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COPTS AND THE MILLET PARTNERSHIP: THE INTRA-COMMUNAL DYNAMICS BEHIND EGYPTIAN SECTARIANISM

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2014

Paul Sedra
Paul Sedra*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of History, Simon Fraser University
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Abstract

The sparse scholarship on the political role of Coptic Christians in modern Egypt almost always takes the Coptic Orthodox Church as a point of departure, assuming that the head of the church, the Coptic patriarch, is not only the spiritual leader of the community but its political leader as well. This article argues that the disproportionate attention afforded to the Coptic Orthodox Church in this scholarship has obscured intra-communal dynamics of the Copts that are essential to an understanding of their political role. Through an analysis of historical struggles between the Coptic clergy and the Coptic laity for influence in Egyptian politics, as well as a particular focus on how these struggles have played out in the arena of personal status law, the article demonstrates that Egyptian politics and Coptic communal dynamics are deeply intertwined, to a degree often disregarded both by Copts and by Egypt analysts.

Keywords

Christian-Muslim relationsCoptic ChristianityEgyptian politicspersonal status lawsectarianism
Type
SYMPOSIUM: RE-THINKING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM
Information
Journal of Law and Religion , Volume 29 , Issue 3 , October 2014 , pp. 491 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University 2014 

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References

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65 Wakin, A Lonely Minority, 44.

66 Ibid., 113.

67 Quoted in Fawzi, Mahmud, al-Baba Kīrulus wa Abd al-Nasir (Cairo: Al-Watan Publishers, 1993)Google Scholar (translations of this source are those of the author).

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72 Heikal, Autumn of Fury, 157.

73 Quoted in Wakin, A Lonely Minority, 116–17 (alternation in original omitted).

74 Fawzi, al-Baba Kīrulus wa Abd al-Nasir.

75 Quoted in Fawzi, al-Baba Kīrulus wa Abd al-Nasir.

76 Ibid.

77 Constitution of the Arab Republic of Egypt, 18 January 2014, art. 3.

78 Sedra, “Class Cleavages and Ethnic Conflict,” 227–28.