Why minority hatred isn't always down to religion

The photo opportunity and lavish praise for Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi in New York this week, alongside leaders of the Coptic Church, highlight an awkward truth prevalent across the Middle East. Too many religious minority leaders in the region support dictators. In doing so, they betray their values and subject their followers to undeserved stereotyping.

From Egypt to Tunisia to Syria to Bahrain, Christians, Jews and smaller Muslim sects often find themselves on the bad guys’ side. When those groups become unpopular for taking such positions, Western observers often leap to conclusions. Is this loathing bred from purely religious prejudice and not crude political revenge? Surely those little Middle Eastern people, so the patronising narrative goes, are only acting upon their medieval urges driven by their petty religious differences? Surely it isn’t resentment about jobs, or that prominent religious leaders representing Christians or Jews actively support torture, extrajudicial imprisonment and killings, or the kind of endemic corruption that keeps poor people poor and breeds revolutions?

The leadership of the Coptic Church in Egypt is currently doing this; it has a morally flawed policy of supporting President Sisi, right or wrong. I visited Coptic areas of Cairo shortly after the 2013 coup and there was no doubt that public sentiment against the Muslim Brotherhood was strong. Much of this was down to the perception that Islamist thugs had been allowed to roam free and intimidate and beat Christians. While it is indisputable that such incidents took place, there is significant disagreement over whether the Brotherhood government was simply being incompetent, was too consumed by its aborted reform programme, whether it genuinely wanted Christians to be beaten in the streets, or whether this was simply pro-Sisi propaganda. What there is no doubt about, is that Sisi has done just as little to protect the Copts.

In May, a seventy year-old Christian woman was beaten in the streets. Police failed to arrive on the scene for hours and did little to mete out any punishment. While the myth runs that Sisi is prosecuting those who persecute Christians in a way that the former Islamist government did not, he has not carried through on his promises to do so.

In a sobering analysis from the Brookings Institution — “What Is Egypt Really Like for Coptic Christians?” — the lies that Sisi is a great protector of minorities, which are believed widely in the West, were exposed adeptly.

“For Egypt’s minorities, there is a large gap between de jure and de facto rights—what exists under the law versus what exists in practice. On paper, Egyptians enjoy ‘absolute’ freedom of religion guaranteed by the 2014 constitution. But, the constitution also decrees Islam to be the state religion, and conversion to any religion other than Islam is prohibited. Blasphemy is also punishable with harsh penalties and several high-profile blasphemy cases have been prosecuted under the Sisi government.”

The question is, why are Christians the target? It is not right to completely discount the historic rivalries between Christianity and Islam; perennial awkward cousins within the great Abrahamic faiths. Perhaps, though, it is partly because tens of thousands of Muslim Brotherhood members are languishing in prison, and Sisi is now widely judged to be even more oppressive than Hosni Mubarak and, worst of all, the leaders of the Christian church in Egypt are actively supporting him. Are revenge attacks justifiable? No. Are they explicable? Of course they are.

The most prominent Jewish voice in Tunisia, businessman Roger Bismuth, was also an ardent Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fan, and a similar dynamic is at play. “You cannot find a better government than what we had,” he said of the dictatorial autocrat in June 2012. Bismuth, according to a report in Forward, “extended his praise to all the ministers of Ben Ali’s political party, the Constitutional Democratic Rally, calling them ‘good technocrats’.” He did at least concede that “the dictator and his family” had “ruined the country” through fraud and mismanagement,” but little was said of how Tunisia ranked as one of the “least free” countries in the world, according to the American Freedom House think tank, which noted abuse and torture, violent intimidation of journalists and arbitrary arrests, not, apparently, issues which Bismuth seems to care much about.

So when Jews were discriminated against in the wake of the revolution that deposed Ben Ali, is it any wonder that resentment rose against them? To be clear, Jewish Tunisians as a group are not at fault here; it is their leaders and self-appointed representatives putting Jews at risk, just as it is the leaders of the Coptic Christian church putting Egyptian Christians at risk. Largely led by pro-Israel sections in the West and obviously Israel itself, much has been made of the progressive Islamist Rachid Ghannouchi and an incident shortly after he took power, in which a Hamas leader visited and “Kill the Jews!” was shouted at a welcoming rally. Inexcusable, of that there is no doubt. Was this raw anti-Semitism though, or was it revenge for the political choices made by Tunisian Jewish leaders; or was it simply a crude expression of anti-Israel sentiment, not bigotry against Jews per se?

Making a choice about faith shouldn’t have any consequences, but political decisions should; allowing economic injustices to flourish which favour one belief over another should as well. Western observers must not simplify the sectarian narrative to that of one religion versus another religion; this is as much if not more about economics and politics. And religious leaders and community representatives must think twice, not just in reviewing the religious texts and checking whether torture was a crime that Jesus Christ or Jehovah approved of, but whether they are putting the people they claim to care for at extreme risk through callous, careless and self-serving comments and policies.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.