Earlier this month, an Islamic State suicide bomber infiltrated St. Peter and St. Paul’s Coptic Church in Cairo and killed 25 worshipers—the deadliest such attack since a 2010 bombing in Alexandria and a reminder of the Egyptian state’s failure to protect the lives of its religious and ethnic minorities. But, writes Samuel Tadros, “it is [the Copts’] daily encounter with discrimination and persecution that poses the greatest threat to their future.” This threat springs from deep, willed ignorance on the part of Egyptian Muslims:
Copts necessarily know much about Islam through the education system, media, and their neighbors. The same cannot be said of most Egyptian Muslims and their knowledge of the Copts. The exclusion of Copts and their identity from the public square has made them alien creatures onto which wild fantasies are projected.
In a column last March, a Coptic journalist recounted being asked by a coworker where her future husband would spend their wedding night, given that a Christian woman is required to sleep with a priest on her wedding night, according to what she knew of the Copts. The question apparently had its roots in Mel Gibson’s film Braveheart, which depicts English lords having the right of the first night. The column unleashed a wave of confessions . . . Muslim readers admitting to this and other misconceptions they held about their fellow citizens: Coptic priests wear black because they are saddened that Islam rules Egypt; on New Year’s Eve, churches turn out their lights so that men and women can kiss; the late Pope Shenouda, the leader of the Copt church from 1971 to 2012, conceived of a plan to reconquer Egypt for Christianity by arranging for Coptic doctors to perform abortions on Muslim women.
These are not merely bigoted beliefs held by some, but pathologies with profound ramifications.
Read more on The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/12/egypt-copts-muslim-christian-isis/511007/