Magdi Khalil

Editor’s Note: In recent weeks the State Department has reached out to a series of Moslem Brotherhood linked groups in both the U.S. and Europe.

Many have wondered about the Copts’ evident concern over the Muslim Brotherhood’s victory of 88 seats in the last parliamentary elections in Egypt. Why, exactly, are the Copts so upset?

Actually, the Copts are not the only ones to have serious misgivings about this latest development in Egypt’s political life; women, liberals, civil society supporters, leftists, and other advocates of democracy share the same sentiment.

The Muslim Brotherhood’s main slogan is “Islam is the Solution,” a mysterious slogan that excludes “infidels” such as Christians and Jews. Its proclaimed purpose is to “restore the Islamic Caliphate (Islamic political system and rule).”

I have met Muslim Brotherhood leaders more than once in the course of television interviews, and it did not take me long to realize that we come from two different worlds and spoke different languages: our civil perspective versus their religious perspective. However, they have been strangely determined to force the delusion of a “common civil ground” on their audience by using a plethora of mysterious expressions and misleading theories.

The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that they are hard to pin down, with their elusive style, word play, taqiyya (deceit), contradictory statements, and double language. They are all-set to accommodate different clients: The West and Americans, the Copts, women, liberals, as well as Osama bin Laden and Ayman Al-Zawahiri. To this day they refuse to condemn the writings of

Meanwhile, the Copts have particular reasons to fear the Muslim Brotherhood. First is the Muslim Brotherhood’s racist declarations against the Copts. A famous fatwa (a legal pronouncement in Islam) prohibited the construction of new churches in Egypt. The fatwa was published in Al-Dawaa magazine, which speaks for the Muslim Brotherhood, in December 1980, and was issued by Mohammed Al-Khatib who was, and still is, a member of the guidance council of the Muslim Brotherhood movement. Twenty-five years later, the Muslim Brotherhood still acknowledges the validity of this fatwa.

Another outrageous fatwa issued by Mustafa Mashhour, the brotherhood’s former supreme guide, stated: “Islamic law, Shari’a, is the principal point of reference (authority) for governance. Copts must pay the jizyah instead of joining the army, lest they ally themselves with the enemy, if that enemy happens to be a Christian country" (Al-Ahram Weekly 13 April 1997).

In an interview with the newspaper Azzaman, Mohammed Habib said: “When the movement will come to power, it will replace the current constitution with an Islamic one, according to which a non-Muslim will not be allowed to hold a senior post, whether in the state or the army, because this right should be exclusively granted to Muslims. If the Egyptians decide to elect a Copt for the presidential post, we will issue a protest against such an action, on the basis that this choice should be ours” (Azzaman 17 May 2005).

he danger here lies in the reasoning behind such statements: the presidential post is considered welaya kobra (major governance) and in this case a non-Muslim is not allowed to govern a Muslim, which completely shatters the basic notion of citizenship. It is a given that a non-Muslim Egyptian will have serious obstacles to be elected president. But, the problem is if an obstacle is based on a religious rule advocated by the Muslim Brotherhood.

In an interview with Sameh Fawzi in 1996, Mamoun Al-Hudaibi answered the question whether the Copts were considered citizens or dhimmi by replying that they were both. When pressed for a specific answer, he clearly states: “They are dhimmi” (Al-Hayat, 30 Nov 2005).

The Muslim Brotherhood’s discourse bears a religious and superior tone, with constant references to the “other”, often in a belittling and hurtful manner. The discourse can turn downright hostile: Hassan Al-Banna was quoted as saying: “it is necessary to kill ahl el-ketab (Christians and Jews), and God will give a double recompense for those who fight them.”

At best, the Muslim Brotherhood resorts to vague conciliatory statements such as the famous one: “They (Christians) have the same rights as we do and the same duties as we do.” Yet, there is no way to reconcile the theory of peaceful coexistence on the basis of equality and citizenship and the prospect of a religious majority imposing its rules on the minority – in that case, we are no longer talking about citizenship status but dhimmi status.

The Muslim Brotherhood and their allies insist that the Coptic population amounts to only 6% of Egypt’s total population, in spite of a recent official declaration by Osama Al-Baz that the Copts constitute 12.5% of Egypt’s population, and despite the fact that other organizations have estimated the number of Copts to be 15 million, i.e. 20% of the population. This purposeful twisting of numbers is a strategy used by the Muslim Brotherhood to deny the rights of their opponents.

Finally, Egyptian advocates of democracy strive towards “national integration” for all elements of society, while the Muslim Brotherhood has in mind for the Copts a sort of “religious assimilation,” and there is a big difference between the two. The Brotherhood pushes for the religious assimilation of the Coptic minority through a gradual desertion of their faith, or at the very least through a loss of their cultural and religious identity as it melts into the majority’s Islamic culture.

Throughout the history of Christianity, many martyrs have paid the price for resisting such religious assimilation, but none as much as the Copts. For Copts the idea that religion should become the framework for the state is not even open for debate or compromise.

This is an edited version of an article by Magdi Khalil, a political analyst and executive editor of the Egyptian weekly Watani International.