Middle East Critique

ISSN: 1943-6149 (Print) 1943-6157 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccri20

Conquest of Paradise: Secular Binds and Coptic

Political Mobilization

Candace Lukasik

To cite this article: Candace Lukasik (2016): Conquest of Paradise: Secular Binds and Coptic
Political Mobilization, Middle East Critique, DOI: 10.1080/19436149.2016.1144910

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2016.1144910

Published online: 01 Mar 2016.

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 Middle East Critique, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19436149.2016.1144910

Conquest of Paradise: Secular Binds and

Coptic Political Mobilization
CANDACE LUKASIK
University of California at Berkeley, CA, USA
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ABSTRACT   This article explores conflicts within the Coptic community related to problems of
definition and representation. Coptic groups that emerged from Egypt’s 2011 revolution brought
these tensions to the fore. Groups such as the prominent Maspero Youth Union (MYU) [Itihad Shabab
Maspero] were formed to contest the hegemony of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egyptian national
politics. The MYU and others have attempted to reconstruct social boundaries drawn by the Church
and the state, promoting political secularism, or the separation of religion from politics, as a solution to
inter-communal strife and remedy to intra-communal conflict over the position of the Coptic Orthodox
Church as the sole representative of the community. At the same time, the group has emphasized their
Coptic identity through religious symbols and imagery at protest events, as depicted at the Maspero
memorial march in 2012. While the MYU officially endorsed secular governance as a means to
overcome sectarianism, its actions also made visible internal conflicts over the representation of Coptic
identity in contemporary Egyptian society. Although the promise of secularism and equal citizenship
is not specific to the Coptic or Egyptian context, this article focuses on its paradoxical effects within
the Coptic community and its relationship to the state.

Key Words:  Citizenship, Coptic Orthodox Church, Copts, Egypt, Maspero Youth Union, Minority,
Revolution, Sectarianism

Introduction
On October 9, 2012, we assembled at the Maspero Youth Union’s headquarters on Tera’a
Street in Shoubra, Cairo, with banners commemorating each of the Maspero martyrs. Local
and international reporters arrived to ask MYU members about changes for Copts since the
revolution. This was the first anniversary of the Maspero massacre, which had resulted in
the deaths of at least 28 people after Egyptian military armored vehicles ran over protestors
marching from Dowaran Shoubra [Shoubra Circle] to the Maspero state television build-
ing. The march itself had been a reaction to the September 30 attack on the Mar Girgis (St.
George) Church in Marinab, Aswan, where police and public prosecutors failed to investigate
the attack and insisted that the inter-communal conflict be settled by informal reconciliation
committees [ligan al-musalaha al-‘orfiyya]. As we made our way to Dowaran Shoubra, the
site of the first march, crowds of Coptic Christians, and some Muslims carrying the Bible
and the Qur’an, or cross and crescent together, were preparing for the memorial march
on the same route, to be led by priests associated with the MYU and Coptic scouts from
local churches. MYU supporters adorned makeshift crosses made out of wood pieces, pic-
tures of Pope Shenouda, and banners with enlarged pictures of the mutilated bodies of the

Correspondence Address: Candace Lukasik, University of California, Berkeley, CA. Email: cblukasik@berkeley.edu
© 2016 Editors of Middle East Critique
 2  C. Lukasik

martyrs. Banners, posters, and signs proclaimed that these were martyrs of the January 25th
Revolution (2011), and therefore, of the Egyptian nation. ‘Mina Danial, martyr [shaheed]
of the January 25th Revolution,’ one banner read.
As we lined up for the march, priests prayed over some of the youth wearing white, black,
and red t-shirts (the colors of the Egyptian flag) featuring a bleeding Ankh image. The priests
said they were bestowing blessings on the youth, in case they also were to become martyrs
that day. I jumped onto the truck carrying the sound system generator for a better view of
the march formation, with Coptic youth dressed in Pharaonic apparel carrying the Egyptian
flag and pictures of each of the Maspero martyrs, and others playing musical instruments.
Priests, monks, and politicians (both Muslim and Christian) were in the front, and behind
them appeared a life-sized Pharaonic boat with the pictures of the martyrs grouped together.
MYU members said the boat would ‘carry the souls of the martyrs to paradise, or eternal life
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[al-hayat al-abadiyya].’ As we began to march to the Maspero state television building, the
truck started blasting a haunting piece of instrumental music I later learned was ‘Conquest
of Paradise’ by composer Evangelos Odysseas Papathanassiou, professionally known as
Vangelis, from the film 1492: Conquest of Paradise.
Following the march, sitting at a café in downtown Cairo, I asked some MYU members
why they engaged Coptic and Pharaonic imagery together. ‘We are demanding our citizenship
rights, as Copts, from the Egyptian nation [watan], and we are integral to it.’1 Their citizenship I
understood to be defined at once through the assertion of a Coptic identity infused by a Pharaonic
(national) history, and continuous reminders of Christian martyrdom and conquest of a heavenly
paradise—what Carolyn Ramzy has discussed as ‘heavenly citizenship’ [al-watan al-samawi].2
They demand equality through the expression of a distinctive Coptic identity.3 The 2011 Egyptian
revolution nurtured the re–emergence of Coptic political movements for inter- and intra-com-
munal change in various ways, but importantly the platforms and actions of these groups also
demonstrated tensions internal to abstract notions of citizenship and their concrete realities.
This article explores conflicts within the Coptic community related to problems of defi-
nition and representation. Coptic groups that emerged from the 2011 revolution brought
these tensions to the fore. Groups like the prominent MYU4 [Itihad Shabab Maspero] were
formed to contest the hegemony of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Egyptian national poli-
tics. The MYU and others attempted to reconstruct social boundaries drawn by the Church
and the state since the 1940s5, and explicitly from the 1970s.6 The MYU promoted political
secularism, or the separation of religion from politics, as a solution to inter-communal
strife and as a remedy to intra-communal conflict over the position of the Coptic Orthodox
Church as sole representative of the community. At the same time, the group emphasized
their Coptic identity through religious symbols and imagery at protest events, as depicted
at the Maspero memorial march. While the MYU officially endorsed secular governance as
a means to overcome sectarianism, its actions also made visible internal conflicts over the
representation of Coptic identity in contemporary Egyptian society.7 Although the promise
  1 Author Interview, MYU member, Cairo, October 9, 2012.
  2 C. Ramzy (2014) To Die is Gain: Singing a Heavenly Citizenship among Egypt’s Coptic Christians, Ethnos:
Journal of Anthropology, pp. 1–22.
  3 For more on this, see M. Tadros (2013) Copts at the Crossroads, pp. 168–169.
  4 When I discuss the MYU, I am referring only to the Cairo branch.
  5 The 1930s and 40s saw the strengthening of the Sunday School Movement and Egyptian nationalist discourse
in both secular and Islamic persuasions.
  6 I am referring to sectarian violence that increased throughout the decade and the effects of Sadat’s infitah
[economic ‘openness’] policy.
  7 Author interview, MYU official, Cairo, September 26, 2012.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  3

of secularism and equal citizenship is not specific to the Coptic or Egyptian context, I will
focus here only on its paradoxical effects within the Coptic community and its relationship
to the state.
Several writings on the Middle East portray its peoples as unable to develop the nec-
essary politics required for a modern nation-state, where the separation of religion from
politics is vital to securing national unity.8 Authoritarian rule thus appears as the inevitable
outcome of the inability of nation-states to develop the values of political tolerance and
pluralism, since the region’s political culture is shaped by religious (or ethnic) affiliation
and tribalism.9 Sectarianism (or ta’ifiyya) is understood to undermine the nation-state and
its efforts at inclusion, stability, and democracy.10 This formulation consecrates the solution
to inter-communal strife and religious inequality as the separation of church and state, and
state neutrality toward religion.
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In practice, however, as recent scholarship has shown,11 secular power is less the separa-
tion of religion from politics than the power constantly to (re)define, through administrative
and legal structures, what proper religious virtues should look like and what their proper
boundaries should be. The cultivation of particular religious virtues that do not fit the state’s
dictates is thus necessarily ‘political’ in the sense of both engaging and challenging the
state authority that would arbitrate what religion means and how it should be practiced.12
Additionally, however, The MYU and other Coptic groups were a challenge to the Church?s
representational authority in the public sphere. Although the Church as an institution shaped
by the state since the 1950s is authorized to determine proper ‘Copticity’ outside of Church
walls, its authority was challenged leading up to the 2011 uprising.
In Egypt, the role of state institutions in determining and controlling religious visibility
and proper religious values and practices is not specific to the Coptic context. Much the
same relationship obtains concerning the legitimate public expressions of Islamic piety in
the public sphere (for instance, Al-Azhar’s institutional power). For a minority community
like the Copts, however, the stakes are distinct. Challenging Church authority over Coptic
visibility in public space destabilizes the Church’s monopoly over the community. For Coptic
youth involved in groups like the MYU, challenging the Church’s involvement in Egyptian
politics means the promotion of more equal treatment of Copts in Egyptian society. The
promise of secularism in relation to citizenship is a paradox of the modern state: Although
making identity indifferent to the distribution of rights, it does not eradicate the communal
forms that structure the social and political identities of citizens.13

  8 See D. Lerner (1958) The Passing of Traditional Society: Modernizing the Middle East (MacMillan Publishing)
and B. Lewis (2002) What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (Oxford:
Oxford University Press).
  9 E. Davis (2008) Pensee 3: A Sectarian Middle East?, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 40(4),
pp. 555–558.
10
U. Makdisi (1996) Reconstructing the Nation-State: The Modernity of Sectarianism in Lebanon, Middle East
Report, No. 200, Minorities in the Middle East: Power and the Politics of Difference (July–Sept), p. 23.
11
See H. Agrama (2012) Questioning Secularism: Law, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press), T. Asad (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity
(Stanford: Stanford University Press), and S. Mahmood (2015) Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority
Report (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
12
C. Hirschkind (1997) What is Political Islam?, Middle East Report, 205, p. 13.
13
S. Mahmood (2015) Religious Difference in a Secular Age: A Minority Report (Princeton: Princeton University
Press), p. 25.
 4  C. Lukasik

The Maspero Youth Union and Coptic (In)visibility

Most Christians think of themselves as second-class citizens. The state has treated them
as second-class citizens and they themselves believe that they are. People, Muslims
and Christians, find it odd to have a Christian demanding his rights. Once a Christian
obtains his citizenship rights, he wouldn’t need to be a part of a Christian movement.14

Political representation in liberal democracies theoretically constitutes citizens within a

class that is defined by what is common to all and only its members; each individual citizen
counts.15 However, the political inclusion of minorities has entailed the reconciliation of
different historical narratives, traditions and shared memory that helped form those narra-
tives. The rights of minorities include the right to perpetuate themselves as a group, and thus
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are not derivable from general theories of citizenship that are based on the abstract class
of citizens. Both majorities and minorities are historically constituted groups but only the
former claims the state as its nation-state. The perpetuation of religious difference is thus
internal to the paradox of liberal citizenship, which is constructed as abstract and formally
equal but is normatively derived from a majoritarian bias. Secularism, through the apparatus
of the modern state, reduces religious equality to redress through rights, which only affirms
that the state is the ultimate arbiter of justice with the ability to intervene in religious life.16
It is near impossible to imagine ways to achieve religious equality without considering
the modern state. Indeed, it is difficult to remedy religious inequality without also calling
upon the state to be ‘more’ secular (to demand the separation of state and religion), further
enshrining state sovereignty.
Can religious differences be ‘bracketed’ from public consideration?17 Coptic groups have
taken up strategic positions within frameworks of citizenship, secularism, and rights, empha-
sizing their constraints as well as their possibilities. Many (but not all) Copts have refused
the terminology of minority [‘aqalliyya], since it implies a certain separation from the nation,
where Copts become ‘out of place.’18 This has placed the Copts, as well as other minority
communities elsewhere, in a paradox—integration into the national fabric demands that the
minority community also abandon some values, practices, and histories that constitute the
community’s identity. Yet the minority by definition stands apart from majoritarian norms
that form the basis of national identity.19 Coptic groups thus at once advanced abstract
notions of citizenship, secularism, and Christian visibility in the public sphere to promote
inter-communal equality. By drawing on Orthodox religious symbols and concepts, Copts
‘negotiate and shape a lived Egyptian Christian citizenship.’20 This appears contradictory,
but also offers a way by which to track what the discourses of citizenship and secularism
are doing for these groups.

14
 uthor interview with Coptic youth activist, Cairo, July 16, 2012.
A
15
T. Asad. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press), p. 173.
16
Mahmood, Religious Difference, pp. 211–212.
17
Mahmood, Religious Difference, p. 213.
18
S. Shami (2009) Aqalliyya/Minority in Modern Egyptian Discourse, in: Words in Motion: Toward a Global
Lexicon (Durham: Duke University Press), p. 152.
19
Mahmood, Religious Difference, p. 87.
20
Ramzy, To Die is Gain, p. 4.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  5

The MYU, as one of the most prominent Coptic groups of the 2011 Egyptian revolution,
has been at the forefront of these debates, where some members claim that they are ‘the
only organization specializing in citizenship rights [al-huquq al-muwatana].’21 The MYU is
a combination of numerous movements active in 2010–2011, and was formed in the after-
math of incidents of sectarian violence that influenced the political platform of the group.
Before the MYU’s formation in November 2010, a group of Copts that later would establish
the MYU formed the Coptic Youth Front [Jibhat Al-Shabab Al-Qibti] after the events in
Al-‘Omraniya, Giza. One Copt was killed there after police clashed with Christians over the
halting of church construction due to lack of ‘licensing.’22 Copts in the hundreds, bearing
makeshift crosses then descended upon the headquarters of the Giza governorate, where
riot police armed with tear gas and rubber bullets met them. This event had a lasting effect
on the formation of Coptic political groups, particularly the MYU, leading up to the New
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Year’s Eve bombing of the All Saints [Al-Qudissin] Church in Alexandria.23

As described by the MYU’s political coordinator in 2012, Al-‘Omraniya brought together
many of the high-ranking members of the group, including the most regarded Coptic martyr
of the revolution, Mina Danial.24 During the 2011 revolution, the Coptic Youth Front worked
in Tahrir Square to encourage Christians to participate. As a result of the group’s actions,
more Christians began to join. Eventually, the leadership of the Coptic Youth Front would
become the ‘backbone’ for the Maspero Youth Union.25
The group became an official organization after their first sponsored sit-in on the March 6,
2011, in front of the state television building, which is named after the French Egyptologist
and Coptologist, Gaston Maspero. Between the two sit-ins that took place on March 6 and
May 8 in front of the Maspero state television building in response to incidents of church
burning and sectarian violence, the MYU began to formulate its direction and political
discourse, demanding their rights as Christians on the Egyptian political stage. As the polit-
ical coordinator explained, the reason the Egyptian state television building was the site of
protest was related to the complicity of state television in the promotion and performance
of sectarian discourse within Egyptian society.26 For MYU members, state television was
complicit in inciting sectarian violence.
The coherence of the MYU’s political platform has been difficult, because some members
promote citizenship, equality, and rights, while others adhere to a Coptic nationalist position,
where Copts stand as the ‘descendants of the Pharaohs’ to emphasize their distinct Coptic
identity. One MYU member in 2012 described how their meetings began with traditional
prayers, as would be recited before any other youth meetings inside of the Church. He tried
to stop such activities to be more inclusive of Muslims to increase their participation in the
group. While this particular member’s aim was to reach out to more Muslims in order not
to appear solely as a Coptic organization, other members championed the MYU’s particular
Christian identity.
In addition to internal conflicts over Christian exclusivity, the struggle for widespread
support of the MYU’s political goals among other Copts was also rather complicated. As

21
Author interview, Cairo, June 22, 2012.
22
 ssociated Press (2010) Egyptian Coptic Christians revolt over halted church-building, The Guardian (November
A
24, 2010).
23
For more on the rise of Coptic protests in 2010, see M. Tadros (2013) Copts at the Crossroads, pp. 163–165.
24
Author interview, MYU official, Cairo, December 3, 2012.
25
Author interview, MYU official, Cairo, December 3, 2012.
26
Ibid.
 6  C. Lukasik

described by a MYU member, the reason for the group was rather simple: Copts as a
‘minority’ must be against any religious regime in Egypt.27 Members of the group insist
that as ‘experts’ on citizenship issues and the documentation of sectarian incidents, Coptic
lobbying groups (the MYU being one of them) must forge campaigns against any incidences
of discrimination, whether in education,28 the media, or the everyday lived experiences of
Copts. Members of the group have asserted that the Coptic cause is similar to any interest
group pushing their program forward within the framework of the wider political field,
through international law and human rights discourse that can aid their efforts against state
discriminatory practices.29
While the MYU, as well as other Coptic organizations and NGOs in Egypt, use the termi-
nology of ‘minority’ and ‘citizen’ to construct the fight for rights and equality, the integration
of citizenship into Egyptian public discourse and among Copts is a relatively recent phe-
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nomenon. Since the early 2000s, the Egyptian state became eager to appease international
allies with political reform. In 2003, the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) was
established and in the spring of 2007, the citizenship principle [mabda’ al-muwatana] was
included in Article One of the Constitution, replacing the phrase a ‘coalition of the work-
ing forces’ [tahaluf al-qiwa al’amila].30 ‘Citizenship,’ as public discourse, did not become
fashionable or widely used in Egypt until the 1990s, with its engagement by intellectuals
such as William Sulayman Qilada, Samir Murqus and Tariq al-Bishri.
While the MYU actively engages the citizenship principle, it also proclaims itself as a
Coptic group working on the ‘Coptic issue’ to fight for freedom and equality of all Copts.
Because of this mixture of discourses, many within the Coptic intelligentsia view the MYU
through various lenses. In this conflict over support for these groups, there is no singular,
agreed upon narrative for how Coptic communities are to be integrated into national politics.
One Coptic politician described how ‘fanatic’ Copts, many associated with the MYU, found
a window via the revolution to communicate about discrimination with other marginalized
groups.31 Conversely, a prominent Coptic political analyst and politician emphasized the
importance of Coptic groups like the MYU in promoting Christian visibility:

This new generation played a direct role in Tahrir, and they refused to listen to Pope
Shenouda when he told them to stop protesting. This new generation is playing a very
important role in fighting for citizenship rights and equality. They are not fanatics,
they are proud of their Christianity.32

On the composition of movements like the MYU, many prominent Coptic figures have
acknowledged that these groups consist of many youth who have faced discrimination
directly based on their religion. The Coptic political analyst mentioned above also described
how the first instance of the group’s forming, in Al-‘Omraniya, was a reaction to the lack of
support from the Church against state and social discrimination. While at the same time, he
suggested that they still want to respect the older generation within the Church; they want
to have contact with the Church while remaining independent from it.

27
 uthor interview, Cairo, December 3, 2012.
A
28
The MYU political coordinator emphasized how state history books do not represent the history of Copts within
the larger framework of Egyptian history.
29
Author interviews, Cairo, December 3, 2012.
30
S. ElSasser (2014) The Coptic Question in the Mubarak Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 187.
31
Author interview, Cairo, December 7, 2012.
32
Author interview, Cairo, December 8, 2012.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  7

The relationship between MYU members and the Coptic Orthodox Church is based on
religious, social, and political factors that connect Coptic youth to the Church through com-
munity service, education, and religious programming. Another Coptic intellectual noted
that the group reflects socio-economic structures within Egyptian society, where poor and
lower-middle class Copts have stronger social, political, and economic connections to the
Church than upper-middle and upper class Copts. He likened the MYU to the sectarian
rhetoric of Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq who ‘represents the aspirations and the feelings of those
that are persecuted—the poor and the lower middle class.’33 Here, Coptic support for the
MYU is divided along socio-economic lines, where the ‘Coptic-ness’ expressed by the MYU
becomes entangled in class commitments and experiences. As a prominent Coptic politician
(who lives between the United States and Egypt) described, socio-economic issues and the
lack of Christian representation within the electoral system factors into the development
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of a Coptic ethno-nationalism, which provides the Coptic Orthodox Church the means to
continue their involvement in politics.34
As mentioned before, some MYU members have struggled with the Christian, and par-
ticularly Coptic (Orthodox) composition of the group. The internal struggles over definition
and representation of what a Copt is and what being Coptic means points to struggles with
the Church as center of representational authority and the target of youth dissent. For MYU
members, and Copts connected to it, there are specific ways in which the MYU is a ‘Coptic’
and ‘Egyptian’ group:

What makes it [the Union] Coptic is their [the members] identity, the history, the lan-
guage, the shared common things between them that make Copts distinct. When you
have a group that shares a language, shares a common history, shares an identity—that
is a unique group. So, sharing the Coptic language, sharing the history of the Copts,
sharing the sufferings that even happen today, having that belonging to the Church or
even sympathizing with the Church or Church goers and being faced with the same
challenges—that sort of makes that whole group blend together in what you could call
something distinctly Coptic. Shabab Maspero, the Coptic unions, all these other youth
groups—within them, there are these common things. They are Christians, they feel
discriminated [against]. They have common values; they have common history. And
they’re facing all the same future and pressures within the same social and political
class for the most part. When you put all of these together you come up with a Copt.35

Here, discrimination and shared experiences of sectarian violence frame Coptic identity.
In many ways, the visible signifiers for the MYU (tattoos, crosses, and icons) become
intertwined with a distinct discourse on what it means to be a Copt within a revolutionary
moment and in its aftermath. The play between visibility and invisibility for the Copt within
Egyptian society has been problematic. Anthony Shenoda has argued that what is desirable
for Copts in a new, post-2011 Egypt is a visibility that takes seriously Coptic religiosity.36
With continued calls for national unity and a flattening of communal identities, what is at
stake for Copts, such as those youth within the MYU, is their everyday lived experiences—
compromising their Christianity. It is an everyday life in a perceived Islamic public sphere
that many of my Coptic interlocutors in the MYU have found troublesome.
33
 uthor interview, Cairo, December 18, 2012.
A
34
Author interview, Cairo, November 8, 2012.
35
Ibid.
36
A. Shenoda (2011) Reflections on the (In)Visibility of Copts in Egypt, Jadaliyya, 18 May.
 8  C. Lukasik

Ways of finding belonging in an Egyptian national construct have become increasingly

problematic for Copts. The Church, with its history of independence from the (now) Eastern
Orthodox Churches following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD, is the representative
of the Copts’ Egyptian-ness. The Church secures that image through its rejection of for-
eign domination and terminologies, such as the minority concept, and upholds national
unity [wahda wataniyya] where sectarian violence [fitna ta’ifiyya] is de-emphasized and
inter-communal coexistence is portrayed as perpetual reality. In this bind, Copts become
increasingly aware of how they must present their case—through the documentation of
sectarian violence and awareness campaigns on Coptic discrimination as a means to let
others in Egypt and abroad know of the Coptic plight.37 While this article will not address
the narrative of Coptic victimhood portrayed within the context of Islamophobia in Europe,
the United States, and Australia,38 representations of the Copt as victim and beleaguered
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minority is continuously reinforced within those contexts as evidence of the inherent evil
of Islam. It is vital to deconstruct how groups like the MYU have used such frameworks,
promoted in and by the West, to garner attention in the international community. It becomes
difficult even for Copts who have shared lived experiences of discrimination and sectarian
violence to articulate their demands in such a way that (re)imagines themselves outside
of this grammar of victimhood; it more greatly reinforces religious difference between
communities in Egypt. Groups like the MYU have attempted to engage and reconcile these
intersecting frameworks that hold them, as Copts, in particular positions, especially within
the confines of the Coptic Orthodox Church’s constructed social boundaries.
For the Copts of Egypt, their identity as Egyptians lives with their identity as Christians,
but each identity functions in different spaces.39 Under the colonial regimes of the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries, religious communities in the Middle East were reconstituted
as political communities. In addition to sectarian systems of governance, colonial admin-
istrations also cut off some religious communities from one another, in order for the newly
formed nation-states to appear cohesive and whole. The establishment of such borders
dictated the terms of identity and relations of these new ‘minority’ communities with the
majority community. The recognition and re-inscription of these borders by the modern,
secular state was crucial for their social legitimacy. The Maspero Youth Union as a ‘Coptic’
group in the public sphere sought to challenge the borders that hold Coptic identity in certain
public spaces and not others—those spaces that are authorized by the state and the Coptic
Orthodox Church as a state institution. By asserting a distinctly religious and Coptic cultural
identity in the public sphere, outside of Church walls, the MYU has challenged the limits of
state (and Church) regulation on religious expression. Within these internal conflicts in the
Coptic community over representation, the MYU became the site of contestation between
different Coptic identities. The group’s deployment of the citizenship principle and promo-
tion of secularism on the one hand and renewal of Coptic ethno-nationalist discourses on
the other evidence these internal conflicts.

37

Maspero Youth Union (2011) Reports on Sectarian Violence Incidents in Egypt 2011 (Rep.).
Cairo: Unpublished.
38
This issue has been addressed briefly in P. Sedra (2012a) September 11th, Islamophobia, and the ‘Persecution
Industry’, Jadaliyya; and idem (2012b) Activism in the Coptic Diaspora: A Brief Introduction, Jadaliyya.
39
C. D. Smith (2005) The Egyptian Copts: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Definition of Identity for a Religious
Minority, in: M. Shatzmiller (ed.) Nationalism and Minority Identities in Islamic Societies (Montreal: McGill-
Queen?s University Press), p. 79.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  9

Post-Coloniality, Secularism and the Minority Construct

The post-colonial Egyptian state has set itself up as the ultimate arbiter of religious differ-
ence. New ways of imagining community continue to be overwhelmed by the nation-state
form in the Middle East. It is not simply the inability to think of new ideas of community,
but rather the issue is the surrender to the traditional forms of the modern state that solidify
the paradox of secular rationality and the nation-state form.40 The modern state form deter-
mines the (majority) history of the nation and what national identity looks like, and cements
religious and cultural differences, which necessarily excludes minorities as those who do
not conform to the chosen marks of nationality.41 In the Egyptian context, the boundaries of
Coptic religious expression are made static by state regulation and Church reinforcement.
Coptic Orthodox Christianity does make a difference, for Copts and some Muslims alike,
as it constructs the membership of Copts in the Egyptian nation by virtue of their Christian
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identity—where Coptic Orthodoxy stands as a faith connected to the land of Egypt, which
withstood ‘foreign,’ Byzantine (Roman) persecution and accusations of ‘monophysitism’
following their dissent to the Council of Chalcedon in 451 AD. Despite Coptic connections
to the nation, the majority narrative sometimes constructs Christians as people who need to
be protected or tolerated rather than as equal citizens.42 This formulation reflects the com-
monsense understanding that the Coptic community is defined as a religious and church-
based community and, as such, presents an apparently unproblematic difference seen from
the perspective of many Egyptians because Copts are contained within the administrative
apparatus of the Church.
The perspective of Copts as an inherently religious community, connected to the Church
and as ‘descendants of the Pharaohs,’ not only has been supported by historical narratives
and public discourses in Egyptian society but also has been nurtured and cultivated in the
Church. Prominent Copts agree with this perspective, as well. One Coptic intellectual noted
that the battle between Islamic nationalism and Arab nationalism, in the mid-twentieth
century, was problematic for Christians. They did not know where their place was in the
struggle. Many Copts withdrew to the Church and the majority of Copts became isolated
from the public sphere. In this withdrawal into the Church, the idea of the Coptic nation
was nurtured in an isolated environment. The Church projected one image to the nation
and another to its community inside Church walls. ‘There was a struggle to redefine Coptic
history as Church history.’43
The religious revival, or ‘Coptic renewal,’44 among the Copts, can find its traces from
the late nineteenth century under the influence and effects of Protestant missions to Egypt.
Habib Girgis, a Coptic layman, founded the Sunday School movement in 1918. It developed
into a youth organization in line with the social and political changes of the time—within
the context of the 1919 revolution and the rise of Islamist politics in the 1920s. Since the
1970s in particular, lay influence over Church administration and decisions diminished. The
revival was institutionalized in the Church and attracted a large number of Coptic youth
to participate, especially from urban middle-class congregations. The revival strengthened
and molded various religious and social practices among Copts, most prominently Sunday
40
 . Chatterjee (1993) The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton: Princeton
P
University Press), p. 10.
41
Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age, p. 209.
42
L. Galal (2012) Coptic Christian Practices: Formations of Sameness and Difference, Islam a
nd Christian-Muslim Relations, 23(1), p. 52.
43
Author interview, Coptic politician, Cairo, December 7, 2012.
44
For more on this, see D. El-Khawaga (1997) The Laity at the Heart of the Coptic Clerical Reform.
 10  C. Lukasik

schools as well as theological seminars for laypeople, Coptic language instruction, and the
‘clericalization’45 of the Coptic community, as well as the revitalization of monastic life.
Besides strengthening community structures, these institutional changes also provided
Copts with a space for molding Christian selves. The Church was conceptualized as a ‘sub-
altern counterpublic,’46 as an alternative to the national public sphere. In this counterpublic,
Copts were able to express oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and
needs. Such interpretations were often curtailed by official state narratives, which made many
Copts, dependent upon a safe and secure place—the Church—where they could discuss and
practice their faith without the intervention of wider Egyptian society.47 Nevertheless, for
the Coptic intelligentsia that engages in national politics, the Church’s historical dominance
over the rest of the community has produced strategies of displacement for Coptic identity
and its performance outside of Church walls:
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The Coptic intelligentsia chose to be a part of the public sphere in the form of dis-
tinctive identities—some of them became Arab nationalists and others followed other
currents. They attempted to separate themselves from the Church and keep religion
as a private matter. That does not mean they didn’t use their Coptic identity indirectly
… they find their way into the public sphere because they are Copts. They make use
of their Coptic identity, while also never accepting they are Copts before they are
Egyptians. They say we are not dealing with these issues as Copts we are dealing
with them as Egyptians.48

The juxtaposition between the Copt and the Egyptian speaks to the nature of political
emancipation. In On The Jewish Question (1844), Karl Marx noted, ‘The decomposition
of man into Jew and citizen, Protestant and citizen, religious man and citizen … is political
emancipation itself, the political method of emancipating oneself from religion.’49 While the
Egyptian state upholds Islam as the religion of the state, as anthropologists have recently
explored,50 it still operates on a secular logic to which Marx refers. While religion and pol-
itics are not necessarily separated in Egypt, as typical understandings of secularism would
have it, the state still dictates appropriate religious conduct in the public sphere. For Copts,
as a minority community, their religiosity is made a private manner. This does not neces-
sarily mean that they don’t engage their religious identity in the public sphere or in politics,
but it is regulated and controlled by the state, operating as the representative of majority
interests. Copts promote the separation of religion from political aspirations because this is
the condition of political emancipation for them in an Egyptian public sphere. In this way,
the social emancipation of the Copt is the emancipation of Egyptian society from Coptic
Orthodox sensibilities not authorized by the Egyptian state and the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Within the Coptic community, some Copts are viewed as supporting ‘Christian issues,’ and
others as betraying them. One of the MYU’s allies accused Copts, like the intellectual quoted
above, of being ‘passive when it comes to Christian issues.’51 For example, ‘when an issue
45
Ibid.
46
N. Fraser (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition (London: Routledge),
pp. 81–82.
47
Galal, Coptic Christian Practices, p. 52.
48
Author interview, Coptic researcher, Cairo, December 7, 2012.
49
Karl Marx (1844) On the Jewish Question, p. 7.
50
For more on this, see H. Agrama (2012) Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in
Modern Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press); and Mahmood, Religious Difference in a Secular Age.
51
Author interview, Coptic researcher, Cairo, December 9, 2012.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  11

comes up, they refuse to speak about this issue. They can speak about the worker’s issues
and social issues. Yes, I’m dealing with social issues, but at the same time I’m dealing with
the Christian issue.’52 Emphasizing one’s Christian identity in the public sphere automatically
entails the promotion of the ‘Coptic cause,’ as alluded to in the dialogue above. Marx outlines
this predicament clearly: ‘Political emancipation [is]… emancipating oneself from religion.’
The only way to avoid this Coptic obligation is for Christians to assume another cause that
makes them visible within national politics, aside from their religious identity.53 However,
the Church continues to hold authority and dominance over the political and social lives
of Copts, despite movements like the Maspero Youth Union and other dissenting voices,
because of its integral role in the everyday lives of Copts.
In the 1960s, Pope Kyrillos VI appointed a Bishop of Education committed to delivering
each Friday a lesson to Coptic youth that interpreted Biblical passages relevant to such mat-
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ters as dating, studying, family planning, and class relations. As challenges of discrimination
increased for Coptic youth in public high schools and universities during the 1980s, Sunday
schools appealed to them, with special groups and classes that allowed for the expression of
Coptic identity. To incorporate youth activities into the institutional apparatus of the Church,
the Youth Bishopric was established in 1980. Bishop Musa, the head of the Bishopric, devel-
oped a holistic model for educating and entertaining Coptic youth through retreats, study
groups, and community service.54 By the 1990s, Bishop Musa had also written dozens of
books for youth, educating them on proper Christian conduct and communication.55 The
Youth Bishopric also responded to the 2011 revolution, publishing pamphlets and books
outlining the Church’s perspective on the revolution and its future effects for Coptic youth.56
Particularly since 2011, the Church has re-emphasized the integral nature of Christianity
to Egyptian national identity. These social boundaries and integrations between Copts and
Egyptian society influenced the formation of Christian groups that also sought to challenge
these representations and constraints dictated by the Church.
In a conversation with the son of a prominent Coptic politician, he noted, ‘One of the
thinkings of the Church is that you have to engage in everything to keep people in the
Church—social clubs, everything.’57 He also emphasized the importance of getting Copts
outside of the Church in order to become engaged in civil society. However, the Church
has played an important role as a fulfiller of social services that the state has not provided.
Thus, as many youth will attest to, Copts spend all of their time within the Church com-
munity because it provides them with recreation, activities, and relationships, romantic or
otherwise.58 As one Coptic woman attested, integration into the social spaces of the Church
was an ‘unconscious action.’59 As she recalls, the activities in the Church were meant to

52
Ibid.
53
I ntegral to this dynamic is something that Mariz Tadros has noted in the difference between ‘Coptic protest’ and
‘Copts in protest,’ where there are Coptic movements that aim to combat sectarian violence and discrimination,
and Coptic Egyptians who participate in movements that protest against a wide variety of issues not specific
to Coptic rights, respectively.
54
P. Van Doorn-Harder (2005) Copts: Fully Egyptian, but for a tattoo?, in: M. Shatzmiller (ed.) Nationalism and
Minority Identities in Islamic Societies (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press), p. 38.
55
P. Sedra (2011) From Mission to Modernity: Evangelicals, Reformers and Education in Nineteenth Century
Egypt. (London: I. B. Tauris), p. 178.
56
For example, A. Musa (2011) Hakayat ath-Thawra [The Story of the Revolution] (Cairo: The Youth Bishopric
of the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate).
57
Author, Coptic politician, Cairo, June 14, 2012.
58
Author interview, several Coptic youth, Cairo, July 18, 2012.
59
Author interview, Coptic woman, Cairo, June 21, 2012.
 12  C. Lukasik

introduce Christians into the society, but in reality, only Christians were in these activities.60
Another Coptic woman described how these processes of separation continue into adulthood:

At Cairo University, there are Christian organizations and clubs that many students
from outside of Cairo join in order to develop a community. Then, the Christians are
always in these groups; they sit with each other in the lecture; they do their theses
together. This isolationist attitude is developed through the Church and youth meet-
ings. Then, it is reproduced outside of the Church’s institutional structure and reach.61

MYU coordinators acknowledge these constraints and emphasize that Copts need to integrate
into society and not separate from it, like they do behind Church walls.62 The transformation
of Church space into Church territory centralized its authority, but eventually prompted
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accusations by prominent Muslims, including Islamist thinkers like Salim al-‘Awa,63 that
the Church does not abide by the rule of law, giving the example of the Wafa’ Constantine64
predicament.65 Al-‘Awa asserted, ‘The Pope is not governing a state within a state, but rather
a parallel empire [imbratoriyya muwaziyya]… The Church and its men are preparing for a
war against Muslims … Israel is at the heart of the Coptic issue, and helps the Church by
giving it weapons to store inside of churches.’66 According to Al-‘Awa, nationalism relies
on the conceptualization of a homogeneous people as living within a single, shared spatial
frame, and he claims that the Coptic Church, as representational authority over the Coptic
community, is a threat to the Egyptian nation because of its actions and decisions that he
believes are outside of the bounds of state control and the rule of law.67
I would argue that the production and propagation of a selective, majority history by the
modern state is a hegemonic process that tends to separate minorities from that narrative. A
‘hegemonic selective tradition’ of constructing history usually is challenged by alternative
and oppositional traditions and histories, and in the case of Egypt, groups like the MYU
have disputed dominant articulations of appropriate ‘Christian’ space and questioned the
relations of the Church to national identity and the modern, Egyptian state. The degree of
persuasiveness of the selective histories of official nationalism hinges on the state’s control
over the means of distribution of social meanings and forces in society, and in the context
of the state’s relationship to the Church, this persuasiveness has failed to convince many
Coptic youth, both before and after the 2011 revolution.68
Because many Copts, especially Coptic youth, are uncomfortable with their position-
ing in the Egyptian nation-state (as a community administered by the Church) or Islamist
60
Ibid.
61
 uthor interview, another Coptic woman, Cairo, June 22, 2012.
A
62
Author interviews, Cairo, July18, 2012.
63
Al Jazeera (2010) Itham al-kineesa al-qibtiyya biltghool ‘ala al-dowla w al-qanoon [Accusing the Coptic Church
of infringing upon [the authority of] the state and the rule of law], September 21, 2010.
64
Wafa’ Constantine was married to a Coptic priest from a small village in Beheira, and went missing in November
2004. Allegedly, she converted to Islam and married a Muslim colleague. Protests broke out in her village
and at the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate in Cairo. According to reports, she was handed over to the Church in
December 2004, and remains secluded in a Coptic monastery in Wadi al-Natroun.
65
For more on this case, see S. Mahmood (2012) Sectarian conflict and family law in contemporary Egypt,
American Ethnologist, 39(1), pp. 54–62.
66
Al Jazeera (2010) Itham al-kineesa al-qibtiyya biltghool ‘ala al-dowla w al-qanoon [Accusing the Coptic Church
of Infringing upon [the authority of] the State and the Rule of Law], September 21, 2010.
67
Ibid.
68
For more on this, see A. Alonso (1994) The Politics of Space, Time and Substance: State Formation, Nationalism,
and Ethnicity, Annual Review of Anthropology, 23, p. 389.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  13

imaginations of Egypt (where, in some framings, Copts are characterized through dhimmi
status), they have engaged with what they believe to be alternative strategies to ensure more
adequately their place. Copts, such as those in the MYU, have promoted secularism as a polit-
ical means to secure emancipation and enforce the rule of law for all Egyptians. (As described
previously, this is problematic. However, for many of these Coptic youth, this strategy is an
attractive one). The promotion of secularism is seen as a way to secure a separation of state
and religion, thereby eliminating the differences between Copts and Muslims in questions of
citizenship and rights.69 As one, self-identified Coptic liberal described, everything in Egypt
is focused on the projection of a particular religiosity, and for Copts, this has been centered
on building churches, Christian schools and hospitals, or other institutional buildings (as
concrete embodiments of Coptic religiosity that is visible). ‘All of the churches have to be
as big as the mosques in order to show-off.’70
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Thus, many Copts have developed, and continue to stress, their own time (for example,
through the Coptic calendar and fasting periods) and space (churches, monasteries, and
other building projects), which move past the spiritual to encompass the physical as well.
A Coptic world, as separated from a Muslim one, was constructed through sacred spaces
and time, having its roots in pre-Islamic Egypt, before Muslim influence and domination.71
Markers of ‘Coptic-ness’ contain a separate body of literature, movies, and videos that are
circulated through the Church and independently run Coptic television channels, such as
Aghaby, CTV, and MESAT.72 Pilgrimages to monasteries, youth community service trips,
sports programming inside of Church walls, and specialized courses (from Church history
to political participation in some dioceses) form pieces of an all-encompassing Coptic life.
One proposed role of the MYU, as espoused by some of its members, is to combat the
construction of difference nationally, outside of this Coptic world, at the level of education
and the separation of spaces between Copts and Muslims. How has Egypt become separated
along inter-communal lines in this way? The legacy of the millet system,73 and its reconfig-
uration by colonial regimes under modern, secular governance throughout the Middle East,
has reified difference, constructed ‘Coptic-ness’ as a private identity, and has given religious
leaders greater governing authority. These constructions have shaped Coptic political contes-
tation and dissent. As touched upon previously, debates over the minority concept became
vital to the construction of the Copt. The controversy surrounding the application of this term
to Christians in Egypt once again74 became a national issue when Egyptian sociologist, Saad
Eddin Ibrahim, organized a conference in 1994 to discuss the conditions of minorities in
the Arab world. Copts were included as a minority on the conference agenda, which caused
an outcry in Egypt and was rejected by the state and the then head of the Coptic Orthodox
Church, Pope Shenouda III.75

69
M. Purcell (1998) A Place for the Copts: Imagined Territory and Spatial Conflict in Egypt, Ecumene, 5(4), p. 443.
70
 uthor interview, Coptic liberal, Cairo, June 22, 2012.
A
71
Van Doorn-Harder, Copts, p. 36.
72
For more on Coptic media and its integral role in the revival, see Armanios and Amstutz (2013) Emerging
Christian Media in Egypt: Clerical Authority and the Visualization of Women in Coptic Video Films; and Heo
(2012) The Virgin Made Visible: Intercessory Images of Church Territory in Egypt.
73
In the Ottoman Empire, non-Muslim confessional communities were organized as millets with their own sep-
arate legal courts, run by community leaders, which adjudicated ‘personal status’ matters, such as marriage,
divorce, and inheritance.
74
This was also a source of debate around the 1923 constitution when Egypt was still under British colonial rule.
75
E. Iskander (2012) The ‘Mediation’ of Muslim-Christian Relations in Egypt: The Strategies and Discourses of
the Official Egyptian Press during Mubarak’s Presidency, Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 23(1), p. 35.
 14  C. Lukasik

Tensions over terminology, such as minority, expose certain paradoxes of secular rational-
ity. Aside from understandings of political secularism as the doctrinal separation of religion
and state, ‘secularism has historically entailed the regulation and reformation of religious
beliefs, doctrines, and practices to yield a particular normative conception of religion.’76
Within the Maspero Youth Union’s continuous calls for a secular, or civil, state [dowla
madaniyya] and the invocation of political secularism as a means to envision a new Egypt,
the group, while visually appealing to a distinctive Coptic symbolism77, also attempts to
garner support and visibility through the engagement with international discourses of human
rights and religious liberty to draw attention to discrimination and sectarian violence; to
make the Coptic cause visible to international attention.78
The modern nation as an imagined community is always mediated through constructed
images. According to Talal Asad, secularism is an enactment by which a political medium—
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citizenship—‘redefines and transcends particular and differentiating practices of the self

that are articulated through class, gender, and religion.’79 Thus, as the MYU calls for equal
citizenship rights before the law, other Copts have also engaged this discourse (particularly
since the 1990s) as a means to render legible their communal concerns, as Samia Sidhom,
international editor of the Coptic newspaper Watani described: ‘The demands of Copts
have been equal citizenship rights. If citizenship rights are demanded, we are sure we’ll get
our rights. With that in mind, we are against a religious state.’80 But the rub of the matter is
that within the secular contradiction between the political state and civil society,81 political
emancipation from religious still leaves religious difference in existence, displaced from
the state into society. ‘The emancipation of the state from religion is not the emancipation
of the real man from religion.’82 Samia’s opposition to a religious (read: Islamic) state is
tied into the notion that the ‘secularization’ of the modern state (which is, of course, already
secular by its very nature) will eliminate religious inequalities in society. What Marx tells
us is that the state’s neutrality to religion does not necessarily mean that differences will
be eliminated in civil society. The abstract ideals of citizenship and the concrete realities
of inequality do not align.
The call by Coptic groups for equal citizenship rights and religious freedom [al-huri-
yya al-diniyya] are intertwined within the modern project. As the ‘problem’ of religious
sectarianism has dominated modern historiography and politics on/in the Middle East, the
national and international regulation and protection of religious minorities also makes ‘spe-
cific notions of freedom and unfreedom possible and imaginable.’83 International attention
to a Coptic cause is dependent upon heightened attention to Coptic difference in Egyptian
society. Groups, like the MYU, perform this imperative through numerous publications that
document sectarian incidences. These publications and their disbursement via various media

76
 . Mahmood (2009) Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?, in: Is Critique
S
Secular?: Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (Berkeley, CA: Townsend Center for the Humanities, University
of California), p. 87.
77
One of their logos displays the Egyptian flag, the Pharaonic Ankh and the cross; see Ramzy, To Die is Gain,
for more on this subject.
78
Author interview, MYU member, Cairo, December 13, 2012.
79
T. Asad (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press),
p. 5.
80
Author interview, Samia Sidhom, Cairo, June 11, 2012.
81
Marx, On the Jewish Question, p. 6.
82
Ibid.
83
S. Mahmood, (2012) Religious Freedom, the Minority Question, and Geopolitics in the Middle East, Comparative
Studies in Society and History, 54(2), p. 419.
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  15

(official and social) outlets (including and especially Facebook) and rights groups (such as
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International) become necessary tools in making Coptic
discrimination legible and intelligible within the terms of minority rights and religious
freedom. The MYU has styled its means of communication to a Western audience in order
to perform the figure of a beleaguered minority.84 It is the performance of this construction
that at once renders the Copt legible to the international community, while also weakening
the possibility of a collective, Egyptian life.85

Internal Coptic Conflicts: Shifting Subjectivities and Refashioning Futures

The Copt has been fashioned as a symbol, most often as an inherent victim. Rarely do Copts
figure as actors in this narrative, and when Copts are granted such agency, they are acknowl-
edged only through the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church as official representative
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of Coptic interests.86 This framework does not take into account the multiple networks and
various relations between Copts spread across the spectrum of Egyptian society. As Paul
Sedra has noted, to grasp transformation in sectarian discourses in Egypt, ‘one must scru-
tinize not the accuracy of the historiography, but the history of the historiography—that is,
the social roots of the national unity and persecution discourses…’ from the twentieth into
the twenty-first centuries. Persecution discourses are pervasive both in Egypt and abroad,
which has had dire consequences for inter-communal relations in Egypt.87 MYU members,
while working with various political parties and social movements within Egyptian politics,
dually adhere to the narrative of persecution through the ways in which they document sec-
tarian incidences and through their relations with various actors in the Coptic diaspora that
use calls for international intervention as a means to garner attention to the ‘Coptic cause.’
In addition, (in)visibility continues to limit the ways in which Coptic communities can
express their identity outside of the confines of the accepted discourse of national unity.
Proclamations of national unity and its images (which stretch back at least to the 1919 rev-
olution) of Copts and Muslims, priests and sheikhs hand-in-hand are deceptive. They tend
to maintain the portrayal of a unified Egypt, which undermines inter-communal friction
that constitutes Coptic identity in the contemporary period. As Anthony Shenoda affirms,
‘invisible are the differences that these symbols represent, rather than the samenesses.’ In
other words, the visible here (cross and crescent, for example) is superficial. ‘Invisible are the
actual differences that these very symbols signify, be they social, theological, or otherwise.’88
Discourses of national unity, in the Egyptian context and elsewhere, stabilize the essence
of the nation—as something timeless—and conceal the nation as a historical construct in
constant need of renewal. National unity emphasizes a particular (majority) narrative over
the plurality of narratives that compose Egyptian society. The involvement of Copts in the
2011 uprising was also partially subsumed into national narratives—for the purposes of
portraying inter-communal harmony and reinforcing the Church’s representational authority.
Bishop Musa of the Youth Bishopric described the relation between the Coptic youth, the
Church, and the uprising in this way:

84
 ee Maspero Youth Union (2011) Reports on Sectarian Violence Incidents in Egypt 2011 (Cairo: Unpublished).
S
85
Mahmood, Religious Freedom, p. 446.
86
P. Sedra (1999) Class Cleavages and Ethnic Conflict: Coptic Christian Communities in Modern Egyptian Politics,
Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 10(2), p. 220.
87
Ibid, p. 223.
88
A. Shenoda (2011) Reflections on the (In)Visibility of Copts in Egypt, Jadaliyya, May 18, 2011.
 16  C. Lukasik

With the revolution came the Coptic youth, leaving [the garments] of the Church.
They demonstrated in the Cathedral during the days of Mubarak, which was safer for
them. The police did not enter inside to deal with them; inside the Cathedral, they
cannot. But now, they started to feel more free to speak openly in the streets and the
squares—Tahrir and Maspero .... And we are glad that the Coptic youth are coming
to the society not to be isolated in the Church. And they did a lot of activities that we
appreciate.89

Coptic groups, like the MYU, redefined social boundaries and made visible what has been
left invisible in Egyptian politics. The MYU pushed for a (re)imagining of what it means
to be a Christian in the public sphere. Copts want to be recognized as Christian Egyptians.
One illustration of this is the symbols, language, and hymns used during the MYU’s demon-
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strations that are fused with calls for equal citizenship as well as chants invoking Church
leaders, Coptic theology, or history. Equal citizenship rights are simply not enough because
that still renders Copts invisible, through the very structure of such a political emancipation.
Instead, they are looking for citizenship that allows for the expression of Christian iden-
tity—citizenship with various possibilities. Anthony Shenoda outlines this clearly: ‘Many
Copts want to be seen as being an important part of the fabric of Egyptian history and soci-
ety, and not simply as members of Egyptian society, but as Christian members of Egyptian
society. They seek a visibility that finds valuable their religiosity without subordinating it to
a meta-narrative of a national unity that pretends acceptance of Coptic religious difference
while incessantly seeking to homogenize and incorporate it.’90
The national unity paradigm, which represents ideals of equal citizenship and an end to
sectarian violence overlooks the everyday—the call to prayer openly broadcast throughout
the streets by megaphones in Heliopolis, a suburb of Cairo, while a Coptic Christian in his
jewelry shop must keep the Coptic hymns he plays in the background on low volume as to
not to disturb any customers; or the utterance of ‘Bismillah al-rahman al-rahim’ (In the name
of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful) by a Muslim politician before a speech at any public
event in Egypt when if the same speech started with ‘Bism al-ab w al-ibn w roh al-qodoos,’
(In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit) the Christian politician giving the
speech would be charged with endangering national unity. A list of everyday snapshots of (in)
visibility are limitless, but what is important to infer from these examples is how Copts are
treated and represented as inherently religious.91 They must disprove suspicion of allegiance
to their religious tradition over the nation and disconnect from ‘Coptic’ issues in order to be
accepted into non-Christian (read: Muslim, Egyptian) circles. The Muslim within Egyptian
society is understood as the ideal citizen because their culture and history is the culture and
history of the majority. Coptic Christians, regardless of their religiosity, continually must
reinforce their invisibility as a Christian citizen and visibility as an Egyptian citizen.
Bridging from Kevin O’Neill’s concept of ‘Christian citizenship,’ if citizenship as legal
status asks who is a citizen, then citizenship as a cultural identity asks: ‘What does citizenship
look like?’92 The Maspero Youth Union has realized varying ways of practicing citizenship.
As practice, citizenship is constructed culturally in specific social and historical contexts.

89
 uthor interview, Bishop Musa, Cairo, July 15, 2012.
A
90
Shenoda, Reflections on the (In)Visibility of Copts in Egypt, Jadaliyya, May 18, 2011.
91
For more on this, see Ibrahim, Beyond the Cross and the Crescent.
92
K. L. O’Neill (2010) City of God: Christian Citizenship in Postwar Guatemala, p. 14 (Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press).
 Secular Binds and Coptic Political Mobilization  17

The emergence of Coptic groups like the MYU in 2011 evidences a context of construc-
tion. The practice and performance of their citizenship exists in constant relationship with
other dynamics of being (class, gender) that, through revolutionary openings, trouble rep-
resentations of the nation-state form. From this perspective, citizenship as a cultural identity
becomes something fashioned.93 Despite political crackdowns on dissent and protest since
the 2013 coup, the MYU and other Coptic groups refashioned, during a short, yet hopeful
revolutionary moment, what it means to be Coptic in Egyptian society.

Present Practices and Future Strategies of Coptic Political Mobilization

For many Coptic communities in Egypt, visibility within an Islamic public sphere shapes
visions of citizenship. The Coptic youth involved in groups like the MYU were defining
for themselves expectations of citizenship and politics. While the group invokes a particu-
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lar call for equality through citizenship, their imagery filled with Coptic linguistic refer-
ences, Pharaonic symbolism, and the fusion of Coptic-ness and Egyptian-ness rubs together,
offering ways by which to rethink what equality through citizenship actually may look
like. A Coptic researcher noted following an extensive interview, ‘Those Copts that don’t
publicly identify as Copts will be identified by Egyptian society as that regardless.’94 This
pre-determined identification sets up a specific framework that does not necessarily require
performance of Coptic-ness upon the stage of national politics and within the everyday of
Egyptian society since the Copt, upon identification (the glimpse of a Coptic tattoo, revealing
his/her Christian name, dress, speech), continually will be perceived and related to as such.
In the Egyptian context, the national unity paradigm utilizes religious difference to con-
struct the nation as formed of two different religious communities within one, united national
fabric. Members of these two communities live together, but ‘… almost despite being from
two different religious communities.’95 While Western journalists and scholars espoused
the symbolism of the crescent and the cross during the 2011 revolution, hearkening back
to the 1919 revolution, there are other interpretations of this performance. A Coptic youth
activist described how the appearance of Copts in Tahrir Square was a performance, or play
[masrahiyya], for pictures and video. In reality, for him, Christians didn’t participate in the
2011 revolution as much as the media believes.96 However, Egyptians used this imagery in
2011 to reject attempts by groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist
organizations, to hijack the popular protests, as well as to defy the official stance of the
Coptic Orthodox Church, which ordered Copts not to join the protests.
Discourses of national unity—through symbolism and commemoration—sustain the
narrative of the Egyptian nation. They are utilized to resist fragmentation and maintain
inter-communal harmony. However, without questioning this narrative, its usefulness
becomes obsolete. The reasons behind the emergence of such Coptic groups like the Maspero
Youth Union are connected to the inability of such a narrative, as espoused by the state and
the Church, to eliminate social inequalities and prevent the increase of inter-communal vio-
lence. Instead, the utilization of such a narrative pushed both Muslims and Christians into
more isolated positions, as a way to defend their religious communities from one another.97

93
Ibid.
94
 uthor interview, Coptic researcher, Cairo, June 19, 2012.
A
95
Iskander, The ‘Mediation’ of Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt, p. 43.
96
Author interview, Coptic youth activist, June 16, 2012.
97
Iskander, The ‘Mediation’ of Muslim-Christian relations in Egypt, p. 36.
 18  C. Lukasik

Conclusion
The Maspero Youth Union and other Coptic groups that emerged in 2011 shifted Christian
politics in Egypt. Since the 1950s, when much of civil society activism was curtailed,
Christians also were marginalized from national politics, which included the activism of
Coptic political parties and groups like al-Umma al-Qibtiyya [The Coptic Nation]. The
Coptic Orthodox Church became the sole political and social representative of a Coptic
community through its alliance with the Egyptian state. The work of the Coptic groups of
2011 engages the paradoxes of modern politics, but also evidences the capacity of Coptic
communities to reimagine ways of being that deploy and challenge these paradoxes and
their practices. For a period of time before the 2013 coup which marked the decline of mass
protest and dissent throughout Egypt, the Maspero Youth Union and other Coptic groups
attempted to reconfigure the way Egyptian society operated—by defying the demands of
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the Church not to join the protests and dispute its sole representation of the community, as
well as the legitimacy of the Egyptian state to represent them as citizens. When the law in
Egypt did not protect Christians from sectarian violence and discrimination, Coptic groups
forged a new path to assert actively their place within the Egyptian public sphere and to
provide alternatives for what it means to be Christian in Egypt.

Acknowledgements
I would like to generously thank the Middle East Institute of Columbia University and the Center for Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for funding parts of this research, and Youssef Belal,
Febe Armanios, Basit Iqbal, and the Anthropological Inquiry Working Group of UC Berkeley for their comments
and suggestions. I also would like to thank members of the Maspero Youth Union for their help and support with
this research.

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