From The Holy Mountain

by William Dalrymple

  Nevertheless, while an Islamic revolution appeared improbable, there did seem to be a considerable likelihood that Mubarak's regime would allow - indeed was already allowing - a slow Islamicisation of the country in an effort to appease the more moderate elements of the religious right wing. The censorship powers of the Sheikhs of Al-Ahzar University, the senior Islamic authority in Egypt, had recently been widened. More and more hardline Islamic preachers were appearing on government television, some openly attacking Christianity on the air. Even the vaguest outlines of Christian religious teaching had been taken off the curriculum in government schools, while in many places Coptic schools had had to raise walls around themselves for protection. According to the government's own statistics, mosque building had accelerated dramatically - some 125,000 unauthorised masjids had been erected in the last decade alone - but in the same period the Hamayonic Laws had been used to deny permission for the building of more than a handful of churches.

  Off the record, many Copts argued that Mubarak's government deliberately turned a blind eye to a culture of anti-Christian discrimination and intolerance, thus indirectly fostering the climate that encouraged anti-Coptic violence. Certainly, whether by accident or design, in the last two decades Copts appeared to have been weeded out of all positions of influence, as army generals, university professors, police officers and senior Cabinet Ministers: although the Copts made up at least 17 per cent of the Egyptian population, not one of the country's provincial governors was a Copt, and Copts made up less than 1 per cent of MPs in the Egyptian National Assembly. As a result of all this there had been two major Coptic migrations: terrorised Coptic farmers from Upper Egypt were selling up their farms and making for the relative anonymity of the cities, while at the same time the urbanised Coptic middle class was emigrating in search of better opportunities and less discrimination abroad. It was estimated that in the past ten years as many as half a million Coptic professionals had left the country, mainly for Australia, Canada and the US.

  More worrying still, an increasing number of ordinary Muslim Egyptians seemed to be convinced that a degree of peaceful

  Islamicisation - fewer nightclubs, more veils, less alcohol, more Sharia law - would act as a panacea for their many problems. It was probably here - in the gradual fundamentalist annexation of Egyptian public life - and not in terrorism or revolution, that the real danger for Egypt's future lay. As a Sheikh I talked to put it: 'Inshallah the tide of feeling is so strong that no one can oppose it now. We don't need or want violence. The majority are already calling for a society based on the Holy Koran. Until this latest violence the government was moving in the right direction by itself.'

  One interview I had in March left a particularly vivid impression on me. It was with a man who was in the process of getting divorced. The bizarre feature of the case was that the couple concerned - Dr Nasr Abu Zaid and his wife Dr Ibthal Yunis, both elderly academics at Cairo University - were very happily married, but were having divorce proceedings forced on them against their will by hardline Islamists who had never even met them.

  When the case was first brought to court, most of middle-class Cairo assumed the charge was a joke. Only later did it become apparent that there was in fact an obscure law allowing a complete stranger to initiate divorce proceedings against a married couple on the grounds of incompatibility. The fundamentalists' case was based on their claim that Dr Nasr Abu Zaid's academic writings, which strongly attack the political manipulation of the Koran, show him to be an atheist, and thus an apostate. His wife was a Muslim; ergo the two were incompatible.

  Although the fundamentalists lost the first round of the case, the affair showed quite how far their writ now ran, and how successfully they have managed to infiltrate Egyptian institutions. The Sheikh who first attacked Dr Abu Zaid, a heavily-bearded TV preacher named Dr Abdul Shaheen, was not openly a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but was Chairman of the ruling party's Religious Affairs Committee. The university, far from helping Dr Abu Zaid in his fight against this medieval obscurantism, bowed to fundamentalist pressure and turned down his application for promotion. Neither the Student Union nor the University Staff Club uttered a word in Dr Abu Zaid's support; both institutions,

  it turned out, had effectively been taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.

  I went to see Dr Abu Zaid at the university. A shy, retiring and rather rotund figure, I found him in a corner room of the old colonial Arts Faculty building, protected by a bodyguard.

  'I could have simply stated that I was a good Muslim, made a profession of faith and the case would have been dropped,' said Dr Abu Zaid. 'I am a practising Muslim, but I was determined not to back down and allow these people to manipulate Islam for their own ends. This was a battle which had to be fought.'

  'Do you ever wish you had backed down?' I asked, looking at his guard.

  'No,' replied Dr Abu Zaid. 'After Dr Farag Foda was declared an apostate and shot dead by these terrorists, my wife and I have had to live in fear of our lives. But if I was able to choose again, I would still fight on. What is going on in Egypt is a battle between those Muslims who defend the future and those who want to drag us back into the past. More and more people want to take the easiest solution: to smoke the opium of fundamentalism. Someone has to stand up and have the courage to show that in that direction only disaster lies.'

  Dr Abu Zaid talked at length about his fight with the fundamentalists, about their attempts to censor his writing and suppress his work. Before I left I asked: was he hopeful for the future?

  'For the immediate future,' he said, 'no: I am not hopeful. I don't fear revolution - that is very unlikely. It is the so-called moderates I worry about. They want to suppress rational thought; they won't let anyone oppose them. In the long term history shows that freedom and truth will prevail. But in the short term I think things will get much worse before they get better.'

  We walked together through the corridors of the university, shadowed by the bodyguard. As we walked Dr Abu Zaid pointed out how many of the female students now wore the veil.

  'My generation has witnessed many ups and downs,' he said. After the dreams and hopes of Nasser's revolution in 1952 there have been so many disappointments: the defeat by Israel in 1967, the assassination of Sadat, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the

  Iran-Iraq war, Desert Storm, the anarchy in Algeria. All of this is stored in the memories of our people.'

  He turned to face me. 'After all that,' he said, 'you tell me: would you be optimistic?'

  Cairo, 16 December

  In the Byzantine period, Cairo was a small and relatively unimportant riverside fortress guarding the route from Alexandria to the provincial cities upstream. It was known as Babylon-in-Egypt.

  The town receives only a couple of passing mentions in the pages of The Spiritual Meadow, both times in reference to a prophecy that Moschos's friend Abba Zosimos the Cilician would one day become its Bishop (he did). Few other sources are much more forthcoming, though The Chronicle of John, Bishop of Nikiu does describe its surrender to the Muslim General Amr in 641 a.d., when the defenders, deserted by their generals, handed over the fortress - and all the weapons and munitions contained within it - in return for their lives.

  It was the Muslims who turned this previously obscure fortress into the first city of Egypt, and the Christians were never as dominant an element in the population of Cairo as they had been in Alexandria; indeed it was only in the eleventh century that the Coptic Patriarch deigned to move his cathedral from Alexandria (by then reduced to little more than a fishing village). Today Cairo has a large Coptic population, possibly numbering as many as three million out of the total of fifteen million, but the Copts lie scattered about the poorer suburbs - where, as fate would have it, the more aggressive fundamentalist factions can also be found.

  This afternoon I set out to visit two Coptic churches which had been damaged in the course of the accelerating conflict between the local Copts and their Islamist neighbours.
In one case a bomb had been let off outside the church porch; the other had been attacked when a Muslim mob, whipped up by a fundamentalist demagogue, spilled out of a mosque calling for infidel blood. Neither was a major incident, but I only realised quite how frightened the Copts were when, at both churches, those in charge initially denied that there had been any trouble at all, and only admitted the truth when I produced press cuttings outlining what had happened.

  Menas, the Coptic taxi driver at the Hotel Windsor, drove me up to the district of Shubra. The streets were wide and the houses were high and brown. Overnight the weather had turned wet, and the air came cold through the open window. The sky was grey and there was mud on the road. Men zigzagged between puddles, their woollen winter gelabiyas hitched up to their shins, revealing woolly longjohns beneath. They all had scarves wrapped around their heads.

  An armed guard stood outside the Church of el-Adra (the Virgin). He directed me to the office of the priest. Fr. Mark Bishara had a grey beard and wore a domed Coptic hat. As soon as I asked him about the bomb which had gone off outside his church, he rose and began nervously ushering me out of the room.

  'This bomb is forgotten,' he said.

  'But was it a big bomb? Was anyone killed?'

  'It was nothing,' said the priest, by now propelling me towards the door. 'Only two or three were injured. I can't remember the details. No, please, I do not want to talk about it. The matter is finished.'

  Was anyone arrested?'

  'The man responsible was captured. I think so.' 'So the government is helping you?'

  'Let me not answer, please,' said the priest, half closing the door and looking out through the crack. 'It would not be suitable to write about this matter. It is not good for us. We have no problem. We are very friendly with the Muslims. The government is very well equipped to deal with everything. I have much work, I am sorry...'

  And with that the door slammed shut. I walked around the church compound, amazed by the priest's behaviour. What was he so afraid of? As I wandered about I heard children chanting, and following the sound I came to a modern building behind the church. It held a line of classrooms, and inside several lay people were teaching small children Bible stories and Coptic hymns. One of the classes was just finishing, and when the children had dispersed I approached the teacher to ask if he could tell me anything more about the blast. Like the priest, he looked very uncomfortable, but did say that the bomb had been hung on the church gate during a service, and that it went off as the congregation trooped out. Luckily it had been a very crude device, and no one was killed, though there had been many injuries. I asked the man if he was worried that the church might be bombed again. 'Only God knows,' he replied.

  'Have these attacks made many Copts want to leave Egypt?'

  'Yes,' he said. 'Five or six of my own friends have emigrated, not just because of the terrorists, but to find work. In Egypt it is more difficult for Christians to get good jobs than it is for Muslims. For this reason many, many Christians - the clever ones - are going to Canada and Australia. They think it is better for their children.'

  "Will you go too?'

  'No,' replied the man firmly. 'It is important to remain. We should stay and do our best to defend our religion.'

  As I was leaving the church compound, Fr. Bishara hurried out of the door of his office and called after me.

  'I'm sorry,' he said gently, reaching for my hand. 'I am a priest. If you want to learn to pray, I can help. If you want to go to Heaven, I can help. But if you want to talk about politics...'

  He shrugged his shoulders. T think you have not spent long in Egypt,' he said. 'When you have been here longer, you will understand.'

  From Shubra, Menas drove me to the distant suburb of Ein Shams, now one of Cairo's main Islamist strongholds. As we drove, the

  houses got poorer and the people more bedraggled-looking. Brick tenements hung with laundry gave way to a shanty-town sprawl. Rubbish was piled on the hard shoulder of the road. It began to drizzle, and the vendors lining the roadside began to strap umbrellas to their fruit barrows. Others - beggars, sweet-sellers and newsboys - cowered in the doorways of cafes, looking out onto the muddy streets. In one doorway I saw an old man emptying out the water from a leaky shoe. Nearby, ragged street children were playing football, using puddles as goalposts.

  The drizzle turned to rain and the rain to a downpour. The badly drained streets filled with water as puddles grew into ponds. At one flooded junction, two donkey-carts were ferrying pedestrians across a small newly formed lake.

  After much hunting down narrow lanes, we eventually found the Church of St Michael and the Virgin. The priest was not in, and instead I was shown in to meet his wife, who politely offered me tea. But like everyone else that day, she looked suddenly panic-stricken when I tried to turn the conversation towards the attack on the church.

  'There is no problem,' she said. 'It is very nice here. Very nice Muslims.' She giggled nervously.

  'But didn't a mob of Muslims attack the church only recently?' 'Yes,' replied the woman. 'But do not write this.' 'What happened?' I asked.

  'Nothing. The Muslims came to the church. But the police were stronger.'

  'Was there firing?' 'No.'

  'But I read in the newspapers that several people were killed.'

  'A little firing. Maybe. But in the street. Not in the church.'

  I felt brutal forcing the woman to say what she wanted to keep hidden, but I really needed to know what had happened. 'How many people attacked the church?' I asked.

  'Not many.'

  'Roughly?'

  'Four hundred. Five hundred. My husband telephoned the government and the police came.'

  'They wanted to burn the church,' said a voice from the door. It was the old man who had shown me into the priest's house. He was about seventy, with a greying toothbrush moustache. He had been listening to the woman floundering, and decided to speak up. Tt was a Friday, after Muslim prayers. They came from the Adam Mosque in Ibrahim Abdel Ghazi Street. After prayers had finished, an Irhebi in the congregation took the microphone from the imam. He told the people to go to the church and burn it, and to kill policemen. Some good Muslims in the mosque came and told us what was happening, so we had time to lock the gates.'

  'Were they armed?'

  'They had guns. Many kinds of gun. And some of the Irhebin had bombs.' 'Home-made?'

  'Yes. Not professional bombs. They threw them over the fence. They didn't make a big fire, just broke one or two windows. Many children were here having lessons. They were afraid and were crying. The teachers took them into the church and made them sing hymns, but still they could hear the chanting outside.'

  'What were they chanting?'

  ' "Islamaya Islamaya la Mesihaya wa la Yahoudaya ..." It means "Islam Islam, no Christians, no Jews." Over and over again they were shouting it. Also "Kill the Christians, Kill the Christians."'

  'When we heard this we were all praying,' said the priest's wife. 'But we had confidence that God would help us. My husband was calling the police and Pope Shenoudah. We were not frightened.'

  'And the police came quickly?'

  'Yes,' said the old man. 'In two big trucks. When the Muslims saw them they ran away. For a month afterwards there were policemen standing every metre along the road.'

  'Do you think it could happen again?'

  'We hope it will not,' said the woman. 'Afterwards many Muslims telephoned us to say how sorry they were.'

  'But none visited us,' said the man. 'Like us, the Muslims are afraid of the Irhebin.''

  As we drove back to the hotel in the rain, I asked Menas why the Copts had been so unwilling to talk openly about their troubles.

  'They are afraid,' he said. 'They know the government says there is no problem, so they say that too.' 'But isn't that counter-productive?'

  'We don't like to create problems with the Muslims. At the moment our life is not too bad. To shout out our complaints will do us no good. The Christians i
n Europe will not help. Nor will the Americans. There is no one to help us. So we keep quiet. We have no option but to get on as best we can.'

  He frowned: 'To be honest,' he said, 'the people are afraid. The Father in the church was afraid. If the government does not like what we are saying, it can be very cruel with us, in many ways: with work, with business, with our families, with our children in schools. They can make our life hell. For this reason the people are not telling you the clear situation.'

  He slowed the car to drive through a deep puddle covering the entire width of the road. When we had safely reached the far side he said: 'This is not your problem. It is our problem. You make a book then you go home. But we have to stay here. I know you are trying to help. But you must be very careful. If you are not, you could do us great harm.'

  That evening, for the third time since my return from St Antony's, I visited the Press Centre to find out whether my application to visit Upper Egypt had yet been approved.

  Predictably, I was informed that no decision had so far been reached. As no decision seemed likely in the near future, I decided to play my trump card. Opening my bag, I presented the bureaucrats with a transcript of my March interview with President Mubarak. Highlighted on the last page was the following exchange:

  W.D.: What would you tell people who want to visit Egypt? Is it safe for them to return?

  Mubarak: It is VERY safe. We have so many tourists already. W.D.: So I could go to Asyut?

  Mubarak: Of course. You can go tomorrow! Some of the people in Asyut are criminals and fundamentals. But the majority of the people in Asyut are very good peoples. VERY GOOD PEOPLES. You can go anywhere. No problem. Do not worry about these so-called terrorists.