What has been happening in Egypt and Sudan in recent years?
Lots of things have been in flux in Egypt with the rise of the MB to the presidency and then their removal, which the Copts paid dearly for in both cases, especially since the MB Salafists blamed the Copts directly for the military takeover, completely ignoring the demographic reality of Egypt that would've required the Copts to be several times their actual number to control the 'plot' as they supposedly did (NB: government figures put Copts at around 5.5 to 6 million; the CIA factbook and other non-Egyptian sources put that at
approximately 10% of society, which would be around 10 million by now; the protests that led to the removal of the MB were
estimated at 14 million -- so every Coptic person down to the babies would need to be in them, and then they would need to control an additional 4-8 million Muslims, telling them to go protest...); this rumor nevertheless led to rampant anti-Christian violence among the now-disenfranchised MB Salafists. The reaction was to destroy everything Christian that they could get their hands on,
as you can read about here. You will note how bad the sectarianism can be, in that the Muslims in one version of the narrative concerning the cause of the violence in that particular village were more offended at the idea of a Christian cross being painted on a building belonging to al-Azhar than a swastika! Quite simply, these people hate Christianity for theological reasons (their religion tells them to), and it is transfered to hate of the people around them who practice it. That's by no means unique to Egypt, but it is a strongly sectarian society.
Do you think that recent changes may have an affect on the life of Christians living in those regions?
Sure. How could they not when some Muslims have this narrative where the Copts essentially took 'their' president away, and are responsible for
the Rabaa massacre where MB supporters were murdered (by the government), and so on? The Coptic people are a scapegoat for the reality that Muslims themselves just really didn't like the MB regime. Morsi was incompetent and disliked by many people, but is still beloved by hardcore Islamists. The MB Salafi movement doesn't really go away; it's just like a game of "whack a mole", where you have to crush it whenever it raises its head. And when it is crushed, the Copts get blamed, even when they're not in the government in anything like what you'd expect if the government were proportionally representative of the citizenry, and when Copts actually try to take office the very same MB supporters don't allow it, and openly say that they don't want the governor (or whatever; it's not like they'll ever rise higher than that anyway)
because he is a Copt. The Salafis dominated the protest at that link, as they do many in the areas with high Coptic populations (Qena is one of the highest, at 35%).
This is the reality of what my coreligionists deal with in Egypt. Islam on the ground is ugly and violent. They think they have a right to treat Coptic people however they want, that Coptic blood is cheap, and in a way the world tries to say the same by freaking out when a mosque is shot up (which is good, lest anyone think I believe otherwise; we should all join in harshly condemning these kinds of attacks; it is not the Christian way to say, "Well you did it to me/my people, so I will rejoice when you taste a bit of what you serve us", as though the people of the Christchurch mosques are the same as the Salafis in Egypt -- they are not, and the Coptic Orthodox Church recognizes that, and will ring their bells at noon in NZ on Sunday to recognize and mourn the loss of life), but reporting on the destruction of Christian lives and property in the "Muslim world" as though it is everyday routine sectarian conflict. That ought to tell you something about the problems of Egypt and the region in general: what the Muslims do the others is occasionally a news item, but does not prompt the reflection on the direction of entire societies as the Christchurch mosque shootings do in Western societies. This is a plus for Western societies, definitely, but the same is not possible in the Islamic world because of course Muslims dominating all others is
what is supposed to happen according to Islam.
Here, an actual Coptic priest can probably explain it better. Our grievances come from the place of Islam in society (a lack of truly secular and pluralistic values), and what that means for us directly as a Church and as a people who live in that society natively.
So here is Fr. Zakaria Butros' famous "10 demands" speech, which will lay it out in a manner very similar to how Muslim leaders talk about Christians and other non-Muslims (read: it's very brusque and kind of shocking...even more so if you know Arabic
):
There's no doubt that things like you describe are taking place, but who's reintroducing the jizya tax and attacking the churches and killing the priests in the examples you provided?
Muslim extremists practicing Islam according to the supremacist interpretation as doled out in their mosques and institutions like al-Azhar (probably the premier source of Sunni learning in the Muslim world). These are the people who chant things like "The Copts are our guests!" at their stupid rallies. It is very easy to inflame them just by existing, and even more so if you have some preexisting conflict as you can read about the murder of Mohammed Mahmoud and the resulting violence in one of the earlier-provided links. That's a snapshot of how all this starts: the Muslims presume to be better than the Christians, because their religion and the state's law (which is based upon the Qur'an and the Shari'a) says so, and as a result any resistance to what is taken to be the natural order of things -- where Christians are below Muslims in every conceivable interaction and way -- is met with tremendous aggression. Islam is an aggressive supremacist religio-political ideology. That is it in action in the places where it predominates, which is a very good illustration of why we should resist it, as it really cannot coexist easily with other religions and people.
Now,
the same can be said about Christianity depending on the context (just to preempt the obvious and stupid "But what about Christianity?????" non-reply that will probably come anyway), but what is not deniable is that Christianity at least provides space for the growth of secular civil society (whether or not any one particular society actually
nurtures such a development or not; that's up to the people, and it's definitely been a mixed bag). There is no wisdom from Muhammad or his god equal to Jesus' command that we render unto God that which is God's and unto Caesar that which is Caesar's. Instead, Muhammad was the writer of political pacts and constitutions (all of which place Muslims at the top of the heap, naturally), and his successors followed his example. Again, the problem is that this is Islam; its theocratic nature is not avoidable but that Muslims should actually want to live in a secular society, as is the case in a few places (e.g., Lebanon, Jordan, the Muslim-majority ex-USSR states), but in those places that secularism is always threatened by those who take the Qur'an and the other Muslim sources much more seriously. The Lebanese army has had to fight against
militants in Tripoli recently, for instance. Say whatever you want about any religion, but you just do not see this sort of thing in Christian majority societies in the modern world. Many will say "Of course you don't see that because the Church has been neutered/is kept out of politics", which is fine and true for the most part since these are
secular Christian-majority societies, but that's kind of the point: the traditional Muslim view doesn't even have such a divide between the secular and the religious, hence secularism will always have a hard time gaining ground in the Islamic lands, because it's quite simply against their religion. They have to want it more than they want to see their god's law acknowledged and followed everywhere, and that's a tall order for the traditional Muslim. (Gay imams in Paris and such obviously don't factor in, since that is also against Islam.)
Again, the problem is Islam itself. Go ahead and say I'm being "essentialist" or whatever silly ten-cent word, if you wish (whoever reads this; not you in particular, JosephZ), but going back to the sources you find an explicitly political expansionist mission, no "if a city does not receive you, wipe your feet and move on to one that will." It's less great commission and more Mongol horde, and I don't think pointing to exceptions changes that, because
Muhammad (the example for all mankind) didn't make exceptions but that he and his community could directly benefit from them in some way, as by extracting tribute/jizya from non-Muslims in exchange for their being 'protected'. (Islam is very mafia-like in that way.)
