“There is no need for a novel to create even more tension and hatred against us,” said Maria Boutros, a 38-year-old Egyptian housewife and mother of four.
The ‘us’ she’s referring to is Egyptian Christians, and the novel she’s referring to is Yussif Zeidan’s novel Azazeel (titled Beelzebub in English), which met with little fanfare in Egypt until it won the Arab world’s version of the Booker Prize. Set in 5th-century Egypt, before Islam spread to the Nile Valley, the story takes place at a time when Christians (Coptic Christians to be exact) dominated Egyptian culture and political life.
Boutros is one of many Coptic Christians who want the government to intervene, as the Egyptian authorities did in 2007 when they banned The Da Vinci Code. The Coptic community—which accounts for roughly 10 percent of the nation’s 80 million citizens—had raised alarm and demanded that both the book and movie be banned.
Now, three years on, Zeidan’s bestselling novel is is prompting angry demands from that same community. In early May a group of Coptic lawyers demanded that the government imprison the author for five years, arguing that he “defamed the Christian religion.”
In 2008, when it was first published Azazeel did create a minor furor among those in the Coptic community who felt it was an attack against the Coptic Orthodox Church based in Alexandria. But critics have argued that the book is a historical piece that means to deal with religion generally, using Christianity as a base for the narrative. Zeidan himself has said in previous interviews that the text is about how all religions can and have been “manipulated for worldly gains” and how, in the name of religious injustice, hatred, and cruelty have been committed.
No Such Thing as Freedom of Speech
Boutros and the Coptic lawyers read the novel as a personal attack on their faith. “It is unacceptable that Christians are treated this way and that Muslims can attack us now in writing as well as on the streets,” she adds.
The lawyers have referred to Article 98 of the Egyptian Penal Code as justification for their demands of imprisoning the author. In an open statement to the Egyptian General Prosecutor, they called for the author to be tried for “contempt of the Christian religion and verbal abuse of Copts.”
Naguib Gobrail, one of the lawyers and President of the Egyptian Human Rights Federation, has argued that “Muslims attack Christians in as many ways as they can because of their hatred for our beliefs.” He added that there is “no such thing as freedom of speech when there are blatant attacks against an entire religious community.”
Ironically, in an earlier interview, Gobrail spoke out and supported the European cartoonists who drew caricatures of the Prophet Mohamed wearing a bomb as a turban. He said at the time that freedom of expression “should be upheld no matter what.”
These contradictions have left human rights groups flustered. “They can’t have it both ways,” begins Hany Zaki, an Egyptian pharmacist who said he read the book and sees it much differently than those who have been outraged. “This is a book and it is someone’s vision of a story. We can either take it or leave it. As a Coptic community we have to be open to critical views of religion, our religion and accept that there are dark things that have occurred in the name of Jesus Christ. This is history,” he adds.
Of course, history is littered with incidents of violence and corruption in the name of religion. It is ironic, rights groups argue, that the Coptic community in Egypt is taking a page out of fundamentalism’s book in attacking the author.
One Egyptian writer, who asked not to be named as concern over a possible court case gains steam, says that Islamic conservatives were quick to attack Salman Rushdie over his Satanic Verses and death threats and fatwas were issued against the Indian author. “Now, the Coptic community appears to be doing the exact same thing and while it hasn’t gotten a lot of attention in the West, it shows that it doesn’t matter what religion you are, there are fanatics on both sides,” he argues.
This is the crux of the matter, he and other advocates for free speech believe. Communities cannot demand full rights and then at the same time “revert back to the same strategies they would find abhorrent because it might offend. This is literature and art, it isn’t for everyone, but we can never censor a text because the point might not be agreeable to all,” adds the author.
And he concludes: “I think the situation shows one major truth for the region and that is that we all are full of hate and do not allow opposing beliefs to enter into a discussion.”
