Egypt

KEY

Current issues

Egypt is a country torn by extremes. On the one hand President Sisi has done more to help the Christian community than any previous president. On the other hand, there is a rising tide of radical Islamic attacks on Christians and churches which in some areas threatens to eradicate the Christian presence which has existed in Egypt since the earliest decades of Christianity.

In 2017 a series of threats and attacks by jihadists linked to Islamic State led to what was in effect the entire Christian population of rural North Sinai Province fleeing. This was a highly sophisticated operation, as a 2018 report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights observed

During the third week of February, there was a noticeable change in the pattern of attacks. Copts were targeted inside their homes. Bodies of victims were mutilated after being shot. And their houses were burned in the presence of the women of the family. A number of Christians also received threatening messages on their personal phones demanding that they leave. Leaflets were left underneath the doors of the residences conveying the same meaning. Samir, whose name has been changed to protect him, is one of many who were targeted. He found a leaflet in front of the door of his apartment in the Masaid district, which read: “Leave tomorrow. Otherwise your head will hang at your house, crusader”.[1]

This was a highly sophisticated operation, the report by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights observed that attackers frequently seized their victims’ mobile phones to obtain a details of other Christians in the area:

People were afraid and fled. Now, after the killing was in the streets and shops, they come to our homes. The situation is difficult, and the terrorists have a complete database of all the Christians, where they live, the number of their children and all their movements. They have their spies that follow people, know when they leave their homes. They picked them gradually one after the other. They know their homes and cars. They have information.[2]

A number of individual Christians who subsequently tried to return have been murdered. In effect, much of this area has been religiously cleansed of its entire Christian population which has existed here since the first centuries of Christianity. Prior to the 2011 removal of President Mubarek there were estimated to be 5,000 Christians in Sinai, the increasing pressure felt by them led to that dropping to only 1,000 when the specific targeting began in 2017.[3] There is therefore a significant risk of the Christian presence which has existed in this area since the first century of Christianity, being eradicated.

Across Egypt there is also a widespread issue of the abduction, rape, forced conversion and forced marriage of Christian girls and women by both Salafists and Islamists, with significant sums of money reportedly offered to those engaged in this.[4]

There have also been an increasing number of attacks on Christian churches. These escalated significantly following the overthrow of the Islamist government of Muhammad Morsi in 2013 which Muslim Brotherhood supporters blamed in part on protests by Christians against its proposals to islamise the constitution. There followed large-scale attacks on churches and attempts to stop Christians meeting for worship, particularly in Upper Egypt, but also elsewhere.

There have also been an increasing number of terrorist attacks on churches, monasteries and Christians in other parts of Egypt. These include the 2016 bombing of St Marks’ Coptic Cathedral in Cairo during a Sunday service. Such attacks reflect the teaching of shari’a, which was also specifically enforced in Ottoman law, that as dhimmis, Christians should not be allowed to build new churches, or even repair existing ones. Destroying churches is therefore seen as a way of religiously cleansing an area of its non-Muslim population. Although in 2016 President Sisi brought in a new law to give legal approvals to existing church buildings, it is evident that there is considerable resistance to this within both the government administration and significant sections of society.

In August 2022 at least six unexplained fires occurred in churches a single week. In the worst of these at Giza in Greater Cairo 41 people died, including 18 children. Although these occurred on the anniversary of Muslim Brotherhood supporters burning down 62 churches in 2013, while the fires were still burning government officials were reported to have insisted the fires were all due to “faulty wiring".[5]

Christian converts face significant risks to their lives as a result of the penalty for apostasy in the Shaf’I school of shari'a being execution for both male and female converts from Islam. Although the state does not formally impose this, the statement of shari’a that anyone can take the life of an apostate without incurring any penalty, effectively legitimises violence and honour killings in the eyes of many who undertake them. The rhetoric of jihadist groups regularly emphasises the killing of “apostates” and although this term is extended to include some Muslims, its central meaning is that anyone who abandons Islam should be killed. [6]

Christian converts from Islam, including even those forced to convert to Islam, are in practice unable to change the religious identity on their national identity cards. They therefore remain subject to Islamic law for family law. This has serious implications as shari’a prohibits a woman deemed to be a Muslim being married to a Christian man, and any children of someone who is deemed to be a Muslim are automatically registered as Muslims.[7]

The disproportionate targeting of Christians with blasphemy accusations under a vaguely worded section of the penal code by as well as mob violence associated with accusations of blasphemy has until recently been a largely under reported issue.[8]

Legal situation

In the 21st century Egyptian law has reflected

i) old Ottoman era laws, including laws which effectively prevented the building of new churches, or even repair of older ones.

ii) western style constitutional law.

iii) shari’a, particularly of the Shaf’I jurisprudence which predominates in Egypt.

During much of the twentieth century the second was emphasised and Egypt signed a number of international human rights treaties, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified 1967). 

However, since the 1970s Islamic law has been increasingly emphasised. In 1971 the constitution was amended to state that Islamic law was now the principal source of Egyptian legislation.[9] While in 1990 Egypt signed the OIC’s Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, article 24 and 25 of which made all human rights stipulated in it subject to Islamic shari’a and only to be interpreted in the light of shari’a.

s.60 of the Penal Code gives immunity to anyone committing “any deed in good faith pursuant to a right determined by virtue of shari’a”. While s.98f is a vaguely worded blasphemy law which imposes up to five years’ imprisonment for anyone “disdaining and contempting any of the heavenly religions” or “prejudicing national unity or social peace.”

Ideologies linked to persecution

Salafism: Which seeks to create a society which closely follows the example of the first three generations of Muslims known as “the pious predecessors” (al-Salaf as-Ṣāliḥ).

Classical Islam which is taught in madrassas, although most ordinary Muslims have only limited knowledge of it. This is largely based on the interpretations of the Qur’an agreed in medieval times and the shari’a derived from them: Al Azhar University in Cairo is the intellectual centre of Classical Islam for the Sunni world. Although it seeks to portray an image of tolerance to western governments, its comments on Arabic media are far harsher and include advocating the execution of those who leave Islam. [10]

Islamism. Which seeks to bypass the interpretations of Classical Islam and reinterpret the Qur’an and Hadith to create a radical Islamic vision for every area of modern life, which it aims to impose on wider society. The Muslim Brotherhood (Jamāʿat al-Ikhwān al-Muslimīn), the world’s first Islamist movement (motto: Allah is our objective. The prophet is our leader. Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope) was founded in Egypt by Hasan al Bana in 1928. It gained power in 2012 a year after the popular Arab Spring uprising against President Mubarek and then sought to introduce an Islamic constitution and islamise society before widespread street protests led to the Egyptian army assuming control in July 2013.

Future Risk

The recent spread of jihadist attacks on churches to areas previously regarded as relatively safe such as Cairo and Alexandria coupled with the religious cleansing of a large area of North Sinai Province of its historic Christian community creates a significant risk that other nearby areas such as South Sinai Province may similarly be subject to attempts at religious cleansing.

Church History

Egypt played a central role in biblical history from Abraham to the Exodus to Mary and Joseph’s flight from Herod. There were Egyptians present on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:10). The Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, was probably completed by Jews in Alexandria in the third century BCE. Egypt therefore had a well-established Christian church significantly earlier than western nations such as Britain or Spain (Rom. 15:28).

The Egyptian church produced some of the most influential theologians of the early church including Athanasius and Clement of Alexandria.  It also experienced persecution from the earliest centuries and still looks back to the “era of martyrs” which began during the reign of the emperor Diocletian (303CE), the most widespread of the persecutions under Roman rule. Later persecution arose as a result of the Arian controversy, resulting from Arius, an elder of the church in Alexandria, claiming under the influence of the Greek philosophy of Platonism that Christ was not eternally God. The political alignment of a number of Christian emperors with the sections of the church which followed him led to the persecution of orthodox church leaders, such as Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, who was five times exiled from his bishopric by the emperor.

However, it was the conquest by Arab Islamic armies in 642CE which has had the most long-lasting and profound impact on the Egyptian church. Christians and Jews were subjected to dhimmi status, whereby they were permitted to live as subservient peoples, symbolised by the payment of jizya and allowed to worship behind closed doors provided they kept to the terms of the dhimma contract, any perceived breach of which led to them being deemed harbis (enemy combatants) who could be killed with impunity by any Muslim. Following the incorporation of Egypt into the Ottoman Empire in 1517 this evolved into the millat system which permitted Christians to govern their own community in matters such as marriage, provided they demonstrated their total subservience to Islamic rule. However, under an 1856 Ottoman decree even the most minor repair or enlargement of a church required the Sultan’s approval. Whilst this ceased to apply during the period of British rule, following independence it was reinstituted in 1934.[11] President Sisi’s approval of a new church buildings law in 2016 was an attempt at a partial reversal of the virtual impossibility of obtaining permission for church buildings that had resulted from the earlier law.[12]

© Material in this analysis may be freely reproduced or quoted in context provided i) the source is explicitly acknowledged as The Lindisfarne Centre for the Study of Christian Persecution and ii) the date of download is stated.

[1] Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights A Death foretold: An Analysis of the Targeted killing and Forced Displacement of Arish Coptic Christians (al Qahirah,EIPR,2018) 24.

[2] Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights A Death foretold: An Analysis of the Targeted killing and Forced Displacement of Arish Coptic Christians (al Qahirah,EIPR,2018) 47.

[3] Special Briefing: Killings in Arish:Rising Sectarianism in Sinai Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy 1 March 2017 < https://timep.org/esw/reports-briefs/special-briefing-killings-in-arish-rising-sectarianism-in-sinai/> [accessed 18 March 2022].

[4] This was first highlighted by the Coptic Pope Shenouda III in 1976 at a conference in Alexandria cf ‘Abduction and forced Islamization of Christian Coptic girls continues in Egypt’ AINA 11 August 2009 [accessed 14 October 2022]. However, the report by Professor Michele Clark and Nadia Ghaly Tell my Mother I Miss Her: The Disappearance, Forced Conversions and Forced Marriages of Coptic Christian Women in Egypt (Westlake,CA: Christian Solidarity International 2012) was seminal in its recognition. More recent reports include: Jihad of the Womb: Trafficking of Coptic Women and Girls in Egypt (Coptic Solidarity International,2020) and reporting similar issues in a number of countries including Egypt Hear Her Cries: The Kidnapping, Forced Conversion and Sexual Victimisation of Christian Women and Girls (London:ACIN,2021).

[5] ‘More churches burn in Egypt as government shirks responsibility’ Middle East Forum 21 August 2022 [accessed 14 October 2022].

[6] For example, in 2013 al Nusra Battalion, a unit within the al Furqan Brigades released a video claiming responsibility for killing “apostates” cf David Barnett ‘Egyptian jihadist groups claims shooting attack on apostates and criminals’ FDD Long War Journal 30 September 2013

[7] Prohibited Identities: State Interference with Religious Freedom (Human Rights Watch, November 2007) [accessed 19 May 2022].

[8] ‘Egypt’s blasphemy laws’ Eshad March 2016 (Washington:Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy,2016). For examples of Egyptian Christians, Muslims and secularists targeted by blasphemy laws cf ‘Apostasy and Blasphemy Laws in Egypt’ Coptic Solidarity 9 March 2020 [accessed 7 October 2022].

[9] Article 2 of both the 1971 and the current (2014) constitutions.

[10] ‘CIHRS urges Sheikh of al Azhar to retract statements condoning violent extremism’ Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies 10 July 2016 [accessed 14 April 2020]; Martin Parsons ‘The truth about the Grand Mufti’s visit to the UK’ The Critic 21 May 2022 [accessed 25 July 2022].

[11] Bat Ye’or Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide ET from French by Miriam Kochan and David Litttman (Cranbury,NJ: Associated University Presses,2002) 180-81.

[12] ‘Sisi ratifies Egypt’s new church building law’ Ahram Online 28 September 2016 [accessed 19 May 2022].