Copts worry about political future in Egypt

Members of a leading Salafi organization in Egypt this week announced plans to form a political party to participate in the country’s upcoming elections, the first vote since former president Hosni Mubarak was forced from office after 30 years. The extremist Islamic group has been blamed for attacking both Sufi Muslim shrines and Christian churches over the past month. The announcement is raising fears that the September elections could lead Egypt in an Islamist direction, affecting the country’s millions of Coptic Christians.

“The Copts are very nervous that they would be excluded from participating in the future re-ordering of the Egyptian political system,” says Anthony O’Mahony, the Director of the Centre for Eastern Christianity at Heythrop College in London. He says there are several reasons for this.

“We don’t have a Coptic political party which could represent the interests of all the community. Also, Pope Shenouda was elected to office in 1971, so he has been in office for a long time, so there is a question of the relationship between the Coptic religious leadership, which is older, and a new changing regime,” he told Vatican Radio.

He also says that non-religious Egyptian parties have failed to gain Coptic support. “Many of the …more secular or lay religious parties have never been able to mobilize the Coptic vote or the Coptic community into supporting them and they have not necessarily sought to represent their interests. So I think there is a crisis here about the representation of Coptic interests,” he said.

Listen to the full interview by Charles Collins with Anthony O’Mahony: