A Coptic Intifada
Coptic Reform
Having been baptized and raised in the Coptic Orthodox Church my whole life it saddens me that what I thought was the Church of Salvation, has been corrupted by political mudslinging and an inept leadership.
My Salvation turned sour.
Every Sunday morning I would wake up excited at the thought of going to church and getting closer to God. Although I enjoyed the mass, my favorite part of my spiritual experience was going to Sunday school. Learning about the saints that laid the foundation of our resilient church gave me hope that our church can survive under the most severe prosecution. Unfortunately there was a darker side to my ‘spiritual experience’ that has affected me until this day.
For a period of eight years I suffered from verbal abuse from many of the most highly respected deacons of my church. I still remember being pushed around and even being verbally abused in front of my friends and family who did nothing but just watch in disgust. Several of my Sunday school teachers and even my priest viewed this behavior as just ‘boys playing around’ and did nothing to stop the torture. I turned from a boy who found sanctuary in church to one that hated and made any excuse not to go to it. Perhaps it was my fault for not complaining to anyone or fighting back, but I always believed that God would get my revenge for me.
My parents for a couple of years forced me to go to Church and with this my depression increased tenfold. I did not have very many friends and the ones that I did have often viewed me as a social outcast. As a finally matured and progressed to high school, the verbal abuse decreased but the memories of the torture that I went through in my childhood have never gone away. It’s hypocritical that those same deacons who wake up early every Sunday morning and dress up as angels in front of the All Mighty are the same ones that as children used to verbally abuse and sometimes physically inflict pain on me. Everyone tells me to move on and to forget the past, but I still see in their eyes that they view me not as an equal, but as the same child who was weak and defenseless against their aggression. I guess it’s the verbal abuse that made me work hard and be persistent in everything I do. Regrettably, this isn’t is a story about a boy hell-bent on revenge, but one of an entire race being pushed aside by the very clergy that was supposed to protect us and give us sanctuary.
Decline or Golden Age?
The Coptic Church in Egypt has been witnessing a cultural decline as many members of its congregation convert to Islam or other dominations. The once so-called sanctuary that the church was supposed to provide from the outside aggressors has begun to decline. Instead of helping the weak, the leaders of our church have begun to tout the official government line, that there is no discrimination against the Copts and everything is just dandy in the land of the pyramids. While the Coptic Church is flourishing in the land of immigration, the exact opposite is happening because our leaders refuse to confront the government on the issues of forced conversions, rampant discrimination and outright oppression.
There’s no problem with Wafaa Constantine!
The after-effects of the Wafaa Constantine affair have sent shockwaves throughout Egypt and Coptic communities across the globe. I remember hearing the news from the ultra-radical http://www.copts.net/, that a priest’s wife in Egypt was kidnapped and drugged by Muslim extremists. I’m not a fan of Michael Munier or his tactics of twisting facts in the favor of our ‘uber-discriminated’ race. His sort of tactics remind me of the pushiness of the Jewish organizations here in America, except no official of high regard in the government gives the time of day for this individual.
Mrs. Constantine is going through what hundreds or even thousands of women in Egypt are going through everyday, a marriage that is on the rocks. Due the orthodox character of the Coptic Church, one of our main principles is the sanctity of marriage. Divorce is not allowed except under extreme cases in our church, and even then it is difficult to remarry because many of the clergy view the second marriage as a sin that they can not bless. Constantine was locked in a verbally abusive marriage with no way out. Her only hope was to break the cycle by doing something drastic that would shock the church into action. The church knew about this ‘disastrous’ marriage for over two years and did nothing about it. The half-hearted response by the couple’s father of confession Bishop Bachomious did not solve the acrimonious relations between the two. Added to this with many members of the community, especially in her workplace knowing of her uneasy marriage, the easy solution of just converting to Islam became increasingly attractive to the desperate Wafaa.
The response to her forced conversion was so immense that even communities outside of Egypt called on the government to free the priest’s wife. Petitions were signed, letters were sent, and congressmen were called all in hopes of pressuring the regime to find the militants who took our beloved mother. In Egypt, thousands of youths stormed the Cathedral during the funeral looking for answers from our leadership. The demonstrations outside the Cathedral turned sour as a lack of information coupled with an absent leadership made the situation worse. Stones were thrown at Government Anti-riot police who then arrested over thirty youths on trumped up charges of trying to undermine the national security of Egypt. As a response to the failed negotiations between the government and the Church, our Pope fled to a local monastery telling all that he would not return until this crisis was resolved.
The cover-up began within the church when the leadership chose to withhold information that Wafaa Constantine went on her own freewill to start the process of conversion. When she safely returned to her family and church, there started a silent debate within the Coptic community about reform.
Reforms
Divorce
The Wafaa Constantine experience showed to millions of Copts the frailties of how domestic squabbles can head south extremely fast. Several newspapers in Egypt began demanding that the Copts seriously look at the issue of divorce so that future episodes like this do not damage the national fabric of the country. For the most part the debate has been silenced by higher powers using the archaic interpretations of the bible to justify that the current system is correct.
Domestic Violence
Leaving the issue of divorce behind, the issue of domestic violence is one that should be brought into light. Thousands of women are daily beat each day in pious Coptic homes all across the globe. Many of the priests who serve these homes know of the abuse, whether it be verbal or physical and choose to do nothing about it because of our patriarchal society. Confession is usually the medium through which the abuse is first known, but instead of telling many of these women to seek help from the police, they tell them to pray for their abusive husbands. The Constantine affair, if anything, should have changed this sort of passive view towards abuse and caused many priests to take a pro-active role in raising awareness about this horrible issue.
Kidnappings
I’ve personally heard reports of true kidnappings especially in the Southern part of Egypt where teenage girls are abducted and illegally forced to convert to Islam either through rape or intimidation. On http://www.amcoptic.com/ there are several recordings of hysterical mothers pleading for help from our Pope in the issue of these kidnappings. Our leadership as been politically inept in dealing with these cases, especially in the case of Neven Malek, a seventeen year old who was kidnapped from the village of Kolosna, Samalout, in the Province of Menya. Since 2003 her kidnapping has still been unsolved and has even caused her older sister, Heba Malek, to go on a hunger strike so that government officials could be pushed into reopening her case. Although the south has been rocked by crimes in the past, there is currently a new wave of discrimination following the acquittal of the defendants in the 2000 al-Kosheh massacre. Our church unfortunately has abandoned these victims and has not demanded justice for thirty Copts who have died without justice.
Financial Transparency
A constant joke by many Copts, particularly those who are just beginning college and wondering about what they are going to do with their lives professionally, often joke that since Abouna drives a Mercedes then why not become a priest? This subject has been the debated constantly with the great many dioceses refusing to show where donated money is going to. Corruption within the church could be halted if the congregation knew where and how much money was leaving the church’s coffers.
Democracy
The Coptic Orthodox Church like that of the Egyptian government has been led by strong men who are desperate not to give representation to their oppressed subjects. Not many Copts in the land of immigration know that we like our Catholic compatriots have a parliament one that is in charge of the inner dealings of the mother church. The Coptic Parliament or the Maglis al-Melli, is an institution that was created in 1874 to oversee the affairs of the Coptic community and manage church endowments. Briefly during the reign of Pope Cyril it activities came to a virtual freeze in 1956, but were revived in the 1970s. Al Ahram Weekly evaluates the voter restrictions that are placed on average church goers:
Council elections have been plagued in the past by low voter turnout and many blame the strict conditions for voter registration. Under the council's statutes, voters must be over 25 years old and have either a university degree or be registered as a businessman or land owners. These pre-conditions are dismissed by some detractors as "unconstitutional" and blamed, along with the apathy of many Copts, for poor turnout. Only 4,000 Copts are currently registered to vote.
This council has been in the past been a tool to further the rights of the Copts, but currently it is being controlled completely by our Pope Shenouda III. Presently there are no independent council members, nor are there any opposition members who do not have the backing of our Pope.
Even local church councils in the land of immigration follow this same trend of putting extreme power of the church’s finances in the hands of the priest. For the last twenty years my church has participated in ‘democratic’ elections that would even make President Mubarak blush. Just recently due to pressure from the congregation, mostly from my parents, did my priest allow true elections for the church council, one in which voters were chosen individually from amongst the congregation in true democratic elections.
Conclusion
The Coptic nation has endured discrimination on a large scale for many centuries. For over three hundred years our ancestors endured countless horrors so that future generations can keep the Christianity deep rooted in Egypt. As we approach a new era of political freedoms, many Copts should stand up to their Clergy and demand reform from the politically inept leadership. Corruption is rampant within the walls of our churches and it is about time that we as a nation stand up and help each other instead of giving in to our greedy urges. Thousands of Copts each year convert to Islam not for their love of the religion but because they lack food, shelter and an occupation. Our church isn’t poor, nor is our race. God has given us what discrimination took away; we still control the economy and are the most educated citizens of Egypt. Let’s work together in solving our Church’s problems instead of pretending there isn’t a problem. My story is similar to that our my race, we stay silent about abuse, discrimination and corruption until it is too late.
Having been baptized and raised in the Coptic Orthodox Church my whole life it saddens me that what I thought was the Church of Salvation, has been corrupted by political mudslinging and an inept leadership.
My Salvation turned sour.
Every Sunday morning I would wake up excited at the thought of going to church and getting closer to God. Although I enjoyed the mass, my favorite part of my spiritual experience was going to Sunday school. Learning about the saints that laid the foundation of our resilient church gave me hope that our church can survive under the most severe prosecution. Unfortunately there was a darker side to my ‘spiritual experience’ that has affected me until this day.
For a period of eight years I suffered from verbal abuse from many of the most highly respected deacons of my church. I still remember being pushed around and even being verbally abused in front of my friends and family who did nothing but just watch in disgust. Several of my Sunday school teachers and even my priest viewed this behavior as just ‘boys playing around’ and did nothing to stop the torture. I turned from a boy who found sanctuary in church to one that hated and made any excuse not to go to it. Perhaps it was my fault for not complaining to anyone or fighting back, but I always believed that God would get my revenge for me.
My parents for a couple of years forced me to go to Church and with this my depression increased tenfold. I did not have very many friends and the ones that I did have often viewed me as a social outcast. As a finally matured and progressed to high school, the verbal abuse decreased but the memories of the torture that I went through in my childhood have never gone away. It’s hypocritical that those same deacons who wake up early every Sunday morning and dress up as angels in front of the All Mighty are the same ones that as children used to verbally abuse and sometimes physically inflict pain on me. Everyone tells me to move on and to forget the past, but I still see in their eyes that they view me not as an equal, but as the same child who was weak and defenseless against their aggression. I guess it’s the verbal abuse that made me work hard and be persistent in everything I do. Regrettably, this isn’t is a story about a boy hell-bent on revenge, but one of an entire race being pushed aside by the very clergy that was supposed to protect us and give us sanctuary.
Decline or Golden Age?
The Coptic Church in Egypt has been witnessing a cultural decline as many members of its congregation convert to Islam or other dominations. The once so-called sanctuary that the church was supposed to provide from the outside aggressors has begun to decline. Instead of helping the weak, the leaders of our church have begun to tout the official government line, that there is no discrimination against the Copts and everything is just dandy in the land of the pyramids. While the Coptic Church is flourishing in the land of immigration, the exact opposite is happening because our leaders refuse to confront the government on the issues of forced conversions, rampant discrimination and outright oppression.
There’s no problem with Wafaa Constantine!
The after-effects of the Wafaa Constantine affair have sent shockwaves throughout Egypt and Coptic communities across the globe. I remember hearing the news from the ultra-radical http://www.copts.net/, that a priest’s wife in Egypt was kidnapped and drugged by Muslim extremists. I’m not a fan of Michael Munier or his tactics of twisting facts in the favor of our ‘uber-discriminated’ race. His sort of tactics remind me of the pushiness of the Jewish organizations here in America, except no official of high regard in the government gives the time of day for this individual.
Mrs. Constantine is going through what hundreds or even thousands of women in Egypt are going through everyday, a marriage that is on the rocks. Due the orthodox character of the Coptic Church, one of our main principles is the sanctity of marriage. Divorce is not allowed except under extreme cases in our church, and even then it is difficult to remarry because many of the clergy view the second marriage as a sin that they can not bless. Constantine was locked in a verbally abusive marriage with no way out. Her only hope was to break the cycle by doing something drastic that would shock the church into action. The church knew about this ‘disastrous’ marriage for over two years and did nothing about it. The half-hearted response by the couple’s father of confession Bishop Bachomious did not solve the acrimonious relations between the two. Added to this with many members of the community, especially in her workplace knowing of her uneasy marriage, the easy solution of just converting to Islam became increasingly attractive to the desperate Wafaa.
The response to her forced conversion was so immense that even communities outside of Egypt called on the government to free the priest’s wife. Petitions were signed, letters were sent, and congressmen were called all in hopes of pressuring the regime to find the militants who took our beloved mother. In Egypt, thousands of youths stormed the Cathedral during the funeral looking for answers from our leadership. The demonstrations outside the Cathedral turned sour as a lack of information coupled with an absent leadership made the situation worse. Stones were thrown at Government Anti-riot police who then arrested over thirty youths on trumped up charges of trying to undermine the national security of Egypt. As a response to the failed negotiations between the government and the Church, our Pope fled to a local monastery telling all that he would not return until this crisis was resolved.
The cover-up began within the church when the leadership chose to withhold information that Wafaa Constantine went on her own freewill to start the process of conversion. When she safely returned to her family and church, there started a silent debate within the Coptic community about reform.
Reforms
Divorce
The Wafaa Constantine experience showed to millions of Copts the frailties of how domestic squabbles can head south extremely fast. Several newspapers in Egypt began demanding that the Copts seriously look at the issue of divorce so that future episodes like this do not damage the national fabric of the country. For the most part the debate has been silenced by higher powers using the archaic interpretations of the bible to justify that the current system is correct.
Domestic Violence
Leaving the issue of divorce behind, the issue of domestic violence is one that should be brought into light. Thousands of women are daily beat each day in pious Coptic homes all across the globe. Many of the priests who serve these homes know of the abuse, whether it be verbal or physical and choose to do nothing about it because of our patriarchal society. Confession is usually the medium through which the abuse is first known, but instead of telling many of these women to seek help from the police, they tell them to pray for their abusive husbands. The Constantine affair, if anything, should have changed this sort of passive view towards abuse and caused many priests to take a pro-active role in raising awareness about this horrible issue.
Kidnappings
I’ve personally heard reports of true kidnappings especially in the Southern part of Egypt where teenage girls are abducted and illegally forced to convert to Islam either through rape or intimidation. On http://www.amcoptic.com/ there are several recordings of hysterical mothers pleading for help from our Pope in the issue of these kidnappings. Our leadership as been politically inept in dealing with these cases, especially in the case of Neven Malek, a seventeen year old who was kidnapped from the village of Kolosna, Samalout, in the Province of Menya. Since 2003 her kidnapping has still been unsolved and has even caused her older sister, Heba Malek, to go on a hunger strike so that government officials could be pushed into reopening her case. Although the south has been rocked by crimes in the past, there is currently a new wave of discrimination following the acquittal of the defendants in the 2000 al-Kosheh massacre. Our church unfortunately has abandoned these victims and has not demanded justice for thirty Copts who have died without justice.
Financial Transparency
A constant joke by many Copts, particularly those who are just beginning college and wondering about what they are going to do with their lives professionally, often joke that since Abouna drives a Mercedes then why not become a priest? This subject has been the debated constantly with the great many dioceses refusing to show where donated money is going to. Corruption within the church could be halted if the congregation knew where and how much money was leaving the church’s coffers.
Democracy
The Coptic Orthodox Church like that of the Egyptian government has been led by strong men who are desperate not to give representation to their oppressed subjects. Not many Copts in the land of immigration know that we like our Catholic compatriots have a parliament one that is in charge of the inner dealings of the mother church. The Coptic Parliament or the Maglis al-Melli, is an institution that was created in 1874 to oversee the affairs of the Coptic community and manage church endowments. Briefly during the reign of Pope Cyril it activities came to a virtual freeze in 1956, but were revived in the 1970s. Al Ahram Weekly evaluates the voter restrictions that are placed on average church goers:
Council elections have been plagued in the past by low voter turnout and many blame the strict conditions for voter registration. Under the council's statutes, voters must be over 25 years old and have either a university degree or be registered as a businessman or land owners. These pre-conditions are dismissed by some detractors as "unconstitutional" and blamed, along with the apathy of many Copts, for poor turnout. Only 4,000 Copts are currently registered to vote.
This council has been in the past been a tool to further the rights of the Copts, but currently it is being controlled completely by our Pope Shenouda III. Presently there are no independent council members, nor are there any opposition members who do not have the backing of our Pope.
Even local church councils in the land of immigration follow this same trend of putting extreme power of the church’s finances in the hands of the priest. For the last twenty years my church has participated in ‘democratic’ elections that would even make President Mubarak blush. Just recently due to pressure from the congregation, mostly from my parents, did my priest allow true elections for the church council, one in which voters were chosen individually from amongst the congregation in true democratic elections.
Conclusion
The Coptic nation has endured discrimination on a large scale for many centuries. For over three hundred years our ancestors endured countless horrors so that future generations can keep the Christianity deep rooted in Egypt. As we approach a new era of political freedoms, many Copts should stand up to their Clergy and demand reform from the politically inept leadership. Corruption is rampant within the walls of our churches and it is about time that we as a nation stand up and help each other instead of giving in to our greedy urges. Thousands of Copts each year convert to Islam not for their love of the religion but because they lack food, shelter and an occupation. Our church isn’t poor, nor is our race. God has given us what discrimination took away; we still control the economy and are the most educated citizens of Egypt. Let’s work together in solving our Church’s problems instead of pretending there isn’t a problem. My story is similar to that our my race, we stay silent about abuse, discrimination and corruption until it is too late.
posted by Koptikjihad at
6:20 PM
5 Comments:
Thanks for dropping by my blog. I appreciate your comment and I'm curious to know how you heard about the blog, etc... I couldn't find an email address in your profile so I had to drop these lines here.
Ok.. I can't agree better that the Coptic Orthodox Church is in deep trouble. As far as I'm concerned, I see more Church problems in the theological/spiritual side than in the sociopolitical one.
However, most of the issues you raise are true and serious.
First of all let me disagree on the word "race" that keeps shocking me from time to time. I don't call "coptic" a race by any means: we're not Latinos nor African Americans. Ethnically we're a bunch of Mediterraneans mixed with Arabs (not very racially different from Greek, Italians, or even North Africans).
Second, I tend to substancially agree on most of your stuff (except for the divorce point).
To a more detailed comment:
- I personally don't think that you should blame the childhood "verbal abuse" on the church. Although I agree with you that there is as much corruption in the church "enterprise" as anywhere else (and maybe even more), I just don't see the deacons' inappropriate behavior as one of the major church problems.
-"I’m not a fan of Michael Munier or his tactics of twisting facts in the favor of our ‘uber-discriminated’ race."
I am not either. Let me know how can we work together to let him know that.
- Your version of Wafaa Constantine story sounds the most sober among the versions I heard; still, it would be nice if you support it with some sources. I would love to believe it.
- I would love to hear your "non-archaic" interpretation of the Bible that will solve the divorce problem!
- "Our church unfortunately has abandoned these victims and has not demanded justice for thirty Copts who have died without justice." What else could the Coptic Church have done? Resort to violence? They used all the steps of legal justice, and the legal system failed them.
I don't hate the patriarchal system, it just needs a serious monitoring by the congregations. Compared to the Egyptian society in general, the church congregations are more aware of their rights and have been monitoring clergy corruption more and more in the latest years.
As for the Pope Shenouda monopoly of power, this should be seriously resisted. It's a fatal mistake that he controls the "Magels Melli" and it's a "constitutional error" that he all the council's members into deacons.
As for my vision of the Church problems, it has to do with:
- The apologetic theology that has not changed much since the golden centuries (3rd to 5th).
- The defensive faith, the resort to miracles, the fear of Muslims and Islam...
- Mixing up spirituality and ethics
- The mentally retarded Sunday School teachers for kids
- The ultra-conservative wing controlling most of the Church Education
etc...
Why don't you start your own 'post' on this R?
I believe you may make use of Coptic, but not Orthodox, insights in this.
Hehe.. Aladdin
Do you mean my Coptic Orthodox insights will not be "orthodox" (lower case) or my Coptic orthodox insights will be anti-Orthodox ?? :)
I need to start my own posts on many things; but I have much work to do, and many more things...
Where are you "myfingerisonthebutton" to comment back?
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