The Coptic Church Today

A Coptic monk visiting with
faithful at his monastery on the
roof of the Church of the Holy
Sepulcher in Jerusalem

The Arab Caliphate invaded Egypt in 639 and from that time on Egypt was ruled by Muslims, yet for many centuries the majority of the Egyptian people clung to the Christian faith.  The main instrument that the Muslim rulers used to influence its subjects to convert was the jizya, a tax levied on non Muslims to remind them of their inferior status under the law and also a means of putting the burden of taxation on the Dhimmi or non-Muslims.  The jizya may have been a burden but it was not without benefit—as the Dhimmi were not subject to conscription into the military. And in some places, among the Palestinians for example, Christians were proud to pay this tax and saw it as a sign of spiritual integrity that their religious faith was not for sale.  In regards to Egypt, it is a testimony that as many Egyptians as did remained faithful to the Christian faith—between ten and thirteen percent of the population. 

     Despite popular Christian mythology, especially of the pseudo-evangelical sort, Islam has not made it its policy for there to be outright persecution of Christian or Jewish minorities in Islamic states.  The Arabian Peninsula, by the decree of the Prophet Muhammad, is restricted to Muslims and religions other than Islam are proscribed today in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  And it is forbidden everywhere in the Islamic world for a Muslim to convert to another religion.  For the most part, the philosophy has been that intermarriage, and in particular the marriage of Muslim men to Dhimmi women, as well as the social disadvantages of not being Muslim will eventually persuade Jews, Christians, and others to accept Islam.  And so in Egypt, over the almost fourteen centuries since the Islamic invasion, the vast majority of people have accepted Islam.  But not the Copts and they are very proud of their independence.  

      The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have triggered a negative reaction among many Muslims.  The “Crusade” language used by the previous American administration and the anti-Islamic rants of the religious right have sparked the resurgence of a militant Islam.  Oppressive regimes such as the Sadam Hussein Regime in Iraq and the Hosni Mubarak Regime in Egypt feared militant Islam and kept it at bay.  The overthrow of those regimes, rather than spawning democratic movements, has energized radical Islam. Unqualified American support for Israeli policies, especially in regard to the Settlement Movement, has also awakened a sense of Islamic solidarity especially among those Muslims of Arabic language and culture.  Indigenous Christian communities in the Near East and North Africa have felt the consequences of this.  Since the fall of Mubarak in Egypt the Copts have been put in an especially difficult situation with many violent outbursts against Coptic Churches and communities.  The more traditional harmony between the Muslim and Coptic segments of Egyptian society are giving way to more politicized and polarized antagonism. 

      Several months ago when first planning to do an entry on the plight of Coptic Christians I visited a Coptic Orthodox Church and spoke with several lay leaders of the congregation.  (I would have like to speak to the priest but no offer was made to introduce me; I suspect the laymen with whom I was speaking were anxious to get their opinions across rather than the views of a more official spokesperson.) 

      Unlike the Palestinians with whom I have spoken who feel that it is the Israelis who are squeezing them out of their ancestral homeland, encouraging them to emigrate and begin new lives elsewhere, the Copts with whom I spoke are blunt in saying that the cause of their suffering is Islam.  In this they are not unlike the Chaldean Christians—Iraqis—who also feel that it is their Muslim neighbors who are squeezing them out of the lands on which they have lived for millennia.  The Coptic men with whom I spoke that day pulled no punches in their blaming Muslims for the suffering of their ancient community.  For more information and (I believe) balanced views, I suggest you contact the Catholic Near East Welfare Association.  http://www.cnewa.org

Keeping in Mind This Christmas the Christians of the Near East

Chaldean Patriarch Cardinal Mar Emmanuel III Delly

celebrates Christmas Liturgy in Mosul.  Priests from

Arlington VA, note the altar girl serving mass on the

picture's right. 

We think of the Iraqi people as Muslims but before the second Iraqi war there were approximately one million Christians in Iraqi, mostly members of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Syrian Catholic Church, or the Syrian Orthodox Church.  Christianity came to what was once Assyria in the second and third centuries and despite the Muslim conquest in the seventh century and subsequent centuries of Muslim Rule under the Baghdad Caliphate and then the Ottoman Empire, vibrant Christian communities continued to exist and even flourish especially in the towns and villages of the so-called Nineveh plain centering around modern day Mosul.  
     The Chaldean Catholic Church has been in formal communion with Rome since at least the early seventeenth century.  (It’s previous status was ambiguous, especially after the Council of Florence in 1445, but it can be said that it was never in formal schism.) The current head of the Chaldean Catholic Church is Cardinal Mar Emmanuel III Delly, Patriarch of Babylon of the Chaldeans.  Worldwide there are about a million and a half Chaldean Catholics, six hundred thousand of whom lived in Iraq before the most recent war.  (There were also about 400,000 other Christians, not Chaldean Catholics but Latin (Roman Rite) Catholics, Syrian Catholics, and Syrian Orthodox.)     The Chaldean Catholic Church maintains  a seminary in Baghdad.   The Patriarch resides in Mosul. The Syriac Orthodox Church comes from Apostolic times and the Patriarchate of Antioch which parted ways with Greek Orthodoxy and Western Catholicism when it rejected the teachings of the Council of Chalcedon (451) regarding the manner in which humanity and divinity are united in Jesus of Nazareth.  Syriac Catholicism separated from Syriac Orthodoxy in the late eighteenth century when Mar Ignatius Michael III Jarweh, Bishop of Aleppo who had reconciled to Rome was elected Patriarch.  Several bishops who opposed union with Rome rejected his election and chose an alternative candidate pledged to retain the autonomy and separation of the Syriac Church.  The followers of Mar Ignatius thus became known as Syriac Catholics; those of his rival, Mar Matta ben Abdel Ahad Saalab bishop of Mosul are Syriac Orthodox.   Latin Catholics are fewer and their Archbishop is Jean Sleiman, a Lebanese Discalced Carmelite. There are also smaller communities of Armenian and Maronite Christians.  
      I remember that about two weeks before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 that I was at a dinner party with a couple who are Arab Christians—the husband Maronite, the wife Copt.  They were very upset at the impending war as they foretold—and foretold correctly—that a war would destabilize the entire region and have ominous consequences for Arab Christians in Iraq and throughout the region.  They could not have been more right. The late Pope John Paul II also forecast a dangerous shift of power in which Christians would suffer as a consequence of the American determination to go to war.  The Pope sent Cardinal Pio Laghi, a family friend of the Bushes, to speak with President Bush but it was to no avail.  The plight of Christians in the region has grown steadily worse since the American invasion.  
      For centuries the Christians of Iraq were give the protected status of dhimmi by the various Muslim overlords and the various Christian communities existed in peace and even thrived.  Even under the regime of Sadaam Hussein they remained protected and Chaldean Catholic Tariq Aziz served as Foreign Minister and then as Deputy Prime Minister.  The Second Iraqi War (“Mr. Cheney’s War”)  totally destabilized Iraq and not only pitted Shiite against Sunni in a bloody civil war but left the Christian minority without any protection.  American strategy only made this worse when, in order to take pressure off Baghdad, Mosul became the center of conflict.  The majority of Iraqi Christians lived in Mosul and surrounding villages and towns. Militants suspected the Christians of treasonous ties to the NATO forces whom they viewed as foreign invaders.  Terrorists began targeting the Christian communities with abductions and murders of religious leaders.  Father Ragheed Azis Ganni was killed in Mosul in 2007 along with three subdeacons at Mass.   Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped in 2008 and found murdered several days later.  Several of his companion including chauffer and bodyguard were also killed.  Christians were threatened with death if they did not abandon their homes and their businesses.  Churches have been bombed and religious institutions destroyed.  To date about 40% of Iraqi Christians—400,000—have fled the country and most of the remainder live in fear and with hope of escaping their ancestral homeland.