Unwelcome Here

By Sally Bishai

Everyone knows how Black Americans were barred from certain lunch counters and water fountains in the recent past. But what people may not realize is that this appearance-based discrimination has not gone the way of the cavemen—even though the whole “judging by looks” thing is obviously a relic of more Neanderthal times.

See, the “cavemen,” whom I do NOT believe came from apes and tadpoles and whom I am not even sure I believe in, had to judge at first sight because if they didn’t, they could be eaten by some scary animal, or else killed by a poisoned spear or arrow or whatever weapons they had back then.

Makes sense, doesn’t it?

In the world of communication theory, we also have several notions that fall nicely into step with the aforementioned cavemen one, although my modern brethren generally tend to couch positive and negative discrimination in such terms as “energy-saving frameworks for determination” and the like, suggesting that a person may shy away from a person of certain races because of their previous negative experiences with them.

As with the cavemen thing, it makes sense, although this “assuming the worst” (or best, for that matter) mentality may cause us to miss out on a wonderful friendship or opportunity.

But that’s not what today’s topic is (surprise, surprise).

Rather, I wanted to share a tale from my last trip to Egypt. Don’t tune out just yet, the moral of the story is actually universally generalisable.

Anyway, there I was. In the city of my dreams, the place I’ve been haunted by since childhood, and longed for twice as long. Alexandria!

Despite a 6-year absence from my honorary hometown, not much had changed there.

The foul (fava bean, pronounced “fooool,” not like “foul,” as in, erm, horrible) sandwiches at Lotfi’s cart were still kind of horrible, the scent of jasmine still assaulted my nostrils in the best possible manner, once I got within a mile of Abdo, a flower-wreath vendor whom I’d been seeing next to my friend’s apartment since I was about five.

Some things changed, however. The percentage of women who had elected to don the higab (veil) had leapt exponentially, and more of those women than I had expected were cloaked in head-to-toe black (abaya/shroud, face mask, gloves… check my blog for a photo), in the Muslim Brotherhood style.

A friend there even told me that over 97% of Muslim women were veiled now, making the unveiled—either Christians or tourists—stand out even more.

I didn’t realize the implications of this until my friend Samia and I went shopping. I had determined to buy a new blouse to wear under my favorite black suit, and Samia immediately whisked me off to the most fashionable store she could think of.

While I didn’t find anything that caught my eye just there, I did find some shoes in the store next door. The store owner, whilst wrapping up my new 3-inch-heels, referred me to yet another store, when I told him what I’d been looking for.

He was right. I fell in love with an orange sequined tank top in the store window and bustled in for a closer look.

I pointed the shirt out to the lady behind the counter, who’d been eyeing me and Samia suspiciously since she first laid (beady) eyes on us.

I didn’t know what the problem was… After all, Samia and I were not only better-dressed, but obviously more wealthy than any of the dour-faced, veiled women around us. And I don’t look SO foreign that someone would automatically peg me an American or non-Egyptian.

The lady behind the counter shook her head and frowned sternly at me.

Maybe my accent was worse than I had imagined? I nudged Samia to say it for me.

“No, that shirt is not for you,” the lady said. I was speechless. How did SHE know? And furthermore, how did she know it was even for me?

“Uh… well, it’s not for me, it’s for her,” I said, struck by a flash of insight; maybe the matron didn’t think the shirt would fit me, so I foisted it off on my anorexic-looking friend, Samia.

No go.

“No, that is not for you. How about that?” she asked, gesturing to a navy abaya. I frowned, not bothering to tell her that I was unveiled for a reason, and that reason was that I wasn’t Muslim.

I must’ve hesitated too long, because a girl came up and snatched the shirt from me, after a token “You’re not getting that, are you?”

My jaw struggled to stay off the floor.

The lady turned away and rang MY tank top up for the girl. Who was veiled.

Samia grabbed my arm and steered me outside before I could give the matron a piece of my mind.

“Look, there’s nothing you can do. That’s just how it is. You knew that,” she said in a quiet voice.

Yes, I knew that a Christian couldn’t be the dean in a college, I knew that a Christian could be kidnapped in a village, or shoved on a city bus, but I had no idea that my being unveiled could make me less likely to buy an orange-sequined tank top!

The more I thought about it—the more I was able to picture the thousand little indignities that Christians in Egypt have to go through in the course of a normal day—the angrier I got.

Until I realized that I’m usually on the other end of the very same equation; when I go shopping for a Chanel lipstick, the attendants trip over themselves to help me out, but snub someone who’s wearing tattered jeans and a t-shirt.

When I go into a store in a less-exalted part of town, the owner looks infinitesimally less on- his-guard, upon seeing my benign countenance.

And the greeters at Sam’s Club never even hazard a glance at my store membership card. (Oh, they don’t look at anyone’s, do they..)

So why should I be so annoyed that, for once, my race (or lack thereof), my financial status, or my relatively non-threatening appearance didn’t save me?

Because.

Being denied a job or the guarantee of safety makes the discriminated-against feel like he’s suffering for an actual cause. But there’s nothing noble about being denied an orange sequined tank top because I happen to have been the only girl in the store who wasn’t veiled. (Apart from Samia, obviously.)

Don’t ask me what my point is in shedding the light on this maybe singly-occurring event, and don’t expect me to be able to give you any form of statistic on its happening within The Dear Land (as Egyptians call their home).

Although I should tell you right now that a non-Samia friend in Alexandria has recently informed me that this is actually beginning to happen a lot, and that people are starting to call the higab “the mark of the beast,” hearkening back to Revelations (in the Bible) where it says that you can’t buy or sell without the mark. (Hey, it could be true, and just because I think that may be taking it a bit far doesn’t mean that I’m right…far be it from me to stand in the way of anyone’s imagination..)

Do expect me to keep up my campaign of shedding the light on these inequalities, no matter how small they may be.

And expect me to keep praying for and working towards the day when all citizens of Egypt will be treated equally, when all religions will be equally accepted in America (ahem, ACLU..), and when all humans are valued for the mere fact that they were made in the image of a Creator who has carved us in the palm of His hand.

Muslim Medical Professor Fights For Coptic Colleague, and Other Big News

By Sally Bishai

This week has certainly been a busy one!

For one, 12 well-known figures have put their John Hancock on an anti-Islamist manifesto. (More on that in a minute, though.)

In other news, Dr. Salem Ahmad Sallam, distinguished Egyptian and professor—and Head of El Menya University’s Department of Pediatrics—has stood up for his fellow Egyptians.

Professor Sallam—a Muslim—has resigned from his post at the university in protest of the discrimination against Copts that’s practiced there.

So Dr. Sallam, in stepping down from his esteemed position, has stood up for equality.

His resignation said:

“Dear Mr. President of the University,

I would like you to accept my resignation from heading the department of pediatrics to protest the antagonistic practices by the medical teaching staff against the resident Mira Maher Raouf (a Coptic female physician) in order to prevent her from holding a teaching post solely because of her faith. In addition, I’m protesting the university’s negligence in addressing such grave matter despite the abhorrent mistreatment and injustice against the (Coptic) physician.

Upholding citizenship rights is of great importance in order to achieve a comprehensive development of the Egyptian society in all aspects. There is no citizenship rights without providing an equal opportunity to everyone regardless of their religious affiliations.”

Now that we’ve finished with the news that really hits home, we can move onto this manifesto thing.

WARNING: I am not endorsing this, I am only sharing it because some Arab friends of mine have claimed that no American paper will ever run this. I have news for them, though…

“After having overcome fascism, Nazism, and Stalinism, the world now faces a new totalitarian global threat: Islamism.

We, writers, journalists, intellectuals, call for resistance to religious totalitarianism and for the promotion of freedom, equal opportunity and secular values for all.

The recent events, which occurred after the publication of drawings of Muhammed in European newspapers, have revealed the necessity of the struggle for these universal values.

This struggle will not be won by arms, but in the ideological field. It is not a clash of civilisations nor an antagonism of West and East that we are witnessing, but a global struggle that confronts democrats and theocrats.

Like all totalitarianisms, Islamism is nurtured by fears and frustrations. The hate preachers bet on these feelings in order to form battalions destined to impose a liberticidal and unegalitarian world. But we clearly and firmly state: nothing, not even despair, justifies the choice of obscurantism, totalitarianism and hatred. Islamism is a reactionary ideology which kills equality, freedom and secularism wherever it is present. Its success can only lead to a world of domination: man’s domination of woman, the Islamists’ domination of all the others. To counter this, we must assure universal rights to oppressed or discriminated people.

We reject « cultural relativism », which consists in accepting that men and women of Muslim culture should be deprived of the right to equality, freedom and secular values in the name of respect for cultures and traditions. We refuse to renounce our critical spirit out of fear of being accused of “Islamophobia”, an unfortunate concept which confuses criticism of Islam as a religion with stigmatisation of its believers.

We plead for the universality of freedom of expression, so that a critical spirit may be exercised on all continents, against all abuses and all dogmas.
We appeal to democrats and free spirits of all countries that our century should be one of Enlightenment, not of obscurantism.”

12 signatures
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Chahla Chafiq
Caroline Fourest
Bernard-Henri Lévy
Irshad Manji
Mehdi Mozaffari
Maryam Namazie
Taslima Nasreen
Salman Rushdie
Antoine Sfeir
Philippe Val
Ibn Warraq

(Visit Jyllands Posten for more information on this.)

All in all, two seemingly positive developments for the week, hmm? May these seeds take root and bring about more widespread—and positive—changes around the world!

(Now, if only I can ace my statistics exam later today…)

Converting Copts? Seeking Civility and Safety in Egypt, Part II

By Sally Bishai

In yesterday’s column, “Kidnapping Copts,” I wrote of the stream of kidnappings—disputed by some—alleged to occur in modern Egypt. Today, however, I’ll focus on the underlying and undisputable problem, which is that of coerced conversion.

As I said before, I think the true problem is that the Copts aren’t prepared for the eventuality of a kidnapping, despite the fact that all Copts living in the villages and in the Diaspora have heard of these atrocities—the villagers because it happens to them, and the Diasporics because they’re the only Copts who can speak out with any modicum of freedom.

You may have noticed that I left out the mention of Copts living in the city.

You may be wondering why I would do such a thing.

The only answer to that is because many of them simply don’t know.

Since the police—a veritable arm of the government—oftentimes take the opposing side of any struggle involving Copts, the media (also run by the government) can’t really be expected to sound the alarm about someone that their sister organization indirectly helped to keep missing.

I have many friends and contacts in Cairo and Alexandria, and, despite the fact that they’re “closer to the action,” I can tell you that they hear much of their “Coptic Kidnapping News” from me.

And some of them don’t even believe it.

They claim that the girls are runaways who were too chicken to confront their families with an issue that was upsetting them.

They imagine that these girls may have fallen in love with a young man from church, or perhaps, a Muslim who had no interest in converting the girl, and prefer to believe that she merely ran away to make a new life for herself.

This mentality—-when applied in a sweeping stroke to all the missing girls—-ignores several facts, however.

For one, many girls who are found later have a curious marking on their wrist, where their Coptic tattoo used to be.

This mark is something of a concavity, resulting from the knife—-or stone—-that excised the cross from their skin.

Another thing that skeptics might consider is the fact that people make “jokes” (“Hey Mina, you should be careful. You could really hurt yourself next time. Maybe if you converted, this kinda stuff wouldn’t happen…Ha ha!”) or veiled threats or carry out extortions relating to conversion—all over Egypt.

For example, I recently heard from a lady who related an experience she had in one of the larger—and more cosmopolitan—cities in Egypt last month:

“I have a seventh-floor apartment in a building with one elevator. In my recent trip to Egypt, I was told by the doorman that I’d have to convert to Islam if I wanted to use the elevator. Otherwise, I’d have to pay a thousand dollars. I wondered if he was joking—after all, I’d been away from Egypt for years; maybe the jokes were different now?—but quickly learned that he wasn’t. I made him a counteroffer of half. He declined it and brought out his original offer. I refused, and was forced to cut my stay short because of arthritis in my knees.”

My question would be, was the doorman intent on getting a conversion, or was he using his religion as an excuse to extort money? (This reminds me of the jizia, whereby non-Muslims had to—-in the days and years after the Arab Invasion to Egypt—-pay this humiliation tax to Muslims.)

Another person I recently spoke with told me of her recent conversations with a girl who had gone missing for a year, and was convinced that this girl—-and others—-had, indeed, been kidnapped.

I did mention an idea to help prevent future kidnappings, though, didn’t I.

In short, it’s a legal document that will make it impossible to allege that the girl was seduced into leaving, or simply a runaway.

It would be accomplished by having all girls sign a form (in triplicate) stating that they will never breach the official conversion protocol, which means that they would promise to meet with the local priest even once if they were considering a conversion.

Also, that they would contact their families if, in fact, they did want to convert.

It would not be a form promising that they would never convert.

This may sound like a lot of hullabaloo over nothing, but the truth is that if a form such as this were distributed and signed, the police wouldn’t have a legal leg to stand on if a girl “went missing,” because the U.S. Senators and members of congress and human rights advocates would never let this go, and would intervene.

And for those who feel that foreign intervention in Egypt is a four-letter-word, look at it this way: As U.S. Copts Association president Michael Meunier recently told me, “When President Bush calls Mubarak on the phone and says ‘there are some people in jail, I want them out,’ that is foreign intervention, and we can’t say we’re against that because it results in good things, and doesn’t harm Egypt’s image or security.” (For more of my interview with Michael, visit Channel X from X Culture Magazine .)

Back to the form, one copy would be kept with the church, one with the family, and one with a foreign (non-Egyptian) association.

This way, no Muslims can be accused of kidnapping a girl (if they didn’t), no Christians can be accused of defecting (if they didn’t), and maybe, just maybe, we can move past this religious divide and remember that before religion came into the picture, we were all Children of Kemet!