The Christian Minority in the Time of Revolution: Social Change and the Possibilities of Encounter across Religions

The true reason behind the sectarian crisis in Egypt appears to be the restriction of the modernist project of the foundation of a modern State within formal frameworks without real content, a thing which deprived citizenship of any social content, reducing it to legal and Constitutional texts without any relationship with reality. Christians have experienced full citizenship and equality only in the time of revolutions, in which they actively participated for two centuries. Even though the 2011 January Revolution did not realize its goals, after stumbling for three years, it nevertheless caused a deep change in society. Signs of a full citizenship’s implementation have, in fact, started to appear – although outside the State’s framework – in parties and syndicates. The main change regarding Copts’ issues, after the 2011 January Revolution, is that these are not considered any more only their issues, but there is now a wide sector of Egyptian Muslims who consider them national issues and not sectarian issues.