Along with countless Christians and Muslims alike throughout the world, I want to express my deep concern about the current situation in Egypt as it affects all our Christian brothers and sisters and to promise our continuing prayers and support especially for His Holiness Pope Shenuda and the community he serves. In modern times the significant Coptic Christian population in Egypt has been free from repression ; Muslims and Christians have happily shared a loyalty to the one Egyptian state….
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Statement on Egypt
Posted in * Anglican - Episcopal, * Culture-Watch, * Economics, Politics, * International News & Commentary, * Religion News & Commentary, Anglican Provinces, Archbishop of Canterbury, Coptic Church, Egypt, Islam, Law & Legal Issues, Middle East, Muslim-Christian relations, Other Churches, Other Faiths, Politics in General, Religion & Culture, The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East
“In modern times, the significant Coptic Christian population in Egypt has been free from repression…” (++RW).
Whom does he think he’s kidding?
That kind of spin is totally unbelievable. I’d love to see others with first-hand knowledge of the Egyptian situation address that whopper of a distortion of reality. I hope ++Mouneer Anis publicly challenges such a silly public statement.
We can celebrate, rightly, the [b]diminishing[/b] of religious tensions in Egypt and the remarkable level of cooperation between Christians and Muslims in protesting the gross abuse of power by former president Mubarak. But glossing over the very real persecution of our Egyptian brothers and sisters in Christ smacks of…
well, either delusion, or downright appeasement.
And if it’s the latter, then trying to appease Muslim terrorists won’t work any better for ++RW than it did for Neville Chamberlain with Hitler.
How can really smart people like him say such stupid things?
David Handy+
“How can really smart people like him say such stupid things?”
It is easy; one simply disengages the brain and says something inane that will satisfy the press.
What an appalling statement! I can see only two possible explanations… shocking ignorance or deliberate mendacity.
I find myself in the odd position of defending Dr. Williams at least partially. This is a public call for support for the Copts in a situation in which some of them have been murdered and in which their position is more precarious than it has been in recent years. In that sense it’s in diplomat-speak, not regular speech. Of course they haven’t been “free from oppression.” They were, in the early twentieth century, I think, released from paying the jizya. Restrictions on building and repairing churches have been ongoing, and there have been incidents of violence even under Mubarak. Pope Shenouda was under arrest for several years in the 1980s. More than one hundred Copts were massacred in riots in Cairo in 1981. The latter years of the Mubarak regime were relatively comfortable for Copts, with the emphasis on “relatively.”
But what good would come if Pope Shenouda or Bishop Mouneer were to publicly denounce the past decades, nay, centuries, of mistreatment? They are faithful Christians in a hostile Muslim sea. If they issued public denunciations it might very well shut down the efforts of the al Azhar leadership to moderate Muslim opinion.
I wish Dr. Williams’ statement had not made this foolish assertion. Prayer for Egypt and for all Middle Eastern Christians is in order.
Thabnks, Katherine.
I was hoping you or Karen B. (or someone else with first-hand knowledge) would chime in. Your comment is very sensible, as usual. Yes, certainly ++RW’s press release is couched in the veiled language of diplomacy; and yes, above all else, prayer is in order. May the revival in the Copitc Church continue and grow stronger, even as the pressures on that historic church also grow.
David Handy+