Egypt's Christians, the Copts, are the largest Christian community in the Middle East. While they have always been considered an integral component of the Egyptian nation, their precise status within Egyptian politics and society has been subject to ongoing debates from the twentieth century to present day. Part of the legacy of the Mubarak era in Egypt is the unsettled state of Muslim-Christian relations and the increasing volatility of sectarian tensions, which have continued in the post-Mubarak period. The Coptic Question in the Mubarak Era delves into the discourses that dominated public debates and the political agenda-setting during the Mubarak era, explaining why politicians and the public in Egypt have had such enormous difficulties in recognizing the real roots of sectarian strife. This "Coptic question" is a complex set of issues, ranging from the petty struggles of daily Egyptian life in a bi-religious society to intricate legal and constitutional questions (family law, conversion, and church-building), to the issue of the political participation of the Coptic minority. Through these subjects, the book explores a larger debate around Egyptian national identity. Paying special attention to the neglected diversity of voices within the Coptic community, Sebastian Elsässer peels back the historical layers to provide a comprehensive analysis of the historic, political, and social dynamics of Egypt's Coptic Christians during Hosni Mubarak's rule.

The book presents an original and critical study of Coptic-Muslim relations in Mubarak's Egypt, providing a comprehensive analysis of its political and social background. With great historical depth, the book examines the Coptic concerns discussed and negotiated by the Egyptian public during the Mubarak era, focusing especially on the oft-neglected diversity of voices within the Coptic community.

This text presents an original and critical study of Coptic-Muslim relations in Mubārak's Egypt, providing a comprehensive analysis of its political and social background. With great historical depth, the book examines the Coptic concerns discussed and negotiated by the Egyptian public during the Mubārak era.

A comprehensive examination of this deeply traditional Christian religion as it confronts modernity Though the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt is among the oldest Christian communities in the world, it remained relatively unknown outside of Egypt for most of its existence. In the wake of the Arab Spring, however, this community was caught up in regional violence, and its predicament became a cause for concern around the world. Copts in Context examines the situation of the Copts as a minority faith in a volatile region and as a community confronting modernity while steeped in tradition. Nelly van Doorn-Harder opens Coptic identity and tradition to a broad range of perspectives: historical, political, sociological, anthropological, and ethnomusicological. Starting with contemporary issues such as recent conflicts in Egypt, the volume works back to topics—among them the Coptic language, the ideals and tradition of monasticism, and church historiography—that while rooted in the ancient past, nevertheless remain vital in Coptic memory and understanding of culture and tradition. Contributors examine developments in the Coptic diaspora, in religious education and the role of children, and in Coptic media, as well as considering the varied nature of Coptic participation in Egyptian society and politics over millennia. With many Copts leaving the homeland, preservation of Coptic history, memory, and culture has become a vital concern to the Coptic Church. These essays by both Coptic and non-Coptic scholars offer insights into present-day issues confronting the community and their connections to relevant themes from the past, demonstrating reexamination of that past helps strengthen modern-day Coptic life and culture.

No attempt to define the Mediterranean as a region can overlook the multiplicity of political, religious and social forces at work along its shores. Responding to changes in the global and regional environment these forces have interacted in complex ways, as evidenced by their impact on the social, cultural, and political life of the states comprised between the covers of this collaborative volume. The peculiarity of the Mediterranean, as has been noted time and again, lies in its geographical position as a “sea in the middle of the land”, where different religions and cultures vie for recognition and self-expression. In the wake of the popular uprisings that have inflamed the region, beginning in Tunisia in December 2010, a drastic reorganisation of their respective state systems is coming into focus in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya. Though their paths do not run along parallel lines, they share a common denominator: the determination of their people to become the masters of their destinies, and to do so by grappling with new forms of democracy. Almost five years later, after their rulers became the target of violent mass protests, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are going through an exceptionally difficult transition, trying to accommodate their nascent constitutional forms to the new forces inspired by the Arab Spring.

The Routledge Handbook of Minorities in the Middle East gathers a diverse team of international scholars, each of whom provides unique expertise into the status and prospects of minority populations in the region. The dramatic events of the past decade, from the Arab Spring protests to the rise of the Islamic state, have brought the status of these populations onto centre stage. The overturn of various long-term autocratic governments in states such as Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, and the ongoing threat to government stability in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon have all contributed to a new assertion of majoritarian politics amid demands for democratization and regime change. In the midst of the dramatic changes and latent armed conflict, minority populations have been targeted, marginalized, and victimized. Calls for social and political change have led many to contemplate the ways in which citizenship and governance may be changed to accommodate minorities – or indeed if such change is possible. At a time when the survival of minority populations and the utility of the label minority has been challenged, this handbook answers the following set of research questions.What are the unique challenges of minority populations in the Middle East? How do minority populations integrate into their host societies, both as a function of their own internal choices, and as a response to majoritarian consensus on their status? Finally, given their inherent challenges, and the vast, sweeping changes that have taken place in the region over the past decade, what is the future of these minority populations? What impact have minority populations had on their societies, and to what extent will they remain prominent actors in their respective settings? This handbook presents leading-edge research on a wide variety of religious, ethnic, and other minority populations. By reclaiming the notion of minorities in Middle Eastern settings, we seek to highlight the agency of minority communities in defining their past, present, and future.

How secular governance in the Middle East is making life worse—not better—for religious minorities The plight of religious minorities in the Middle East is often attributed to the failure of secularism to take root in the region. Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges this assessment by examining four cornerstones of secularism—political and civil equality, minority rights, religious freedom, and the legal separation of private and public domains. Drawing on her extensive fieldwork in Egypt with Coptic Orthodox Christians and Bahais—religious minorities in a predominantly Muslim country—Saba Mahmood shows how modern secular governance has exacerbated religious tensions and inequalities rather than reduced them. Tracing the historical career of secular legal concepts in the colonial and postcolonial Middle East, she explores how contradictions at the very heart of political secularism have aggravated and amplified existing forms of Islamic hierarchy, bringing minority relations in Egypt to a new historical impasse. Through a close examination of Egyptian court cases and constitutional debates about minority rights, conflicts around family law, and controversies over freedom of expression, Mahmood invites us to reflect on the entwined histories of secularism in the Middle East and Europe. A provocative work of scholarship, Religious Difference in a Secular Age challenges us to rethink the promise and limits of the secular ideal of religious equality.

The situation of Christians in the Middle East has become an important topic of international discussion as well as an important theme covered in the media, as several CBS Sixty Minutes programs have highlighted the plight of Christians in Palestine, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt. In the Eye of the Storm tells the story of the plight of twenty-first-century Middle Eastern Christians in five countries (Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, and Egypt) in the context of the so-called Arab Spring and within a destabilized region that is a geopolitical triangle shaped by Israeli hegemony and Arab-Iranian tensions. The book places the situation of the Christians within the wider sociopolitical context of the Middle East in the twenty-first century. A unique feature of this book is that it is written mainly by native Christians who have spent their entire lives in the region and continue to live there. In the Eye of the Storm, therefore, provides an insider perspective rather than a hegemonic and colonial outsider perspective. This book hopes to offer a sociopolitical framework for the Christians of the Middle East, thus allowing them to tell their own story as they see it and not one that has been projected onto them by outside forces.

The Crisis of Citizenship in the Arab World argues that the present crisis of the Arab world has its origins in the historical, legal and political development of state-citizen relations since the beginning of modern history in the Middle East and North Africa. The anthology covers three main topics. Part I focuses on the crisis of the social pact in different Arab countries as it became manifest during the Arab Uprisings. Part II concentrates on concepts of citizenship in Islamic doctrine, Islamic movements (Muslim Brotherhood and Salafism), secular political movements and Arab thinkers. Part III looks into the practices that support the claims to equal rights as well as the factors that have obstructed full citizen rights, such as patronage and clientelism. Contributors are: Ida Almestad, Claire Beaugrand, Assia Boutaleb, Michaelle Browers, Nils Butenschøn, Anthony Gorman, Raymond Hinnebusch, Engin F. Isin, Rania Maktabi, Roel Meijer, Emin Poljarevic, Ola Rifai, James Sater, Rachel Scott, Jakob Skovgaard-Petersen, Robert Springborg, Stig Stenslie, Morten Valbjørn, Knut S. Vikør and Sami Zemni.

Politisch begründete religiöse Gewalt war und ist seit der Antike eine gängige Praxis: Die Gräueltaten des Römischen Reiches gegenüber frühchristlichen Gemeinschaften wurden schnell durch nicht minder aggressive Handlungen gegenüber nicht-christlichen Gläubigen ersetzt, denen abscheuliche und polytheistische Praktiken vorgeworfen wurden. Mit dem Aufkommen der Moderne hat die Homogenisierung der religiösen Sphäre für politisch-ökonomische Zwecke, die Vernichtung jeder Form von Häresie und die Ausbreitung des Protestantismus, des Calvinismus und des Anglikanismus eine Umstrukturierung und Konzeptualisierung der westeuropäischen Staaten bewirkt, ganz nach der Devise „ein Königreich, mit einer Religion und einer Nation“. Das Ende der Religionskriege (1648), die Westfälische Souveränität und der cuius regio, eius religio hatten Einfluss auf die Bildung des modernen Europa und anderer Regionen, der französisch-britische Kolonialismus zwang dabei dem gesamten Nahen Osten und der islamischen Welt das gleiche System auf. Der vorliegende Band widmet sich der Untersuchung von interreligiöser Gewalt, religiösem Sektierertum und Islamophobie auf theoretischer Basis, verbunden mit dem „Kampf der Kulturen“ und dem „Religiösen Nationalismus“, als Ausdrücken präziser politischer Ziele, mit denen die Erhaltung der Fragmentierung und der kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen im Osten sowie das Schüren von Ängsten und Vorurteilen im Westen verfolgt werden. Religious violence due to political reasons has been a common practice since ancient times: The massacres of early Christian communities, carried out by the Roman Empire, were rapidly replaced by equally harsh measures against non-Christian believers, being accused of abominable and polytheistic practises. The advent of the modern age, the homogenization of the religious sphere for political-economic ends, the annihilation of any kind of heresy and the emergence of Protestantism, Calvinism and Anglicanism restructured the conceptualization of the Western European States emphasizing the adage “one kingdom, with one religion and one nation”. The end of the religious wars (1648), the Westphalian sovereignty and the cuius regio, eius religio had an impact on the formation of Europe and other regions, the Franco-British colonialism imposed the same system on the entire Middle Eastern and Islamic World. This volume thoroughly examines the usage of inter-religious violence, religious sectarianism and Islamophobia on a theoretical basis, linked with “Clashes of Civilizations” and “Religious Nationalism”, and describes them as manifestations of precise political ends, aiming to preserve fragmentation and warlike states in the East as well as fear and prejudices in the West.