Current Analysis The Subversive Power of Grief One need not cast one's mind too far back to see that both the Egyptian government and the Coptic Orthodox Church are worried more about the December 11 church bombing's destabilizing potential than about the national unity they spoke of during the state-run funeral. Paul Sedra • 3 min read
Current Analysis Onward, Christian Soldiers For the past 18 months the Israeli government has gradually raised the stakes in its campaign to pressure Palestinian Christians to serve in the Israeli military. In April, Israel upped the ante once again, announcing it would henceforth be issuing enlistment notices to Christians who have graduated Jonathan Cook • 17 min read
MER Article Antoon, Ya Maryam Sinan Antoon, Ya Maryam (Beirut/Baghdad: Dar al-Jamal, 2012). Isis Nusair • 3 min read
MER Article Becoming Armenian in Lebanon Each year in April, the municipality of Burj Hammoud, a densely populated residential and commercial city just east of Beirut, hosts a three-day festival called Badguer, the Armenian word for “image.” Free and open to the public, the event has variously been staged in an old concrete factory, a bloc Joanne Randa Nucho • 14 min read
MER Article With Friends Like These In June 2010, amidst escalating controversy over the construction of a mosque and Islamic community center near the former site of the World Trade Center, two Egyptians found themselves on the receiving end of xenophobic abuse as a crowd accosted them with calls to “go home.” Unbeknownst to the angr Michael Wahid Hanna • 10 min read
MER Article Copts Under Mursi Throughout his 2012 presidential campaign, Muhammad Mursi was keen to emphasize that he would be a president for all Egyptians, not just supporters of the Society of Muslim Brothers, and that he believed in equal citizenship for all, irrespective of religious affiliation. The majority of Egypt’s Cop Mariz Tadros • 11 min read
MER Article Iraqi Christians: A Primer Media coverage in the West can overstate the degree to which Christians are “disappearing” from the Middle East. But one place where such characterizations have merit is Iraq. In the years since the 2003 invasion led by the United States, at least half of Iraq’s Christians have fled the country to e Amanda Ufheil-Somers • 5 min read
MER Article Covering the Christians of the Holy Land Every year around Christmas and Easter, a kind of meta-ritual takes place in which American journalists describe how these holidays are celebrated in the “Holy Land.” It is a long-running story, never stripped of politics. In 1923 , for example, the New York Times published a classically Oriental Amahl Bishara • 15 min read
MER Article From the Editors (Summer 2013) The problems of Christians in the Middle East are often not discussed forthrightly, either in the region or in writings about it. One reason is that, in many ways, the problems of Christians are everyone’s problems -- Israeli occupation hurts Christian and Muslim Palestinians alike, as does second-c The Editors • 3 min read
MER Article Reconstituting the Coptic Community Amidst Revolution Egypt’s Coptic community marked the passing in 2012 of two widely known and influential public figures. The first was the patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Shenouda III, who died on March 17. Shenouda had celebrated the thirtieth anniversary of his enthronement as patriarch the previous Paul Sedra • 12 min read
MER Article Copts in the "Egyptian Fabric" To talk about Egyptian Christians as a “minority” is to open a can of worms. The sensitivity of the relationship between Egyptian Muslims and Christians was evident in 1994 when a conference on minorities in the Middle East, supposed to be held in Cairo, included the Copts of Egypt on its agenda. [1 Karim El-Gawhary • 6 min read
Religion and Political Identity in Bayt Sahour In 1989, the West Bank village of Bayt Sahour made international headlines by staging a successful tax strike against Israeli military authorities. My introduction to Bayt Sahour came six years earlier, in late December 1983, when I attended Latin Christmas Eve celebrations at Manger Square in neigh Glenn Bowman • 12 min read
