I WAS in Egypt recently with a team from CMS Ireland to work on a new resource
video on Muslim-Christian dialogue. It was an ideal land to focus on this subject,
for Egypt is a Biblical land in which the majority Muslims respect and revere
the key Biblical figures associated with this land.
For tourists, Egypt is primarily the land of the Pyramids and the Pharaohs. But
Egypt is also a Biblical land, as much a part of the Holy Land as Palestine and
Israel. This is the land where Joseph was sold into slavery but where his brothers
found refuge from famine. This is the land where Moses and Aaron were born and
from which the Children of Israel were called from slavery into freedom. This
is the land where the Prophets found refuge from persecution. This is the land
of the Septuagint, where the seventy great Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew
Scriptures into Greek and gave us our Old Testament. This is the land where the
Holy Family found safety in exile when Joseph and Mary fled with the Child Jesus.
This is the land where the Evangelist Mark became first Bishop of Alexandria
and where he was martyred.
This is the land of the first monasteries, of the Desert Fathers, of the great
controversialists at the early councils of the Church. Today there are twice
as many Christians in Egypt than in Ireland, and there are more Christians in
Egypt than in all the neighbouring countries of the Middle East put together.
Although Christians are a minority in Egypt today, they are a vibrant community
with active churches and a living faith.
No quiet haven
In Cairo, I stayed in the Anglican Diocesan Guesthouse, overlooking the modern
All Saints' Cathedral. The cathedral, the guesthouse, and an international school
all stand on the island of Zamalek in the middle of the Nile and in the heart
of the Egyptian capital. They are close to the luxury hotels and the playgrounds
and clubs of the rich, but this is no quiet haven or little oasis on the edge
of the desert. Throughout the day, the cathedral campus is thronged with Sudanese
refugees, seeking medical care, legal advice, and help with housing, training
and skills, all provided through Refuge Egypt, a programme attached to the cathedral
and supported by David and Gillian Maganda from Belfast, CMS Ireland's mission
partners in Cairo.
Anglicans are one of the newer members of the Christian family in Egypt, the
oldest churches in Cairo being the Coptic Orthodox and Greek Orthodox. Each tradition
has an authentic place in the Egyptian story and is respected by its neighbours.
In a part of Old Cairo once known as Babylon in Egypt, the Coptic Church of Saint
Sergius is venerated by Muslims and Christians alike as the place where Mary
and Joseph made their home with the Child Jesus when they were refugees; the
nearby Greek Orthodox Patriarchal Monastery of Saint George is a place of pilgrimage
not only for Christians but for Muslims too who also revere the martyred saint.
The Anglican Bishop of the Diocese of Egypt and North Africa, the Right Rev Dr
Mouneer Hanna Anis, is a former medical director of the Harpur Memorial Hospital.
A doctor in Menouf for 21 years before his election as bishop, he has been engaged
in Muslim-Christian dialogue for many years and speaks of the need to move from "conversational
dialogue between our two faiths to that of practical dialogue." The Diocese of
Egypt believes that the way forward in "dialoguing" with Muslims is through the
church offering love – practically demonstrated.
Bishop Mouneer explains the basis for his approach to dialogue, saying that one
of the key goals of the Episcopal Church of Egypt is "to be a bridging church
with other denominations and faiths". The Anglican Church is accepted as a bridge
church by all the other traditions, and we were invited to a special audience
with the Coptic Patriarch, Pope Shenouda III. Despite spells of house imprisonment
in his monastery, Pope Shenouda has brought a new vitality to his church, and
h leads a weekly Bible study in Saint Mark's Cathedral (Al-Qiddis Morcos), which
is the largest church in Africa.
Vision for dialogue
Bishop Mouneer's vision of the Anglican Church as a bridge church extends to
enabling dialogue between Christians and Muslims, and thanks to a large degree
to his efforts Cairo is at the centre of exciting and innovative efforts to establish
Muslim-Christian dialogue on a firm footing. The Al-Azhar Mosque is the highest
Islamic authority in the Middle East and the intellectual heart of Sunni Islam,
and a ground-breaking interfaith agreement was signed there between the Anglican
Communion and the Islamic Community, acknowledging "our common faith in God" and
a "responsibility to witness against indifference to religion on the one hand
and religious fanaticism on the other."
Among the senior officials of the Al-Azhar Mosque we met was Dr Ali el-Samman,
who directs the mosque's programme for dialogue with monotheistic religions.
One of the signatories of the Anglican-Muslim inter-faith agreement, he sees
a new medical project in Sadat City entrusted to the Anglican Church as "an excellent
addition to the projects that advance dialogue between Christians and Muslims."
Many Anglican projects, including the Harpur Memorial Hospital and the Cairo
School for Deaf Children, date back to the early work of Dr Frank Harpur, a CMS
missionary from Co Kilkenny who came to the villages of the Nile Delta in 1889.
Bishop Mouneer emphasises that the Diocese of Egypt believes that an important
ingredient in dialogue with Muslims is provided by the church offering love – practically
demonstrated. The Harpur Memorial Hospital has served the people of Menouf, both
Muslim and Christian, since 1910, and is open to all, regardless of religious
beliefs and background. This hospital, the church-run schools, a new hospital
being built with Irish and EU aid in Sadat City, and the work with the marginalised
in the deprived areas of Alexandria are all practical symbols of this approach
to dialogue.
Alexandria's Greeks
Alexandria is a Mediterranean city that lost much of its multicultural identity
with Nasser's expulsions over fifty years ago but that remains proud of its Greek
founder, Alexander the Great, known in Arabic as Iskander al-Akbar. Alexandria's
Greek theologians gave us much of our theology and doctrine: the debates driven
by Arius, Athanasius and Cyril helped produce our Creeds and define our understandings
of the Trinity and the nature of Christ. Today, the Attarine Mosque takes its
name from the supposed site of the grave of Athanasius, who, despite his Christological
formulas and the anathemas associated with them is still respected by local Muslims
as one of the holy men of the city. Nearby, the Nabi Daniel Mosque, which features
in Laurence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet , is built over a sarcophagus
that many pious Muslims claim is the tomb of the Prophet Daniel. Although this
is the tomb of a later Sufi saint, the claim and the piety associated with it
illustrate once again that Muslims also revere the prophets of the Old Testament.
The legends associated Nabi Daniel later snowballed, and one Egyptian archaeologist
supposed the graves beneath the mosque included the tomb of Alexander the Great.
But if there have been Greeks in Alexandria since Alexander the Great, the Greek
population of the city is declining rapidly, although the Greek Orthodox Church
remains a respected community and the church's leader, Petros VII, is known as
Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa.
In the labyrinthine sidestreets and alleyways behind the Coptic and Greek Patriarchates,
it is still possible to catch a glimpse of the city that was home to so many
poets and writers a century ago or even sooner, inspiring Durrell's Alexandria
Quartet , many of Constantine Cavafy's poems – including The City , Waiting
for the Barbarians and The gods abandon Antony – and the works
of E.M. Forster. Although they are now wholly owned and patronised by Egyptians,
cafés such as Athenios and Trianon still retain their charm with a gently
fading glory that reflects the once vibrant cultural life of the city's Greek
community.
Tourism and tolerance
In recent years, the development of tourist resorts in the Sinai peninsula has
opened a region of Egypt that was once an isolated and remote wilderness. It
was in this wilderness that the Children of Israel wandered for forty years,
and the Greek Orthodox of Saint Catherine stands beneath the summit of Mount
Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments.
Saint Catherine's is the world's oldest, continuously inhabited monastery, and
the 25 monks there make up the world's smallest autonomous Greek Orthodox Church.
Today the monks still tend the Burning Bush, but few visitors notice that within
the walls of the monastery there is an eleventh century mosque, dating back to
pre-Crusade days. The mosque was built by the mad Caliph al-Hakim. Although Hakim's
destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem later became one
of the excuses for the Crusades, his mosque has survived within the monastery
walls as a symbol that in Egypt not only have Christians survived as a minority
within a Muslim society, but that Muslims can survive and find respect as a minority
in a Christian context.
As a testimony to that tolerance, Father Julian pointed out one of the most unusual
treasures in the monastery library. In 635 AD the monks of Mount Sinai sent a
delegation to Medina, asking for Muhammad's patronage and protection. A document
in the library, with the imprint of Muhammad's hand, guarantees that Muslims
would protect the monks and the monastery even under Islamic rule.
Father Julian is now working hard at digitalising all the books and manuscripts
in the library. Scholars will soon have access to the whole collection without
any fear on the part of the monks that their treasures will be plundered: in
the nineteenth century, their most valued manuscript, the Codex Sinaiticus ,
the oldest existing copy of the New Testament and dating from the 4th century,
was "borrowed" from the monastery library has never been returned, and is now
in the British Museum in London.
But modernisation has brought a new danger to the monastery that was never imagined
at the time of the Islamic invasions or when dishonest scholars were pilfering
from the library. Today the monastery's peace and serenity is invaded and disturbed
every morning by coachloads of tourists. The development of the Sinai tourist
resorts has been a mixed blessing for the monks. But theft, tourism and a decline
in vocations to the monastic life have not dampened the monks' sense of hospitality,
their commitment to scholarship, and their openness to dialogue.
Rev Patrick Comerford is Southern Regional Co-ordinator of CMS Ireland. Contact:
theology@ireland.com