Raymond Ibrahim: Why Are Christian Soldiers in Egypt Harassed and Killed/Egyptian Coptic Church tapped to play the role of mediator in Nile River dispute
Why Are Christian Soldiers in Egypt Harassed and Killed?
Raymond Ibrahim/PJ Media/September 16, 2015
Originally published under the title “In Egypt, Muslim Soldiers Slaughtering Their Fellow Christian Platoon Mates.”On Sunday, August 23, a Coptic Christian soldier was killed in his army unit in Egypt. Baha Saeed Karam, 22, was found shot dead with four bullet wounds at the headquarters of his battalion in Marsa Matruh. Although transferred to a hospital in Alexandria, he was pronounced dead upon arrival. According to Baha’s brother, Cyril, the Coptic soldier had recently told him that he had gotten into arguments with Muslim soldiers in his unit and that one had threatened him with death. Baha is certainly not the first Coptic Christian serving in his country’s military to be killed over his religious identity. Two months earlier, on June 24, the only Christian in his army unit was found shot dead in a chair at the office of the military base he was stationed. Bahaa Gamal Mikhail Silvanus, a 23-year-old conscript, had two gunshot wounds and a gun at his feet. Relatives who later saw the body said he also had wounds atop his head, as if he had been bludgeoned with an object.
In most cases, the Egyptian military claims that murdered Christian soldiers committed suicide.
The military’s official position was that the Copt committed suicide—despite the fact that suicides are rarely able to shoot themselves twice or first hit themselves atop the head with blunt objects. Moreover, according to Rev. Mikhial Shenouda, who knew the deceased, “A person who commits suicide is a disappointed and desperate person, but Baha was in very good spirits. He was smiling always. He was keeping the word of God,” and planning on entering the monastic life after his military service. A friend of the deceased Christian said that Silvanus had confided to him that he was regularly pressured by other soldiers in his unit to convert to Islam: “He told me that the persecution of the fanatical Muslim conscripts in the battalion against him had increased … and that they would kill him if he wouldn’t convert to Islam.”On August 31, 2013, another Copt in the armed services, Abu al-Khair Atta, was killed in his unit by an “extremist officer” for “refusing to convert to Islam.” Again, the interior ministry informed the slain Copt’s family that he had committed suicide.
However, Abu al-Khair’s father, citing eyewitnesses who spoke to him, said that “one of the radical, fanatical officers pressured and threatened him on more than one occasion to convert to Islam. Abu al-Khair resisted the threats, which vexed the officer more.”
Then there was 20-year-old Guirgus Rizq Yusif al-Maqar, who died on September 18, 2006. Without notifying him why, the armed forces summoned his handicapped father to the station in Asyut. After making the arduous journey, he was verbally mistreated by some officers and then bluntly told, “Go take your son’s corpse from the refrigerator!” The father “collapsed from the horror of the news.”Officials claimed the youth died of a sudden drop in blood pressure. Later, however, while family members were washing Guirgus’ body, they discovered wounds on his shoulders and a large black swelling around his testicles.Assuming these were products of injuries incurred during harsh training, his family proceeded to bury him. Later, however, a colleague of the deceased told them that Guirgus was regularly insulted, humiliated, and beaten—including on his testicles—simply because he was Christian. The dead youth’s family implored authorities to exhume Guirgus’ body for a forensic examination but was denied.
And on August 2006, the mutilated and drowned body of another Copt serving in the Egyptian military, Hany Seroufim, was found. Earlier he had confided to his family that he was being insulted and abused for being a Christian by his commander, both in public and in private. According to MCN, “His unit commander ordered him to renounce Christianity and join the ranks of Islam.” The Coptic youth refused, warning his Muslim commander: “I will notify military intelligence about this,” to which his superior replied, “Okay, Hani; soon I will settle my account with you.” His body was later found floating in the Nile covered with signs of torture.
For Muslims who equate war with jihad, having non-Muslims fighting alongside them is unacceptable. It should come as no surprise that some Muslim soldiers insist that the men fighting alongside them be Muslims as well. “Infidels” are seen as untrustworthy fifth columns (hence why Islamic law holds that non-Muslim subjects, or dhimmis, are forbidden from owning weapons). In Islam, allegiance belongs to the Umma—the abstract “Muslim world” that transcends racial, linguistic, and territorial borders—and not to any particular Muslim nation.
Thus it may seem reasonable for all Egyptian citizens—Muslims and Christians alike—to serve in their nation’s military. But for Muslims who equate “war” with “jihad,” having non-Muslims fighting alongside them is unacceptable—hence the aforementioned anecdotes of pressure on Christian soldiers to convert to Islam. Nor is this sort of thinking limited to Egypt. In Kuwait, no one can become a citizen without first converting to Islam, and indigenous Kuwaitis who openly leave Islam lose their citizenship. In nations as diverse as Iran and Sudan, prominent church leaders are regularly persecuted, some put on death row, on the accusation that, because they are not Muslim, they must be treasonous agitators working for the West (which, in the popular Muslim mind, continues to be conflated with Christianity). Finally, all these modern day slayings of Christian soldiers who refuse to convert to Islam thoroughly contradict the historic narrative being peddled by Mideast academics in America. Put differently, the present sheds light on the past. In an attempt to whitewash the meaning of jizya—the extortion money non-Muslims redeemed their lives with—Georgetown University’s John Esposito writes that jizya was actually paid to “exempt them [non-Muslims] from military service.” Similarly, Sohaib Sultan, Princeton University’s Muslim chaplain, asserts that jizya was merely “an exemption tax in lieu of military service.”Such assertions are absurd: Muslim overlords never wanted their conquered and despised “infidel” subjects to fight alongside them in the name of jihad—holy war against infidels, such as the conquered subjects themselves—without first converting to Islam. That’s how it was in the past, and, increasingly, the way it is in the present.
**Raymond Ibrahim is a Judith Friedman Rosen fellow at the Middle East Forum and a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Egyptian Coptic Church tapped to play the role of mediator in Nile River dispute
Ayah Aman/Al-Monitor/September 16, 2015
CAIRO — As tensions continue between Cairo and Ethiopia over the construction of the Renaissance Dam of Ethiopia despite political efforts in both countries to overcome the dispute over sharing Nile water, the Egyptian government is involving the Egyptian Coptic Church and encouraging it to play a role of mediation and convergence of views over the issue. On Aug. 25, the minister of water resources and irrigation, Hossam El Din Maghazi, announced at a press conference attended by Al-Monitor the signing of a cooperation agreement with Pope Tawadros II, the pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Maghazi said, “The church supports the efforts of President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and the government to manage the issue of the Renaissance Dam and build confidence between the two sides,” expressing hope that the church’s efforts would resolve the crisis of the dam for the benefit of the two countries.Khalid Wassif, spokesman for the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation, told Al-Monitor, “We appealed to the church to help solve the water crisis in Egypt given its important influence on Egyptians and since it has the ability to deliver a message explaining Egypt’s water crisis to a broad sector of local and foreign public opinion.”Wassif added, “The cooperation program with the church will allow training 500 pastors, servants and priests to be water ambassadors and convey messages based on religious devotion to protect the Nile River.”
He said, “The church does not have a direct role in the political or technical negotiations with Ethiopia and the Nile upstream countries, yet it has another role, that of cultural and religious influence aimed at activating soft policy through the Egyptian church’s activity in Africa.”In another development, Tawadros is expected to travel to Ethiopia Sept. 27 to participate in a celebration of what tradition says was the fourth-century discovery of remnants of Jesus Christ’s cross. The pope had indicated in press statements that the “visit is in response to the visit of Patriarch of Ethiopia Pope Matthias I to Cairo on Jan. 10, and the Nile water issue has paramount importance in all of our dialogues.”
Regarding the pope’s visit to Ethiopia, Bishop Beemen, the liaison between the Egyptian and Ethiopian churches, said in a press statement Aug. 27, “The pope did not ask for meetings with political and executive leaders of Ethiopia.” He added, “The church has soft power in terms of negotiations over the Renaissance Dam through [spreading] messages of peace and love, reassuring the Ethiopian side with regard to Egypt’s intentions. Our message is clear. We seek the development of Ethiopia, but at the same time we will not accept any damage to our country.”The Egyptian Coptic Church is the mother church in the African continent since its inception in the first century, and has a strong and active role in Africa, which is not limited to the religious role, but also covers a range of political, cultural, educational and developmental duties.
The Coptic Orthodox Church had sent several missions to Africa, where it built its first church in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1976; there are 55 churches in Kenya alone. Egyptian Coptic churches have spread to Tanzania, Zambia, Congo and Nigeria. Abune Boulos, the general bishop of the Bishopric of African Affairs, has documented the Egyptian church’s services in Africa in the documentary “Miracles in Africa,” which presents the church as helping provide medical, social, educational and cultural as well as spiritual services.
The Egyptian and Ethiopian churches have a special historical relationship. The church of Alexandria is the mother of the church of Ethiopia, which became part of the See of St. Mark the Apostle. According to the prevailing tradition, the head of the Ethiopian church was an Egyptian bishop assigned by the pope of Alexandria. However, in 1959, Abune Basilios, an Ethiopian, was enthroned as the first patriarch of the Ethiopian church. In 1974, under communist rule and following the military coup led by Mengistu Haile Mariam against the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie I, the ties between the churches were severed. Moreover, the church in Ethiopia faced fierce attack under communist rule and lost its influence on the political administration in Ethiopia.
Despite the strong spiritual influence of the Egyptian church in Africa and its distinctive relationship with Ethiopia, experts in African affairs rule out the possibilities of potential progress to mitigate the crisis with Ethiopia over Nile water.Hani Raslan, an expert in African affairs at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor, “Resorting to the church or religious institutions at the present time to resolve the ongoing dispute over the Nile waters is a waste of time and will not push negotiations toward a solution.”Still, he believes the role of the church and the exchange of visits could improve relations between Egypt and the Nile Basin countries, especially since most of the problems between Egypt and its African neighbors are due to the bad perception African countries have about Egypt in general. “Ethiopia is a secular state and the Ethiopian church has no influence over the government’s decisions,” Raslan said.Moreover, he did not expect the visit of Tawadros to Ethiopia to have concrete results, saying, “Sisi himself went to Ethiopia, talked with the political leadership and signed a declaration of principles, but the crisis persists.”
It should be noted that the technical negotiations between Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia, which began in August 2014, failed to reach tangible results to minimize the negative impacts of the Renaissance Dam on the Nile water’s flow to Egypt and Sudan. Despite the political momentum in these three countries on this file, Egypt expressed — in an official statement of the Ministry of Water Resources on Sept. 6 — its dissatisfaction with the slowdown in the implementation of impact studies showing the dam’s bad effects on Egypt so far. Moreover, Egypt reiterated its call for urgent consultations with Sudan and Ethiopia to rescue the negotiations on the construction of the dam in order to preserve the common interests of the three countries. It seems that Egypt is keeping the door open to any initiatives that will strengthen its position and resolve the ongoing crisis with Ethiopia and the countries of the Nile Basin over the management of the Nile water. However, the political administration must exert more effort in the negotiations to reach technical and legal solutions guaranteeing the interests of all parties while not prejudicing any of them.
