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Egypt Coptic Church
The Copts have remained a significant minority throughout the
medieval and modern periods. After the Turks incorporated Egypt
into the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century, they organized
the government around a system of millets, or religious
communities. The Copts were one of the communities. Each
organized religious minority lived according to its own canon law
under the leadership of recognized religious authorities who
represented the millet to the outside world and supervised the
millet's internal communal life. This form of organization
preserved and nourished the religious differences among these
peoples. Most historians believe that the millet system prevented
the full integration of non-Muslims into Muslim life. The system,
which the Ottomans applied throughout their empire, had an
enduring influence on the social structure of all countries in
the Middle East.
The Copts, an indigenous Christian sect, constituted Egypt's
largest religious minority. Estimates of their numbers in 1990
ranged between 3 million to 7 million. The Copts claimed descent
from the ancient Egyptians; the word copt is derived from
the Arabic word qubt (Egyptian). Egypt was Christianized
during the first century A.D., when the country was part of the
Roman Empire. The Coptic Church claims to hold an unbroken line
of patriarchal succession to the See of Alexandria founded by
Saint Mark, a disciple of Christ. Egyptian Christianity developed
distinct dogmas and practices during the more than two centuries
that the religion was illegal. By the fourth century, when
Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman
Empire, Coptic traditions were sufficiently different from those
in Rome and Constantinople (formerly Byzantium; present-day
Istanbul) to cause major religious conflicts. Dissension
persisted for 150 years until most Copts seceded from the main
body of Christianity because they rejected the decision of the
Council of Chalcedon that Christ had a dual nature, both human
and divine, believing instead in Christ's single, divine nature.
The Coptic Church developed separately from other Eastern
churches. The Coptic Church's clerical hierarchy had evolved by
the sixth century. A patriarch, referred to as the pope, heads
the church. A synod or council of senior priests (people who have
attained the status of bishops) is responsible for electing or
removing popes. Members of the Coptic Church worldwide (about 1
million Copts lived outside of Egypt as of 1990) recognize the
pope as their spiritual leader. The pope, traditionally based in
Alexandria, also serves as the chief administrator of the church.
The administrator's functionaries includes hundreds of priests
serving urban and rural parishes, friars in monasteries, and nuns
in convents.
Following Islam's spread through Egypt, Muslims alternately
tolerated and persecuted the Copts. Heavy taxation of Christians
encouraged mass conversions to Islam, and within two centuries,
Copts had become a distinct minority. By the tenth century,
Arabic had replaced Coptic as the primary spoken language, and
Coptic was relegated to a liturgical language.
The Ottoman millet system of drawing administrative divisions
along religious lines reinforced Coptic solidarity. The
dismantling of the millet system during the nineteenth century
helped open new career opportunities for the Copts. Egypt's
Muslim rulers had traditionally used minorities as
administrators, and the Copts were initially the main
beneficiaries of the burgeoning civil service. During the early
twentieth century, however, the British purged many Copts from
the bureaucracy. The Copts resented this policy, but it
accelerated their entry into professional careers.
In the twentieth century, Copts have been disproportionately
represented among the ranks of prosperous city dwellers. Urban
Copts tended to favor careers in commerce and the professions,
whereas the livelihoods of rural Copts were virtually
indistinguishable from their Muslim counterparts. Urban Copts
were stratified into groups of long-time residents and groups of
recent migrants from the countryside. The latter group was often
impoverished and fell outside the traditional urban Coptic
community. The former group included many university professors,
lawyers, doctors, a few prominent public officials, and a
substantial middle echelon of factory workers and service sector
employees.
Anti-Coptic sentiment has accompanied the resurgence of
Islamic activism in Egypt. Since 1972 several Coptic churches
have been burned, including the historic Qasriyat ar Rihan Church
in Cairo. Islamist groups frequently and explicitly denounced
Copts in their pamphlets and prayer meetings. The increasing
tensions between Copts and Muslims inevitably led to clashes in
Upper Egypt in 1977 and 1978 and later in the cities and villages
of the Delta. Three days of religious riots in Cairo in 1981 left
at least 17 Copts and Muslims dead and more than 100 injured.
Isolated incidents of Muslim-Coptic violence continued throughout
the 1980s and during 1990.
Coptic Pope Shenudah III (elected in 1971) blamed government
silence for the increasing violence. He also expressed alarm at
official actions that he said encouraged anti-Coptic feelings. In
1977, to protest a Ministry of Justice proposal to apply sharia
legal penalties to any Muslim who converted from Islam, the pope
called on the Coptic community to fast for five days. As
harassment of Copts increased, Pope Shenudah III canceled
official Easter celebrations for 1980 and fled to a desert
convent with his bishops. Sadat accused the pope of inciting the
Coptic-Muslim strife and banished him in September 1981 to
internal exile. The government then appointed a committee of five
bishops to administer the church. The following year, the
government called upon the church synod to elect a new pope, but
the Coptic clergy rejected this state intervention. In 1985 Husni
Mubarak released Pope Shenudah III from internal exile and
permitted him to resume his religious duties.
Data as of December 1990
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