Egypt's Muslims Rally to Back Copts after Al-Qa‘ida Threat

It's been a rough year for Coptic-Muslim relations in Egypt, as noted previously. Not so long ago, some Islamists were even questioning whether Copts should be citizens. So what does it take to persuade members of the Muslim Brotherhood to pledge to defend the Copts?

If you know Egypt, you may well guess: some non-Egyptians are making threats. In this case it's the Al-Qa‘ida-linked "Islamic State of Iraq." The group claimed responsibility for the hostage taking during Sunday services at an Armenian Catholic church in Baghdad last Sunday; some 60 people died either at the hands of the hostage-takers or during the rescue. The Islamic State of Iraq announced that Iraqi Christians were legitimate targets who would be "exterminated" if al-Qa‘ida militants in Iraq were not released, and also demanded that Egyptian Copts would become a target if they did not release "the Muslim women held hostage in its churches" referring to the Camillia Shehata affair and a similar case, Wafaa Constantine. The church denies that the two women are being held for trying to convert to Islam.

In the wake of the Iraqi threat, Egyptian security forces reportedly stepped up security around churches, and warned that the controversial bishop Anba Bishoi, whose previous comments about Islam stirred protests., might become a target. The head of al-Azhar, members of the Brotherhood, and other senior Muslim officials quickly denounced the threat and pledged to defend Egyptian Christians.

While the threat did remind many of the claimed conversion cases, the fact that much of Egypt's Muslim leadership sprang to the defense of the Church was, as Pope Shenouda III noted in his weekly Wednesday sermon, a positive result of the threat.

And Egyptian Muslim institutions showed that they would support their own fellow citizens against foreign threats.