudi channels as problematic; according to him they propagated a very aggressive version of Islam. However, he saw the satellite programmes of father Zakaria Botros as important because they were the only possible route to convert Muslims to Christianity, as Egyptian society only allows for missionary efforts converting people to Islam. While some saw the media as the root of the problems, others saw them as the means by which problems were finally being uncovered: Now the Egyptian media is addressing issues like Naga Hammadi... Before they would say that there are no problems and that everything is fine... Before we were living as in a closed room and we didn’t hear anything from outside, but now satellites are in every household... If we do not hear the truth from here [inside Egypt], we will hear it from somewhere else. According to Elsa¨sser (2010), the liberalisation of the press and access to international media had led to greater discussion of the discourse of national unity by 2010, but some of these discussions did also exacerbate the problems between Muslims and Christians. This led some of the Egyptian media to openly criticise the use of the discourse of national unity ad nauseam in times of sectarian strife (Elsa¨sser 2010, 140). As will be obvious in Chapter 5, the revolutions finally opened up a discussion on the discourse of national unity, with positive and negative consequences. A recently highly-positioned spokesperson of the Azhar also saw a problem with some of the Copts leaving Egypt to live in the West. He believed that some of these held a grudge against Egypt and conspired against Egypt with people abroad. Quoting him highlights the roles of both the satellite channels and the West: One of the major reasons for the problems is the Christians who travelled abroad and have issues with the government in Egypt. The enemies abroad, who desire instability for the Egyptian state, connected with some of the Copts in diaspora, are now feeding the sectarian strife . . . Father Zakaria Botros is using a channel to defame and deform Islam, giving the Prophet and Islam as a religion a bad reputation as an incorrect religion.

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An Azharite professor was quoted above as stating that there are no problems in Egypt and whatever incidents there might have been were isolated. But when discussing churches he took a somewhat different approach, even though he started out by maintaining the stance that there were no problems: People see the church as a place of worship, like the mosque. And we have never heard about an assault on any churches by an Egyptian. It has never happened. There have been churches in the villages since a long time ago, and no-one has destroyed them. But what is happening now is because of the building of churches, where the number of churches just does not compare to the number of believers. [he goes on, explaining how the churches are not used for worship and are more like fortresses of concrete than normal buildings of bricks]24 . . . The real effect of the church on the people is that it makes them feel like a minority, by constantly asking for more churches. While some of the Muslim interviewees blamed Christians in Egypt or abroad for the issues, a Coptic priest was more direct in blaming Islam generally, calling it a religion based on hate in order to explain what he felt as pressure from the Muslim majority. The priest was very negative in his interpretation of Islam and Muslims and the one who seemed the furthest from the discourse of national unity, even though he also had some remnants of it superimposing national identity on the religious identity. He highlighted being a good citizen as a Christian virtue, which had to be honoured even though the country was becoming increasingly dominated by Islam, making it more and more problematic to be Christian. But he underlined that: people unite during catastrophes, during war, during football matches, during accidents – everybody becomes Egyptian. For example, when my son had an accident and was stuck under a tractor. Many Muslims came and moved the tractor, and saved my son. They took him to the hospital. They were ready to spend their money to save him. Most of these people visited him in the hospital. When he became better they shouted: Allahu Akhbar – like the Christian hallelujah. This was a positive situation... There

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are also a lot of positive examples. The inner soul of people comes out during hardships – whatever their beliefs. While this Coptic priest is generally superimposing religious identity over other identities, here the national “soul” of people seems to be able to outshine religious influences. While other Christians seemed more optimistic about their situation and about Islam than the Coptic priest, many of their ideas featured remnants of a discourse of Islam as a hateful religion, which is why the Coptic priest will be briefly quoted to illustrate this perspective: [The worst thing about Islam] is the hate. This is apparent in Muslims spitting at Christians, not wanting to deal with Christians, and calling the Christians kuffa¯r [non-Muslims or infidels]. Two things are the worst: hatred and underdevelopment of the mind. And in third position is the killing and fighting as a result of hatred. This goes for Muslims throughout the world . . . [The major difference between Muslims and Christians as believers is] that Christians love everybody, and Muslims hate the other . . . The more the Christian becomes a believer, the more loving he becomes, the more the Muslim is a believer, the more hateful he becomes. This Coptic voice is relatively radical, but it is situated within the Coptic community in Egypt in an official position where it is heard, not just as a priest but also as a scholar. When he is speaking about the “devout Muslim”, he is speaking about the radical Muslims who are behind grand events, as these grand events are very present to him. The view of Islam used to make sense of what is happening in his life in general is based on the extreme because he feels his personal world is under threat (Brewer 2001). Interpreting the world from this perspective, all other Muslims become potential radicals as well, building up the fear that is an intrinsic part of the Coptic interpretation of Muslims and the unity of the Church. Some people do not look for scapegoats, but simply dismiss any issues between religious groups as societal matters, blaming poverty. This is clearly a more subtle approach than just blaming another group of people, as it makes the problems disappear as a religious problem among the multitude of social problems. But it also motivated some Muslims and Christians to work together against the inequalities of society, which

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seemed to be the point of a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer interviewed, and as will be elaborated upon in the section on social dialogue in Chapter 4. A young conservative Muslim Brother not only blamed societal matters, but also alleged that the problems arising between Muslims and Christians were likely to have been set in motion by the regime, as the regime needed the problems to justify the use of emergency law in the eyes of the West. He started out more generally blaming “people of selfinterest” and eventually pointed to the regime: [The people creating the problems] have their own interests... so they hate any harmony in society between Muslims and Christians or between the classes of society – as if they have an interest in the division of people . . . This is the regime itself... [The regime does this] to maintain corruption in society, and the emergency law. They argue that these problems would multiply if they cancelled the emergency law. They cannot argue for an emergency law if there is order in society. He then underlines how the problems between Muslims and Christians were inseparable from problems between various Muslim groups, as these would attempt to utilise other segments of society to their advantage, for example by the regime using the problems to argue for an emergency law. There were, however, also interviewees pinpointing religion in Egyptian society as a fundamental problem. This was especially the case for a Coptic intellectual, who saw the 1970s and the politics of Sadat as opening up Egyptian society to more radical elements (see Chapter 2), and as being the major reason for the present sectarian strife. As with the Muslim Brother lawyer, the Coptic intellectual wanted to address the problems through a just political system. Many of the young interviewees seemed to have some distance from both Muslim and Christian social groups and their segregational tendencies and were straightforward in pinpointing a growing divide between the groups. In the words of a young Coptic woman: I think that most of the Egyptians, Christians and Muslims, are making a mistake by telling their kids from the very beginning that

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they shouldn’t play with kids from the other religion... Even if they are grownups they are warning them not to trust the Muslims. And I think the same thing is happening among the Muslims. It should be noted that the Ibn Khaldun Center for Developmental Studies and its founder Saad Eddin Ibrahim publicly criticised the conditions of the Christians in Egypt (Makari 2007, 162–9; S. Ibrahim 2002) and thereby did not accept the discourse of national unity at face value. The Ibn Khaldun Center highlights four problems in Egyptian society: “1) problems getting permissions to build churches, 2) the Copts are marginalised in historical accounts, the media, and the educational system, 3) the Copts are excluded from certain official and governmental posts, 4) the number of Copts in parliament is disproportionate to the number of Copts in society” (Galal 2009, 98).25 In the years before the 2011 revolution there was a tendency towards more openness about Coptic issues, and Iskander (2012) argues that the increased access to open media has been essential for this to happen. But it was not until the 2011 revolution that Coptic issues could be discussed openly; this will be the major focus of Chapter 5.

Conclusion Using Bourdieu’s theories of societies as frameworks for social competition for social status, discrimination against Christians has been situated in dynamics of Egyptian society. Bourdieu points out that people are social beings and as such strive to gain societal standing, and seeing the discrimination in Egypt in this light underlines that discrimination – although it at times has dire consequences – is not a product of Islam as an essentially evil religion, which propagates the suppression of people not belonging to the faith. The discrimination against Christians in Egypt is a product of different societal groups being pitched against one another in the competition for societal influence and in the struggle to cover the basic needs of one’s social group. Using Bourdieu’s concept of fields, where values arise as a result of relations between fields, it was furthermore argued that even though sectarian strife is often based on social issues, it is still a religious problem in so far as religion helps define the field.

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There were significant differences in the narratives regarding discrimination against Christians; while Muslims often saw no or few problems between Muslims and Christians, many Christians felt persecuted. Apart from the fact that the Christian minority experienced more discrimination than Muslims as a group, these differences were explained by analysing the group dynamics leading to different perceptions of reality; while the Christian minority experienced incidents as directed against the entire community, the Muslims belonged to a disparity of different Muslim groups, which meant that they did not connect emotionally to injustices as Muslims, but rather as citizens. When the question of tensions between Muslims and Christians was not addressed in a safe environment, most Christians would, however, answer in a manner very similar to the Muslims; the vocabulary would be identical even though the interviewees and people in general did not know each other. This points to a discourse of national unity, which sustained the political order of the country; as described in Chapter 2, Egyptian society consisted of disparate groups based in local networks of power. For any ruling entity to govern such a society, it had to maintain a discourse of unity in the country. This was done through schools, media, and official mosques, and questioning the discourse would amount to something similar to treason. The discourse was, however, already being questioned in 2010, and was opened up for discussion with the revolution in 2011, as will be obvious in Chapter 5.

CHAPTER 4 THE DIALOGICAL NAVIGATION AND NEGOTIATION OF EGYPTIAN SOCIETY

Religious dialogue in Egypt is very diverse, but common to all the types of dialogue is that there is a relation between the methods and goals of the dialogue and the position of the participants in dialogue in society. The aim of this chapter is to shed light on the conceptualisation of dialogue and how it relates to societal dynamics in Egypt, providing a description of the relevant individual institutions and organisations only in so far as they are important in understanding how dialogue is understood. Egyptian society is religiously divided according to sociopolitical dynamics, as Chapter 2 made clear, and these dynamics are reflected in the practice of dialogue. A traditional understanding of dialogue in Egypt is as an intellectual debate or argument, which is based on the religious differences in faith and societal belonging; it is imperative for many to argue for the superiority of one’s own religion to win over other people to one’s own religious community. The clientelist structures crystallised into a representative type of dialogue called official dialogue, where the established people in power renew and confirm their social contract at religious celebrations and connect to sectarian incidents reaching the attention of the public. Protesting this and the general political state of the country is the opposition in the shape of intellectuals and the Muslim Brotherhood pushing for society to change through what here is termed social dialogue.

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At the periphery of society are a number of religious institutions and youth groups, not large enough to influence the settled paths of political participation (see Chapter 2). The minority churches, such as the Catholics, Anglicans, and Presbyterians, strive to gain recognition in society, both nationally and locally, by engaging in various dialogue endeavours to make themselves essential to many people’s lives, such as hospitals, schools, and development projects. Many of these are clearly marked as Christian projects to help acceptance in local areas; other projects gather intellectuals and influential people to propagate the value of a pluralistic society. The youth is more experimental, as their dialogical initiatives are unburdened by the responsibility of social representation and therefore freer to establish a community across religious boundaries for the participants nurturing the community type of relations; most of the other initiatives were aimed at establishing positive relations between communities, thus maintaining a society type of relations between the groups (see Chapter 1). As Chapter 3 made clear, relations between Muslims and Christians are often tense, but there are also many people with a drive to help improve these relations, as formulated by a Catholic monk with years of experience in Egypt: If someone wants to paint a solely positive picture [of Muslims– Christian relations in Egypt] they can find plenty of material to do so. If someone wants to only paint a negative picture, they also have material to do so. Both sides exist in my opinion. Now the great challenge is how we can develop a mentality in which true co-existence or cooperation will develop more, lessening the other side – fanaticism.

Dialogue in the Socio-Political Centre Boxing match dialogue A Coptic priest described dialogue with the analogy of a boxing match: Dialogue is like a boxing match. You have to know how to attack and how to defend yourself. To attack you have to know enough about the other religion to show its followers the mistakes of their

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religion. To defend, you have to know enough to be able to defend against their attacks and show your religion as truthful. The Arabic concept of dialogue (hiwa¯r) in Egypt seems to encapsulate a ˙ certain duality, with dialogue as a positive endeavour of improving relations in various ways, and dialogue as the attempt to discredit the truth value of the other religion while defending one’s own (Griffith 2010, 161).1 This first category of dialogue reflects a more negative definition, but most of the rest of the interviewees see this type of dialogue as wrong, defining their understanding of dialogue against this negative understanding. This is clear when a Coptic intellectual says: “religious dialogue about religious issues ends in disputes. You find these in different places, such as the satellite channels, the newspapers and other places”; or when an Anglican cleric describes some of the failed dialogue he has experienced, as “dialogue that aims to promote one religion”. It is, however, important to underline that even a progressive thinker such as the Coptic intellectual interviewed believes that this more negative type of dialogue is a religious imperative as he believes that all believers are called to spread the word. The fact that all of the interviewees define their concept of dialogue either in line with, or against, boxing match dialogue makes it likely that this is a basic understanding of the concept of dialogue in Egypt.2 The story of Saint Simon referred to in Chapter 3 is also relevant to boxing match dialogue; its starting point is the problems arising from theological debates. The story is set in the tenth century but as pointed out, the language used shows that the story has been retold to be educational to contemporary Christians. The text therefore illuminates the present Coptic debates (Galal 2009, 202). According to the book about Saint Simon, the Caliph enjoyed these theological disputes and: sent a message to the Patriarch, saying, “If you want to debate the Jews someday, whether yourself or through one of the bishops you choose, come to my house and join issue with them in my presence.” (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 46) One of the interviewees, a Coptic priest, talked about similar situations where he had joined delegations of clergy going to the Azhar to debate

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with the Shaykhs there. Referring to the unequal power relations, with the Christians being the minority, the priest underlined that they were not allowed to attack, as this was reserved for Muslims, with Christians having to defend their beliefs. In the story about Saint Simon one of the bishops of the time is promoted as an especially astute debater at these meetings as he was well-versed in “comparative religion”, having written among other books “The Book of the Wondrous Presentation in Answer to the Jews” (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 46); this corresponds very well with the priest calling knowledge of how to attack and defend in these debates “comparative religion”. The priest taught “comparative religion” to Christians in several places in Egypt, with comparative religion defined as follows: First, comparative religion is discussed between Christians to know how to answer questions and be ready for dialogue, looking into questions such as: what are the weaknesses and mistakes of Islam? What is the Hadith and what are the weaknesses in it? . . . This is the attack. The defence is: what is the role of Christ in the Qur’an? How is the Holy Bible portrayed in the Qur’an? How does the Qur’an speak about Christianity and Christians? . . . [“Attacking” the Muslims in the dialogue] can normally not be addressed in a dialogue with Muslims, unless they are very close friends; you can do it when you feel like you are stronger than the person you speak with. But it [comparative religion] is used among Christians [where they learn about the faults of Islam].3 When asked about some concrete examples of how these dialogues played out in practice, he explained that there were two levels of dialogue, the official and the everyday encounters. Defence only being allowed to the Christians, the Christians were pushed to answer what the Coptic priest defined as attacks: We [the Christians] never start the dialogue. They [the Muslims] call us to enter into dialogue. We are questioned first, and we only answer. In the official dialogue we [Muslims and Christians] speak first about commonalities to feel like one people, but then we start dialogue where questions are answered with questions [answering

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by quoting the Qur’an to have the Qur’an answer the questions directed against Christianity, which is then legitimised on an Islamic basis] and you get to speak your mind without aggravating the other. After the dialogue a Swedish lady was very impressed that I got to say everything I wanted [in defence of Christianity] and they were even pleased! . . . [As an example of an everyday dialogue:] I was taking a train and there were some young people discussing what Christians worshipped [since it was not the true Islamic God]. I answered “Umm Kalthoum” [a famous Egyptian singer from the times of Nasser] and they laughed. After this I told them: “we [Christians] taught you about faith, and according to the Qur’an you [Muslims] have to ask us if there is something you are uncertain of.” They were very pleased and we could continue a conversation in a pleasant atmosphere . . . [If we could work with dialogue in Egypt in any way we like] then we would conduct dialogue like they do now on the satellite channels, like Abuna Zakaria . . . in the beginning they [the Muslims] are repulsed by this, but eventually it leads to people converting. Probably due to my religious belonging, which was assumed (correctly) by the interviewees to be Christian, the Muslim interviewees were less prone to speaking freely about these methods of proselytism as a form of dialogue. These were, however, readily available outside mosques, where pamphlets would enumerate the virtues of Islam and the faults of Christianity. Similar material could also be found among Christians, but it would be hidden as they feared that public displays of evangelistic material would lead to violence. A good example of an Islamic pamphlet about Christianity is Muslim–Christian Dialogue, written by H. M. Baagil. Based on extensive knowledge of Christian scriptures, he for example disproves the holiness of the Bible and God as triune. This pamphlet was picked up in the Khan el-Khalili marketplace in 2010 and was aimed at tourists, but similar pamphlets were found at the Azhar and outside other mosques in a number of languages.4 In principle, this kind of dialogue was not meant to lead to tension, even though both the Coptic priest and the Azharite professor engaging in this kind of dialogue were aware that it often did. According to the story of Saint Simon, the Caliph “stipulated that this [the debates] should be carried out with neither anger nor contention” (The Church of

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Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 45). The Azharite professor elaborated on how to prevent any inflammatory effects of the debates by referring to something that can be defined as “gentleman’s rules” (not a concept used by the interviewees) much as there are rules to a boxing match: If all had the same idea of dialogue, then there would be no clashes. It demands respect for the views of the other, whatever they are. The former Grand Imam el-Shafa’i used to say “Our views are correct, but they could be wrong. Their view is wrong, but it could be right” – no-one should be completely convinced that the other is necessarily wrong. The other could in principle be correct, as we are trying to reach the truth. These “rules” were also addressed by the Coptic priest, and can be summed up as follows: (i) both parties have the right to both defence and attack; (ii) both parties have to be open to the possibility of defeat; (iii) boxing match dialogue has to happen in a respectful atmosphere. What will later be described as official dialogue is seen as important in creating a relaxed and friendly atmosphere for the boxing match dialogue; (iv) conversion has to happen because of one of the parties realising intellectual defeat and admitting the superiority of the other religion, as opposed to conversion happening by force or for reasons other than the superiority of a religion, for example marriage; (v) once a gentleman’s conversion occurs, the followers of the other religion have to accept defeat and let the person convert. According to the above, boxing match dialogue therefore has the following assumptions and characteristics: (i) there is one religious truth; (ii) this truth is self-evident and if approached with an open mind and/or heart people will be able to grasp this truth; (iii) it is important to contest the truth of people who are not of your own religion; (iv) even though the risk is small, you have to realise that there is a risk of defeat; (v) there ideally seems to be a “may the best person win” attitude connected to boxing match dialogue, but power relations and popular reactions to conversions change this; (vi) boxing match dialogue takes place on several levels of society, including meetings between people from the Azhar, people from the Coptic Orthodox Church and people from society at large.

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According to John Chesworth (2011) this form of staged, polemical encounter between religious groups is not unusual in other places in the world as well. Chesworth mainly talks about sub-Saharan Africa, in a context where Christians are allowed a public polemical voice as well. According to Chesworth, this type of interaction stretches back through history, which supports that this is likely to be a major form of interaction when faith issues are addressed (Chesworth 2011). A description of one of the most famous and more recent of these encounters, which took place in 1854 between K. G. Phander and R. A. Kairanawi, can be found in Goddard (1996, 47 – 51). Sidney H. Griffith traces the polemical exchanges back to the seventh and eighth century, when books were already being written defending one’s own religion and outlining the perceived weaknesses in other faiths (Griffith 2010).

Boxing match dialogue and Egyptian society The dynamics involved in boxing match dialogue are illustrative of the theory of the book and the relation between knowledge, social groups, and identity. Fundamental to the theory is the understanding of the concept of knowledge as something built up locally (Wittgenstein 2001) in communities (To¨nnies 2002) to settle a norm or standard for the thinking of the community (Foucault 1995) in relation to other groups (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992), depending on how this group is positioned in society in relation to one’s own community (Postmes and Branscombe 2010; Mackie and Smith 2003). In other words, knowledge is a social construct dependent on the social construction of reality (Berger and Luckmann 1967), determining where a person belongs in society, and boxing match dialogue negotiates this belonging by attacking the cognitive structures of the other religion. As will be seen, the other two types of dialogue of this chapter were a direct part of the dynamics of socio-political life. Boxing match dialogue did not, however, have a similar function, but rather contributed to the religious divide in society, and religion became what Bourdieu calls an “admission fee” (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 107) without which people often were not allowed to engage with others on a more in-depth basis. Boxing match dialogue was consequently an initiative based on the “society type of relations” between competing social groups (see Chapter 1).

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Religion as an “admission fee” is best illustrated by analysing how marriage functioned as a “border guard”, promoting a view of Muslims and Christians as incompatible “breeds” of people, who could interact on a superficial level but not on a more in-depth basis (Galal 2009, 227). This divide was maintained by both Muslims and Christians, and was very obvious in the marital law to the advantage of Muslims. It was not possible for the dominant person in a marriage, the man, to marry a person from the dominant religious group, a Muslim woman, if the man was Christian. If the dominant person in the marriage was part of the dominant social group, the Muslims, then he was allowed to marry someone from the inferior social group, as the dominance party in the marriage would remain within the dominant social group, and the offspring of the marriage would add to the dominant social group (R. M. Scott 2010, 156– 7). Marriage provided a border that could not be crossed without the person undergoing radical social change that would likely lead to social exclusion, possibly facing death at the hands of his or her family, whether Muslim or Christian. This border was, however, not only tangible, such as in the prohibition of inter-religious marriage, but was also found in the difference of religious truth, which in the case of Egypt was constructed to have the same function as marriage to many. Religion then became a “border guard” like marriage, defining who was part of the community and potentially trustworthy, and who was part of outgroups and potentially untrustworthy (Brewer 2001, 30). Conversion thus constituted a great social change for the converted, as well as a change to cognitive structures, as the conversion of the person into the other “breed” in society, allowing them to interact on a deeper level with the other social group, would have to be justified. From a social standpoint, the person would have to die and be born again into this new social setting, and this would lessen the influence of one social group in favour of the other, since influence is partly (but not necessarily) based on numbers; this therefore made this process a threat. In areas where people would turn to those closest to them to secure their lives, they would naturally also divide resources up according to religious affiliation – as their families were partially determined by religion, making religion a very tangible phenomenon in society. Conversion was then not only a matter of religious affiliation, but also of social affiliation and of providing security for your life and the lives of

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those closest to you by forging social networks – leading to conversion being seen as a crime against your immediate community, as an Anglican cleric explains: The fear [of participating in dialogue, which to many is connected to conversion] comes from the family, because to convert from your religion is a big issue. It is not a private issue, not a personal issue. It affects the whole family . . . It’s like doing something wrong, when you convert and leave the religion of your fathers. It is very wrong. Religion defining who could be trusted and who you could turn to for help in an hour of need explains why conversion could provoke such intense feelings in the former community of the converted. The inflammatory effect of conversions is therefore obvious and has also been addressed in Chapter 3. Even though both the Coptic priest and the Azharite professor referred to “gentleman’s rules” as a basis for a fair fight in boxing match dialogue, they did not seem to believe that their competitors were honouring these rules as both accused the other of not allowing people to convert. The inflammatory potential of boxing match dialogue was furthermore pointed out by a number of the other interviewees, who all strongly disapproved of this kind of dialogue. In particular, a highly-placed Azharite Shaykh working with dialogue was vehemently opposed to any talk of the other’s religion, as he believed this would only lead to sectarian strife, and even became aggravated when asked to share his understanding of Christianity, underlining two points: he did believe that Christianity was inferior to Islam, and he did not want this conviction to influence Muslim – Christian relations negatively. Even though boxing match dialogue had no direct role to play in political life in Egypt, it strengthened the boundaries between Muslims and Christians, which were the foundations of the other forms of dialogue with a more direct impact on political life. The official dialogue was akin to diplomatic dialogue between societal groupings, established by the clear separation of Muslims and Christians. The feeling among Christians of being persecuted had secluded them within the strong church structure that they looked to in order to secure their lives, and this enabled the senior clergy to negotiate with the regime, rendering

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official dialogue legitimate for both Muslims and Christians. Social dialogue was, especially in the shape given to it by the Muslim Brothers, a reaction to these structures, arguing for criticism of these established dynamics of society. To some progressive Christians, social dialogue meant participating in society to push for social space for Christians to feel at ease, but by advocating this they also criticised the social structures as they were.

Official dialogue Official dialogue was an alternative to boxing match dialogue for the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church, often involving representatives of the regime. A difference in beliefs leading to the possibility of mutual enrichment does not seem to be something given much consideration within the mainstream of Egyptian religious institutions. The belief that the religions are incompatible on the subject of faith therefore characterised both official dialogue and boxing match dialogue. But while boxing match dialogue saw differences as an invitation to conversion, official dialogue saw them as something to be skirted around so as not to create problems. Official dialogue was in other words presented as the positive alternative to boxing match dialogue by avoiding faith issues, and its practitioners identified themselves as “moderate”, distancing themselves from people working with boxing match dialogue, who were seen as “aggressive” or “fanatic”. But they also distanced themselves from the “secular” approach (an example of this would be the social dialogue described in the following section), which some people working with official dialogue felt does not take religion seriously enough. As Makari (2007) and Galal (2009) point out, official dialogue often focused on the theme of national unity discussed in Chapter 3. Official dialogue took place on two different levels: between high and local officials. The meetings of high officials were often confined within the walls of the institutions and hosted by their most important representatives, while the meetings of the local officials were scattered throughout the cities and villages of Egypt in connection with popular celebrations and included local dignitaries, Shaykhs, and priests. The separation between high and local officials corresponds to the description of Egyptian society in Chapter 2 as separated into two levels of power, the elite (including senior clergy and people from the

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regime) and the local networks of power, power being distributed from the upper echelons of society to the lower. The hierarchical way of thinking, with cultural capital (according to Bourdieu’s vocabulary) being distributed from the top to the bottom of society was therefore essential to official dialogue.

Official dialogue among the elite of society and in the local networks High officials would meet and address different topics. The topic itself did not, however, seem to be what was of greatest importance, but rather the act of agreeing on these topics was, promoting good relations as shared knowledge would promote a mutual identity. As the description of boxing match dialogue pointed out, religion was important as a cognitive “border guard” separating Muslims and Christians. This cognitive identity marker was partly addressed with the discourse of national unity (see Chapter 3), superimposing national identity on religious identity, but also by the construction of cognitive structures mutual to Muslims and Christians. At some of the meetings, scholars and clergy would discuss similarities between the religions or work to break down negative stereotypes dominant in Egyptian society. In the words of Berger and Luckmann (1967), official dialogue was an attempt at (re)constructing social reality (or plausibility structures), and by this, in the words of Tajfel (Postmes and Branscombe 2010), repositioning the relations between the groups of Muslims and Christians in society from negative to positive relations (see Chapter 1). This repositioning did not, however, address societal identity borders between Muslims and Christians, as “border guards” (discussed under boxing match dialogue) such as marriage were not renegotiated to also allow Muslims and Christians to relate to one another at a more intimate level. Official dialogue negotiated a society type of relation, but without reaching the community type of relation (see Chapter 1), despite the use of the discourse of national unity (see Chapter 3). This partly explains why faith issues were not addressed; official dialogue was diplomacy between groups, but not an attempt to break down the social barriers defining these groups as different social groups. In other words, the point was to reach some symbol of mutual understanding leading to positive relations between communities by

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maintaining the discourse of national unity. This was not only done within the country between the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church, but also with the Anglican and Catholic Churches, with whom the Azhar signed agreements and discussed different matters during televised debates, with the aim of promoting positive relations, leading to the Azhar establishing a department to specifically work on dialogue with monotheistic religions (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 166). At these dialogue meetings a topic was chosen and discussed, researchers from each side prepared lectures, and the participants sought an agreement on the topic. The topics included for example the position of children in the family and the position of women in society, but never faith issues. These meetings were especially typical of the dialogue between the Anglican and Catholic Churches and the Azhar and are best described later in this chapter. A former leading member of the Azhar on topics of dialogue explains how official dialogue was implemented: Dialogue as has been conducted up until now is dialogue working at the top – that is a religious talk between leaders. I wish we could extend the dialogue to also reach the general public . . . [In the process of the dialogues] we meet once a year with representatives of the Catholic or Anglican Churches as part of the agreement. Every time, we choose a subject. The Christians give their opinion, then the Muslims; for example, the position of children in the family or women in society. Extremism. There are many subjects. Each side gives their opinion through researchers, and these opinions are then discussed. We found that there was full agreement on these issues between the religions. But we did not discuss faith issues at all . . . Discussing faith would only deepen the divide between us . . . We did not say “your faith is wrong, or mine is correct”. We have to avoid the issues of faith [leading to sectarian incidents] and let everyone pray in their own way. A symbol of positive relations between the Azhar and the Coptic Church was the celebration of the breaking of the fast during Ramadan and the celebration of Easter and Christmas, when the Coptic Church invited various Muslim officials (religious and otherwise) to join celebrations at the church (Galal 2009; Makari 2007, 85; Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 168; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 161; McCallum

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2008, 80). These meetings were started during the 1919 revolution (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 101) and were also a method of dialogue found at the local level. The Coptic Church also worked with the regime and the Azhar to promote moderate interpretations of religion and educate people about good relations between Muslims and Christians. Both Makari (2007) and Guirguis and Doorn-Harder (2011) describe the “Reading for All” campaign initiated by the regime in 1992–3 as an attempt to move beyond the media in reaching the general population.5 Local officials would meet continuously throughout the year to maintain good relations; during religious celebrations it would be the duty of the local official to host a number of other local officials, and if public events such as those the Christian mulı¯d described earlier took place, local officials would make an appearance together (see Chapter 3). These meetings maintained positive relations between the groups and would most often only involve officials, without involving the average Christian or Muslim, but would be spoken about as “The Christians visit the Muslims in the mosques and the Muslims come and visit the Christians in the churches”, emphasising the representational value of the officials. Meetings often took the shape of social occasions, involving food, more casual chatting about local news and joking.6 The negotiation of social positioning through the negotiation of cognitive structures was essential to much of the official dialogue, but as described above much of the official dialogue did not necessarily involve scholarly debates. The renegotiation of societal positioning can be achieved through other means such as the proximity of eating together or partaking in celebrations. In the words of Devos et al. (2003, 127): “contact reduces prejudice, in particular on affective measures”. This corresponds well with the theoretical approach of this book, highlighting the importance of both cognitive structures and emotional patterns (see Chapter 1). In this case the proximity was not only meant to improve relations between the people present, but also relations between Muslims and Christians in general based on the representational authority of the officials.

Official dialogue as part of the socio-political dynamics Chapter 2 described how the leadership of the Coptic Orthodox Church was in negotiation with the regime. Official dialogue was a tool to

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promote their relations by making the ties official; official dialogue legitimised the regime cooperating with the Coptic Church through the authority of the Azhar. This was especially obvious after violent incidents, when high officials from the Coptic Church, the Azhar, and regime representatives would meet to sustain the discourse of national unity (Galal 2009). These displays of national unity between high officials were, however, not only presenting a united front against violent extremists, but also against other opponents of the regime including moderate groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. The national dynamics of dialogue were thus not just between Islam and Christianity, but rather were influenced by a number of different communities of interpretation influencing each other in multiple ways. The Azhar and the Coptic Church had different impacts on official dialogue, as the two institutions had different channels of influence within the population. The Coptic Church was a tightly-knit community that had a dynamic flow of influence, without breaking the hierarchy of the institution. A good example of this flow would be how the church reacted to the incident in Naga Hammadi, as described in Chapter 3, when the whole religious institution was mobilised, from the Pope to the believers on the ground. This zeal was fuelled by the identity of the Christians as a persecuted people. The dynamics of the Azhar and its influence in society were based less on an Islamic identity separate from society than on the formal relations between employers and employees with the Azhar as the organising institution; i.e. the Azhar had an impact on large parts of Egyptian society, but they were not primarily driven, as many Christians were, by a sense of being persecuted which, in the case of the Christians, drew many laypeople into the structure of the institution and fostered a sense of community. Lay Muslims involved in religious work often found outlets for their zeal in other settings; for example, the Sufis, Salafis, or Muslim Brothers all had a more community-based approach to membership than the Azhar. The Azhar Mosque and other mosques would, however, often be the centre of demonstrations, as many of these would find their starting point at the end of the Friday sermon. In this way, the Azhar also had some influence flowing up from the grassroots, and not just from the top down. Boxing match dialogue was based on a negative understanding of the truth value of the other religion. The people working with official dialogue had realised this not only in boxing match dialogue, but also

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within themselves. Faced with this negative understanding as a reality, they chose to eliminate the threat to good relations with their compatriot believers, whether Muslims or Christians, by addressing everything but religion. This approach to other religions was a progressive stance considering its setting. Dialogue was not about religious issues, but about the socio-political issue of how the two major Egyptian religions as social groupings could function together positively in Egyptian society. Official dialogue can be summed up by the following hallmarks: (i) the focus of official dialogue is to maintain and/or improve relations between religious groups; (ii) official dialogue addresses societal relations to the exclusion of debates on articles of faith or religious practices; (iii) official dialogue is involved in the general structures of society by representing the two major religious groupings through diplomatic activities; (iv) official dialogue sustains the political ties between the Coptic Orthodox Pope and the president, strengthening the clientelistic structures of Egyptian society.

Figure 4.1 This illustration shows how official dialogue was intimately connected to the socio-political dynamics of Egyptian society, involving the Azhar, the Coptic Orthodox Church, and the regime. Source: courtesy of the author.

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It should be noted that official dialogue not only utilised the political dynamics of the country, but also helped sustain them. The political difference between Muslims and Christians was institutionalised through official dialogue. Furthermore, the senior clergy of the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church gained influence in society by taking on the responsibility of representation, which included negotiating for their community in cases of conflict. This is likely to have perpetuated existing power structures, including the system of patronage that was at the root of the problems of general society and the problems specific to Christians, as has been shown.

Power as the basis for official dialogue The concept of power is important as it ties many of the different parts of the book together. As established in Chapter 1, knowledge is power, as knowledge is the normality by which a society functions. This had an impact on how power struggles in Egyptian society were understood in this book not just as an oppressor coercing their subjects, but also as a battle for normality; the political player who could define true Islam and just rule would have legitimacy in the eyes of the people. Furthermore, this is supported by self-categorisation theory, where Turner (2005) builds on this concept of normality in the sense that ingroup knowledge has persuasive power over group members. Where Foucault was dealing with a subject-free concept of power,7 Turner describes three kinds of subject-anchored power: persuasive, authoritative, and coercive (Turner and Reynolds 2010, 26), which makes it applicable to the discussion of official dialogue. According to Turner, the most common type of power is the persuasive kind, where people are influenced to act according to the norms (Turner 2005, 10) of a community simply by a person referring to the norms of this community. When this type of power is utilised it is not controlling people but influencing them to do what they might already be inclined to do, since they share the norms of the community (Turner 2005). Like persuasion, authority is based on the consensus of the community, in which some people often act with authority, enabling them not just to persuade people to do what these people find correct, but also to act in accordance with the wish of the leader because the leader is seen as being in a privileged position to judge correct actions from incorrect ones. Leadership can be gained through a number of means, such as custom, experience, or

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election – but the key to authority-based power is legitimacy (Turner 2005, 11). While both persuasion and authority are more positive aspects of power, coercion is uniformly negative in the perspective of Turner, as it is taking a position of power over people without them accepting it, and having them act against their will. Turner points out that no ruler is able to stay in power based solely on coercive power, as he or she will need at least enough persuasive or authoritarian power to win over the police or armed forces, which are needed to wield coercive power (Turner 2005, 12). Taking Egypt as an example, people were co-opted through the clientelist system, and an ideological war was fought between the regime (and the Azhar) and the Islamic movements over the right to define what true Islam was and what just rule entailed, to legitimise (i.e. normalise) the construction of Egyptian society. But as the coercive power eventually outgrew the authoritative and persuasive elements of the legitimation of the Mubarak regime in the minds of the people, it became difficult – and in the end impossible – to maintain the population as acquiescent. This understanding of power is, however, not only relevant to the understanding of Egyptian society but also to the understanding of what dialogue is – in so far as dialogue is seen as the negotiation of relations between societal groups. It provides a means of determining which people are essential to different types of dialogue and it can demonstrate how people are influenced by dialogue. Official dialogue can be likened to diplomacy, where officials of different faith communities representing a larger body of followers meet and agree that their relations should be good. This is only a possibility if the leaders of the different institutions do in fact hold some authority over their flock. As should be obvious by now, for a person to be persuasive he or she has to be from within the group, and he or she has to stay within what is defined as legitimate knowledge in the group (Turner 2010a, 266–7; Turner 2005). The Azhar commanded this authority partly based on its international scholarly acclaim, but the authority of the Azhar was also, and perhaps more so within the Egyptian setting, based on the organisation being part of national clientelistic structures as the official voice of moderate Islam taught in schools and mosques. The authority of the Coptic Orthodox Church was also based on the clientelistic elements in the governance of Egypt. Many Christians felt the need to be part of a

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network that could secure their lives. They sought refuge in the Coptic Orthodox Church, where they could voice and work to overcome their frustrations. As long as the leaders of these two organisations held authority and met with each other, relations between Muslims and Christians in Egypt could be seen as good, as the leaders embodied their faith communities. However, the senior clergy of both the Azhar and the Coptic Church being associated with the regime led many people to question or dismiss the authority of their teachings, as many did not feel part of the same social group as the regime. And the Muslim Brotherhood and other groups from the Islamic movements were contesting the legitimacy of Azharite teachings because the senior clergy did not question the level of justice in society and many felt that the rulings of the Azhar often promoted the interests of the regime. There was consequently a lot of scepticism towards official dialogue (M. Guirguis and Doorn-Harder 2011, 168 and 170; Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 156). The interviewees more sceptical towards official dialogue based their doubts on the tenacity of problems between Christians and Muslims, or saw discrepancies between what was said in the dialogue and what was taught afterwards. A liberal professor from the medical department of the Azhar gave an example of the latter: “Superficially they [Azharite professors] do try to maintain good relations with the church. Superficially. But it is only superficial, if I teach my students that Christians are atheist and the worst creatures God ever created. This is in the Qur’an.” A young Muslim dialogue participant was sceptical towards official dialogue because she felt it had very limited impact: “Dialogue in Egypt is an elite academic activity. People in general do not read and only the few who read might be a little influenced [referring to the ‘Reading for All’ campaign described earlier].” Even within the ranks of people participating in this kind of dialogue there was a noticeable amount of scepticism. An Anglican cleric, for example, characterised some official dialogue as having a “political agenda of showing an image that is not really true”. That being noted, the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church did command considerable authority in Egyptian society, and that was essential for official dialogue to have some level of impact. It is likely that Muslim –Christian relations would have been worse had it not been for the negotiations of official dialogue, though this is of course

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speculation for the Egypt of 2010. But the period following the 2011 revolution, when the discourse of national unity was questioned, saw a significant increase in the number of attacks on Christians and witnessed some impact of the official dialogue. This will be further discussed in Chapter 5.

Social dialogue While both boxing match dialogue and official dialogue were fairly consistently described in the various interviews, this was not the case with social dialogue. Boxing match dialogue seemed to be an established intellectual discipline, and official dialogue took the form of religious diplomacy centred on the two major religious institutions, the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church – both categories of dialogue confined to relatively unidirectional goals and methods. Social dialogue seemed to encapsulate various endeavours undertaken by people in opposition to the established institutions. Very often, social dialogue therefore also seemed more ideal than real, as the initiators had less resources to realise their visions of dialogue. But these people constituted an important voice against the religious and political establishment that not only deserves to be heard, but that is essential for a complete understanding of the concept of dialogue within the major religious institutions of Egypt. Social dialogue was based on the idea that the real problem in Egypt between Muslims and Christians was social, not religious, and was as such building up the discourse of national unity. The aim of social dialogue was to try and solve these social issues. Both a Muslim Brotherhood lawyer and a Coptic intellectual talked about working with social dialogue as working against prevailing ideas of dialogue in Egyptian society. The dominant types of dialogue, i.e. official dialogue and boxing match dialogue, were seen as ineffective and not addressing the root problems of Egyptian society. In the words of Tajfel (Postmes and Branscombe 2010), the lawyer and the intellectual saw societal positioning according to non-religious identity markers, such as poverty/wealth, perpetrator/victim, or social justice/social injustice, and were thereby overruling religious identity markers. It is, however, questionable whether analysing and addressing the problems of society as unaffected by religious belonging would have helped alleviate the problems: Egyptian society was differentiated along religious identities

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and there were consequently problems between Muslims and Christians, which likely needed attending to be alleviated. Due to limited space only two visions of social dialogue have been incorporated into this book; one from the Muslim Brotherhood focusing on the legal system in order to try and root out the possibility of criminal acts being carried out in the name of religion, and a lay vision from the Coptic Church wanting a secular state with the aim of creating space for the Christians in Egyptian society. Even though one has the impression that several more voices could be found, taking the concept of social dialogue in other directions within these organisations, it is believed that the two chosen show major strains of thinking within social dialogue. The first example of dialogue was a vision of dialogue that was yet to be implemented, while the Coptic intellectual was the chair of an organisation working with dialogue.

Figure 4.2 This illustration builds on the earlier figures to show the direction of social dialogue, opposite to official dialogue, with the periphery of society trying to influence the dominant parts of society (through institutions such as the Azhar, the Coptic Orthodox Church, parliament and the trade unions). This underlines how social dialogue functions according to the social structures described in Chapter 3, where the oppositions attempt to influence the clientelist system from the periphery of the established power structures. Source: courtesy of the author.

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A vision of social dialogue from the Muslim Brotherhood According to the Muslim Brotherhood lawyer, the major problem with dialogue in Egypt was that the regime would not take care of its citizens, but rather focused on maintaining its own power and its image abroad.8 Official dialogue was to the lawyer an utter failure, as it did not touch the real issues between Christians and Muslims. The lawyer believed that most of the issues arose from the lack of a legal system penetrating into the further reaches of Egyptian society. This claim is backed up by the lack of trials connected to Muslim –Christian issues highlighted by a number of human rights organisations. The regime often preferred local, traditional juridical systems over the national legal system in the event of incidents against Christians, leading (Muslim) perpetrators to feel freer to pursue illegal actions against Christians. The lawyer describes this consistently himself: There must be intellectuals who speak in the independent media with fairness from the perspective of each of their religions . . . There is no effective dialogue as the state is the one which creates the problems, so their dialogue is without value and effect through the media . . . All the dialogue going on is a failure. An example was when the late Grand Imam of the Azhar was kissing and holding Pope Shenouda and Pope Shenouda was doing the same, but they did not have a meeting in which they could focus on finding solutions to the problems. They do not even speak a sentence of scientifically-founded content on the issues. If there is a killer in Upper Egypt and the family of the victims is seeking revenge, is it then possible for them just to kiss and make up? No. The Shaykh and the Pope need to address the issues scientifically to prevent a murder in the first place. What is needed is that they [the criminals] are faced with the law and that the government does its duty. It doesn’t matter if a man raping a girl is a Muslim or a Christian; he needs to be punished by law. The Christian might be facing the law, while the Muslim criminal who just killed 10 Christians goes free – what is this in the face of the law? The government should initiate serious dialogue on these issues. Instead the government speaks to Europe, to project a positive image they take pictures of a kiss [between the Shaykhs and priests], and each of them

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come up with pleasant phrases about being brothers and living hand-in-hand. It is obvious that the lawyer saw no value in official dialogue, as he felt that it was a tool of the regime to please the West rather than addressing the real issues present in Egyptian society. His criticism of official dialogue was therefore equally a criticism of the regime, and the lawyer believed that the Azhar was being used by the regime. The nature of the problems according to the lawyer was not religious to begin with, but issues arose because the regime was not providing Egyptians with adequate legal protection against perpetrators from any religion. The lawyer did not see any real societal divide between Muslims and Christians, only a flawed legal system, and believed that if the latter were to be corrected then there would be no problems between Christians and Muslims. In his own words: Egypt has been known for its peace between Muslims and Christians. The problem now is that there is no political solidarity because there is no democracy . . . The regime can use the problems created by sectarian strife, as it creates fear of fanatics so people prefer the current corrupt system. The primary task of dialogue according to the lawyer was therefore to analyse the roots of the problems, and then to address these issues with appropriate measures. In this sense the lawyer had the same focus on social justice in his understanding of dialogue as the Muslim Brotherhood had in general (see Chapter 2). This focus is in accordance with Honneth, who underlines that for people to feel part of a society they need the recognition of having societal rights (see Chapter 1).

An example of social dialogue from the Coptic Orthodox Church The Coptic intellectual was the chair of a Coptic laypeople’s organisation working from the periphery of Coptic society. He saw himself and his organisation as being a continuation of the laypeople’s movement, which had led to the empowerment of the present Coptic Church (see Chapter 2), and he was working with a type of social dialogue in this organisation by involving Muslims and Christians in promoting a

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secular state. This dialogue involved academics and other experts discussing the future of Egypt at seminars, leading to a larger group of people following the debate at these meetings and on the internet. Furthermore, the Coptic intellectual took part in the public debate on various issues through newspaper articles. He saw the current church leadership as having been more or less corrupted by their success and ties with the regime. This also made him very suspicious of official dialogue: When people from the Azhar and the Coptic Church meet as a public symbol [of unity] they delay the [real] solution. It is like an anaesthetic to the people in the street . . . They do this because they are appointed by the authorities, so they are loyal to the regime – but also because they have no political experience, but they have specific religious interests. [These religious interests are] to maintain their positions in society. The Grand Imam is appointed by the regime, and the Coptic Pope . . . objected to the policies of President Sadat and was put under house arrest in a monastery. Even after Sadat died President Mubarak kept him [the Coptic Pope] in isolation for three years, and placed him back in a position of authority with a new decree. The major lesson for the Pope was to not collide with the regime. The Coptic intellectual agreed with official dialogue on the issue of whether or not to address faith issues in dialogue. Islam and Christianity were seen as completely different, and faith issues as something to be avoided if the dialogue was to lead to more positive relations: I see interfaith dialogue as an incorrect type of dialogue, because there is no dialogue between religions as they are in essence different. There could be a dialogue between the believers, but not between religions . . . This is especially true for Islam, as it is in its basic tenets to force others to accept Islam. He was pushing for what he saw as a continuation of the true path of the Coptic Church based on the influence of laypeople. Part of this continuation was to be found in the separation of religious and governmental powers to the benefit of the whole of Egyptian society, and this was fundamental to his understanding of dialogue.

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The aim of dialogue is to avoid a religious state and reach a secular state . . . There is no solution to the problems of the Copts on a religious basis; we need to change the system into a secular one. Issues [for dialogue to address] are education, culture, development, and media targeting all of Egyptian society – not only the Copts. It is a solution for society as a whole . . . My feeling is that Egypt is becoming more and more religious as a state, and this is very dangerous for all Egyptians . . . The problems are arising from this religious trend . . . [On the relation of his organisation to the Orthodox Church] Around 10,000 people follow us [through the internet], but they are afraid to publicly support us because of the pressure of the Church. Even bishops and priests are supporting us, but they are afraid to appear in the media [with our message], because they are afraid of being harmed by the Church. They are afraid of being excluded from the Church. Copts should stay true to the Church, but people are not educated enough to distinguish between the Church and the bishops and the Pope. It is obvious that the identity of this Coptic intellectual is as part of Coptic society, but that he is in conflict with the Coptic Church as defined by its leadership. He is not satisfied with being a critical voice outside the Church, but is concerned with its wellbeing and wishes to reform it from the inside, in spite of pressure from the Church to not pursue these aims. It is equally evident that he opposes the way the regime is governing the country and the way “religious issues are being pushed into everything. Football teams start praising God when scoring, which makes everything religious.” The aim of the dialogue of this Coptic intellectual is ultimately to create space for Christians in Egyptian society by eradicating what he sees as a radicalisation of religious discourse and a symbiosis between religious and political governance, which is destroying society for Christians and Muslims alike.

Dialogue on the Periphery The first half of the chapter described three discourses of dialogue found in Egypt. These ideas of dialogue were shown to be intimately linked to the societal positioning of the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Azhar, and

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the Muslim Brotherhood, and to their roles in the construction of society. The discourses – especially boxing match dialogue and official dialogue – were authoritative, i.e. defining the notion of dialogue in the Egyptian population, as the general understanding of dialogue according to one of these three discourses was not only explicit in the interviewees from the three major religious institutions, but also found generally in the interviews with different people, in the practical work with dialogue, and in general encounters with people when discussing the topic. The rest of this chapter will show how various smaller institutions and individuals chose to approach these three different types of dialogue, while navigating Egyptian society and trying to push for their perspective on dialogue and Egyptian society. Contrary to the first part of the chapter, which was arranged according to discourses of dialogue, this section is arranged according to the institution or organisation initiating the dialogue. This is to underline how the societal positioning of the institution or organisation influences their dialogue initiatives. The difference is also that the discourses of dialogue in the first part of the chapter were general to Egyptian society, whereas the dialogue initiatives in this part of the chapter are developed at a more local level by various minority groups. Dialogue initiatives involving religion are relatively few in Egyptian society, as in many other societies. This does not, however, necessarily have to be taken as evidence that Egyptians do not actively care about religious issues or the problems between Muslims and Christians. The inertia is also likely to be because dialogue is often seen as something conducted by “professional” religious people with a special interest in religious issues – just as the explicit discussion of general religious discourse is very often left to “professionals” in the shape of academics and clergy. According to a Catholic monk who had been working with Islam and dialogue with a progressive attitude since the 1970s, the lack of dialogue initiatives was due to the tense atmosphere among Muslims and Christians and the tendency towards isolation of the Christians. The focus is now on voices from peripheral institutions concerning dialogue, but will also move beyond institutional boundaries and discuss two different examples of dialogue produced by young people who did not believe that the institutional attempts at dialogue were adequate. All in all, five different settings will be described in this section, including three institutional settings: the Catholic Church, the Anglican Church,

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and the Coptic Evangelical Organisation for Social Services (CEOSS); and two non-institutional settings: Ana Masry, a Muslim–Christian singing group, and a youth group working to improve Muslim–Christian relations (this group will be called the Dialogue Forum). Quantitatively these settings of dialogue, each with a number of initiatives, are believed to comprise the bulk of dialogue types and active initiatives in Cairo when taken together with the initiatives of the first part of the chapter. It is impossible to verify the non-existence of other dialogue initiatives, but in any case this is not necessary because the goal is not to be numerically exhaustive, but rather to provide examples of different types of dialogue to be able to analyse them in relation to general society. Initiatives arising spontaneously among Muslims in connection with grand events should be noted as an important sign of a rising awareness of the hardships of Christians even in 2010. These initiatives were very diverse in nature, for example Muslims gathering around churches to protect Christians during their holiday services or showing solidarity through social media. These displays of unity became even more obvious during and after the revolution in 2011, when people used slogans underlining the unity between Muslims and Christians as well as rich and poor, who were seen as working together for a better Egypt (McNamara et al. 2014, location 38 per cent). The initiatives were very dynamic and ad hoc in nature and therefore difficult to address as concrete dialogue initiatives. The more free-floating desire for dialogue and improvement of Muslim– Christian relations did, however, become more manifest and tangible in the two dialogue initiatives under the heading “The Liberated Youth” in this chapter. On the other hand, it would be academically unsound not to question these slogans of unity. They were underlining national unity by highlighting the unity between the social groupings driven the furthest apart. Egyptian society was divided along the lines of religion and wealth in 2010. If there had been no division between Muslims and Christians, then there would have been no incentive to underline the unity between the groups as a positive sign of national unity. Springborg makes a similar point about the amicable meetings taking place between the competing parts of the police and military (Springborg 1989, 142); if there were no problems the meetings would have been redundant. It is also highly unlikely that these slogans of unity between Muslims and Christians were used by all Muslims and Christians. They were more likely used by the

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people open to the idea of a religiously pluralistic society and by people who believed that pooling the resources of a united Egypt would benefit the future of all Egyptians – without necessarily considering whether this would demand concrete action to improve relations between Muslims and Christians. The slogans were in other words political slogans building on the idealised prism of a united Egypt, and it remains to be seen if the proliferation of this idea of unity alone will be enough to overcome the actual problems between some groups of Muslims and the Christians. The year 2011 saw some of the worst incidents in modern times in Egypt against Christians by the interim governing body with the help of Muslim citizens, but this will be discussed in Chapter 5 along with other postrevolutionary developments.

The minorities of the Christian minority While the Coptic Orthodox Church comprised the vast majority of Christians, there was also a multitude of other Christian denominations present in Egypt: Other Christian communities include the Armenian Apostolic, Catholic (Armenian, Chaldean, Greek, Melkite, Roman, and Syrian Catholic), Maronite, and Orthodox (Greek and Syrian) churches that range in size from several thousand to hundreds of thousands. A Protestant (known in Arabic as “ingili,” meaning evangelical) community, established in the mid-19th century, includes 16 Protestant denominations (Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, Brethren, Open Brethren, Revival of Holiness (Nahdat alQadaasa), Faith (Al-Eyman), Church of God, Christian Model Church (Al-Mithaal Al-Masihi), Apostolic, Grace (An-Ni’ma), Pentecostal, Apostolic Grace, Church of Christ, Gospel Missionary (Al-Kiraaza bil Ingil), and the Message Church of Holland (ArRisaala). There are also followers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which was granted legal status in the 1960s. There are 800 to 1,200 Jehovah’s Witnesses and small numbers of Mormons, but the government does not recognize either group. (US Department of State 2010)

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Of these many denominations it was primarily the Roman Catholic, the Anglican, and the Evangelical Churches (specifically the Presbyterian Church) working through CEOSS that were engaged with various types of dialogue. There are likely to be at least two reasons for these denominations adopting their specific types of dialogue: their position in Egyptian society as the minorities of the Christian minority (J. H. Watson 2000, 117; Makari 2007, 106), and the churches being the offspring of Western churches. A senior manager from CEOSS made this clear in talking about the position of the churches in Egyptian society, pinpointing that: The Protestants have a lot of schools, the Catholics a lot of hospitals, but what about the Copts? . . . They are focusing on their Church, their Church life. The Protestants and also the Catholics are about people’s lives . . . When the Copts do have some initiatives in society they primarily serve the Copts, not the community, even when it comes to other Christians. There seemed to be an inverse relation between how self-sufficient a church society was and how much it engaged with general society; i.e. the less self-sufficient a church was the more it would engage with society to improve relations between Muslims and Christians (this would also apply to individuals working against the grain in the major religious institutions, such as the Coptic intellectual who was working towards a secular state). While the Coptic Church could accommodate the needs of the Christians to feel secure within the structure of the Church, for example by negotiating with the regime, this was not the case for the minority churches to the same extent. These were pushed to navigate society while to some degree being alienated from both Muslims in general and the Coptic Church. Chapter 2 explained how the Coptic Orthodox Church was sceptical towards the Western Churches because these were founded primarily through the conversion of Copts (this was the experience of the CEOSS manager to a degree, as she felt it was easier to involve Muslim imams in dialogue than Coptic Orthodox clergy), they had become symbols of the unwanted influence of the West directly before Nasser (Hassan 2003), and they were seen as a culturally and religiously destructive factor after Nasser. The minority Churches

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did, however, have the same responsibility towards their followers as the bigger religious communities; i.e. sustaining the livelihoods of their members in the local networks. The less self-sufficient the Western Churches were, the more they had to engage with general society to be able to provide security and prosperity for their members. They did this by opening up to society and thereby creating space in society for the minority, building clinics, hospitals, development centres, schools for children with special needs, normal schools, creating micro-finance projects, providing poverty relief, raising awareness of child education, etc. These projects were most often carried out for society at large and would make the Christian minority communities indispensable to the local society, where individuals from majority groups would have to think twice before negatively targeting their local minority groups. The focus of dialogue initiatives on the right to exist as a religious community becomes clear when an Anglican cleric states that: The most important topic for us [in dialogue] is the right of citizenship. How we see it as Christians and Muslims. How it is in the Qur’an and how it is in the Bible. It is obvious that the Prophet Mohamed started the first kind of citizenship when he wrote the Medina document and gave space for Jews, Christians, and Muslims to live together. Somehow this is not the case now in Islamic countries. The rights have diminished since the times of the Prophet Mohamed . . . like building places of worship, etc.9 Dialogue projects were possible partly because of ties to the West, which provided funding. CEOSS’s list of partners makes this evident (Rowe 2009, 122). This was, however, not only a positive factor in the work of the local branches of the Western Churches and in local societal relations. The relatively large amounts of money made the churches look suspicious in the minds of some Muslims, Western Churches were sometimes seen as propagating Western decadence, and the local churches had to accommodate Western sensibilities in their work, sometimes leading to a contrast of ideologies (Meinardus 2006, 102–4), for example in working with a specific notion of gender roles. The churches in Egypt were, however, not just supported financially but also politically, which affected issues between the churches and the regime (as when local security police started demolishing an Anglican community

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centre in the suburbs of Alexandria and the British embassy was contacted and was able to help put a stop to the demolition before the building was completely destroyed). The relations with the embassy were also in line with official dialogue as embassies were sending diplomats to various public and private gatherings initiated by the churches, such as when a hospital was opened or during religious celebrations. Having foreign guests from various embassies attend would show the connections of the church and build up their strength in society. In this way, the minority churches were able to assert influence at local level through their various development and dialogue endeavours and at national level through their international ties as international churches, thus securing their own position in society (but with minimal general political weight). The primary goal of dialogue work, especially that of CEOSS and the Anglican Church, was therefore to create space for the Christian minorities in Egyptian society, opening up Christian communities to society at large through progressive action. In the internal dialogue in Egypt, the West was also used by some Christians to emphasise their needs as a minority by comparing their condition to the condition of the minority of Muslims in the West, which was seen as significantly better by the Anglican cleric: “There needs to be reciprocity. What Muslims have in terms of rights in the West, Christians need to have in the East as well.”

The Catholic Church The Catholic Church stands out in comparison with the two other church organisations in two significant and interrelated ways. The Catholic Church has been part of Egyptian society for approximately 800 years (Meinardus 2006, 74) and is broadly integrated into Egyptian society through a large number of different institutions aimed at improving the living conditions and level of education of Egyptians in general. While both CEOSS and the Anglican Church have a history in Egypt and are working to improve the lives of Egyptians in general, the history of the Catholic Church is significantly longer and its various organisations beneficial to general society are many, providing visibility of the Catholic Church in Egyptian society. The Catholic Church is divided within itself in Egypt, as a Coptic Catholic bishop was consecrated for the first time in 1741 (Meinardus 2006, 83) and in time the Coptic part of the Catholic Church outgrew

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the Roman Catholic part. Egypt also contains a number of other Catholic national churches, such as the Syrian Catholic Church, but each of these groups within the Catholic Church is distinguished by following their national and ethnic traditions. However, they are all as Catholics clearly distinguished from the Coptic Orthodox Church, at least at an organisational level and as part of the Holy See of Rome (Meinardus 2006), but also by the fact that a Coptic Orthodox can only marry another Coptic Orthodox, not Christians from other denominations according to Church law. Religion then also provides a social border guard between Christian denominations, similar to the one between Muslims and Christians (see Chapter 4), although this border guard is less vehemently guarded by the general population. The many different orders and organisations and the widespread nature of the Catholic Church help explain why there were very few coordinated and centralised efforts at dialogue work by the Catholic Church in Egypt. One of the interviewees also felt that there was a generally hostile approach to Muslims and Islam among Coptic Catholics, who seemed closer to the scepticism towards Muslims found among the Coptic Orthodox. This view was supported by a Catholic monk of European origin who was organising monthly meetings with Christians interested in dialogue primarily attended by Catholics and a few from other denominations, but characterised by the relatively low number of Coptic Catholics attending. This left dialogue initiatives as primarily based on the initiatives of individuals, rather than being a collective effort of the Catholic Church in Egypt. Three of these dialogue initiatives will be described here. First, the dialogical influence of the different organisations and schools will be looked into. Then the academic dialogue of a Catholic monk will be described, showing how scholarship based on a positive attitude towards the different religions helped build bridges between Muslims and Christians. Finally, the dialogue experience of a Catholic nun will be described, based on little more than a positive attitude while living in a poor neighbourhood. Apart from these three dialogue initiatives, the Catholic Church also participated in official dialogue, but this dialogue was primarily between the Vatican in Rome and the Azhar, even though steps were being taken in 2010 to involve Coptic Catholic clergy as well (Umsworth 2008). An interviewee believed the non-presence of the local church in official dialogue from the beginning, combined with the nature

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of official dialogue, gave a rather bleak result, even though he started out by praising official dialogue: There is always a good impression on the part of common people, when they see that the official representatives of both religions meet together and issue peaceful declarations inviting believers to live and work peacefully together . . . However, in the long run I have the impression that people became increasingly indifferent to it. They saw that the situation didn’t change, the same difficulties remained untouched; all this business became another show with no result.

Diapraxis10 According to Meinardus (Meinardus 2006) the Catholic Church in Egypt was working through a great number of institutions and organisations providing services in the fields of education, research, refugees, international cooperation, health, poverty relief, youth, orphans, homes for the aged, and help for the disabled. Most of these fields were provided for through a number of institutions spread widely throughout Egyptian society, but the Catholic Church was especially known for their schools, which were used as an example of the good relations between Muslims and Christians. For example, a lawyer from the Muslim Brotherhood grew up on a street with seven churches of different denominations and attended a Catholic school, which functioned as a playground for Muslims and Christians alike. It was, however, also obvious to the Catholics that their social work and schools had a positive effect on their relations with Muslims. During a seminar in Egypt about dialogue for Catholic clergy from different places in Africa, a Catholic nun talked about the dialogical effect of their schools among the Muslim population as their presence was needed by Muslims.11 The seminar was arranged to promote dialogical work in the Catholic Church through their activities.12 Through these projects Muslims would understand the value of accepting the Christian community as an integrated part of society, and they would then more readily accept Christians as equal citizens with rights and needs specific to them, such as places of worship. The interaction provoked by these projects would generally generate positive

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attitudes, which would counteract any negative attitudes provoked by incidents and the growing societal separation of religious communities. The theoretical basis for diapraxis is outlined under the description of CEOSS’ diapraxis work. It should be noted that the diapraxis of the Catholic Church (and the Anglican Church) differed from that of CEOSS as the Catholic Church provided services to Egyptian society, and by helping others gained goodwill. The diapraxis of CEOSS, as will be seen, was a two-way street creating mutual dependence, thus increasing the benefits in terms of social cohesion.

Academic dialogue An Italian Catholic monk was very optimistic about the possibilities of academic dialogue in Egypt: Having conducted a positive study on a topic within Islam, a study of historic texts without prejudice and polemics . . . I have seen that people, professors, accept it very well . . . Reason used in a proper way really is a field of dialogue; most Muslims will appreciate it even though there still is some enmity. The monk had conducted extensive research on Sufism while living in Egypt since the 1970s and had recently published a book in Arabic introducing major Sufi thinkers. This book was well received in Egypt, and he debated the book and Sufism at different philosophical and religious forums including the Azhar. According to the monk, the book filled a gap in Arabic literature on Sufism and was therefore welcomed. He felt that he rarely had to defend his status as a Christian, foreign monk when presenting his research on Sufism – but he did have to defend the usage of Sufism within Islam, as this was something contested by more conservative Islamic currents. While the monk had a very positive experience of being open to the truth he saw in Islam as a Christian, he was not aware of any Egyptian Muslims or Christians doing the same as him. His background for engaging with dialogue was the second Vatican Council in the Catholic Church in the 1960s (Umsworth 2008), but he felt that he was alone in his rather progressive approach to interpreting Islam in his research in Egypt. The monk described the Coptic Catholic monks and clergy as going against the

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trend of the second Vatican Council by adopting what he felt was a very negative attitude towards Islam, excluding any kind of truth. It should be noted that there had been other foreign scholars in Egypt as well, such as the recently retired Catholic monk of Dutch origin, Christiaan van Nispen tot Sevenaer, who was highly appreciated and respected by Muslims and Christians alike. The Dominicans also have a major library on Middle Eastern and Islamic studies in Abbasiyya, Cairo, where people from all over the world come to study Islam, many with an attitude similar to that of the interviewed monk – who therefore did have an international community with similar interests to his own. The academic dialogue of the monk builds cohesion through positive access to the cognitive structures of the other religion. Basing his approach to dialogue on the second Vatican Council, the monk was clearly within the inclusivist type of dialogue in Race’s typology (see introduction). He did see truth in Islam, but he found ultimate truth in Christianity. It is, however, doubtful how much the term inclusivism actually says about his attitude towards Islam. There was no doubt that he in theory placed the salvific possibilities of Christians above those of Muslims; Christianity was described as superior when he was asked to address the question of religious superiority. But this was not his focus in general, as he spent a lifetime studying Sufism and vehemently defended the status of Sufism within Islam. Looking at his life and his choices of professional interests, it is difficult to argue that he had a less positive attitude towards Islam in general, but also in relation to the truth value of Islamic teachings, than someone not engaged with Islam in general, but who happens to be of a pluralistic conviction. Attitudes are “easy” if they have no impact on our lives. The theoretical implications of the academic dialogue of the monk were adequately filed under official dialogue as the negotiation of the cognitive structures defining social identity markers, but contrary to official dialogue he would directly and positively approach faith issues – though not comparing faiths or addressing the question of religious truth. The resulting proximity, where he was invited to academic discussions of Sufism among Muslim scholars, bears witness to the success of his dialogue work and the possibility of addressing faith issues in Egyptian dialogue. The limitation of the dialogue work of the monk was found in the fact that there were only few, if any, Egyptian Muslims

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or Christians actually engaging in this type of dialogue to the same extent as the monk. While working on the book on Sufism, the monk became aware that many Egyptian universities did not have Bibles in their libraries, preventing Muslim students with an academic interest in Christianity access to basic texts to develop their understanding of this other religion. This was especially critical according to the monk as most Muslims acquired their knowledge from what the Qur’an said about Christianity. To enable a more critical approach to the study of Christianity the monk was therefore, in collaboration with a Muslim colleague, working on a project to place and file Bibles in university libraries. The monk was interested in dialogue in general and worked to unite the efforts of Christians by setting up a monthly meeting at which Christians working with dialogue shared their experiences and discussed recent developments between Muslims and Christians in Egypt and abroad. He also arranged seminars within the Catholic Church, such as the one mentioned in the previous section, to further the awareness of dialogue in the different Catholic organisations and institutions.

Grassroots dialogue A Catholic nun of African origin lived in Cairo in order to learn Arabic with the aim of working with refugees in Egypt. During her studies she lived in a community of four nuns in the lower middle class/lower class district of Shoubra el-Kheima in the Northern part of Cairo. The nun described this area as filled with tension, and many Muslims were suspicious of the presence of this community of nuns in the Muslim majority area. The fact that the nuns were of foreign origin was, however, seen by some as intriguing, prompting the child of a Muslim woman to visit them. The child eventually brought her mother along despite the initial suspicions of the mother. The mother of the child told the nun to be careful when visiting the Christians as they were thieves, and the Christians were afraid that the nun would be poisoned by the Muslims. The initial interactions of the nuns with a few people eventually led to more people interacting with them and the breaking down of prejudices and fear – and in turn to both Christians and Muslims interacting more freely and visiting each other. According to the nun, all it took was the courage to live in this less privileged area and a positive attitude towards the people they met in their

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everyday lives. The nun believed this to be a very effective form of dialogue as it pushed people to be personal and interact as people rather than as believers. The social mechanism utilised in this dialogical situation where there were no tangible reasons for scepticism between the groups – apart from a prevailing social divide – was proximity. People’s curiosity towards the group of nuns, which broke with the traditional schism between Egyptian Muslims and Christians, then pushed people to engage with them – the group of nuns being salient in turn functioning as a catalyst between the divided groups.13 Three central elements were thus involved: (i) an unfamiliar (salient) group of people who were not entangled in local divides; (ii) the new group commanding some authority (Turner 2005) over how relations to people from beyond the divide should be seen, in the end leading to (iii) proximity (Devos et al. 2003, 127) which helped overcome negative stereotypes and attitudes (Brewer 2001).

The Anglican Church The Anglican Church had 20,000 members in Egypt in 2010, including Egyptians, African refugees, and Westerners living in Egypt. The diocese of Egypt was controlled strongly from the top in line with many other institutions in Egypt, and dialogue initiatives came primarily from the leadership of the Church, as this seemed to be the part of the Church with an interest in dialogue as an endeavour to improve relations with Muslims. The concept of dialogue used by the Egyptian part of the Anglican Church was based primarily on the vision of one of the top leaders of the Church, whose personal passion for dialogue prompted him to incorporate an element of dialogue into the fabric of many developmental initiatives, using his personal relationships with a number of prominent Egyptian Muslims and Christians. First, the official dialogue between the Anglican Church and the Azhar will be described, followed by how this official dialogue between the leaders of the religious groups was channelled towards the grassroots of Egyptian society through a school project, and finally how the Anglican Church integrated religious dialogue into their developmental initiatives, resulting in diapraxis.

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Official dialogue In contrast to the Catholic Church, the Egyptian Anglican cleric interviewed was involved from the beginning in official dialogue between the Azhar and the Anglican Church. This Anglican cleric was an important figure as a participant and in facilitating meetings, both through his skills in navigating the Egyptian religious environment and through his personal relation to the Azharite Shaykh in charge of dialogue with monotheistic religions. While official dialogue was addressed theoretically in the last chapter and explained as an important socio-political tool, the official dialogue of the Anglican Church is illustrative and promotes an understanding of how official dialogue was conducted without broaching the topic of articles of faith. In 2002 the Azhar and the Anglican Church signed a dialogue agreement, stating that annual meetings were to take place at which issues of mutual interest were to be discussed, aiming to improve Muslim–Christian relations. According to the webpage of the Anglican diocese in Egypt, the meeting in 2008 had the following main topics: “1. Citizenship in Islam [i.e. in religious scripture]; 2. Islam and Citizenship [i.e. citizenship in Muslim societies]; 3. The Role of Religious Leaders in Promoting the Rights of Citizenship.” The themes explored how Christians have a legitimate space in a Muslim society and how legitimation was found in Muslim sources. The dialogue therefore addressed the heart of the issue for many Christians, but did so from a positive, normative perspective of how things should be. This was done without addressing the current hardships of the Christians in Egypt, but generally acknowledging problems between Muslims and Christians all over the world, and that it was the duty of both Muslim and Christian clergy to work to improve relations.14 As described in the section on official dialogue, these meetings were negotiating social positioning (Postmes and Branscombe 2010), and the main topics of the meeting in 2008 show how explicitly this can be the case, directly discussing the legitimacy of the Christian presence in Muslim countries according to Muslim scriptures. Generally, the topics were not restricted to addressing the issue of creating space for Christians in Muslim societies. In the five years following the 2008 meeting, according to the Church webpage, the topics would also address:

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1. The foundational principles and goals for dialogue in our respective religions; 2. Ethical questions, particularly medical ethics; 3. Ensuring that all human beings benefit from scientific research; 4. How to ensure that human solidarity and collaboration works in a way that does not disadvantage some nations; 5. Developing the culture of peace rather than the culture of clashes between religions, cultures and civilizations. The topics of the meetings were generally prepared by the participants beforehand and lectures were given by members of the clergy and professors, elaborating on different perspectives of the topics. In the end the aim was to arrive at some consensus on the topic. The meetings caught the attention of the Egyptian media, and on some occasions special broadcasts were made to share the spirit of the dialogue meetings, as in 2004 when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, gave a speech televised in the Arab media about how the Christian dogma of the Trinity should not be misunderstood as Christians believing in three gods (Williams 2005). Sitting next to the Archbishop was the then Grand Imam of the Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who concluded the session by confirming the value of dialogue and good relations between Muslims and Christians – but also commented that dialogue was not meant to discuss faith issues. The conference furthermore resulted in the booklet entitled “Restoring Distorted Images”; an attempt to promote greater understanding between Muslims and Christians in general by addressing misconceptions of both religions among believers of the other religion. In the meeting in 2008 there was a special focus on the importance of schoolchildren and reaching them to influence them positively before more negative influences could do so, which at the time had already developed into a project that the Anglican diocese in Egypt was working on. This will be described shortly. The cordial relations between the local Anglican Church and the Azhar made it possible for the Anglican cleric to integrate dialogue into a number of church projects such as schools, hospitals, and development centres (making them “diapraxis” similar to that described under the Catholic Church). Official dialogue was integrated into projects by making the Muslim– Christian ties visible in the work. One way of accomplishing this was by inviting high-level Muslim clergy to the founding of a hospital. This partially legitimised the project in the area

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as a Christian project, but it also helped make high-level cooperation between the faiths visible to more people, as these events were public and covered by the local media. During special services, such as when the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, visited Egypt, the front seats of the All Saints Cathedral in Zamalek were reserved for Egyptian notables from the other churches, the Azhar, and the regime, integrating these into the contacts of the church and showing the Anglican, Christian congregation its positive ties to the Muslim majority.

School/home dialogue project The Anglican cleric was heavily involved in Anglican official dialogue, but also initiated other dialogue initiatives, one of the most prominent being “Planting a Tree of Hope”. The project had its early beginnings in 2005 and was conceptualised in cooperation with foreigners and Egyptians with a bottom-up approach, focusing on developing the experience of dialogue between students, homes, and teachers. It was, however, taken over by an Egyptian coordinator in 2007 and adapted to be more effective in the Egyptian setting, with a top-down approach conveying knowledge from religious officials to the students and their parents through the teachers. Three schools were involved in a number of projects over the course of two years starting in 2008, when teachers were taught the importance of dialogue and educated in a dialogical spirit of understanding and positive coexistence. The students were mobilised through various activities, for example painting pictures illustrating national unity and the peaceful coexistence of Christians and Muslims. The project involved senior clergy from the Coptic Orthodox Church, The Anglican Church, and the Azhar all legitimising the project from a religious standpoint. Suzanne Mubarak, spouse of the then president Hosni Mubarak, was the patroness of the project. The Anglican cleric explained that this was partly because working with dialogue in the school system could arouse suspicion among people in general and the secret police, but it was primarily to involve people of a high enough level to be able to repeat the project on a larger scale, and eventually teach dialogue in the general school system. The project ended in 2010 as a pilot project unique to the Egyptian setting, and will hopefully provide valuable experience for the benefit of future dialogue among the grassroots facilitated by the officials. This project is described here, but

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will be theoretically developed under the description of the Dialogue Forum later, which was working on a similar project.

CEOSS CEOSS (Coptic Evangelical Organisation for Social Services) was established as an NGO and recognised by the authorities in the 1960s when the organisation also became independent from the Presbyterian Church, even though they do share some affinities at present. It is one of the major NGOs in Egypt and the largest organisation working with dialogue. CEOSS started as a development organisation (Rowe 2009, 120) and in the 1990s the organisation established two departments: one for development and one for dialogue. The department for dialogue is described as follows on the CEOSS webpage: The Cultural Development Division addresses the cultural and intellectual aspects of development in Egyptian society. This division is comprised of the Forum for Intercultural Dialogue and the Curricula and Educational Resources Department. The Forum opens avenues for the discussion of new ideas, bringing together leaders from different segments of society. Since its establishment in 1992, the Forum has worked from a viewpoint that respectful and pluralistic dialogue will nurture intercultural cooperation and contribute to positive communication and interaction. As is plain in the description, the wording “religious dialogue” has been avoided and “Intercultural Dialogue” preferred. This is likely due to boxing match dialogue being the pervasive definition of religious dialogue in CEOSS, as the need to evangelise would be imperative if religion was to be addressed. Compared to both the Anglican and the Catholic Churches, CEOSS had clear visions of dialogue and how it should be conducted, leading to two very clear-cut types of dialogue. The higher level of clarity and consistency in the dialogue work of CEOSS was likely due to the departmentalised structure of the organisation, where each department was working relatively autonomously according to written guidelines. This was not the case in the Anglican and Catholic Churches, where the work was based on individual clerics and dialogue workers which could

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lead to a more dynamic, but at times somewhat inconsistent approach. As described earlier, the regime placed heavy restrictions on NGOs so as not to lose face, such as after the earthquake in the 1990s (Zahid 2010), and this was also the case for CEOSS, one of the major NGOs in Egypt, which then had to take care not to draw negative attention to themselves and have their work terminated. The dialogue work specific to them and their articulation of this dialogue work therefore seemed to be placed well within the boundaries of the socially acceptable. According to the manager interviewed, the dialogue of CEOSS directly engaged about 5,000 people, who would then influence many more. CEOSS was working with two types of dialogue. One type of dialogue was shaped according to Egyptian society and official dialogue; in this, local leaders were educated in the spirit of tolerance. Leaders were targeted so that they would in turn influence many more. Contrary to most official dialogue, CEOSS focused on the intermediary level of leaders called local officials in the description of official dialogue. The other type of dialogue CEOSS was working with was diapraxis, utilising the many years of experience CEOSS had with development work.

Dialogue aiming at the local networks of power: intercultural dialogue The senior manager interviewed expressed a clear inclination towards what she called “intercultural dialogue”, or dialogue between religiously defined societal groupings (specifically Muslims and Christians) with the aim of creating a viable space for the Christian minority by breaking down negative stereotypes. The dialogue was explicitly directed at intermediate leaders of Egyptian society like priests, Shaykhs, people from the media, the regime, etc., as these were seen as essential for changing the general opinion of the Egyptian population (Makari 2007, 156) – see Chapter 2 for a further description of the influence of local leaders. The manager provided an illustrative example: We started working with the new generation – the young imams and Shaykhs – because they grew up in the times of tension – the 70s, early 80s with a lot of Muslim –Christian clashes – which fostered an attitude of hatred or fear towards each other. We might be able to live as in one building, Muslims and Christians, but

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they never talk about their feelings, their beliefs. They might meet and greet in the elevator, but there is no human connection. Some Christians and Muslims might say: “We are living together as Muslims and Christians.” But the Muslims don’t know about Christian beliefs, while we Christians don’t know about Muslim beliefs. Breaking this wall of silence helps people get involved and ask these questions. One of the topics we discussed was: “The Woman as a Citizen”. And then we started discussing how the woman is viewed in Christianity. It turned out they had some very mistaken beliefs about Christian views on this topic. But as we explained the Christian perspective, they saw that we agree in our views. The media portrays Christian views wrongly. They think [Egyptian] Christians are like the Westerners, where women are free in everything.15 The dialogue the manager described was explicitly directed at people with strong voices in Egyptian society, but at an intermediate level. She estimated that they worked with approximately 2,500 of these local leaders and believed that each of these would influence thousands of other people (which might be an exaggeration). The goal was clearly to reach as many people as possible by addressing those who would otherwise propagate a negative view of the “others” and thereby increase the tensions that the manager located as starting in the 1970s. The manager trusted that the message of understanding and peace would resonate with a humanity present in both Muslims and Christians and eventually restore relations to how they were before the 1970s. She talked about the separation between Muslims and Christians as “a wall of silence”, which dehumanised people by building up negative stereotypes. She therefore saw the relations between Muslims and Christians as positive in essence and the tensions as mere distortions, which in her experience could easily be corrected once this wall of silence had been broken down and people could meet directly as the human beings they basically were. In her description of this the manager never relapsed into a simplified discourse of national unity, but continuously showed awareness of the position of the Christians as a minority. Therefore, with their intercultural dialogue CEOSS was dealing directly with what Brewer (2001) calls “universal stereotypes”, which are stereotypes based on the dynamics of intergroup relations. People from

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the same community are likely to be labelled positively, for example as trustworthy, moral, or peaceful; people from a salient outgroup are likely to be the opposite by default. Both the manager and Brewer point to people tending to be dehumanised – or depersonalised, according to Brewer – because of these group dynamics. It is the depersonalisation that this type of dialogue addresses, by having people meet and confront stereotypes – the example of negative stereotypes here being how women are viewed. This is very similar to the experience of reconciliation work, as described by Ronald J. Fisher with the term Interactive Conflict Resolution: “The emphasis in dialogue is on increasing shared knowledge and building trust among the participants, as opposed to developing options to influence public opinion or affect policymaking” (Fisher 2001, 30). In particular in the case the manager described, the aim is to establish the Christian minority as “equal but different” in what Tajfel calls a creative attempt to assimilate with the population at large without compromising the boundaries of the community (Tajfel 2010a, 163–4), in this case establishing the community as moral, even though the women are not – for example – veiled. Kelman’s description of a workshop covers this idea of CEOSS perfectly: A workshop is a specially constructed, private space in which politically involved and often political influential (but generally unofficial) members of conflicting communities can interact in a nonbinding, confidential way. The microprocess of the workshop provides them the opportunity to penetrate each other’s perspective; to explore both side’s needs, fears, priorities, and constraints; and to engage in joint thinking about solutions to the conflict that would be responsive to the fundamental concerns of both sides. (Kelman 2001, 198) The cleric from the Anglican Church was passionate about bringing the dialogue to the grassroots. He did this primarily – as was shown – by using his contacts among the nationally influential religious leaders in his other projects, some of which focused directly on religious dialogue. The dialogue work of CEOSS differed in an important way, as it utilised the other level of power found in Egyptian society – the local networks of power – described in Chapter 2 (Ismail 2006b; Singerman 1997).

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Institutions such as the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church were national power players with a voice permeating most of society and in principle reaching the local networks of power through their preachers in local congregations and mosques, but official dialogue often did not involve the local religious leaders in the dialogue meetings themselves. CEOSS attempted to achieve more direct influence on the grassroots through the local networks of power by inviting local leaders to join the Intercultural Dialogue, with the aim of changing their attitudes and thus the nature of their influence. Official dialogue and CEOSS’s Intercultural Dialogue therefore both hinged on the hierarchical, clientelist structure of Egyptian society. The important people for this kind of dialogue were the leaders who functioned as patrons (or brokers) for a wider group of people, many of whom would feel obliged to follow the lead of the people with strong influence. In principle, the local networks of power were subordinated to the national networks of power, but the influence of the national networks of power would not always reach the local networks of power. As pointed out by the Anglican cleric, the efforts of the national networks of power (the Azhar) were at times not sufficient to enable the dialogue to reach the grassroots. Establishing this link to the grassroots was an aspiration for an interviewed Azharite Shaykh, but it was not actually happening. Furthermore, as described in Chapter 2, the structure of clientelism also allows for a multitude of patrons (or brokers) and not all of these would feel obliged to follow an otherwise nationallyrecognised institution such as the Azhar on all – if any – topics.

Diapraxis Poverty was an obvious national problem in Egypt, where a substantial part of the population lived below or around the UN-determined poverty line. The lack of opportunities for the future created frustrations in the population, which clearly also had an impact on relations between societal groupings, where people from other groups would more easily be seen as unwanted competition. In this sense poverty could influence people and their understanding of other people as competitors or maybe even as enemies. The diapraxis of CEOSS aimed at giving people possibilities for steering their own destiny away from poverty and for creating partnerships of Muslims and Christians. The

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CEOSS manager describes this shift: “We now use religion for a better life – not for conflict.”16 An enlightening example of diapraxis was experienced on a field trip to a village where CEOSS had a project in 2007. The village was located by the Nile River and was highly dependent on fishing. They had experienced problems between Muslims and Christians in the past. When CEOSS approached the village they started by setting up a local committee consisting of the people of the village – both Muslims and Christians. The first task of this committee was to pinpoint any major negative influences on the financial situation of the village and how they could address them. It was agreed that they needed independence from an intermediary between them and the local market. As they did not own a refrigerated truck to transport their fish, they had to settle for the price of a fish supplier at the local market. The project then took shape as the village communally took a loan through CEOSS to buy their own refrigerated truck, thus creating opportunities for shaping their own future in a more positive direction. The goal of diapraxis was therefore to create dependence through cooperation between the social groups, leading to greater cohesion. To obtain the benefits they so desperately needed, they would have to cooperate, which resulted in breaking down segregation and establishing a positive attitude. This way of breaking down barriers between groups is a recurring topic of Tajfel (see Chapter 1). He sees his social identity theory as fundamental to the idea of mutual needs and action leading to cohesiveness. One of Tajfel’s inspirations, Sherif, works with the link between need and cohesion, and is quoted by Tajfel (1978, 434): The “superordinate goals” of the fourth stage, defined by Sherif as “those that have a compelling appeal for members of each group, but that neither group can achieve without the participation of the other”, resulting in a lowering of intergroup tensions together with renewal or creation of friendships across group membership; although it remains true that all traces of previous intergroup hostility were by no means removed. These “traces” might be what Turner is warning against when he points out that mutual needs and cooperation will only lead to greater cohesion between groups if the project succeeds. If the project fails, Turner

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predicts elevated intergroup hostility (Turner 2010b, 215). Johan Galtung also points to practical projects of mutual interest to conflicting groups as an important opportunity for healing after a conflict from the perspective of research in peace and reconciliation. One example he mentions is to have soldiers from conflicting armies rebuild the facades – covering bullet holes – of their homes together (Galtung 2001, 15 – 16). A major difference between the diapraxis of CEOSS and the “Joint Reconstruction Approach” of Galtung is that CEOSS builds long-term commitments involving significant parts of the population while Galtung’s suggestion is more short-term and involves only a few, who then would gain symbolic value for the rest of the population through the media. Again it needs to be pointed out that there was no need for CEOSS to address dogmatic religious issues. The senior manager strongly expressed her aversion to addressing religious dogma, as she felt it would only lead to problems and alienation. Her focus was on improving relations, and because of this she explicitly argued against boxing match dialogue. Constructive religious dialogue to her was when followers of religions came together to create space for the religious minority groups of society. This was to her solidly founded in her beliefs as a Christian: [I am prompted by my faith to conduct dialogue] because I believe that with no dialogue there will be more conflict . . . Stories always come to my mind about dialogue from the Bible. Jesus always went to his enemies to talk with them. He never just stayed at a safe distance. He was not afraid to express his beliefs. The senior manager is here talking about the pattern of how many Christians kept to themselves because of what they perceived as discrimination. She, on the other hand, was emboldened by her faith to cross this socio-religious line – building on stories of Jesus in courageous open meetings with threatening people or in threatening situations (she was not specific about which stories), rather than stories drawn from the Bible and Church history about the hardships of believers (as was described with reference to the Coptic Orthodox Church earlier). On the other hand, the manager expressed a need to focus specifically on what she defined as religious issues (which did not include discussing

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religious dogma, but rather focused on Muslim– Christian relations). Even though diapraxis was an established part of the dialogue work of the organisation, she felt that it was too focused on developmental issues to really have an impact on interreligious issues, leading participants to care primarily for their personal wellbeing at the expense of the breaking down of stereotypes. She pointed out that for dialogue to be successful in improving Muslim– Christian relations it was essential to address misconceptions of other religious groups – not in relation to their dogma, but in the behavioural and ethical image that one group would have of the other. A salient example of a topic for dialogue to the manager was how she felt Christian women were perceived as less respectable than Muslim women among many Muslims. Because of this she preferred the intercultural dialogue of CEOSS over their diapraxis. The reason why CEOSS would still engage with diapraxis was that the focus of the poor people was their daily needs, according to the manager, and if you wanted their attention, then you would have to push for Muslims and Christians to work together for their mutual benefit. While the intercultural dialogue of CEOSS depended on the same structural pattern of society as official dialogue, diapraxis was closer to social dialogue, which was found as described earlier on the periphery of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Coptic Orthodox Church. This dialogue was based on an analysis that situated the problems in society as resulting from the relations between Muslims and Christians as societal groups – and not as part of the dogmatic constructs of either religion. The method was therefore first to identify the problem as a social problem, and then to address this problem. In the example highlighted here the problem was identified as poverty. Poverty was then used as a tool for dialogue to improve relations instead of worsening them. A major difference between the diapraxis of CEOSS and the social dialogue described earlier is that in social dialogue intellectuals were discussing the problems of the country to implement changes in governance, while CEOSS was working in a more hands-on manner, promoting proximity between Muslims and Christians.

The Liberated Youth With the Arab Spring in 2011 the revolutionary potential of the youth was realised, but the urge for change among some young people was also evident within the religious setting before 2010. These young people

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from the middle class grew up in a relatively secure part of society, were well-educated, selective in their religious interpretations, and pushing for change towards a more inclusive society based on social justice. Much of this youth did, however, not feel attracted to religion as a catalyst for change, as they were disillusioned with the established institutions and felt distanced from what they saw as an antiquated and restrictive expression of faith. This was also the case for many of the participants in the dialogue groups that will now be described, but when they found an opportunity to address religious issues in an open and inclusive environment they took it. These groups of young people were relatively free in their expression, as they could function “under the radar”, attracting only a limited number of people from limited social groups (primarily the upper middle class). Also, their very loose structural nature made them flexible and able to use different settings for their meetings, making them less visible in society and to the authorities, which was a concern for the planning group of the Dialogue Forum. These young people were an important alternative voice to the established authorities within religious discourse, and not just in contemporary Egyptian society; the youth was historically a major source of change that through the past century had manifested itself in the vigorous student organisations (Abdallah 2008). But with student organisations being taken over by more conservative, aggressive currents during Sadat’s rule (Gaffney 1995), the more progressive religious currents of society found outlets in initiatives such as the ones described here, when they did not leave religious debate altogether. Dialogue in Egypt was generally conducted by the elite, either in terms of religious leadership, upper middle class intellectuals, or dialogue initiatives among the more privileged youth (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 164). The term “liberated” in the title of this section points to the initiators of these projects as liberated from the traditional perspectives of religion expressed by the major religious institutions, but also to their relative freedom from fear of the authoritarian state, since they were mainly part of the upper middle class and felt relatively secure from the sporadic police intervention and poverty issues described in Chapter 2. While the groups primarily came from the upper middle class, they did also involve people from less favourable backgrounds. An obvious bias should be noted at this point. Initiatives such as these are the ones most in line with my ideas of dialogue and with those of many

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other Western researchers. It is, however, easy to overstate the impact of these initiatives on the general Egyptian population; it is doubtful how far they would be able to reach into the broader Egyptian society.

The Dialogue Forum The Dialogue Forum was originally conceived by a young European woman living in Egypt and her Egyptian friends. The first official meeting was held in January 2004, when a number of primarily Egyptian Muslims and Christians met to discuss what the forum should be and how it should work. In the beginning different kinds of dialogue were experimented with. While the organisers behind the group were a mixture of Egyptians and Westerners, the bulk of the participants were Egyptians; one of the aims of the forum was to incorporate differences in religion, culture, and nationality into the core of the group. According to one of the Muslim interviewees, participants in the Dialogue Forum were not typical of the Egyptian population; she found this especially to be the case with the Christians, who, according to her, would normally be too closed to engage in anything as progressive as the approach of the forum. Another of the Muslim interviewees noted that the forum was welcomed in the Anglican and Catholic Churches, which would allow them space for their meetings and at times participate in them, but she believed that this would not be possible for any mosque or Coptic Orthodox church because of the nature of the dialogue, i.e. discussions about faith with the aim of better understanding the religious perspective of the other. Another interviewee noted that “It is part of Egyptian culture that people do not accept differences of opinion.” It was obvious that these Muslim interviewees felt separate from society as progressives, leading also to a certain distance from the more traditional strands of dialogue, of which they could name two: boxing match dialogue, which was seen as too aggressive, and official dialogue, which was satirically termed “Official Nonsense”. Elaborating on “Official Nonsense”, they explained: It [official dialogue] is like every other official aspect of our lives [as Egyptians]. It is just collapsing – has no meaning. It is conducted for the media, and everyone knows that they are lying about it [i.e. their public dialogical affirmation of each other] . . .

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First of all the Grand Shaykh of the Azhar; no-one respects him religiously, because he is not a scholar [producing thoughtprovoking theories] . . . He is an official appointed by the government. It should be noted that one of the interviewees seemed more pessimistic overall about Egyptian society and religious institutions than the two others. But they were all highly critical of how things were constructed in the Egyptian society of 2010. They agreed that what they felt were less enlightened (i.e. less fortunate and less educated) people, a major part of the Egyptian population, used the official statements of the Azhar as a source of information.

Experiential dialogue At the first meeting of the Dialogue Forum the nature of dialogue, and how to shape it in the forum was discussed.17 Having received training in how to build dialogue from a Danish experience as a layperson I promoted working with an experiential type of dialogue (talking about faith from a personal perspective). This was received with some scepticism by some of the Egyptians, who preferred working in a more hands-on manner with the Egyptian population, but it was eventually accepted with enthusiasm as one of the ways we would work with dialogue. One of the Muslims interviewees pointed out that: “The dialogue group wasn’t only connecting people and looking for common ground between them, it was more than that, to most of us, it was new scopes, new horizons and new ways of actually getting to know the other believer.” The first meeting took place in the desert oasis of Fayoum, south of Cairo. The idea was to take people away from their everyday setting of Cairo, which was crowded with religious symbols, practices, and identities, and have the group of young people interact in a more neutral setting. Other trips went to Ismailia by the Suez Canal and Mt Katherine in Sinai. Still other dialogues were held in Cairo, but the most effective seemed to be the dialogues where people were removed from their normal context, as the participants had to rely more on each other as a group for an identity and less on the identities given by their everyday lives.

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Addressing the approach of this kind of dialogue, the Muslim interviewees defined it as: “Speaking about faith with no intention of conversion.” To illustrate this, it is enlightening to briefly describe one of the events. The participants, a group of 30 mostly Egyptians in their 20s, were transported out of Cairo by bus. They interacted naturally, seemingly without any segregation along religious lines. Arriving at their destination, the desert oasis of Fayoum, the topic of prayer was broached by a Muslim and a Christian, who both explained how and when they prayed, what they prayed for, and described any associated movements. After this, people were split into groups, mixing Egyptians and foreigners, Muslims and Christians, and the topic was discussed on a personal level. It was made explicit that curious questions about the religion of the other were welcomed, but not questions meant to disprove the religion of the other. In some cases Christians and Muslims expected to agree with people from their own faith, but ended up agreeing with their compatriots irrespective of their religious affiliation – and this was also the case for explicit religious matters, for example morality or the importance of prayer. This emphasises that the understanding of the world and religion is a regional construction (see Chapter 1). The impact of the dialogue varied according to the person participating, but the following examples are informative regarding those who were more enthusiastic about the trips. One person had some of his stereotypes contested; after the dialogue an Egyptian Christian told me that it had been very enlightening to him, as he had always been told in his church that Muslims have no personal prayer; that they only followed the five daily prayers mechanically and felt no personal relation to God. Having Muslims talk about feeling connected to God was thought-provoking to him, and made him question many of the negative teachings he was raised with in his church. One of the Muslim interviewees described how she felt about the trip: That day was blessed. The mercy and acquaintances bestowed upon us that day was so clear and present in the air . . . Each shared his/her own experience, mesmerised by the presence of God between us, by mentioning Him and His customs, trying to come up with a unified prayer, which we can all share and say together [Muslims and Christians]. [The prayer was:]

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Oh God Almighty, All praise and hail You, I pray to You with helplessness and weakness, I pray to You in humility and modesty, I ask You, the Kindest, the Merciful, the One and only God, To bestow your love and mercy upon us all. All believers, all worshipers . . . Gather us one day in Your heavens, Hand in hand looking towards You with one heart, Submitting and thankful for Your blessings. Forever and always. Oh Lord, Thank you God.18 Defined in social psychology terms, these dialogue trips offered the participants an opportunity to discuss faith with people from another religion within the framework of a shared social group. This was encouraged by the isolated choices of venue enhancing proximity (Devos et al. 2003, 127). Fisher also talks about the importance of self-disclosure in breaking down stereotypes and the negative emotions of people towards negatively-defined outgroups. Fisher is writing with a background in peace and reconciliation studies with a similar conclusion: Consistent with theory and research on interpersonal self-disclosure, this exchange typically increases shared understanding and begins to rebuild trust in the relationship, at least among workshop participants. What is also occurring is a rehumanization of the other, which casts a whole new light on their behaviour and appropriate reactions to them. (Fisher 2001, 34) The rehumanisation Fisher is talking about is based on proximity offering the possibility of self-disclosure. This is an effective renegotiation of societal positioning involving both cognitive structures and emotional patterns. In the wording of the theoretical chapter, the participants went from interacting through the society type of relations to interacting as a community of interpretation through the community type of relations (see Chapter 1). The experiential dialogue as described here and in the section on Ana Masry could be termed pluralistic in the sense Race uses it in his

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typology (see introduction). This was, however, only possible because the question of superiority was not addressed; instead the participants dwelt on religious practices of mutual interest to many Muslims and Christians. In this experiential dialogue, the emphasis was on how the individual believer approached and felt about his or her religious practices. Since the dialogue was conducted at this personal level, without any cognitive metastructures in the shape of religious dogma, the participants were able to connect to what they could recognise in the spirituality of the others and to be curious about what they could not relate to.

Fraternity Day The ideas of a more practical approach to dialogue led to what were called “Fraternity Days” in the Dialogue Forum. These were days where the forum would gather approximately 40 children of different genders, colours, faiths, nationalities, and societal backgrounds to conduct what one of the Muslim interviewees termed ideal dialogue: “[ideal dialogue has] many people from different economic backgrounds, religions, and ethnicities. Not necessarily just Christians and Muslims, but also – for example – atheists. For people to get to know each other and get along better.” Some of the organisers were school teachers and people working with children in Catholic schools, making it possible to organise gatherings of children from various backgrounds. Various games were prepared for the children, some of which were directly didactic, teaching the children about the positives of plurality; others were simply to have the children interact through play and laughter. One didactic game involved children colouring a story of two animals that saw their fortunes greatly improved through cooperation, while another game with no direct dialogical discourse involved bursting water balloons over the heads of the children, resulting in much turmoil and enjoyment among the children regardless of any financial, ethnic, or religious differences they might have had. Each Fraternity Day also had an adult speak about unity in humanity and cooperation, and their value. Describing “ideal dialogue”, one of the Muslim interviewees drew on her memories of sharing life with Christian children in her school days:

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Ideal dialogue should reach out to poor neighbourhoods through different projects. Especially projects with children, where it might have a stronger impact. My personal experiences with Christian friends always appeared [in my mind] when someone told me negative things about Christians. In these cases I would refer to my experiences of having Christian friends back in my early school days. The interactions between Muslims and Christians were seen by many in the interviews and in the work with dialogue as more positive in their school days, when they recollected themselves as children playing together with less reserve than is seen in the interactions of the adult versions of the same people. This notion of children being “unspoiled” by tensions in society seemed to be strong, and promoted focus on children in some dialogue initiatives such as “Planting a Tree of Hope” of the Anglican Church, where the Anglican cleric, remembered his childhood as relatively unproblematic in relation to the tensions facing Egyptian society in 2010. The idea was therefore to form the minds of children and promote natural positive relations before the more negative currents of society could reach and corrupt them. Even though these dialogue initiatives of the Anglican Church and the Dialogue Forum were aimed at the same group in Egyptian society, the schoolchildren, their dialogue initiatives were based on vastly different social structures. While the Anglican cleric utilised his contacts among religious officials to facilitate dialogue reaching from the top of society through teachers to children, the Dialogue Forum took a more personal and direct approach as grassroots influencing grassroots. While the dialogue work of the Dialogue Forum seemed more “authentic” to the Danish author, there is little doubt that the dialogue initiative of the Anglican Church, if followed through, held greater potential impact than the work of the Dialogue Forum. This is partly because the Anglican Church utilised the authority of hierarchical structures and partly because of the potential sustainability of the continuous work of established institutions. It can furthermore be argued that the Anglican Church, depending on traditional religious power structures, would find it easier to legitimise their work in a country where religious tensions were rising.

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The theoretical implications of promoting dialogue in the school system are too obvious to elaborate on; what children learn in the school years has an obvious impact on how they develop later in their lives. See Anderson (2006) for further elaboration. However, it should be noted that the Anglican cleric and others pointed to the importance of homes in contrast to schools, as the schools could only develop a positive understanding of the religious other to the extent that this image was supported at home.

Ana Masry The musical group Ana Masry (meaning “I am Egyptian”) was started by a young Egyptian Muslim singer. It features a minimum of six people performing at various progressive venues in Cairo, often to full houses. The group has released a CD of their songs. Their image is progressive but diverse, being composed of unveiled and veiled women (approximately half of the group were women), men dressed traditionally and in modern style, and Christians and Muslims (approximately twothirds Muslims). Their performances feature a repertoire of their own songs sung by all members of the group together, intertwined with Christians hymns and Sufi chants performed by the respective members of both faiths. The audience seemed very enthusiastic about the group at concerts the author attended, but the relaxed atmosphere prevalent also gave the impression that much of the audience belonged to the same circles of friends as some of the performers. Introducing the message of the group, it is appropriate to cite one of their most famous songs, the eponymous “I am Egyptian”:19 I am Egyptian, Muslim or Christian, I am Egyptian. Whether from Lower or Upper Egypt, I am Egyptian. Nubian or Siwan, I am Egyptian. From Sinai or Arish, I am Egyptian. Rich or poor, I am Egyptian. At shrines, I light candles,20 I am Egyptian. For the newly born, a Sobou’21 is held, I am Egyptian. Spring is brought by Sham El Nessim22, I am Egyptian. The ‘Arbe’een’23 is held after my death, I am Egyptian. When wars and armies attacked my country, injured and killed

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civilians. The bombs did not discriminate between Egyptians; When the Nile dried up one day and stopped giving; At these times, I made a vow. And when blessings and prosperity were back, I lit two candles: One at Mar Girgis,24 and the other at Sidna El Hussein.25 Because I am Egyptian.26 The song describes how Egyptian Muslims and Christians share a lot of traditions, rooting this solidly in the Pharaonic past, but at the end of the song the lyrics move on to an unknown future, in which the poet, as an Egyptian, will give thanks to God in both a church and a mosque to avoid the catastrophe of the Nile drying up, which would kill all Egyptians no matter which faith they belong to. The song proclaims unity between Muslims and Christians as part of the Egyptian cultural and religious fabric. The words do not differ much from those of the Azharite professor engaged with boxing match dialogue (see Chapter 4), who saw Egyptians as “one tissue of unity”, but the background in each case is vastly different. The Azharite professor did not acknowledge any problems between Muslims and Christians but the singer from the Ana Masry singing group had a keen sense of the discrimination against Christians varying from unpleasant to unbearable, according to him. Having access to the perspective of many Christians prompted the singer, as a Muslim, to work towards improving conditions for Christians. For the Azharite professor the idea of national unity blinded him to any problems, while the singer was utilising the discourse to push for better conditions for Christians. Furthermore, both official dialogue and Ana Masry utilised the discourse of national unity, but they differed in the proximity to their “audience”; while Ana Masry addressed the audience (i.e. the recipient of the dialogue initiative) directly, official dialogue was filtered through the media, creating distance from the “audience”. Proximity was also fostered by the singing group addressing a specific group of the population with a strong identity as liberal; the liberal content of the songs would sustain the identity of the group and distinguish it from the rest of the population. Proximity (Devos et al. 2003) to the audience and between the members of the group might help explain why the recipients of the dialogue initiative of Ana Masry seemed more engaged with the message.

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According to the singer, the songs they had been performing as a group mainly focused on positive material and encounters between Muslims and Christians, as the singer felt that there were already plenty of people focusing on the problems. The singer noted that: We should find common causes which we could work together for. Common threats . . . When we had common enemies – the Brits, Israelis, or the French – they didn’t discriminate between us. And now our new common enemy is illiteracy, ignorance, policy. They do not discriminate between us either. We are all suffering, so let us unite and work against these issues. This is the message. This situates the ideas of the singer close to those of the social dialogue described in the Chapter 4, in so far as they both protest the social construct, but with major differences in how the dialogue was conducted. The method of the Ana Masry dialogue initiative partly involved singing songs of unity like the one quoted, but also consisted of bringing together believers, Copts and Sufis, singing Christian hymns and chanting Sufi-style, each according to their religious expressions in front of an audience. These are not normally songs for entertainment, but religious songs used within religious communities. Sharing their religious traditions in this personal manner is in line with what was categorised as experiential dialogue, where people from different religions get the chance to obtain a glimpse and feel of the other religion. This is again in line with the dialogue work of the Azharite professor who was working with experiential/academic dialogue, but with a basic difference in attitude. While the Azharite professor was basing his work on a negative attitude towards the truth value of Christianity, ending up with boxing match dialogue, the singer had a positive attitude, seeking to promote understanding and appreciation of the religion of the other. The singer’s definition of dialogue was people speaking about faith, and he was somewhat discouraged by the dialogue initiatives he had experienced in Egypt in the shape of official dialogue and the intercultural dialogue (of CEOSS), neither of which he felt ever reached the grassroots. Being discouraged by this type of dialogue, the singer saw dialogue as just one possible tool to encourage tolerance and respect for differences. He seemed somewhat lost for words regarding what to

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call the work he and his fellow musicians were carrying out in “Ana Masry”, as the term “dialogue” was used to describe initiatives the singer was discouraged with, but he ended up alighting on the term “coexistence”, because the various members of the band would take part in each other’s lives, present each other with their best wishes on religious occasions, and call if any of the others were in trouble. People react differently to initiatives such as Ana Masry, but to highlight a positive response the voice of a young Catholic Christian is interesting. He had earlier participated in the Dialogue Forum described above even though he had never felt fully engaged with the methods of the forum, but stayed in it as he had no other alternatives and because he believed action was needed. When experiencing Ana Masry he later explained that he was moved to tears and felt both truly Egyptian and Christian at the same time, immediately joining the group as he was an experienced musician himself. The music had made him feel connected to his fellow countrymen, both Muslims and Christians. Experiential dialogue in Egypt was known to most people in the form of boxing match dialogue, as religious beliefs or traditions would be shared to show the superiority of one’s religion. This was why some people would shy away from engaging in this form of dialogue and keep religious experiences personal or within their religious setting. Dealing directly with expressions of Islam and Christianity, Ana Masry would therefore in many settings be controversial, but at least two factors played an important role in protecting the initiative. One was the obvious one that most concerts were held in places where more progressive people would meet, such as the Town House Gallery in the Downtown area or the Culture Wheel in Zamalek, where you would also find for example jazz played by ensembles from all over the world and progressive art exhibitions – the singer himself was aware of this, as he pointed out that their strategy was first to “preach to the converted” (i.e. people who were already open to the dialogical message), then eventually to branch out to broader society. The other reason why people would more easily accept listening to the religious messages of others was likely to be that the songs of the other religion were an artistic expression that could be appreciated solely for its aesthetic or cultural value. It therefore constituted a more passive religious expression, which it was more difficult to perceive as active proselytisation. The theoretical background of experiential dialogue was elaborated under the examples from the

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Dialogue Forum, leaving further elaboration here redundant. However, a major difference between the experiential dialogue of Ana Masry and the Dialogue Forum was that the Dialogue Forum was built on the intimacy of a smaller group and Ana Masry succeeded in bringing this intimacy to their audience in larger numbers through art. One exception from the categorisation of dialogue in this chapter should be mentioned. In the international church in the rich Cairean area of Ma’adi, an American, Anglican pastor had a strong passion for dialogue in line with Western conceptions of dialogue. He arranged art exhibitions, speeches, and other dialogue initiatives primarily involving the Westerners and well-off Egyptians frequenting the church, Egyptian notables, and residents of the area. While these dialogue initiatives were very interesting in their own right, they were specifically Westerninitiated, involving primarily Western people from the Christian side, and situated on the periphery of Egyptian society with a relatively limited impact outside the sphere of the inhabitants of the area who already enjoyed positive relations – leaving them of little interest as an example of an “Egyptian” concept of dialogue. This does not, however, diminish the value of the dialogue initiatives, which provides an excellent example of how people from outside Egypt positively can influence the dynamics of the country. This is, however, not the topic of this book. Should this dialogue initiative be categorised, it would be under “the youth” as it had an equally experimental approach to dialogue.

Conclusion The benefits and possibility of analysing religious dialogue as part of social dynamics is clear in this chapter. Societies are characterised by the presence of different social groups, which are delimited by signifiers as detailed in Chapter 1. In Egypt, religion is an important signifier among other important signifiers determining societal positioning, as described in Chapter 2. When societies are experiencing difficulties, people are likely to seek out their closer communities for security. When communities are religiously defined, the problems between groups become religious as well; the situation becomes a clash of communities using religious signifiers, as described in Chapter 3. Dialogue is then the negotiation of the positioning of these groups in society trying to overcome their problems as described in this chapter:

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(i) Boxing match dialogue is maintaining religion as a “border guard” between social groups by contesting the legitimacy of the cognitive structures of the other faith. The solution to the contestation of social groups is to win over people from another social group to one’s own. (ii) Official dialogue clearly shows the political significance of religion and dialogue in Egypt. The Copts are governed by ruling entities in accordance with their religious belonging, and many Copts seek to support themselves through their Church membership in times of need. Official dialogue reiterates a discourse of national unity, which legitimises the Copts as part of the Egyptian political order, and sustains the Coptic Pope as the representative of the Copts. (iii) Dialogue is also used to question societal order through what is here termed social dialogue; people in opposition to and on the fringe of established society question the role of religion in society. The examples of this chapter are the questioning of the Coptic Church as the politically representative entity of the Copts, and of the role of religion in the judicial system; punishment should be meted according to the crime without any consideration of religious belonging for everybody to feel part of society. (iv) The minority churches were unable to secure their members to the same extent as the Coptic Church, which pushed these churches to a more open type of dialogue, exposing more church members to broader society, where they legitimised their presence through hospitals, development initiatives, and workshops building trust and understanding. (v) Finally, several youth groups protesting the general condition of the country were experimentally approaching the concept of dialogue and engaged positively with the faith of the other through explanations and understanding or through art. Chapter 1 defined two types of societal relations: the community type of relations towards members of one’s own community, and the society type of relations towards members of outgroups. It was made clear how people were most often members of an array of different groups, which could be utilised in dialogical navigations of social relations; dialogue could try to superimpose a common identity over a problematic identity. There was only one type of dialogue, boxing match dialogue, that functioned solely at the level of society type of relations, and thereby maintained a distanced relation between the groups engaged in the dialogue. The strategy of this type of dialogue was to strengthen the boundaries between religions, as well as lessen the perceived danger

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of the other religion by converting their believers to one’s own community. This type of dialogue was building societal differences based on religion. None of the other types of dialogue were solely based on the society type of relations. Official dialogue, social dialogue, diapraxis, and the academic types of dialogue in Egypt all maintained a clear separation between Christian and Muslim communities, and as such the basis for the society type of relations. But at the same time, most of these dialogue initiatives superimposed the national identity over religious identities and with this attempted to build community relations between the different religious communities. As Chapter 2 described, Egyptian society was, however, increasingly divided according to religious delimitations, as most people sought safety in their religious settings when they failed to find it in the national setting. The urge to secure their lives in their religious setting was more powerful than the dialogical attempts to push people towards a common national identity. Some of these dialogue initiatives, such as social dialogue and diapraxis, did actually question if the religious differentiation of society was helpful to society, politics and religion, but did not simultaneously question the social boundaries between religions. They consequently based their dialogical endeavours on the idea that religion could easily be dismantled as a social signifier in Egyptian politics and society, leaving their approach as somewhat idealistic. While these different dialogue initiatives were striving for the community type of relations, they were losing out to the society type of relations. These types of dialogue were bridging societal differences based on religion, without any successful attempt at removing religion as a social differentiator. The only dialogue initiatives that were based only on the community type of relations were those found among the liberated youth. This youth often hailed from a section of Egyptian society that did not need to seek security in local networks of power. The youth was often influenced by the general discourses of Egyptian society, and entered dialogue with a tendency towards the society type of relations towards the other religion. This was especially the case for the Christian minority. But given the opportunity to embrace the community type of relations, this was often done. Some of these dialogue endeavours would evoke the discourse of national unity to include people from the other religious community into their own community, and others would refrain from

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either discussing the dogma of the other religion and focus on common religious experiences, such as prayer, or would only address religious dogma with the aim of understanding the perspective of the other. These types of dialogue contested religion as a social signifier and instead used religion as a potential source of mutual enrichment within a community built up by the dialogue. As described in the introduction, Race differentiates dialogue into three types of attitudes: exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. This corresponds well with the differentiation between dialogical attempts to sustain, bridge, or contest religious differences as social signifiers. The difference is that Race bases his analysis primarily on cognitive structures, while this book founds its analysis on cognitive structures, emotional patterns, social positioning, and the construct of society. This opens up the analysis to the impact of dialogue on social constructs and relations as essential to understanding attitudes and what dialogue is – and what dialogue should be; while most Egyptian dialogue participants enter dialogue with an exclusivist approach to the truth value of other religions, their general attitude towards other believers can be pluralistic, when their dialogue initiatives are analysed more holistically as a social endeavour.

CHAPTER 5 EGYPT AND DIALOGUE IN A TIME OF REVOLUTIONS

As Chapter 1 made clear, the theoretical perspective of this book posits that society consists of a network of groups; the politics and social dynamics of societies are determined by their groups and how these groups relate. Usually the groups and their relations grow into a relatively stable pattern, which defines the political constellation and how politics are conducted. While not changing much of the underlying political structure (Aoude´ 2013), the 2011 revolution led to a struggle to redefine Egypt’s groups and their relations (Wickham 2013, 154); the Muslim Brotherhood ascended to the presidency for a year, but was unsuccessful in accommodating the powerbases found in the financial sector, the administrative system, the judiciary and the military, while also adjusting to the politically-awakened Salafi groups and their political opposite found in a cohabitation of liberal groups and revolutionary youths. The Muslim Brotherhood followed a governmental path similar to that of the former president Mubarak, where they tried to concentrate power in their own ranks to consolidate their power (Ennarah 2014). In this process they made enemies of the judiciary (which was a significant power base in the clientelist system of Mubarak as described in Chapter 2) and the military (Hamid 2014, location 43 per cent). The people did not feel that they were benefiting greatly from the revolution and felt overlooked by the post-revolutionary division of power, leading to another popular uprising in 2013. With their voice enforced by the military and the judiciary, the Muslim Brotherhood was swiftly dismantled in a strategic

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effort not unlike those found under the former president Mubarak, but now sanctioned by “the will of the people”; hundreds of political leaders were detained based on their political affiliations, and one of the questions lingering in the minds of many after the former military general Abdul Fatah Saeed Hussein Khalil el-Sisi was elected president in May 2014 – a question also voiced when the Muslim brotherhood ascended to the presidency – is whether it is possible to develop Egypt towards a democracy. A moot question, since no political system is above change, and the events of 2011 and 2013 might have sown the seeds that eventually lead to a change in Egyptian society and politics. The different groups use the signifiers of “religion”, “revolution”, and “democracy” in the struggle to establish the new order in which their respective group will have significant influence. In this socio-political contest “Islam” and the related idea of “righteous governing” are central in the establishment of a governing body backed by people, and this puts the role of the Christians into political focus with more intensity than before the revolution. This is especially the case after the 2013 revolution, where the political field has been divided into Islamist and non-Islamist affiliations to a much larger extent than after the 2011 revolution, as the Muslim Brotherhood no longer provide a political buffer between the disagreeing groups. This is not to say that the Christians were exempt from a similar debate before the revolution, but that with the revolution the social construction of Egyptian sociopolitical reality is being renegotiated and the question of the Christians has become central for a group to determine their general position in the socio-political landscape, as this chapter will elaborate. The term “revolution” is a signifier for the society-changing events characterising Egypt since 2011. Some would claim that nothing much has actually changed in the governmental system of Egypt, and therefore that Egypt has not had a revolution since the 1950s. I believe that Egypt has experienced a significant change that has pushed the people into politics to a much larger extent than before 2011, and even though much has stayed the same, the term “revolution” adequately covers what happened in 2011. The term took on new meaning in 2013 where the people rose again to overcome the short rule of the Muslim Brotherhood, with the military throwing their weight behind this initiative. As the 2013 events divided the population into two camps to a much larger extent than before, the term was juxtaposed with the term “coup” in the

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discussion of the legitimacy of the removal of the Muslim Brotherhood from power; the Muslim Brotherhood claimed their rule as legitimate and called the military intervention illegitimate, while the people protesting the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood called the demonstrations a revolution, as they saw the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood as undemocratic and thus illegitimate. I will use the term “revolution” here for both the 2011 and 2013 events, but without choosing sides in the ongoing struggle between Islamists and the military; the term will signify the fact that mass demonstrations prompted the early termination of the ruling entity. I personally see the one-year rule of the Muslim Brotherhood as undemocratic and therefore illegitimate (Ennarah 2014), but while I appreciate the democratic value of the mass demonstrations in 2011 as well as in 2013, the military intervention in 2013 and following crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood was also undemocratic and furthermore inhuman, and must be condemned as such. Whether the illegitimate rule of the Muslim Brotherhood legitimises an otherwise illegitimate military intervention is a longer political discussion, which will not fill these pages (McNamara et al. 2014, location 27 per cent). One should not overemphasise the influence of political rhetoric if this detracts attention from the underlying struggle of the general population to secure their lives through the clientelist system; people often voted for the people they felt would secure their personal lives, rather than according to some political ideology. Most Egyptians are of modest means, often backed by a “patron” in the local networks of power as described in Chapter 2. The clientelist structure is even more essential to the poor following the revolution, as the economic situation of the country is critical, with failing tourism and rising prices. The fact that the majority of Egyptian people encouraged the re-entry of the military into politics following the 2013 revolution has emphasised a valuable lesson about clientelism and the balance of power between the regime and the people. Chapter 2 made it clear that Mubarak had a number of mechanisms co-opting parts of the population and legitimising his rule, as well as the option of utilising more repressive methods. As there was no government working for the broader population, people secured their lives in their local networks, which could then be co-opted by the regime. These local networks offered people a means of survival. In the poorer areas, the struggle to get by on a daily basis allowed the regime to

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a large extent to co-opt these simply by subsidising bread. During the revolution, in many areas the political struggle was won by the promise of these basic commodities – and lost when they were not provided. In 2008 the regime erected bread stalls distributing subsidised bread baked by the military (see Chapter 2); during the revolution the Muslim Brotherhood used the same tactics, but failed to convince the people that they would be able to secure their future. When the military deposed the Muslim Brotherhood from the presidency, the people saw in them the most viable option for securing their basic needs and stability and chose to overlook the obvious coercive tactics that were so hated and feared during the regime of Mubarak. A lesson to be learned is therefore that coercion is not necessarily the strongest foundation for a dictatorship such as the Egyptian prerevolutionary regime. The fear of losing what little is available can be more powerful than the yoke of repression. This has a very real impact on average Egyptians, who now therefore turn to the socio-political structures that they know, as they sustained them before the revolution. Egypt has been governed by bread more than votes and political rhetoric, and it is questionable if or to what extent the revolution has changed this. It is still too early to answer these questions, but what can be analysed is how the revolutionary renegotiation of socio-political relations has influenced the Christian minority and the dialogue between Muslims and Christians. It must be underlined that this chapter is not an attempt to gauge the outcome of the revolution, but to discuss what has happened to the Christian minority and Christian–Muslim relations during this period of revolutionary flux so far – and this is analysed by looking at the socio-political structures. The description of the position of Christians and dialogue in Egyptian society following the 2011 revolution requires four components: a theoretical understanding of what has happened and how this influences group relations, an understanding of how political dynamics have changed and what has stayed the same, the state of Muslim–Christian relations, and whether dialogue has changed with the revolution.

Redefining Egyptian Society The theory presented in Chapter 1 discussed how society is structured by different groups and their relations, but this structure was disrupted

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by the revolution in 2011 and consequently needed to be renegotiated. The situation in Egypt will be explained based on the thoughts of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, as these are highly relevant in discussing the disruption and renegotiating of societal structures (Laclau and Mouffe 2002; Laclau 1994). In particular, Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason (2007) will be essential in understanding how society has ingroups and outgroups, leaving some groups outside the circle of national community. This will be fundamental to understanding how the post-revolutionary negotiation of Egyptian socio-political structures uses Christianity as a signifier in the debate of Egyptian national belonging; a negotiation that influences the societal position of Christians and escalates sectarian incidents. As explained in Chapter 2, Egyptian society under the rule of Mubarak consisted of different groups, often delimited by religion. The groups analysed in the former chapters were all comprised within the definition of the Egyptian national community, in which they had each a socio-political role. The Mubarak regime was in power, supported by the Azharite leadership. The Muslim Brotherhood was the opposition, and recognised (in practice, not rhetoric) as such by the regime as they were too influential to just brush aside. The Christians, especially the Coptic Orthodox Church, had their own community within the national community, gaining societal position by maintaining positive relations to the regime. These different groups consequently all had their own positions and roles within the circle of national community (which defines the societal order); there was a hegemonic socio-political order, which allowed its people and groups to act and predict the actions of the others. Outside the circle of national community, there were a number of smaller groups, the ones of interest here being the more radicalised Islamist groups; these are comparable to Laclau’s use of the Marxist term lumpen proletariat,1 as they were on the fringes of society, from where they criticised the established discourses of societal order: “The term lumpen proletariat has an intended referent: those lower sectors of society which have no clear insertion in the social order” (Laclau 2007, 144). Before the revolution, much of the criticism of Christians being part of the legitimate societal order would come from these groups outside the societal order; within the legitimate societal circle the discourse of national unity was, with some exceptions, upheld (see Chapter 3 for a

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discussion of the Egyptian discourse of national unity). With the revolution, the hegemonic order of society was dissolved and the public debate about the weaker societal positions was opened up for debate; as Egyptian societal positions are being renegotiated, the position of Christians is unstable and open for discussion. The social position of the Christians becomes a signifier or “bargaining chip” in the positioning of other groups (L. Guirguis Forthcoming). Those who accept Christians as part of the national community are opposed to other positions, where Christians are not accepted as members of the national community. This was already a discussion before the revolution, but with some exceptions not accepted within the legitimate political circle that defined who belonged to the national community; 2 following the revolution the circle of legitimacy itself is being renegotiated and this allows for the question of the societal position of Christians to enter the debate to a larger extent. The societal position of Christians is, however, not only visible in this more negative debate about how inclusive a Muslim state can be, but Muslim–Christian unity is also a powerful political symbol in protests and demonstrations. The slogan “Muslims and Christians together” has been used since the 1919 revolution to signify a unified Egypt against an oppressor; a slogan that can only be used meaningfully if there are Christians present at the demonstrations. The Copts as a symbol of national unity were also used by the military after the 2013 revolution when the commanding officer announced that power had been taken from the Muslim Brotherhood flanked by the Grand Sheikh of the Azhar and the Coptic Pope. The Coptic Church then openly backed the presidency of el-Sisi in the 2014 elections. The opposite position regarding Christians in Egypt is evident in Daniela De Maria’s blog from 30 July 2013 from an interview she attended between the Arab West Report and two Muslim Brotherhood leaders: She then asked us a question about the Christians in Egypt, only to then give us the answer and open a one-direction speech in which she blamed the Christians for dividing the country and bringing down Morsi’s legitimate government. While the Muslim Brotherhood does not univocally place political blame on the Christians, it is obvious that Christians are used both as a

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symbol of unity or as a scapegoat for political division in the struggle for political legitimacy. The Copts as central to political positioning will be an important point in this chapter. In post-revolutionary Egypt, some Muslim groups declined while others accepted the invitation to the Christmas celebrations at the Coptic Cathedral – and thereby either continued or discontinued the pre-revolutionary clientelist ties between the ruling entity and the Coptic Church represented by the Pope. The question of Christians belonging to the national community receiving more attention has also produced a number of initiatives pushing for Christian belonging; one such will be described as the Misriyati initiative. The point, which should be emphasised, is therefore that the elevated focus on Christian belonging is not only a product of escalating instability following the revolution or a general increase in Muslim aggression, but is part of the dynamics that follow the breaking up of societal order: when societal order is disrupted, minority groups are more at a risk of becoming victims in the renegotiation of who legitimately belongs to the circle of national community than majority groups. At this point, it would be relevant to provide an overview of the political struggle in the country, which can be broken down into three overarching positions in post-revolutionary Egypt. Up until the revolution in 2013, the only unified position was the Muslim Brotherhood and their Freedom and Justice Party in the centre, trying to encompass as much of Egyptian society as possible (Wickham 2013, 174). To the right of the Muslim Brotherhood there is a more traditionalistic position consisting partly of Salafi groups, with the liberals at the other end of the spectrum (Ottaway 2013; El Houdaiby 2013, 8). The Salafi groups are a new phenomenon in politics, as they stayed politically dormant during the Mubarak regime (Hamid 2014, location 6 per cent). According to Ste´phane Lacroix3 the Salafi groups are diversified, which was obvious during the post-revolutionary elections, when multiple people ran under the positional umbrella of the Salafi. They consequently do not have just one voice; some of the more radical voices against the Christians are found in this camp (Iskander 2012, 172), while it is also possible to find Salafi with an inclusive attitude towards religious minorities. The Salafi are, like the Muslim Brotherhood, grounded in the local networks of power, but Lacroix points out that they do not have a unified political structure comparable to that of the

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Muslim Brotherhood, which means that so far they have remained politically scattered. According to El Houdaiby (2012, 139), the dominance in the public debate of the liberal youth following the revolution resulted in the Salafi groups feeling that their identity was under threat, consequently prompting them to become politically active. At the same time, many Salafi groups felt that the Muslim Brotherhood did not cover their political agenda, provoking them to follow an independent political track. On the other side of the political field are the established political parties active during the presidency of Mubarak, though these have little support in broader society (Ottaway 2013) and have stayed relatively scattered, even though there have been attempts at unifying them to give them a common voice. Before the 2011 revolution, the Muslim Brotherhood was a conglomerate of people who gathered in opposition to the presidency of Mubarak (see Chapter 2). Some of these were liberal and separated from the Muslim Brotherhood following the revolution, as the organisation needed a politically unified voice without extremes (Brown 2012; El Houdaiby 2013, 1). Some of more liberal Muslim Brotherhood voices then became part of the political position here termed “the liberals”. “The youth” are seen as the initiators of the revolution (Shehata 2012, 105) and are politically glorified as such. Many of these belong to the liberal position, where there is a focus on an inclusive approach to society and politics (Wickham 2013, 155); this position is concerned with human rights issues, such as women’s rights and the protection of minorities – including the Christians. Much of the youth did, however, join the revolution because of their personal frustrations concerning unemployment, low salaries and consequently the low prospects of settling down in a marriage (Shehata 2012, 107). Apart from these two positions in the political arena, there are also three major entities with political relevance: the military, the financial sector, and the bureaucracy (including the police and the judiciary). As discussed in Chapter 2, all three of these are extremely influential in the clientelist system and control much of the financial and governmental system. Their main goal is to maintain some status quo from the Mubarak regime, as their influence depends on it. The political interest of the military and the bureaucracy lies in maintaining the clientelist structure more than directly participating in political debate

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(Kandil 2012, 176). The military holds two roles as the guarantor of both the governing entity and the will of the Egyptian people under the slogan “the military and the people are one hand”. This allows the military room for political manoeuvre. If their position is not satisfactory they can lean one way or the other, though they do seem sensitive to mass demonstrations, making these a possible democratic corrective to whoever the ruling entity is. Up until the revolution, the military was not interested in maintaining power for themselves; they have primarily been interested in maintaining their privileged position in society, economic stability, and a ruling entity that will not question the position of the military (Yildrim 2013). The former general el-Sisi ascending to the presidency will secure this privileged position of the military in Egyptian society in the same way Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak did. Some prominent people from the financial sector who have a personal and financial interest in maintaining a more liberal system where beach resorts can serve alcohol and have guests in bikinis, and foreign companies are not dissuaded from investing in Egypt, do often enter the political debate with a more liberal voice. The financial sector also contains some very influential Christians, who are pushing for the rights of the Copts and other Christian denominations. The Christians are only to a very limited extent part of the upper echelons of the bureaucracy and the military, while they are well represented in the financial sector. This influences the political position of the Christians; while they are not likely to hold power directly, they are important in sustaining the money-making machine. The Muslim Brotherhood failed to accommodate these three structural pillars in Egyptian society (the military, the bureaucracy, and the financial sector) during their year of presidency – while navigating the political discourses established by the other political positions (the Islamists and the liberals). The Muslim Brotherhood was trying to avoid losing Islamic legitimacy to the Salafi, maintain a democratic rhetoric, work to take over the money-making machine and the bureaucracy of the Mubarak system, and leave space for the separate clientelist system of the military (Bowker 2013, 583) – while maintaining their focus on social justice (Wickham 2013, 272), which branded their organisation before the revolution. In this political game, the Muslim Brotherhood moved to co-opt the Coptic Orthodox Church, following the pattern of the Mubarak regime, which was seemingly welcomed by the leadership of the Coptic Church

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and criticised by a number of politically influential Islamist voices. But as the Muslim Brotherhood tried to accommodate as much of Egyptian society as possible while navigating the discussions of the day, they did not adopt a straightforward or singular policy towards Christians.

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD BUREAUCRATIC SYSTEM SALAFI GROUPS

MILITARY FINANCIAL SECTOR LIBERALS +

COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH

Figure 5.1 This illustration shows the aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood as the centre of Egyptian post-revolutionary, socio-political life up until the 2013 revolution. They worked to incorporate the bureaucracy, the military, and the financial elite into their clientelist system, while they also had to accommodate to the rhetoric of the Salafi groups, which were scattered but with some clientelist roots in local networks of power. The “liberals” were also an important voice in society, especially after the liberal youth had attained a status as heroes to much of the population for initiating the revolution. This group was, however, characterised by not having roots in the local networks of power to the same extent as the other groups (this is illustrated by closed triangles); the liberals were part of what was described in Chapter 2 as “the elite”, who enjoyed relative safety and freedom guaranteed by different channels, such as the legal system, the parliament, and the trade unions. Since to a large extent the lives of the liberals are guaranteed by the governmental system, they do not need the local networks of power to the same extent as the rest of the population to secure their lives. This means that their needs are different from the rest of the population and their political focus is more on discussing the political state of the country than securing their societal group a position within the clientelist system of the future Egyptian society. Source: courtesy of the author.

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According to Hazem Fahmy, the reasons for the 2011 revolution were found in the escalating poverty and lack of dignity and freedom, which was obvious in the slogans of the 2011 revolution: “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice, and Human Dignity” (Fahmy 2012, 350). By 2013, many Egyptians felt that these were still lacking in their lives and that democracy was no closer than before the 2011 revolution; it was obvious that the Muslim Brotherhood was working to install a governmental system similar to that of Mubarak (Bowker 2013, 585; Tadros 2013) and that the conditions of the average person would not improve as much as hoped (Osman 2012). This pushed people out onto the streets in the millions to vent their discontent and demand a change of political leadership. The military, which was one of the first power entities the Muslim Brotherhood had confronted after gaining power (El Houdaiby 2013, 11; Hamid 2014, location 43 per cent), seized this opportunity to flex their political muscles and forcibly depose the Brotherhood leaders. In many ways, the period following the 2013 revolution reflected the policies of President Mubarak; the military and the secret police swiftly and adeptly rounded up and imprisoned the political and religious leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood in the hundreds and forcibly tried to shut down pro-Muslim Brotherhood demonstrations, arresting and killing thousands – but this time with the major difference that it was done with the blessing of many of the liberal forces that had triggered the 2011 revolution, although the harsh methods quickly dampened some of the support. The scepticism towards the military in this camp was stoked further as the sceptical voices among the liberals were also forcibly quieted. The biggest problem for the topic of this book following the 2013 revolution is that the political landscape has been torn into two factions (Bowker 2013, 582); the 2013 revolution saw the actions of the military and the secret police against the Muslim Brotherhood legitimised by liberals and Christians, deepening the divide between these societal groupings and multiplying attacks on Christians. This came as a surprise, as the leftists were very active in expressing their discontent with the military rule following the downfall of Mubarak (Cole 2012). The same period saw intensive hate speeches against the political enemies of the Muslim Brotherhood, including the Christians, resulting in savage attacks on police stations and personnel, the military, and Christians, their churches, shops, and other property. This shocked much

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THE AZHAR FINANCIAL SECTOR

MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH SALAFI GROUP

MILITARY SECURITY POLICE

THE NOUR PARTY LIBERALS

Figure 5.2 This illustration shows how the 2013 revolution has led to a dichotomised Egyptian society without a mediating voice. Rhetoric places the military as the saviour of the general population from the Islamists, who are mostly depicted as violent extremists and labelled terrorists except for the Salafi Nour party, that has sided with the military. Source: courtesy of the author.

of the general population and pushed them to back the heavy hand of the military against the Muslim Brotherhood, including many of those who had earlier protested the influence of the military and/or supported the Muslim Brotherhood. As pointed out by an Egyptian observer: There are no heroes in this. The military is not supposed to be vengeful and randomly arrest people because of their political affiliation. But the Muslim Brotherhood is no better with their hate speeches against their political opponents; they might not be overtly violent as an organisation and we cannot generalise that all their members resort to violence, yet the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood are provoking the Islamist movement and pushing laymen to violence in the name of defending their “religion”. Really, it is about power and politics. This is obvious when their [the Muslim Brotherhood] Supreme Guide called for

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the masses to remain in Rabaa square until Morsi returned [as president] in defence of “legitimacy”. Also, Beltagy (a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood) said in a Youtube interview that all ongoing violence in Sinai would only stop if Morsi was reinstated. This kind of talk scares people and leads them to support the military, most of all the Christians who are pinpointed as the enemies of the Islamists in much of the discourse of the Muslim Brotherhood leadership. The former military general, el-Sisi, gained tremendous momentum as he was the public figure of the military when deposing the Brotherhood president following widespread discontent and massive protests. After el-Sisi ascended to the presidency, however, not only Brotherhood members felt the heavy hand of the military. Any budding displays of discontent in the media and population were swiftly suppressed.

Political Renewal and Continuation The revolution added significance to the political debate, to the extent that the political system was no longer solely dependent on the clientelist system. There are therefore two significant issues in the future of Egyptian society and politics that are highly relevant to the exploration of post-revolutionary dialogical endeavours: clientelism and the appearance of a more critical public debate, which has also opened up the discussion on the role of Christians in Egyptian society.

Clientelism continued Egypt’s system of governance has an ingrained clientelist system that keeps many influential Egyptians in positions of power (see Chapter 2). The system cannot be avoided, as it cannot be replaced from one day to the next; in their one year in power, the Muslim Brotherhood seemed to work to take over the old administrative system (L. Guirguis Forthcoming) and there were no signs of the bureaucracy being reformed to root out the clientelist elements. Some of Mubarak’s former cronies have been investigated for their ties to the former regime, but there has been no attempt to seriously question the role of the financial sector in governance and their responsibility towards broader society (El Houdaiby 2013, 10; Wickham 2013, 279). With the instability following the

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revolution – worsening an already bad situation – it might be difficult to question the established productive system in the attempt to improve it, but for the system to change clear visions and action are needed. Mubarak’s regime was based on the military as a failsafe in times of revolt. Already in the early months of the revolution, demonstrating Egyptians placed a lot of hope in the military facilitating a peaceful handover of power from Mubarak to a system more considerate towards the broader population. But, as Martini and Taylor point out, during the intermediate period between the revolution and the elections when the military had power (power was invested in the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces or the SCAF), they moved to maintain their position in the clientelist structure by strengthening it, partly by implementing: a system of single-member districts for half the seats in the lower house of Egypt’s parliament (the other half will be chosen based on a party-list system)... For one, it will aid local power brokers . . . A system of single-member districts will cement this kind of pattern by reducing campaigns to competitions over which candidate can best win resources for his region. The military prefers this to proportional representation, which would foster party identification by allowing voters to choose between parties campaigning on national platforms . . . Since the revolution, the generals have sought to maintain control over key instruments of power, especially provincial governorships, to complement their top-down control. Governors are appointed by the regime and oversee all local development projects, making them central players when it comes to distributing patronage. (Martini and Taylor 2011) This quote also highlights how clientelism is part of the bureaucracy, linking it to the military. But the pressure to keep the clientelist system did not only come from the higher levels of authority in Egypt. As Chapter 2 pointed out, the system of clientelism was partly based on local networks of power, in which many poor people relied on their local networks in times of need. With the revolution, food and security were lacking in large parts of the country, prompting people to seek their traditional means of security, even though this empowered the clientelist system – and thus the elite more than the poorer parts of society. It is

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important to recognise that clientelism – while not ideal or comprising all of society – is functional, and to many the only known and consequently possible political path of participation; and that this system will remain in place until the majority of the population can see a viable alternative. In sub-Saharan Africa, the experience of free elections in a society with a heavy clientelist structure has been that: Parties that won founding elections are almost invariably still in power. Secondly, the typical emerging party system has consisted of a dominant party surrounded by a large number of small, unstable parties. Thirdly, party cleavages have been overwhelmingly ethno-linguistic in nature, while ideological and programmatic debates have been muted and rare. (Walle 2003) Walle points out that the first free election in a society functioning by clientelism is likely to dictate who will stay in power, as this party will command the clientelist distribution of wealth and thereby maintain power. This was actually not the case with the Muslim Brotherhood, who the people and military felt the need to remove with a second revolution. It does, however, remain an open question if the people will continue to revolt if future presidencies turn out to be equally undemocratic. Walle’s third point begs the question as to what role the Christians will have in Egypt if the politics there are based on religious identity, which is likely to be the case to some extent, even with the Muslim Brotherhood removed from the presidency.

Hope for the future Egypt has seen widespread political struggles, with different allegiances appearing on the political scene (Milikh 2011; Hulsman 2013b). Demonstrations were part of the political revolutionary process, constituting a “democratic” political tool for the people, who consequently seemed less pacified and more critical, one of the results being a more outspoken media (Amar 2011; Stork 2012, 473). Likewise, social media proved essential for people to organise and communicate openly and not just through regime-controlled media (Iskander 2012, 47–8). Street art became a way of making public political statements (Schoene 2012; Gro¨ndahl 2013). Workers demanded rights and independent unions, even

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though both the military and the Muslim Brotherhood actively worked against the efforts of establishing these (Beinin 2012; Tadros 2013, 41). It should, however, be noted as important that not all people and groups demonstrating and using the possibility of open speech were pushing for Egypt to become more democratic; instead, some were using the new public platforms to vent their dissatisfaction with the people in power because they were not part of their clientelist system, or to vent their dissatisfaction that their financial situation had not improved. The concept of “the youth” was important in the political struggle after the 2011 revolution. The revolutionaries attained the status of heroes for much of the population, who felt downtrodden under the Mubarak regime. During the first ten years of the millennia, there had been various attempts at change through protest that did not come to fruition; for example the Kifaˆyah (Enough) movement that tried to unify the opposition against the regime (Stork 2012; Lesch 2012, 32), or repeated strikes starting in the influential industrial city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra (Beinin 2012; Bishara 2012). But none of these succeeded in bringing substantial change, while the 2011 revolution forced the president to step down. The 2011 revolution was initiated by the youth, who kept the struggle going and risked their lives for a freer Egypt. Many Egyptians pointed out after the revolution that they had regained their dignity by ousting Mubarak and that they now had hope for the future. It consequently became important in the political debate to “own” the revolution, to inherit the right to redefine the country. This elevated the role of the youth, as they were proclaimed the heroes of the revolution because they initiated it. This gave them more of a voice in the public debate, which is apparent in the description of new dialogue initiatives following the revolution, where “the youth” are often the initiators and/or focus of the dialogue. This means that civil society focusing on issues such as human rights, including discrimination against religious minorities, is publicly heard to a larger extent than before the revolution.

Muslim –Christian Relations During the 2011 revolution itself, scenes were reminiscent of the 1919 revolution with Muslims and Christians demonstrating against oppression together for the sake of their common nation. The incidents

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following the revolution did, however, leave many Christians fearing for their future in Egypt (Galal 2012, 45). The major incident before the 2013 revolution provoking this fear took place in October 2011 during the Maspero demonstrations, when at least 24 Copts were killed and more than 300 injured (Stork 2012, 474– 5; Mahmood 2012) as the army opened fire on and drove armoured vehicles into crowds of Copts protesting an incident in rural Egypt. Apart from the immediate violence of the situation, it is worth noting that not only was it the interim military entity governing the country, the SCAF, who authorised attacking the Christians, but that they also asked civilian Muslims to come to their aid against the Christians (Iskander 2012, 174), as they claimed the Christians had shot at them first – a call heeded by groups of Muslims: In an unprecedented move, broadcasters on state television at one point called on the Egyptian public to head to Maspero en masse to defend Egyptian soldiers from what they described as “angry Christian protesters”. Indeed as the night unravelled, vigilante mobs attacked demonstrators fleeing police bullets and tear gas, using machetes, swords and cudgels. (Zeinab 2011) While this can be taken to mean that the SCAF at the time saw it as politically opportune to rally Muslims to their side by attacking Christians, one interviewee believes that the incident should not be interpreted as sectarian, as the military clamped down hard on many protests during this period and used the media to call on the Egyptian public to help them at other times – but this does not change the fact that many Christians saw the incident as sectarian, leaving them fearful for their future as Christian Egyptians (McNamara et al. 2014, location 39 per cent). Some Muslims reacted with displays of sympathy during and after the incident, for example by posting intertwined crosses and crescents on Facebook, and cartoons showing that the SCAF provoked problems between Muslims and Christians, reiterating the discourse of national unity. Similar declarations were also publicly made by other Muslims, some of whom demanded that the news anchor be fired (Zeinab 2011), but none of this was enough to quell the feelings of insecurity among Christians. As part of the revolution, as described, the discourses of nation and people were being redefined. Many Christians feared that there would be

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no space for Christians in this redefinition of the concept of “the Egyptian People”, if in the current political struggle the segment defined by Islamists won. Some had a rather bleak view of their future, where Islamists were often conflated into a very threatening amorphous group. These Christians based their fears on tragedies such as the Maspero incident and growing unrest, including accelerated sectarian problems following the revolution, and had a tendency to seclude themselves, some even fleeing the country when possible. Their fears were not helped by the fact that very little seemed to be done officially to improve the lot of the Christians (Galal 2012, 49). Other Christians had a more hopeful view of the future; they saw the revolution as a possibility to improve relations. Their hope was based on positive demonstrations of Muslim –Christian relations, such as Muslims demonstrating with intertwined crosses and crescents or guarding churches after bomb attacks, Christians guarding praying Muslims during the revolution, and Churches functioning as field hospitals for the wounded during demonstrations (Weber 2012). With the 2013 revolution, some Christians founded their hope for a better future on the military intervention against what they saw as Islamist aggression. The building frustrations of the Christians resulted in repeated demonstrations, often converging on the Coptic Cathedral in Cairo, where the demonstrators were more protected against counter-demonstrations, even though there were incidents where some aggressive Muslims attacked the demonstrating Christians. The pattern was often that sectarian incidents would occur in the countryside, sparking demonstrations in Cairo that at times resulted in further incidents as some Muslims reacted violently to the demonstrations. This is a pattern similar to that described in Chapter 3, where Christians feel a spiritual bond to Christians all over Egypt, except the post-revolutionary situation offered more possibilities to vent frustrations and featured less control over the more aggressive parts of the population, often increasing the risks of the demonstrations escalating and leading to further bloodshed. The 2013 revolution changed the situation for Muslim– Christian relations; the Muslim Brotherhood was pushed into a defensive camp of Islamists also comprising radical elements, while the Christians were on the side of the liberals and the military. The fragmentation of Egyptian political life multiplied Muslim –Christian incidents in Egypt (McNamara et al. 2014, location 39 per cent), as the societal positioning

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of Christians was being renegotiated (see earlier in this chapter). But as the difference is primarily to be found in the quantity of the incidents, it would be redundant to discuss the quality here (see Chapter 3). It is, however, worth noting that the political dichotomisation following the 2013 revolution highlighted the Christians as a political and religious opponent, making them stand out as a focal point for Islamist frustrations after the military deposed the elected Islamist president and reverted the Islamist position to the position in place before the 2011 revolution, when they were unable to freely participate in the political process (Hulsman 2013a, 53). At the same time, while the post-2013 situation creates obvious enemies for the Christians in the Islamists, it also provides obvious allies in the (also Muslim) liberals and the military (Hulsman 2013a, 57). The Copts primarily voted against the Muslim Brotherhood in the 2012 elections and sided with the military in the 2013 revolution; this muffled some of the more moderate voices in the Muslim Brotherhood and legitimised the more radical voices from the Islamist movement to target Christians and Christian property and churches. The attacks targeting Copts and the violent responses to the brutal repression of demonstrations by the military and the secret police were conducted by the radicalised part of the Islamist movement, while many Muslim Brotherhood leaders maintained that the best way to maintain political legitimacy was through non-violent demonstrations. This has, however, not stopped leading members of the Muslim Brotherhood from delivering hate speeches against their political opponents, including the Christians, undoubtedly leading to violence. It is therefore difficult to make out who advocates violence and who advocates peaceful demonstrations in the revolutionary turmoil; the political legitimacy of the Islamic bloc and the Muslim Brotherhood is highly questionable as an organisation and political entity for many Egyptians following the 2013 revolution.

Dialogical Responses after the Revolution As this chapter so far has expounded, the revolution was a renegotiation of Egyptian socio-political structures, which opened up a more public debate about the societal position of Christians than possible during the Mubarak regime. If the definition of dialogue as the negotiation and navigation of intergroup relations (see Chapter 1) is relevant, the general

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renegotiation of the societal positioning of Christians combined with a freer public debate on the topic of the Christians as a minority is likely to multiply religious dialogue, which indeed is the case; the discursive and material instability of the post-revolutionary period led to a questioning of the belonging of the Christians and sectarian incidents – at times with the direct involvement of the ruling entity. But the revolution and the new possibilities of public debate also led to a number of dialogue initiatives, as will be shown here. The revolution opened up general debate in Egypt, providing more freedom of speech and seriously questioning the discourse of national unity (Hulsman 2013a, 86), which was the backbone of many of the prerevolutionary dialogue initiatives (see Chapter 4). The weakening of the discourse of national unity makes it possible to gauge some of the positive impact the discourse of national unity had before the revolution. The pre-revolutionary academic discussion of the discourse of national unity was often sceptical towards any positive impact of the discourse, but speaking now, it is clear the discourse did in fact help maintain Christian legitimacy as part of the Egyptian social order. The discourse also had – as pointed out in Chapter 3 – negative effects; it rendered discussion of sectarian incidents as anything other than ripples on the water of a calm lake very difficult in public debate. With the revolution this changed. The legitimate questioning of the discourse of national unity opened up a debate on the presence of Christians as Egyptian citizens and their hardships, but also generated criticism of these points, leading to more sectarian incidents. Unfortunately it seems the positive approach to Christian citizenship is often in reaction to the negative approach, with sectarian incidents spawning discussions and Muslims making human chains around churches to protect them, although there are also well-founded initiatives aimed at changing the general Egyptian attitude.

The Coptic Church as an institution The response to the elevated insecurity among Christians in Egypt varies greatly. The Coptic Orthodox Church as an institution seems to lean towards official dialogue, which was dominant before the revolution (see Chapter 4), but with changing allegiances. At the start of the revolution the Coptic Orthodox Pope asked the Copts to not partake in the revolution, though many lay Copts and some members of the clergy did

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not follow his request (M. Guirguis 2012, 512; Iskander 2012, 162). During Christmas in 2012 and 2013, the Coptic Pope moved to accommodate the new political situation by using the same clientelist signifier as during the Mubarak regime; he invited the army and major political parties to participate in the Christmas celebration at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, which traditionally has been, as described in Chapter 4, a major signifier of peaceful relations in official dialogue. The Muslim Brotherhood accepted the invitation, signalling a willingness to engage in political cooperation in the future, and that they were open to maintaining the clientelist mechanism of the Pope representing the Coptic Church as a political entity. The Brotherhood furthermore appointed four assistant presidents, one of which was a Copt, in an attempt to show political acceptance of the Copts (Hulsman 2013a, 42). The Salafist politicians failed to attend the Christmas celebrations – some of them even declaring Muslim participation religiously unsound (Hauslohner 2012). In March 2012, the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood followed up on these budding relations by visiting the Coptic Cathedral – the first guide of the Muslim Brotherhood ever to do so officially – to wish the Pope well after his operations. Although the Muslim Brotherhood sent season’s greetings on their homepage, they did not participate in the 2014 Christmas celebrations that take place in January in the Coptic Church after the new round of political turmoil in 2013. Instead, the interim president visited the Coptic Cathedral in the week before the Christmas celebrations and Coptic crowds cheered after the Christmas message from el-Sisi was read out. With the death of Pope Shenouda in 2012, the newly elected Pope, Tawadros II, declared publicly that he would steer the church clear of politics, but this does not seem to have been possible for him (Samaan 2012). This was especially clear during the 2013 revolution, when the Pope publicly supported the removal of President Morsi from power, and during the 2014 presidential elections, when the Pope openly supported General el-Sisi. Many Copts are dependent on the patronage of the Coptic Orthodox Church, and it would be difficult for the new Pope to leave the worldly needs of his flock untended, as Christians need the same basic security as the rest of the population. Tawadros does seem to be politically savvy, as he has at times promoted peaceful demonstrations and at other times spoken out against civil disobedience with the aim of securing stability in Egyptian society. The Pope is thus

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walking a tightrope between Copts demanding a voice through demonstrations, the need for a place in the clientelist system by maintaining the discourse of national unity (i.e. within the legitimate circle of national belonging), and an established hierarchy of power that cannot easily be dismissed.

The Azhar and post-revolution dialogue It is not only the Coptic Pope who keeps the interreligious discourses of the Mubarak era alive. Less than a month after the attacks on the Copts in Maspero in 2011, the Grand Mufti of the Azhar denied any sectarian discrimination against Christians, maintaining the discourse of national unity. He instead blamed the turbulent times and a few Salafi. The Azhar has not taken up much space in this chapter because it did not have a strong voice during the revolution, but it did attempt to secure a more liberated position in society (Brown 2012). The document released in June 2011, “al-Azhar Declaration on the Future of Egypt”, underlines what the Azhar hope to gain from the revolution, while at the same time committing themselves to democracy and religious dialogue (Bohlander 2014, 29). The Azhar want a leading role in determining moderate Islamic thought and thereby defining the relationship between state and religion, and sound rules of governance. To legitimise this leading role in defining religion in politics they invoked several of the Azhar’s major reformers, including Muhammad ‘Abduh (see Chapter 2), pointing to the relation between politics and the Azhar 100 years ago as a role model. This would establish the Azhar as an independent, critical voice in Egyptian society. In the document, the Azharite scholars underline that Islam has never had a legitimate theocratic state, and instead promote a constitutional, democratic nation state – speaking out against the anti-democratic rhetoric of some Salafi. The document furthermore states that religion cannot be used against the rights of other people – also underlining the rights of the Christians in Egypt. At the end of the document the Azharite scholars push for the political independence the institution enjoyed before the 1952 revolution, without giving up the benefits they gained from their relations with the regimes since the revolution. The document was made available in Arabic, English, German, and French, signalling the international scope of the document, and probably showing that the institution used the influence of the West to apply pressure on the ruling entity to accept the

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document and by extension also accept a stronger influence of the Azhar. Many of the Azhar’s demands for institutional autonomy were rushed through by law during the interim reign of the SCAF in January 2012, but the consequences of this are yet to be seen as there was an outcry from the Muslim Brotherhood and some scholars (Brown 2012). The largest and potentially most influential post-revolutionary dialogue initiative was jointly started by the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church. The initiative is called “Family House” (Baı¯t al ‘Ayı¯la) and brings artists, politicians, intellectuals, and religious leaders together for workshops and debates on how to maintain positive relations between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. The initiative was already in the making before the revolution, as the Grand Sheikh of the Azhar called for the initiative after a church bombing in Alexandria in December 2010, and the first meeting took place just before the revolution on 17 January 2011 – but the initiative gained momentum after the revolution, as formulated by a Muslim observer: When the revolution came and several sectarian clashes took place, the actual implementation and work of the initiative started to spread; you could say that the revolution confirmed the need for such initiatives and that without it, this initiative could have simply fallen by the wayside like so many others. The Grand Sheikh of the Azhar and the Coptic Pope take turns in heading the initiative for four-year terms, underlining the cooperation between the Azhar and the Coptic Orthodox Church. According to a Muslim woman, the initiative is inclusive and encompasses: Azharite scholars, priests, journalists, theologians, famous actors, and prominent business men; different types of people and intellects are engaged in this initiative. The initiative was initially called the National Reconciliation Initiative, but was later renamed “Baı¯t al ‘Ayı¯la” or “The Family House”; a place where all Egyptians can meet based only on their citizenship, from all backgrounds, renouncing violence and sectarian clashes, spreading a message of peace and love. The initiative includes both Christians and Muslims for the purpose of educating, enlightening and delivering a correct image of each religion to the other.

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The participants of the initiative are publicly visible on national television, pushing for a more tolerant stance towards other religions, but the initiative also has access to a number of centres in the various governorates of the country, where young people meet for week-long retreats to get to know each other better despite their religious differences. The initiative seems to have a relatively low profile when compared to the hue and cry of the current political turmoil, but it seems a sturdy initiative based on some of the more respected Muslim and Christian voices in contemporary Egypt. The initiative does not differ immensely from the pre-revolutionary official dialogue discussed in Chapter 4, but it does differ in some important ways; it includes a broader segment of Egypt’s influential elite, also encompassing for example artists and actors, which potentially pushes the initiative beyond the political use of official dialogue, and it involves the youth directly. The post-revolutionary period has led, as described, to more depth in the debate about Muslim– Christian incidents, to a large extent by lifting the taboo on sectarian issues.

Other Christian denominations and Coptic laypeople Other Christian denominations than the Coptic Church, who before the revolution had engaged in various forms of grassroots dialogue (see Chapter 4), and some Copts see the revolution as an opportunity to restructure Egyptian society to be more inclusive towards minority religions. An example of this was the Episcopal Church opening up discussion on the discourse of national unity. This was done for example at a conference in Cairo held by the Egyptian Episcopal School of Theology in June 2012, with the aim of discussing Muslim– Christian relations in light of the 2011 revolution, according to the invitation: What is likely to happen to the sectarian tension of the last generation? Speakers will include both Christians and Muslims speaking about the changing environment both in terms of growing demands for human rights as well as the emergence of powerful Islamist forces. Participants will visit the prestigious Al Azhar and hear a lecture by one of its scholars. This discussion is likely prompted by the downfall of the earlier regime enabling criticism of the past as a means of discussing the future, though

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the invitation does not stipulate if the Azharite scholar will have a critical approach to the discourse of national unity. In March and May 2013, the Anglican Church also held conferences in collaboration with the Azhar involving Egyptian clergy and imams. The aim was to foster positive relations between imams and priests in areas burdened with sectarian tensions, in order to ease these tensions. It is useful here to extensively quote Jayson Casper’s report on new initiatives by Coptic laypeople. Many of these initiatives are comparable to the social dialogue described in Chapter 4, although it is doubtful that all of these initiatives are called dialogue initiatives by the people starting them: For years Copts presented their demands to the state primarily through the person of Pope Shenouda. When pressed to demonstrate for their demands, either by events or by clergy, they did so mostly within the confines of church walls. The revolution changed this equation, however, and the unity expressed in overthrowing Mubarak gave Copts a new sense of participation in rebuilding Egypt. Some Christian participation remained along the lines of revolutionary values, enveloped fully in the youth movements that populated Tahrir Square. Others began sensing a threat to their full participation from the emergence and ascendency of Islamists groups, and rallied behind a liberal and civil cause. Still others took the opportunities of the revolution to organize and demonstrate for particular Coptic issues. Though there is significant overlap between Coptic demands and those for a civil state, these movements are characterized by Coptic peculiarity, even though many boast the participation of Muslims, who tend to be liberal in outlook. This category is shaped by a desire for Copts to assert their rights as Copts, leaving the church to take to the street and integrate with society. Yet as they do so they highlight the tensions of religious identity. Insisting upon their right as citizens to demonstrate, they move beyond citizenship and appear to many as sectarian. Conscious to defeat this charge, Coptic movements stress their belonging to Egypt, and their work on its behalf. 4

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Casper lists an array of different initiatives; too many to give an exhaustive account of here. But it is noted how the revolution has enabled initiatives through improved freedom of speech, but also because the revolutionary debate questions the legitimacy of Christians in Egypt; a question many Christians then rush to answer. It is also clear that many Copts see the revolution as an opportunity to break with the reclusive tendencies that characterised many Coptic initiatives before the revolution. A young Muslim activist formulates it this way: Early during the revolution, before the Muslim Brotherhood took control, there was this growing hope among activists, and particularly the young generation (which was the most active in the revolution), that the Christian community was actually breaking free of its ghetto and revolting against the hegemony of the church over all life issues, just as the youth everywhere were revolting against symbols of authority... I’m not sure, but I think this period saw an increase in Christian involvement in activism and political activities. The continuation of the interviewee’s comments should, however, also be highlighted: Two years later, a number of sectarian violence events have taken place (including the attack on the “patriarchal” cathedral in Abassiyya), and the Islamist ideology is in power... I think now the general feeling is one of “fear”... and I think that there is hardly any trust in the possibility of true dialogue... I think at this point the general population of Christians (as well as Muslims that do not have an Islamist ideology) see no point in “dialogue” as there is no trust... The enthusiasm following the revolution is being challenged by the worsening situation: sectarian incidents have increased in number, the financial situation is desperate, and political freedom is still needed. It seems there could be efforts of reviving the millet system, where Copts are represented through a council of laypeople – or, if not reviving, then establishing an advisory council along similar lines. There

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has been a continued struggle between Coptic laity and clergy over who has the authority to represent the Copts through the millets (R. M. Scott 2010, 29). As described in Chapter 2, the Coptic Church took over the influence of the Coptic millet in 1973 by installing clergy instead of laypeople (Khawaga 2004b, 153). Casper describes a Coptic Consultative Council that strives to function as an umbrella organisation for the various revolutionary initiatives that mushroomed after the revolution, to provide the efforts with uniformity, strengthen their impact, and represent the Copts in relation to the state. One of the institutions not represented in this umbrella organisation is the Coptic Orthodox Church, demonstrating a conscious attempt to separate political and spiritual activities, according to Casper. Several bishops have, however, given the initiative their blessing. It is worth noting that while these liberal Copts question the role of the Church in representing the Copts politically, they seemingly do not question whether Copts should be a political unit in the first place. Casper notes that “nearly all Coptic activists strenuously oppose the Muslim Brotherhood”, either because they are suspicious towards their nature or their political actions. This seems contradictory to some of the efforts of the Coptic Orthodox Church and bears witness to contrasting Coptic voices in the current debate.

Religious dialogue in NGOs Not only Coptic NGOs are discussing the role of Christians in Egyptian society after the revolution. A number of other NGOs are adapting to the new situation and heightened focus on the hardships of the Christians by adjusting their programmes to specifically include Muslim – Christian relations. One of the more interesting of these is the NGO Nahdet el Mahrousa. An inspiring NGO started by the youth, for the youth, and run by the youth. At the start of the new millennium a young Muslim, Ehaab Abdou, founded the organisation with the aim of empowering the ideas of young Egyptian professionals to create innovative initiatives that lead to social change. I was engaged with the organisation from 2005, as they were interested in the religious dialogue I was working with. We loosely cooperated for years, discussing the nature of religious dialogue, but they did not at the time feel that they were engaged in any activities that they would term religious dialogue. Upon conducting interviews in 2013 for this chapter, three people connected to the organisation independently

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pointed to the Misriyati initiative (meaning “Egyptianity”, pointing out that Egyptians have different approaches to being Egyptian and that these differences should be respected) as religious dialogue, even though it was started in 2004 and over the course of the years has never been spoken of as religious dialogue. This underlines the tendency described earlier in this chapter; the revolution has brought a hands-on approach to sectarian problems as religious problems. This is clear in the comments of an employee of Nahdet el Mahrousa: From my own experience working with Misriyati on diversity issues, I feel there is in general much more openness and willingness now after the revolution to talk about the injustices, discrimination, and related personal experiences in groups where both Muslims and Christians are present... (This applies at all levels, not only for religious issues) although there is certainly still both “shyness” and “defensiveness”... I guess the level of openness really depends on the group and the level of trust... According to the Nahdet el Mahrousa webpage, Misriyati promotes a culture of peace, diversity and inclusion within Egyptian society. The aim is for Egyptian society to know and practise the principles of peaceful living and non-violent ways of dealing with conflicts. In an interview with a young Muslim man, the specific approach to religion is clear: The meetings aim to deepen the attention to and awareness of the ideas deep-rooted in our culture as Egyptians and in our collective consciousness on different religious affiliation, with the result that our attitudes are reflected in the ways we deal with religious differences, whether in daily life or in times of crisis. This is an awareness of the sectarian issues as something more than just ripples on the surface of an otherwise calm lake; an awareness that is backed by the urge to act and the possession of tools to do so. It is furthermore of interest that Misriyati has collaborated with the art and culture centre Darb 1718, which indicates that the progressive art scene is also opening up to the debate on the position of Christians in Egypt.

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The tendency to be more open to religious dialogue is also mirrored in the Hisham Mubarak Law Center NGO that is working with the “Don’t Label Me” initiative. As was the case with the Nahdet el Mahrousa initiative, “Don’t Label Me” started before the revolution, but the open inclusion of sectarian issues took place in 2012. The interviewee points out that participation in the initiative has grown significantly since the revolution, as the fear of the regime was removed. The initiative is working for the freedom of speech and religion and is based on the thought that “everybody should be able to participate in Egyptian society and politics irrespective of their religion, gender, etc”. The initiative functions at street level by handing out flyers, but also at national level by participating in televised debates.

Conclusion It is debatable to what extent the Arab Spring so far has contributed to a reconfiguration of how Egypt is governed as a country. The clientelist structure seems intact and the debate questioning these structures is very limited in its influence. The Arab Spring has, however, destabilised those in charge of the clientelist structure, and this has led to a reorganisation of societal positioning. As Chapter 1 made clear, societal positioning is essential to how different groups understand themselves and other societal groups. The revolution has opened up a discussion of what it means to be Egyptian and what legitimate governance means, and Islam plays a significant role in this debate as politics are often separated into Islamists and non-Islamists, questioning the position of Christians. This discussion has been interpreted as something akin to “discursive instability” that has opened to the debate on the position of Christians in society as just described, but has also led to more material instability, which legitimises attacking Christians to a larger extent than before the revolution in some circles. The more open discussion of the position of the Christians does, however, also have a positive side; it has paved the way for NGOs and intellectual circles to more openly push for better conditions for the Christians. Before the revolution, this was primarily carried out by Christian and very few non-Christian NGOs; now it is an issue that NGOs more generally address. With the situation at present, one can hope that the renegotiation of societal positioning concludes to the

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benefit of the Christians, leaving them inside the legitimate political circle, while the open discussion against discrimination based on religion is maintained. This would place the Christians in a better position when the revolutionary dust has settled. There is, however, the risk that the open debate will be silenced. The interim governance of the military already took steps to control public debate in 2013, most famously by shutting down a satirical show commenting on Egyptian politics – a symbol of democratic blossoming during the revolution – and by introducing a law against unlicensed public gatherings. There is also a risk that the open debate on sectarian issues will be drowned out by the dichotomisation between Islamists and non-Islamists, if the Islamists are blamed for all the problems between Muslims and Christians, shutting down any further discussion on the very real problems for Christians in Egypt.

CONCLUSION

A number of different dialogue initiatives have been analysed as part of socially-situated institutions. It seems fitting to have the conclusion sum up the factors found to have the greatest impact on dialogue and relate them to the dialogue initiatives analysed. In the dynamics of politics, society, religion and Muslim– Christian relations of Egypt, it was shown that when the people placed their hopes for a better future in the governing entity, they were less dependent on their local structures for identity, thus promoting a sense of national unity. In periods when people had little to no hope of the regime contributing positively to their future, they would seek to secure their futures through local clientelist structures often demarcated by religious belonging. These structures were consolidated into political entities, which would work to improve conditions for the members of their structures. This in turn deepened the social and religious divide between these groups defined by their societal and religious affiliation.

Established Discourses about Society and Religion Influencing Dialogue The discourses of dialogue ranged from the most established discourses of dialogue in the major institutions, through more dynamic dialogue initiatives among the minority churches, to very experimental dialogue initiatives among the youth, who did not feel connected to

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the major institutions and their discourses – or at least were highly critical towards what the representatives of the institutions were saying and doing. The two major discourses found to have impact on dialogue were: national unity and the monopoly of religious truth. The interviews revealed a discourse of national unity, preventing many of the interviewees from realising or admitting to obvious discrimination and violent incidents between Muslims and Christians as anything but sporadic incidents or incidents caused by an ill-willed entity outside the circle of national unity. Speaking out against the reality of this idea of national unity amounted to something akin to treason against the nation, making it difficult for many to address the problems that were present between Muslims and Christians. The revolution in 2011 did, however, open up the discussion on the conditions of Egyptians in general – and this opened up the public discussion on the position of Christians to a larger extent, but not necessarily to the benefit of the Christians. Only very few of the Egyptian interviewees seemed to have access to a notion of religious pluralism when addressing faith issues. Those who had were all internationally-minded and outside institutionalised religious life. This was also the case in my practical work with dialogue from 2004 to 2010 in Egypt (although much of the progressive Egyptian youth seemed attracted to the idea when it was presented). Discussing religious pluralism in questions of faith therefore does not seem to be within the Egyptian episteme of religion and religious dialogue. The understanding of religious cognitive barriers would often influence – and be influenced by – social affiliation, as Muslims and Christians most often would not intermingle in intimate matters such as interreligious marriage (though legally Muslim men could marry Christian women, but not vice versa). For some parts of society, religion was furthermore a definite social delineator, to the extent that people from another religion were seen as enemies; however, others saw no problem in including people from another religion within their social circles. No definite relation between social affiliation and a more or less pluralist understanding of religious dogma was found, but the relation between attitudes towards other believers and attitudes towards the faith system of these believers resulted in at least four different constellations. (i) In cases with a low level of identification with one’s own religious

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community, and a low feeling of personal threat from another religious group, the person was likely to engage positively with people from the other religion. This would often be based on non-religious, altruistic motives. Examples were found in the initiatives of the youth. (ii) In cases with a high level of identification with one’s own religious community, and a low feeling of personal threat from another religious group, the person was likely to engage positively with people from the other religion. Reasons for engaging with people from the other religion would often be found in religion or society. Examples were official dialogue, social dialogue, intercultural dialogue, and grassroots dialogue. (iii) In some cases with a high level of identification with one’s own religious community, and a high feeling of threat from another religious group, the person was likely to engage negatively with people from the other religion. Reasons for engaging negatively would often be found in religion or society. Examples were boxing match dialogue and grassroots dialogue. (iv) In some cases of people from minority groups, a person with a high level of identification with one’s own religious community and a high feeling of threat from another religious group would engage positively with the dominant religious group. A negative understanding of their situation would provide reasons for entering dialogue. Examples of this were official dialogue and diapraxis. The discourse of national unity seemed to provide space for Muslims and Christians in the same society by superimposing a national identity over the religious identity, as it allowed for a plurality of religions in society despite most, both Muslims and Christians, not believing that the other religion could lead to salvation by itself and despite the fact that religion functioned as a social delineator for most. This did, however, unfortunately exacerbate problems in the cases where they were glossed over with empty rhetoric of national unity instead of the problems being dealt with. But it also provided the basis for dialogue building positive relations between Muslims and Christians in the cases where the problems were addressed and national unity became the goal of the dialogue.

Dialogue as Part of the Egyptian Social Structure Chapter 1 showed that social identity is essential to people in so far as they are social beings. People need cohesion with a group of people,

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which often leads to social evaluation based on belonging to this group. Religion is a possible major variable in social positioning, as it is a primary signifier for many. Belonging to a group was shown to be fundamental to the development of emotional patterns and cognitive structures, both when it comes to the person him- or herself, the group this person belongs to, and how other groups are identified. Social belonging was in turn shown to be at the heart of dialogue when addressing relations between religious groups. In the case of Egypt, the system of clientelism was central to understanding dialogue as it promoted the social identity demarcated by religion in the political system. Religion was shown to be used by the regime to legitimise its rule as truly Islamic – backed by the Azhar. The opposition spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood was focusing on social justice as central to a true understanding of Islamic rule, which was used to delegitimise the rule of the regime. The opposition was not just the organisation of the Muslim Brotherhood, but a wider Islamic movement based on local networks of power established to secure the lives of the people in these networks or groups. As the Muslim Brotherhood was the only real voice against the social injustice of the regime, it became the voice of many of the disenfranchised people gathering in local networks of power; as such the Muslim Brotherhood became the political head of an “oppositional movement”. At the same time the regime – again backed by the Azhar – was maintaining good relations with the Coptic Orthodox Church through negotiations with the Pope, in principle allowing the president to co-opt some 7 per cent of the population and maintain a positive image in the eyes of the West. These negotiations were built on the rhetoric of national unity, but in this case a rhetoric at times uniting parts of the society (the regime and the higher officials of the Coptic Church and the Azhar) against the opposition (spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood). Because many of the people influenced by the Coptic Church and the Azhar belonged to the part of the population feeling the consequences of the lack of social justice, the higher officials of the Coptic Church and the Azhar did eventually experience problems in maintaining authority over their flock. The Muslim Brotherhood did also experience some dissent as it encompassed various groups of society with very different approaches to life and religion. These did not always agree, and some people did at times try to establish oppositional movements outside the Brotherhood.

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That being said, it has been obvious that these three – the Coptic Orthodox Church, the Azhar, and the Muslim Brotherhood – have been central to the construction of the political scene and the religious, interreligious and intra-religious discourses in the period of study. The relations between minorities and majorities were shown to have had an impact on how dialogue was conducted as well. The dynamics between minorities and majorities differed according to how the minorities and majorities were defined. Copts, minority churches, and progressive people have been treated in this book as minorities. The Copts were a minority with the Muslims as the majority, but acted differently towards different groups of Muslims according to the power structures of Egyptian society, as was just described. The majorities for the minority churches were found in the groups constructed as “indigenous” to Egyptian society: the Copts and the various Muslim groups. And for progressive Muslims and Christians, the majority was constituted by the majority of the population – including their own church or mosque communities. People from the lower middle class and the lower class were furthermore defined as a minority when compared to the majority beneficiaries of regime politics. The theories from social psychology taught us that groups situated as minorities would either try to gain power in society to be situated as a majority – or as equal to the majority. If that was not possible, they would attempt more creative solutions to elevate their position in society as a group. The latter was found to be true for the minorities in Egypt and several cases of dialogue have been interpreted as such. As has been shown, the Coptic Church functioned as a “representative” unit in the clientelist system, which had the dual effect of (i) offering some protection by the regime from attacks and allowing the Christians – for example – to build and repair churches. But it also (ii) kept people within the walls of the church, as this was felt to be a sanctuary in which Christians could find a social setting where they would feel secure from aggressive elements of general society and where they could find some help when faced with poverty. Official dialogue was therefore conducted by the high officials of the church, excluding participation by the rest of the church in the dialogue. But there were also some Copts who were critical of how matters were conducted institutionally, and who would venture beyond the walls of the church

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and proactively engage with Muslims in an attempt to improve relations between Muslims and Christians and conditions for Christians. Minority churches (the Anglicans, Catholics, and Protestants were interviewed as they seemed especially active in dialogue initiatives) were found to engage more dynamically with the Muslim majority. This was believed to be because they were unable to seclude themselves to the same degree as the Copts; because of their relatively small sizes they were not self-sufficient as a community, which forced them to actively engage with society and to continuously justify their presence. Another matter pushing non-Coptic Christians to more actively seek to portray themselves as indispensable to society was that they came to Egypt relatively late, and as such were seen as less naturally part of the construction of the discourse of national unity. They were furthermore looked upon with suspicion by Copts and Muslims alike, from whom the minority churches had at some point drafted their members. They were also at times seen as representatives of foreign – oppressive – countries. The more progressive elements, Muslim and Christian, seemed to move more freely outside the framework of institutionalised religion. As such they were freer to question the discourse of national unity just described and to venture into alternative ways of approaching dialogue. The progressive people interviewed were all functioning on the fringe of their institutional settings (the Azhar, the Coptic Church, the Muslim Brotherhood), and some of the youth did not feel that they belonged to any institutional setting. What classified the progressive as progressive was that they were highly critical towards the discourses of the regime, the opposition, and the religious institutions, and would selectively address religious issues where they found answers that made sense in the context of their life forms.

A Typology of Dialogue Initiatives Applying sociology and social psychology to religious dialogue opened up a wider field of analysis than the much-used typology of Race focusing on the cognitive structures of dialogue (see introduction). The book instead considered the construct of society, how people position themselves in this society, and how interreligious relations contribute to different emotional patterns and cognitive structures.

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The attitude involved in working with dialogue proved crucial to the outcome of the dialogue initiative. A type of dialogue such as boxing match dialogue with the aim of converting the other participants in the dialogue was based on a negative approach to the religion of the other – and at times on a negative approach to the other believer as part of another community that was perceived as threatening. The aim of this book was to define dialogue according to definitions of dialogue found in Egypt, and since boxing match dialogue was defined as dialogue, it had to be taken seriously as such. Emotional patterns and cognitive structures were found to differ between different dialogue initiatives similar in methods, but opposite in outcomes. One example of this was the difference between boxing match dialogue and the academic dialogue of a Catholic monk; while the former led to suspicion between groups the latter led to greater coherence, even though they were both based on similar methods of engaging with the religious ideas of the other. To be able to compare the dialogue initiatives found in Egypt with dialogue initiatives in other parts of the world, it is useful to categorise the initiatives into six different categories. As was pointed out in the introduction, the most utilised typology within theology dealing with religious dialogue focuses primarily on cognitive structures and how these reflect relations with other religions. As should be clear from Chapter 1, cognitive structures is only one of four variables important to dialogue and none of the four variables exist alone, as they are all conditions for the formation of groups. When dialogue addresses cognitive elements it therefore also influences the other three variables, and if the Theology of Religions hopes to have an impact on Muslim– Christian relations all four variables need to be addressed. Focusing on the cognitive elements of dialogue to the exclusion of others holds at least three risks: that the methods of dialogue become dictated by the focus on cognitive structures, leaving dialogue as a primarily cognitive endeavour, which we saw Rasmussen protest in the introduction; that academics overlook dialogue initiatives because they do not involve the discussion of cognitive structures; and that practitioners of dialogue are left unprepared to engage with people working with types of dialogue with other foci – the dialogue consequently leading to confusion rather than improved relations. The latter was especially obvious during my six years working with dialogue in Egypt, where participants in

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international dialogue meetings were at times unaware that they had different approaches to dialogue, leading to confusion. To avoid this, the typology of this book defines dialogue according to practices of dialogue, leaving the typology open to further categories. In this way the typology can be used as a yardstick of dialogue without boxing in its definition (Bosch 1991, 483). A similar approach is also adopted by the Roman Catholic Church, which is apparent in the reflection on dialogue entitled Dialogue and Proclamation (Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue 1991). The document restates the Catholic Church’s approach to dialogue and proclamation 25 years after the second Vatican Council and the publication of Nostra Aetate, a seminal document in the history of religious dialogue from a Christian perspective. This publication was one of the first major documents on the topic, which took brave steps towards a very open understanding of other religions on behalf of the largest Christian denomination. The paper lists four different types of dialogue relevant to this book: (i) Dialogue of Theological Exchange, (ii) Dialogue of Religious Experience, (iii) Dialogue of Action, and (iv) Dialogue of Life (Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue 1991). According to Race this also covers much of what is written among other denominations about different methods of dialogue (Race 2001, 10). I listed different types of dialogue in my Danish book On Dialogue: The Dialogical Spirit and the Understanding of the Different (2009), which are still relevant. These categories of dialogue were mainly based on experience with dialogue in Denmark and Egypt, but also experience with or knowledge of dialogue in a number of other countries, and add two categories to the list of the Catholic Pontifical Council: (i) VIP dialogue, (ii) Comparative/academic dialogue, (iii) Experiential dialogue, (iv) Diapraxis, (v) Toolbox dialogue, and (vi) Grassroots dialogue. Contrary to the typology of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, which assumes a positive attitude towards other religions, the attitude with which dialogue is conducted is not assumed in the typology of this book. This means that people using the same methods might achieve diametrically opposite outcomes, for example alienation instead of cohesion, depending on the attitude they enter dialogue with. The concept of dialogue is used with this possible span in meaning, and the aim here is to describe this to reduce any confusion on the concept of dialogue. Focusing primarily on the cognitive aspects of dialogue, the typology of

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Race can be described as a barometer of the attitude incorporated in the cognitive structures, i.e. the truth value of the other religion. Race thus illustrates how the attitude towards the truth claims of another religion varies from “negative” to “positive”, with “exclusivism” at one extreme and “pluralism” at the other, and with “inclusivism” in the middle. I concur that there is a range of attitudes differing from the more negative (polemical) to the more positive (irenical) towards different communities of interpretation, and this will determine the outcome of the methods used. It follows that limiting a typology to only including positive attitudes to the understanding of dialogue will leave out the definitions of dialogue based on more negative attitudes (such as boxing match dialogue) and limit the usefulness of the typology.1 VIP dialogue is undertaken by people of authority in society representing their communities, leading to a more political sort of dialogue. This kind of dialogue involves meetings between representatives of religious groups (the activity does not have to involve anything else), who through the act of meeting establish their relations as positive. Their interaction is often televised or otherwise publicised with the hope that the effect of the interaction will trickle down through society, legitimising positive relations and possibly positive interaction between religious groupings. The Egyptian version of VIP dialogue was identified as official dialogue. Official dialogue was conducted partly between high officials and partly between the leaders of the local networks of power, though these levels were often mixed when high officials would participate in dialogue with local leaders. The discourse of national unity was essential to all these dialogue initiatives. The most prominent official dialogue was between the regime, the Coptic Church, and the Azhar. This was analysed as part of the political dynamics of Egypt, where the regime would gain a higher level of legitimacy among Christians by negotiating with the Coptic Orthodox Church. The public displays of dialogue, such as televised meetings between the leaders of religious communities and the heads of the regime during religious holidays and after bigger incidents, were hoped to promote better relations. At these occasions the officials involved would reiterate the discourse of national unity to an extent where many of the interviewees felt that this was just empty words, as the words were not followed by action. The official dialogue was, however, found to have

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some positive effect, as it allowed the minorities a channel of communication with the authorities. This dialogue not only led to greater cohesion between Egyptian communities, but also sustained the power of the elites in society by fostering the structure of society as clientelist and consolidating their position within this structure. It defined those who were encompassed by the cohesion, and those who were not; political enemies were therefore distanced through dialogue with political friends. The Egyptian leadership of the Anglican Church would also engage in official dialogue and was used as a case study. Working with official dialogue, CEOSS had realised the importance of the leadership of local networks of power in reaching the grassroots, and had directed considerable dialogical effort towards this level of leadership by continuously hosting workshops engaging local officials, religious and otherwise. Comparative/academic dialogue (or Dialogue of Theological Exchange) is conducted by scholars of different faiths, often focusing on the similarities or differences in dogma and scriptures, “to confront, deepen, and enrich their respective religious heritages or to apply something of their expertise to the problems which must be faced by humanity in the course of its history” (Secretariat for Non-Christians 1984). Other academics working with dialogue discuss concepts of religion and society that can be implemented in dialogue. For a description of the content of comparative/academic dialogue, it is enlightening to read Hugh Goddard’s Muslim Perceptions of Christianity (Goddard 1996) and Kate Zebiri’s Muslims and Christians Face to Face (Zebiri 1997). While Goddard writes specifically about Muslim perceptions of Christianity in Egypt, Zebiri also writes about Christian perceptions of Islam. Even though Zebiri’s writing is more international in scope, her work is relevant to the Egyptian setting as well. As this book takes a sociological approach, the content of these discussions of cognitive structures has only been of peripheral interest. Two examples of academic dialogue were given: one more negative (boxing match dialogue) and one more positive (the research into Sufism by a Catholic monk). Dialogue directly addressing faith issues was defined by almost all the Egyptian interviewees as something necessarily leading to arguments and ultimately sectarian strife, which is why most of the interviewees

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would avoid talking about faith differences in dialogue. Those interviewees who did define dialogue as addressing faith issues engaged in dialogue to prove the other wrong and themselves right. A Catholic monk of Italian origin provided an example of the same methods of conducting research in the other religion, but with the difference that he did not look for what was wrong with Islam. While the monk did feel welcomed among Muslims discussing Islamic scholarship, he was unaware of any Egyptian Muslims or Christians attempting to gain this positive access to the faith of the other as a dialogical endeavour – even after half a lifetime in Egypt. Experiential dialogue (or Dialogue of Religious Experience) occurs when believers share their faith experiences through prayers or other religious practices. This type of dialogue is highly personal and often emotional as it builds cohesion through proximity, or as stated by the Roman Catholic Church: “persons rooted in their own religious traditions can share their experiences of prayer, contemplation, faith, and duty, as well as their expressions and ways of searching for the Absolute” (Secretariat for Non-Christians 1984). Experiential dialogue is often distinguishable from the two aforementioned types of dialogue as it is conducted by professionals and non-professionals alike and necessarily involves the participants and their personal religiosity. Experiential dialogue, like academic dialogue, addresses the faith of believers, but while academic dialogue is based on research, experiential dialogue is based on the personal perspective of participating believers. As has been pointed out, addressing faith directly was not common to dialogue in Egypt in general, but in the case of experiential dialogue two examples were found involving Egyptians positively addressing the faith of the other: one was the dialogue trips arranged by the Dialogue Forum, bringing together foreign and Egyptian Muslims and Christians, and the other was the singing group Ana Masry, consisting of Egyptian Muslims and Christians. Even though these expressions of dialogue were relatively limited, they do show the diversity and possibility of experiential dialogue in Egypt – these two being the furthermost from the more institutionalised expressions of dialogue such as boxing match dialogue and official dialogue. Diapraxis (or Dialogue of Action) as a concept has been taken from the research of Rasmussen (1997), but with the difference that it is specifically defined as mutual action directed towards improving

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relations through societal action that improves the local or national societal situation, thereby improving the relations between social groups. Quoting a central Roman Catholic text on their equivalent of diapraxis: “A further level of dialogue is that of deeds and collaboration with others for goals of a humanitarian, social, economic, or political nature which are directed towards the liberation and advancement of mankind” (Secretariat for Non-Christians 1984). The combination of a high level of poverty and the discourse of monopoly of religious truth, pushing many not to address religion in dialogue, made many institutions combine the urgency of poverty relief with the need to dampen sectarian strife by working with diapraxis. Diapraxis took many forms in Egypt. Some people believed social dialogue was the solution to the problems. They were aware of the problems between Muslims and Christians, but they did not believe their problems came from the different groups being religious, but rather because of for example the lack of a functional juridical system that would punish crimes committed against minorities, or the presence of corruption, leaving people with no trust in the political system of the country. These then acknowledged the presence of problems between Muslims and Christians, but maintained the discourse of national unity by locating the root of the problems between religious groups in social issues. The Anglican and Catholic Churches engaged in a somewhat unidirectional diapraxis, as they justified their presence in Egyptian society by establishing and maintaining schools, hospitals, social centres, and other places benefiting society as a whole. These had, over the course of centuries (especially the Catholic Church), established themselves as contributing positively to Egyptian society. CEOSS had an applied approach to diapraxis; they would for example help poorer areas to establish a local council, which would reflect on the situation of their area and then implement solutions where Muslims and Christians alike would share the responsibilities and benefits of the projects. With projects such as these it was to the benefit of all in the area to cooperate with their neighbours in spite of differences in religion. This often proved effective in helping people see each other as part of the same community and in lowering tensions. Toolbox dialogue focuses on the practical applicability of dialogue by equipping participants with tools to engage in dialogue in their

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everyday lives. Toolbox dialogue often directly addresses the underlying attitudes of the participants by pushing towards greater or lesser (in the case of negative attitudes) acceptance of the other in dialogue through exercises at seminars or workshops. If the facilitators of a seminar have a pluralistic approach they can facilitate exercises justifying the value of other religions and opinions. A seminar of this kind can include people from different religions. On the other hand, seminars talking about the superior value of one’s own faith are likely to only include people from said faith. An example of the latter is the understanding of “comparative religion” as an exercise in promoting one religion over the other. Peace building and reconciliation differ from religious dialogue as they usually come into play after major problems have occurred and because religion is not necessarily a part of them. But they are similar to toolbox dialogue as workshops and third-party involvement are basic tools to both, at least in the description of peace building and reconciliation of Abu-Nimer (2001).2 The methods of peace building and reconciliation are furthermore only of comparative interest to this book as peace building and reconciliation most often demand that the involved parties all agree to acknowledge severe problems, which was rarely the case in Egypt in 2010. Toolbox dialogue is set up by a third party working to improve the skills of a group of people – often through workshops or seminars. This was shown to be common practice for some organisations working with dialogue in Egypt in 2010. The official dialogue of CEOSS often took the shape of toolbox dialogue, as they would invite leaders from local networks to seminars, where they would for example discuss different topics to break down negative stereotypes. Both the Anglican Church and the Dialogue Forum engaged schoolchildren in parts of their dialogue work. One of the major changes for Muslim– Christian relations following the revolution was that the social positioning of Christians was discussed to a larger extent. This resulted in a multiplication of Muslim –Christian incidents, but also opened up a more positive debate pushing for the inclusion of Christians in Egyptian society. This was carried out by different Coptic organisations, but also by different NGOs gathering groups of people to teach and spread ideas of peaceful, multi-religious living. One such initiative was Misriyati, as described in Chapter 5.

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Grassroots dialogue (or Dialogue of Life) underlines that we all, whenever we meet someone new and different, immediately engage in an inner dialogue or a dialogue engaging the person in front of us to determine whether or not to trust this person (Hansen 2009, 19). The Roman Catholic Church provides a definition based on a positive attitude: “Before all else, dialogue is a manner of acting, an attitude; a spirit which guides one’s conduct. It implies concern, respect, and hospitality towards the other. It leaves room for the other person’s identity, modes of expression, and values” (Secretariat for Non-Christians 1984). This definition partly emphasises the fact that people in general are important to dialogue, but it can also be used to discuss the term “grassroots”. Building on experience from Egypt and Denmark, “grassroots” is used in different, sometimes contradictory ways. The common denominator in all uses of the term seems to be a focus on “average” people in their “normal” context. The difference is that people from Denmark tend to use the word for dialogue initiatives originating specifically from the grassroots and aimed at the grassroots, while the term in for example Egypt seems to be used for dialogue initiatives originating among the leaders of society and directed towards the grassroots. My definition differs from the definitions in Egypt and Denmark, but is close to the official definition of the Roman Catholic Church. Grassroots dialogue is a “minimal” definition of dialogue, as it is dialogue entailing a minimum of conscious effort. Given that grassroots dialogue in this definition is hardly a practice but rather a way of living, only one example of how the positive mentality of a salient group of people can change things has been given from the Catholic context; a negative example can be found in Chapter 3 highlighting the problems between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. An African (non-Egyptian) Catholic Nun living in a convent (in the shape of an apartment) in a poorer area in Cairo provided an example of how being a salient part of the population made it possible to influence the general relations of the area positively, as she and her colleagues were approached by both Muslims and Christians, which enabled them to break down negative stereotypes and eventually to introduce estranged neighbours to each other. Chapter 3, interpreting religious incidents in the Egypt of 2010, gave an example of how interreligious friendships could maintain positive stereotypes in spite of the surroundings encroaching on the friendship by

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introducing negative stereotypes and pushing for a choice between religiously defined social groups over social groups otherwise defined. The example was enlightening to understand how social dynamics affect relations between people and groups. This book has applied sociology and social psychology to better understand the practice of religious dialogue in Egypt. In particular, the clientelist elements in Egyptian society and governance have been highlighted as essential to understanding how dialogue is conducted in Egypt. It is my hope that the book can help future dialogue initiatives progress in Egypt and between Egypt and other countries. But I also hope that it will lead to more research into the social implications of religious dialogue in other parts of the world. In a Western country such as Denmark, known for its secularism, there is often a feeling that religious dialogue is a practice of purely religious dogmatic relevance. The understanding of Islam and the relation to Muslims in the public space can, however, make or break a political career, and Islam delimits a social category in most Western societies – a social minority that is often discriminated against. With this growing socio-political relevance of religion in a Western society such as Danish society, religious dialogue aiming at improving relations between religious groups will therefore have socio-political relevance. In so far as academia has an obligation to investigate societal matters, this seems an obvious and fundamental area for further research.

NOTES

Introduction 1. In the middle of the 1990s there was a heated debate on whether the Copts could and should be called a minority (Sedra 1999). Many in Egypt – Muslims and Christians – thought it an inappropriate term, as they felt that there were no differences between Copts and Egyptian Muslims apart from belonging to different religions. Furthermore, some Egyptians believed that terming the Copts a minority would create a schism in Egyptian national unity. It is clear that the concept of minority as it was used in the 1990s debate in Egypt is understood differently from its academic Western use. This issue of the Copts as a minority was, however, seemingly of little relevance to the interviewees of this research, which is why it will not be elaborated on here. See Makari (2007) or Stephanous (2012, 7) for more detail. For a discussion of the discourse of national unity in Egypt, see Chapter 3. 2. The concept of discourse used here is primarily influenced by David Howarth (2000) and Norman Fairclough (1993). In the vocabulary of this book, discourse can be defined as: objective (i.e. socially institutionalised) strains of thinking influencing the emotional patterns and cognitive structures of the participators in a given society in the end determining how they understand reality, construct society, and act in these. This will become obvious in Chapter 1. 3. System maintenance is according to Berger or Luckmann not an endeavour reserved for religions, but to all understandings of reality – whether based on religions or not. 4. The same can also be said of a range of Western missionary efforts, where people of an exclusivist or inclusivist conviction often sacrifice many years of their lives to help people, regardless of the faith of the recipients.

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Chapter 1 Dialogue as the Negotiation or Navigation of Intergroup Relations 1. Knowledge is in this book inspired by Wittgenstein to mean everything humans can talk about, which is in accordance with the definition of Berger and Luckmann (1967). Whatever spiritual experience a person might have, in order to think and communicate about it, it is knowledge. 2. To¨nnies is adapted by both social psychologists (Hogg and Vaughan 2005, 276) and sociologists (Falk 2007), making his theory suitable to bridge the disciplines. Also, according to Ayubi, To¨nnies’s concept of community is close to the collective focus of Middle Eastern political practices exemplified by corporatism (Ayubi 2006, 16) – thus making it a suitable concept to link the idea of clientelism in Egypt (see Chapter 2) with the group and social identity perspective of this book. As the paramount task of the theoretical chapter is to sustain and make sense of the collected data, using To¨nnies’s concept of communities seems a good choice. 3. Most of the quotes by Bourdieu used here are from Pierre Bourdieu and Loı¨s J. D. Wacquant (1992), which is an interview with Bourdieu by Wacquant, where Bourdieu has the opportunity to formulate his theory in the simplicity of spoken French – sharply contrasted to the density of written academic French – making this book optimal for clarifying quotes. 4. There is no reason not to include Egypt in this assumption, as the hierarchical structure of Egyptian society combined with a strong community feeling among Egyptians makes for an excellent example of the theories of Tajfel. 5. Shah et al. (2003) make a similar point. 6. The relation between emotion and cognition will be discussed later in this chapter. 7. This will be important in Chapter 3, which describes the discrimination taking place against Christians in Egypt. It is repeatedly underlined that much of this discrimination is only discrimination because there are already tensions in society; because of the tension the actions are seen as discrimination. This is not to say that the discrimination is not real, but it underlines that it is solvable.

Chapter 2

Politics, Religion, and Society in Mubarak’s Egypt

1. Ijtiha¯d denotes the process of making a legal decision by independent interpretation of the Quran and has been a key concept in the debate on who can interpret the holy texts of Islam; al-Afghani and ‘Abduh believed interpretation could in principle be carried out by any enlightened person with adequate knowledge of the Quran and the Hadith. Although ‘Abduh was a peaceful thinker without tendencies to violence, his interpretation of ijtiha¯d was later used by violent Islamist groups to interpret the holy texts by themselves, legitimising the use of violence as a political means (Gesink 2010, 7), but also by moderate Islamist politicians to promote their own religious interpretation

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4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

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11. 12. 13. 14.

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of how society should be construed, contesting that of the regime (Wickham 2002, 162; Baker 2003, 172). ‘Abduh, in questioning the authority of the religious institutions, can as a scholar be likened to Martin Luther, who was part of the reformation of Christianity, though their influence was different (Gesink 2010, 72). The term “public schools” is used to denote schools made freely available through public funds in Egypt (though there are some “hidden” costs such as materials and private lessons). This is different to the United Kingdom, where public schools are privately-owned boarding schools. The Muslim Brotherhood is often associated with religiously legitimised violence taking place in Egypt. This was historically the case, as in the beginning one branch of the physical orientation of the organisation developed into a paramilitary entity – “the Secret Unit”, which until the 1950s carried out military operations (Zollner 2009, 12). For an in-depth discussion of how the dynamics between the Muslim Brotherhood and the regime hinged on the concept of legitimacy, see ‘Awadi (2004). PBUH is an abbreviation of “Peace Be Upon Him” which is said after uttering the name of the Prophet to show respect. The power centre of Christianity being placed outside Egypt also brings the loyalty of the Coptic Christians into question in the eyes of some Muslims (Haddad 1995, 385). See also Rowe (2009). The Coptic Community Council reappeared in 1973, but was then assimilated into the clerical order of the church, consequently not impairing the rule of the Pope in the Coptic Church (Khawaga 2004b, 153). Following a dispute between a Copt and some Muslims violence escalated, and “apartments were torched – their doors barricaded to prevent their Christian residents from escaping – Christian children were thrown out of windows, Christian shop owners were disemboweled, and passerbys were gunned down” (Hassan 2003, 109). Those preferring a more artistic depiction of clientelism will enjoy the novel Relations, in which the Hungarian author Zsigmond Mo´ricz masterly depicts clientelism in the Hungary of the 1920s, which some Hungarians also find accurate for parts of the contemporary Hungarian administration. For an illustrated glimpse of everyday life in Egypt’s capital, Magdy El Shafee’s graphic novel Metro: a story of Cairo is highly recommended. The legal framework of a country is essential for clientelism to function smoothly (Kaufman 1974, 294), but this is not the focus of this book and has been adequately addressed by Kassem (2004). “Dyadic addenda” denotes the addition of the personal relationship between two individuals to the political system. Albrecht makes a similar point (Albrecht 2007, 47 and 149). “Pork-barrel legislation” denotes legislation made to benefit a particular part of the population, which then would feel encouraged to back the existing political

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19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

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order at the next elections. Pork-barrel legislation is the opposite of the idea of legislation made to benefit the population on a whole. Lemarchand makes a similar point (1972, 85). Weingrod writes about development and having a public job as a favour from the ruler to his subjects, incorporating the subjects into the system of patronage (Weingrod 1968, 383). Soliman makes a similar point (2011, 63). For a more elaborate description of the military as a parallel system of patronage, also involved in industry, see Springborg (1989, Chapter 4). For further discussions on brokers, how they link the centre with the periphery, the benefits to the broker, and how a patron with no credibility can gain from the credibility of the brokers, see Sharon Kettering (1988) and Philip Keefer and Razvan Vlaicu (2007). The Grand Imam is the head of all of the branches of the Azhar, and often plays the role of the face of the institution in Egypt and the rest of the world. The Grand Mufti is also connected to the Azhar, but he functions as the national Mufti deciding on fatwa¯s (although these are only authoritative in people’s lives if people judge them to be so). This will be addressed more thoroughly in the following chapters. Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty make a similar point (2007, 149). The reciprocal ties between the regime and the Church – each with their own legitimising and to some extent contrasting primary identity – can be likened to the ties between ethnic groups described by Lemarchand (1972, 71). Religious demarcation pushing a specific system of patronage can be likened to Nicolas van de Walle’s (2003) idea of ethnic demarcation. Lemarchand (1972, 83) makes a similar point. For example, during the trade union elections in 1992 both the Muslim Brotherhood and regime-affiliated candidates allegedly paid the overdue membership fees of some of the lawyers of the Bar Association just before the elections as an enticement for their votes (Wickham 2002, 196).

Chapter 3 The Interpretation of Muslim – Christian Incidents 1. The US Department of State report on International Religious Freedom has been preferred for quotation because of its concise and illuminating nature. There are, however, a number of other reports that can be consulted by the reader if further illustration is needed. For example, the reports of the Human Rights Watch and World Watch Monitor. 2. See H. L. Hansen (2009) for a popular version of the analysis. 3. There is an interest within social geography in how sound is part of shaping a specific landscape. This can seem slightly eccentric to an outsider, but sound defines the general space as well as the specific religious space in Egypt – both because of the multitude of sounds, but also because of the sheer volume of the

NOTES

4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10.

11.

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265

sound. Many Egyptians, Muslims and Christians, find these sounds intrusive, which makes it an obvious point to highlight – also because it has not been done before to the knowledge of the author. The idea of looking into school texbooks and how Christians in Egypt perceive the Islamic element in the textbooks is inspired by a lecture given on the topic by the Egyptian scholar Youssef Habib Nicolas Habib on 8 June 2006 in Cairo. His material is yet to be published. This part of the lesson is not about cooperation with other religions, but within the community. Some Muslim students might include Christians in this community (and vice versa), but it is not explicit from the lesson itself. Hassan also makes this point (Hassan 2003, 171). Maurice Martin (2004, 19) points out that monasteries had a similar function of consolidating the Coptic identity against the multitude of mosques in the cities. Galal (2009, 151) makes a similar point concerning the media. Discriminatory acts being conscious does not necessarily mean that the person enacting them is conscious of his or her act as a discriminatory act. Only very few would actually admit to discriminating against other people, but would define their actions as justified when confronted with the negative nature of the act. This can be illustrated by the usage of words. It is unusual to hear people say: “let’s go and discriminate against those people”, but it is not unusual to hear people say: “those people need to be punished for their crimes”. This is an important point: negative actions need justification for people to perform them and not feel like perpetrators themselves (Brewer 2001). This justification will be addressed in the next section under “signifiers of strife”. The interviewee explained that Christians have a reputation of not smelling good: “As for the food, some Muslims believe that the food cooked by Christians in Egypt has a bad taste and pungent smell. Other Muslims believe that the homes of Christians are not clean and smell unpleasant, as they do not ventilate their homes during the cooking. Also the Christians seek blessings of the food in the church, and this presents a problem for the Muslims blessing their foods in the name of God according to their tradition, making the Christian food forbidden to them.” Especially in rural areas, people laid claim to an area of desert by growing crops on it and then building a fence around it or placing armed guards on it. This was a traditional way of laying claim to an area and was called to “put your hand on it”. Only after an area was claimed by traditional law was it possible to obtain official papers for the area from the state. In the period between the traditional and official claim, the area was vulnerable to attacks from other parties that would then try and take over the claim to the area. This was especially the case in places where new areas of the desert were being irrigated and turned into farmland. In many of these areas the state powers were weak, and authority was often dictated by the influence of local social networks, which made minority groups particularly vulnerable as they would to a large extent be distanced from

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12.

13. 14.

15.

16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

NOTES

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both local and state authorities. Since local authorities held quite a bit of power, the state authorities were also limited in their influence over these more desolate areas. Also see Lynne M. Jackson and Bruce Hunsberger (1999, 510), who also interpret religion as partaking in this sort of social strife by taking over general social values, but from a social psychology perspective. Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty make a similar point (Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty 2007, 156). A law was passed in 2005 permitting repairs without permit, but restrictions continue to apply, as repairs are restricted at the local level (US Department of State 2010). The need for conversion was also a very significant topic for many Christians, especially for a Coptic priest among the interviewees, but his interview will feature primarily in the next chapter when discussing the concept of “boxing match dialogue”, which is dialogue focusing on conversion. While the priest was very explicit about this topic, the rest of the Christian interviewees were more focused on what they saw as the injustice of Muslims being able to proselytise while Christians were prohibited from doing so. In this sense churches were not much different from the local networks connected to the mosques. The major difference was that while marginalised Muslims had to deal with harassment from regime agents, marginalised Christians had to deal with this as well as discrimination from parts of the Muslim majority. The story was related to me on several occasions when entering different churches, when explaining the icons of these places. This often produced a feeling of being tested, especially when relating the miracle of the moving of the mountain. In these cases I was often asked if I believed in these miracles, and I was left with the impression that the answer would determine my faith in their minds. I furthermore saw the story as a short film, which was given to me along with a number of other similar stories. It seems these were watched by Christians as educational entertainment, which they believed I could benefit from as well. The book suggests using the prayer: “My loving God, I thank You with all my heart for all tribulations and all pain at all times. Grant me the ability to give thanks, for all circumstances and under all circumstances, as a way of life, trusting that You are able to use all [of] them to form my life as it pleases You. Give me patience during tribulation and long-suffering at times of trial. Amen” (The Church of Saint Samaan the Tanner. 1994, 16 – 17). The language of the book has been maintained in the description of it to nurture a feel of the story. The word “blame” is used to show that the narratives are inadequate to explain the problems in Egyptian society. The narratives are rather attempts at sidestepping the real issues. Galal (2009, 95) makes a similar point. Paul Sedra discusses the discourse of national unity and offers an historical perspective of it starting in the middle of the nineteenth century (Sedra 1999).

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22. See also Galal (2009, 139). 23. See also Elsa¨sser (2010). 24. There seemed to be narratives among some Muslims that Christians were amassing weapons to be able to take over the country and that some church buildings were built for this purpose (Ansari 1984; Hulsman 2013a, 30). There might be traces of this narrative in this quote. 25. See Albrecht for a description of the political influence of the Ibn Khaldun Center (Albrecht 2007, 112).

Chapter 4 The Dialogical Navigation and Negotiation of Egyptian Society 1. The duality of the concept of dialogue was also a topic of discussion in one of the dialogue groups, during which we became aware of the dual use of the term. Working in the dialogue environment and living in Egypt for a number of years I gained the impression that the more negative approach to dialogue prevails in large parts of Egyptian society – making many leave dialogue endeavours as they do not like the negativity of it. 2. Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty (2007, 158– 159) make a similar point. 3. Goddard (1996, 83) describes something similar. 4. See also Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty (2007, 12). 5. The campaign combines the struggle against illiteracy with the struggle against negative stereotypes between Muslims and Christians by promoting cheap books covering a range of topics, including positive descriptions of the other religion. 6. The meetings of local officials were essential to some of the dialogue work of the Coptic Evangelical Organisation for Social Services (CEOSS) described later in this chapter. 7. Foucault strives to understand the limits of our understanding and thereby delineate what he calls the current episteme: “that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in practice” (Foucault 1994, 168; Lindgren 2007). Discourses are according to Foucault the threads of thought that determine what people think within a certain episteme, as for example the discourse of what feels natural to some but not others regarding sexual preferences (Foucault 1994, 157; Lindgren 2007). Focusing on knowledge as either the episteme or the discourses of the episteme presents some limitations to the usefulness of Foucault for this book, which examines how knowledge is differentiated between societal groups, and not between historical epistemes. Foucault’s concept of knowledge and power is therefore used as inspiration to understand knowledge as intimately connected to the general power structures of society and to see how knowledge helps separate society into people who represent the norm to me, and people who are outside my group of people. Knowledge then becomes a tool for both alienation

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

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and the establishment of familiarity, which is most pertinent to this book. As is obvious in the description of ingroups and outgroups, social identity theory also describes how people are alienated according to societal affiliation – Foucault is then brought in to accentuate how knowledge contributes to the building of social relations between societal groupings. When Joseph Rouse describes Foucault’s understanding of truth-claims as “to strengthen some epistemic alignments and challenge, undermine or evade others” (Rouse 2005, 115), this is not only a question of challenging epistemic alignments, but also of questioning or supporting the norms of who is accepted as part of society and who is not (depending on the content of the truth-claim). Holding or living by the “truth” thus enables a person to feel normalised and a valued member of society. Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty (2007, 167) describe another dialogue initiative of the Muslim Brotherhood. See also Paul Rowe (2009, 120). “Diapraxis” is a term coined by the Danish theologian underlining that dialogue is often a practical endeavour, as pointed out in the introduction. I was invited to the seminar as a lecturer and gained some insight into the Catholic setting through this and other meetings. See also Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty (2007, 171). The term “salience” is used in the meaning of “standing out”, and as such affects social identity and positioning. The term is taken from social psychology, as explained in Chapter 1. Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty (2007, 163) make a similar point. Ibid. (2007, 161– 2) make a similar point. Ibid. (2007, 160– 1) also briefly touches upon this type of dialogue in Egypt. This section is described in first person to underline my biased position to the dialogue initiative. This was a prayer the participants made together to be able to pray as a community. Explanations of terms have been placed in the footnotes so as not to disturb the flow of the song. As a gift to God to overcome hardships. Egyptian tradition, regardless of religion, of gathering family and friends on the seventh day after the birth of a child. Pharaonic spring celebration still practised by many Egyptians. Pharaonic tradition of having a ceremony 40 days after the death of a person commonly upheld by Egyptians. Christian saint celebrated in a famous Coptic Church. Famous mosque holding the bones of the grandson of the Prophet Mohamed. This was originally part of a Shia tradition, but it was continued in the Sunni history of Egypt in spite of the dubious role of saints in most Sunni thought, varying from perceiving it as idolatry to accepting it as part of the Muslim tradition.

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26. A video of the song can be found on YouTube by searching for “Ana Masry”. It seems there are several versions of the song.

Chapter 5

Egypt and Dialogue in a Time of Revolutions

1. This is not to say that Laclau’s lumpen-proletariat is directly comparable to Egypt’s radical Islamists – what is comparable is their societal positioning. 2. Laure Guirguis (forthcoming) argues that this was already the case during the 2005 elections and did not diminish after the 2011 revolution. See also Iskander (2012, 15). 3. Dr Ste´phane Lacroix gave the speech Sheikhs, Politicians and Revolutionaries: Making sense of the Salafi debates in post-revolution Egypt on 17 April 2013 in Copenhagen. 4. The article is from the Arab West Report homepage, on 15 May 2013, entitled Mapping the Coptic Movements: Coptic Activism in a Revolutionary Setting. The article reflects the situation in autumn 2012.

Conclusion 1. For a further discussion of attitudes in dialogue, see Abu-Nimer, Khoury, and Welty (2007, ch. 1). 2. For a typology of peacebuilding and reconciliation, see Johan Galtung (2001).

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INDEX

Abduh, Muhammad, 52 – 5, 60, 237 al-Afghani, Jamal al-Din, 53, 60 Ana Masry, 179, 205, 208– 12, 256 Anglican Church, 131, 145, 155– 6, 162 attitude, 2, 6 – 8, 12, 14, 17 – 8, 38 – 9, 30 – 2, 44 – 8, 61, 99, 123, 128, 137, 159, 178, 184– 9, 194, 197– 8, 210, 212, 222, 235, 243, 247, 252– 4, 258– 9 Azhar, the, 1, 3, 26, 34, 37, 51 – 70, 86, 97 – 98, 101– 3, 106– 10, 132, 144– 9, 156, 158– 9, 162– 77, 184, 186, 189– 92, 197, 203, 209– 10, 220– 1, 227, 237– 40, 249– 51, 254 al-Banna, Hassan, 48, 60 – 2, 67 –68 Bourdieu, Pierre, 2, 11, 22– 36, 41, 47, 49 – 50, 108, 127, 152, 160, 164 Catholic Church, 73, 119, 146, 155, 165, 178, 180– 8, 190– 1, 193, 202, 206, 211, 251–9 clientelism, 3, 12, 25, 37, 45 –6, 76, 81 – 6, 92 – 6, 102, 106, 112, 119, 126, 154, 168, 170, 197, 216, 218, 222– 5, 228– 31, 236– 7, 244, 246, 249– 50, 255, 260

coercion, 3, 81, 86 – 7, 104, 170, 219 cognitive structures, 2, 7 – 8, 11 – 4, 38– 50, 109, 119, 137, 160– 1, 164–6, 187, 205–6, 213, 215, 247, 249, 251– 5 cohesion, 28, 35 – 6, 39, 49, 186– 7, 198, 248, 253, 255– 6 community, 2, 8, 10 – 7, 19 – 22, 28– 31, 34 – 50, 75, 79, 85, 98, 104, 111, 117, 119, 121, 124, 126–8, 135– 40, 143, 147, 150, 153–155, 160–4, 167 –71, 180–188, 196, 205, 210, 212–5, 220– 2, 241, 248, 250–7 conversion, 1, 61, 99, 126, 130–4, 147, 159, 161– 3, 181, 204 co-optation, 3, 37, 82 – 3, 88, 95, 103–4, 170, 218–9, 224, 249 Coptic Church, 1, 3 – 4, 21, 34, 37, 46, 51, 53 – 4, 59, 61, 66, 71 – 82, 85, 93, 100–3, 106, 110, 114, 119, 124, 130– 131, 133, 135– 140, 145–52, 155 –9, 162– 3, 165–186, 192– 3, 197, 199– 202, 210–213, 220–7, 232 –42, 249–251, 254, 258 Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS), 101, 179,

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Coptic Evangelical Organization for Social Services (CEOSS) cont 181– 3, 186, 193– 200, 210, 255, 257– 8 democracy, 83, 85, 93, 97, 103, 107, 175, 217– 8, 224, 226, 230– 1, 237, 245 dialogue academic, 184, 186– 7, 210, 252–3, 255– 6 boxing match, 4, 155– 64, 167, 172, 178, 193, 199, 202, 209– 13, 248, 252– 6 diapraxis, 8 – 9, 185– 86, 189, 191, 194, 197– 200, 214, 248, 253, 256– 7 experiential, 203– 6, 210– 2, 253, 256 grassroots, 188–9, 239, 248, 253, 259– 60 intercultural, 193– 7, 200, 210, 248 official, 4, 59, 66, 72, 97–8, 120, 154, 157, 159, 162–78, 183–94, 197, 200, 202, 209–10, 213–4, 235–6, 239, 248, 250, 254–6, 258 social, 2, 4, 69, 151, 155, 163, 172– 7, 200, 210, 213– 4, 240, 248, 257 toolbox, 253, 257– 8 VIP, 253– 5 Dialogue Forum, the, 179, 193, 201–8, 211– 2, 256, 258 discrimination, 109– 153 everyday incidents, 3, 111– 25, 134, 140 grand events, 3, 111– 2, 125– 36, 140– 1, 146, 150, 179 personal discrimination, 121– 5 systemic discrimination, 113– 21, 125, 140 el-Sisi, Abdul Fatah Saeed Hussein Khalil, 217, 221, 224, 227–8, 236

emotion, 2, 11 – 2, 29, 36, 38 –50, 109, 123–4, 127, 137, 153, 166, 205, 215, 249, 251– 2, 256, 265 n. 10 Foucault, Michel, 16, 24, 27, 41, 49, 160, 169, 267– 8 n. 7 Honneth, Alex, 2, 12, 22, 28 – 36, 49– 50, 108, 111, 175 identity, 2, 12, 14–5, 19, 21–2, 32–43, 48–50, 54, 64, 71–76, 101, 107, 110–2, 115–9, 128, 134–40, 146, 149–50, 160, 164, 167, 172, 177, 187, 198, 203, 209, 213–4, 223, 230, 240, 246–9, 259 Islamism, 3, 34, 37, 46, 55–71, 76–79, 95, 97–99, 101, 103–7, 125, 170–1, 182, 186–7, 217–8, 220, 224–8, 233–4, 237, 239–41, 244–5, 249, 256 judicial system, see legal system legal sytem, the, 83, 96 – 7, 146, 213, 216, 223 legitimacy, 3 – 5, 9, 13, 26, 30, 34 – 7, 56– 9, 63 – 6, 70, 76, 82, 86, 93, 95– 99, 102, 104, 107, 125, 127–9, 137, 141–4, 158, 163, 167, 169– 71, 190– 2, 207, 213, 218, 220– 8, 234– 7, 241, 244– 5, 249, 254 legitimation, see legitimacy local networks of power, 2, 17, 30, 45– 6, 56, 64, 75, 89 – 90, 97 –8, 101–8, 113, 153, 162 –171, 182, 194–7, 214, 216, 218, 222, 225, 229, 249, 254– 5, 258 Luckman, Thomas, 6, 41, 43, 45, 160, 164, 261 n. 3 military, 26, 34, 62, 73, 86 – 7, 90 – 6, 101, 179, 216– 34, 245

INDEX millet system, 75, 241– 2, 273 n. 8 Ministry of Religious Endowments, 55 – 7, 97 – 8 Mubarak, Hosni, 2 –3, 31, 37, 51, 66, 69, 71, 78 – 81, 84, 88 – 91, 93, 95, 97, 101, 105, 170, 176, 192, 216– 31, 234, 236– 7, 240 Muslim Brotherhood, 3 – 4, 26, 34, 37, 51, 55, 57 – 71, 76, 78, 85, 93, 98, 101, 103– 7, 128, 132, 144, 151, 154, 163, 167, 171– 8, 185, 200, 216– 36, 238, 241–2, 249– 51 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 55 – 6, 63 – 4, 70, 75 – 6, 78, 81, 88, 93, 95, 97, 112, 143, 158, 181, 224 national unity, discourse of, 4, 21 –2, 35, 53 – 4, 79, 112, 115, 141, 143– 4, 147– 9, 152– 3, 163– 7, 172, 179, 192, 195, 209, 213– 4, 220– 1, 232, 235, 237, 239– 40, 246– 51, 254, 257 normality, 16, 22, 24, 169– 70, 267– 8 n. 7 opposition, 2, 57 –9, 66, 71, 85, 93, 103– 7, 121, 154, 172, 213, 220, 223, 231, 249, 251 persecution, 110, 137– 8 police, 62, 79, 83, 86– 93, 96 – 7, 117, 131– 2, 136, 170, 179, 182, 192, 201, 223, 226– 7, 232, 234 poverty, 87 – 8, 101, 150, 172, 182, 185, 197, 200– 1, 226, 250, 257 revolution 1919 Revolution, 52 – 4, 166, 221, 231 1952 Revolution, 55, 62, 237

283 2011 Revolution, 4, 12, 31, 35, 37, 52, 83, 112, 143, 152– 3, 172, 179, 200, 216 –245, 247 2013 Revolution, 101, 216– 245

Sadat, Anwar, 37, 57, 62, 64 – 6, 69, 76– 81, 84, 88 – 9, 92 – 3, 95, 102, 105, 143, 151, 176, 201, 224 Salafi, 60, 167, 216, 222– 7, 236–7 salience, 22, 32 –3, 35 – 6, 44 – 5, 48, 142, 189, 196, 259 social justice, 3, 37, 58 – 9, 67 – 70, 104, 107, 172, 175, 201, 224, 226, 249 Sufi, 167, 186– 8, 208, 210, 255 Sunday School Movement, the, 3, 73– 9, 100 Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the (SCAF), see military Tajfel, Henry, 12, 18, 32 – 8, 42, 45, 88, 104, 127, 136, 139– 42, 164, 172, 196, 198 Turner, John C., 12, 13, 32 – 8, 42 – 3, 59, 88, 104, 135– 6, 169– 70, 189, 198– 9 To¨nnies, Ferdinand, 2, 18 – 22, 31, 39– 40, 42, 49– 50, 160 Union Labour, 52, 95, 230 Trade, 69, 86, 88, 93 – 5, 102– 3, 105– 7, 225 Wafd, 36, 55, 60 – 3, 74 – 6 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 7 – 8, 14 –6, 39– 40, 42, 49, 160, 262 n. 1 youth, the, 2, 4, 90, 155, 179, 185, 200–1, 212– 4, 216, 223, 225, 231, 239– 42, 246– 8, 251