Egyptian movie confronts sectarian rift

Nadia Abou el Magd, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: July 21. 2008 12:29AM UAE / July 20. 2008 8:29PM GMT

Omar Sharif (right) as an Imam, rescues Leb Leba and Mohamed Imam, playing the wife and son of a priest in the Egyptian film Hassan and Marcos Courtesy of Good News Group

CAIRO // A new big-budget comedy starring two of Egypt’s most famous actors is attempting to defuse escalating tensions between the country’s Muslim and Christian populations.

In Hassan and Marcos Omar Sharif and Adel Imam play a Muslim preacher and Coptic Christian priest who are forced to change their religious identities and go into hiding after both come under fire from fanatics within their respective communities for being too moderate.

The film lightheartedly explores the causes behind the antipathy and mistrust the communities feel toward one another.

“Why are Copts barred from holding important posts in the government? Why is the government always putting obstacles in front of building new churches or even repairing them?” ask Coptic clerics in one scene, at a national unity conference.

“Where did the Copts get their wealth from? Why is the state allowing them to control the country’s economy? Why do they build their churches near the mosques?” their Muslim counterparts reply.

Egyptian society has been on a knife edge in recent years as the gulf between the country’s religious communities widens at a time of growing conservative Islam and dire poverty.

“There is nothing more serious than what we are undergoing now,” said Wassim al Sissy, a Coptic Egyptologist attending a conference on Christian-Muslim relations.

“I am – and we all should be – alarmed by the sectarian wars in Iraq and Lebanon. Sectarian strife is a new Egyptian Aids that is attacking our national immunity.”

The film, which was released two weeks ago and earned more than three million Egyptian pounds (Dh2m) in its first week, hit the screens during a spike in Muslim-Christian animosity.

In May, a Christian monastery in the southern town of Malawi was attacked by armed Muslims and a jewellery shop owned by Copts was robbed at gunpoint, leaving the owner and four of his relatives dead. This month, clashes took place in Fayoum, 50km south of Cairo, over a rumour that a Christian girl who had converted to Islam was kidnapped by her Christian relatives. She had in fact been on holiday in Cairo.

Discrimination against Christians in Egypt – who make up about 10 per cent of the country’s 80 million people – has led to protests in Europe and the United States.

And while several incidents of violence have occurred in recent years, division has become visible in everyday life. Almost all Muslim women now wear the veil and the long Islamic beard has become common among men, while many Christians have taken to wearing large crosses. Cars and taxis are adorned with such religious symbols as Quranic verses, pictures of saints, and copies of the Bible or Quran.

A conference last week that brought together key Muslim and Christian figures, intellectuals and politicians declared that denying the existence of a rift and giving speeches about national unity – traditional responses by the government to the sectarian problem – were no longer acceptable.

“There is no free nation that oppresses each other,” said Rifaat al Saeed, the head of the leftist Tagamu party, to rapturous applause. “This regime imposed itself by force, doesn’t allow the citizens to differ with it, so how do we expect those people to tolerate the other?”

Those in attendance issued a statement at the end of the conference calling for: a law to allow for the construction of places of worship; the review of school textbooks to remove any prejudicial material; an end to dealing with the Muslim-Christian issue as a security matter only; banning minors from conversion to another religion; and censorship of cassettes that call non-Muslims “infidels” or “non-believers”.

But many major political and religious figures still insist there is no discrimination in Egypt.

“All the problems related to Christians in Egypt are made up,” said Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s biggest Islamic group, in a recent interview with the leftist daily Al Badil.

And some reactions to Hassan and Marcos give little cause for hope.

Activists on the website Facebook launched a group accusing Adel Imam, a Muslim, of apostasy for playing a Coptic priest in the film. Under the slogan “A call to all Muslims, boycott Christian Adel Imam”, the group accuses him of promoting Christianity and discourages Muslims from attending the movie.

Still, thousands of Egyptians have already gone to see Hassan and Marcos, and most were impressed with the movie’s timely message of national unity. “A film with such a name is a frank call for national unity,” said May el Telmesany, an Egyptian novelist. “But the movie wrongly tried to equate Christian fanaticism with Muslim fanaticism, which is stronger and oppresses moderate Muslims too.

“It’s the duty of the majority to protect the minority,” she said. “Christians are neither angels nor devils, but most importantly, they are Egyptians before anything else.”

nmagd@thenational.ae