Egypt's Copts Stand Up to the Muslim Brotherhood

Egypt after President Hosni Mubarak’s abdication has left Coptic Christians in a quandary. Mubarak relied on notoriously undemocratic means to maintain power. But across 30 years he also restrained radical elements from further marginalizing Egypt’s largest religious minority. Experts and practitioners from Lebanon, Iran, Egypt, Syria, and Sudan articulated these conflicting sentiments at the second annual Coptic Solidarity Conference in Washington, DC earlier this month. Coptic Solidarity was founded to empower the Copts in Egypt toward “full and inalienable citizenship rights and inequality,” according to their mission statement.

While speakers did not harken for President Mubarak to return, they were reticent about how to preserve religious freedom in his absence. “It is very important that we are all united,” Dr. Walid Phares, a Lebanese-American counterterrorism expert, emphasized.