A Coptic Strike, Called by Copts Abroad, Flops

Egypt's Copts are a longtime interest of mine, and my thoughts can be found by clicking on the Copts category. As I noted Friday, September 11 was Nayrouz, Coptic New Year. Apparently a Coptic group in the US, failed dismally. The sponsoring group, the National American Coptic Assembly, has assembled on their website a selection of Egyptian press and blog accounts prior to the effort.

The Coptic church itself, wisely, stayed aloof from this. There has been for some years now — really from the Sadat era — a growing disconnect between the church in Egypt, which as a minority in a Muslim country with increasing Islamist influence must accommodate as best it can, and Copts abroad, who feel the freedoms of the West and seek to influence the conditio of their co-religionists back home. Back in the 1970s and early 1980s the Coptic Pope Shenouda III tried to use the Copts in the West as a lever against the Egyptian government. Anwar Sadat reacted as you might expect, and when he cracked down on all his enemies in September 1981, he deposed Shenouda, sent him to an internal exile in the Wadi Natroun, the Coptic version of Mount Athos in the Egyptian desert. Eventually rehabilitated by Husni Mubarak, Pope Shenouda has been suitably deferential to the government ever since.

I do not for a moment deny that the Coptic minority in Egypt suffers from many difficulties. Often they are attacked by Islamists or simply discriminated against. Despite the fact that very senior Copts have reached very senior positions — Boutros Boutros-Ghali as Secretary-General of the United Nations, Yusuf Boutros-Ghali as Finance Minister — most Copts who aren't named Boutrous-Ghali or Makram-‘Ebeid or something similar don't generally prosper. But efforts by Copts abroad to provoke militant protest in Egypt backfire and hurt the Egyptian Copts, as some of the folks interviewed in the Egyptian media linked to by me or even by the Coptic sponsoring group make clear. The idea that if the difficulties of Middle Eastern Christians are constantly emphasized in the West their situation will improve is probably naive: in fact the Egyptian government sees the efforts of American Copts to publicize the problems of Copts in Egypt (which are very real, but mostly of local origin, not the result of government policy) as hurting Egypt's image in the US and its ability to extract continuing aid from Congress.

The whole question of what role Middle Eastern minorities in the West play in determining Western policy towards their countries of origin is a complex one. But it is also quite delicate. Diaspora groups that promote policies that will hurt their fellows back home — as I think this Coptic boycott might have done — seem ill-advised. This one failed, apparently. I too would like to see an improved situation for the Copts (and other minorities) of Egypt and every Middle Eastern country, but I doubt that agitation among US or European based expatriates is the proper way to go.