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April 22, 2006
Alexandria
By David Warren
There were riots in Alexandria, Egypt, through the weekend, in the wake of a stabbing spree that left Coptic Christian worshippers dead in three local churches. That much is clear, as it is also clear that Christians in Alexandria, as elsewhere through the Muslim world, remain under attack from those who hold them responsible for purportedly blasphemous cartoons in a Danish newspaper. The "cartoon affair" has not blown over. Only the media reporting of it has blown over.
The reprinting of those cartoons, in media elsewhere, and the appearance of other cartoons -- including one in a Catholic paper in Italy that alluded to the fate of Mohammad in Dante's Inferno -- have helped keep the issue updated. But it is incendiary rhetoric that inspires violent attacks on (usually) defenceless Christians; not cartoons few have ever seen.
It is worth repeating, that we cannot remove all unflattering references to Islam's Prophet without stripping the whole fabric of Western art and literature. Moreover, Christian faith in the divinity of Christ is itself blasphemous from every Islamic point of view. There is therefore no future in appeasement.
On the other hand, the Da Vinci Code is extremely offensive to Christians. But it is part of our modern Western heritage to live with that. For as we learned through centuries of painful experience, the cost of banning it would be greater than any possible benefit. The best we can do is confute the demonstrable historical lies on which it was constructed.
The received Western view is that we meet arguments with superior arguments, and force with superior force. This is now in direct clash with the alternative views of radical Islam, and of "political correctness". Both hold that the errors in other people's doctrines must be corrected by force, without argument.
Back to Alexandria, where churches have been for some weeks under escalating vandal and arson attacks from self-declared "pious" Muslims. The stabbings in the churches last Friday (which was the one before Palm Sunday, in this year's Coptic calendar) were the culmination of what seemed to the Copts like an orchestrated campaign. They became more incensed when a man arrested for the killings -- a known local Islamist -- was described by the police as "a madman acting alone"; and more still when the funeral procession for one of the victims was attacked by a Muslim mob at the moment the crucifix was raised -- with the usual tardy police intervention. The communal rioting proceeded from there.
Egypt was once a pioneer of secular, Western constitutional government in the Arab world, but like every other Muslim jurisdiction of which I am aware, the trend now is towards the restoration of Shariah. The current Egyptian constitution declares the absolute priority of Islam, and while to my certain knowledge a great effort is made from the minbars (pulpits) of many mosques, and sometimes by the government, to inculcate gracious behaviour towards the Christian minority, the opposite is also preached.
Alexandria has anyway always been a likely flashpoint. It contains a much higher proportion of Christians than other Egyptian cities, including Cairo; and they play a prominent role in its business and civic life. But the city is also a major centre of "Islamism", and fanatic slogans now decorate its walls. The last of the once-large Jewish, Greek, and other long-settled "foreign" communities were driven out two generations ago, following Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal. The Copts remember.
As I found from my own travels among the Copts in Egypt, several years ago, the story is always more complicated than you could ever understand, unless you lived there; but if you live there, your own interests will make objectivity impossible. All human affairs are conducted in a fog, not just wars, in which the fog thickens.
Here, for instance, is one interesting twist. According to Eli Lake -- one of the best journalists writing about the Middle East, for the little New York Sun -- the Muslim Brotherhood (Egypt's oldest "Islamist" society) sent mourners to march with the main Christian funeral procession, in a gesture of sympathy and solidarity.
This is quite plausible, for I was myself told by Coptic clergy in Alexandria that they went out of their way to cultivate good relations with the Muslim Brotherhood. This fact also helped explain otherwise incomprehensible Coptic anti-American and anti-Israeli declarations, and sometimes even extenuations of Palestinian suicide bombers. It is part of the "unwritten bargain" by which a minority community assures its survival in the midst of a society prepared to lethally punish the slightest hint of disloyalty. I would go so far as to say, that what the individual Copt really thinks about politics is in almost every case a secret, closely guarded even from himself. He does not have the luxury of the "opinions" that we still enjoy in the West.
Alas, people here forget how wonderful a luxury that is.
