Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt

Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt
Title Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt PDF eBook
Author Mina Ibrahim
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 340
Release 2022-11-30
Genre Religion
ISBN 3031101790

Download Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book, first ethnographic attempt, examines negated spaces, practices, and relationships that have been intentionally or unintentionally dismissed from academic and non-academic studies, articles, reports, and policy papers that investigate and debate the experiences of Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt. By taking the Coptic identity and faith to bars, liquor stores, coffeehouses, weed gatherings, prisons, casinos, night clubs, brothels, dating applications, and porn sites, this book argues that airing out this “dirty laundry” points to the limits of victimhood and activist narratives that shape the representation of Coptic grievances and interests on both national and international levels. By introducing misfits who exist in the shadows of the well-studied Coptic rituals, traditions, miracles, saints’ apparitions, and street protests, the book highlights the contradiction between the centrality of sin to the (Coptic) Christian tradition and theology, on one hand, and on the other hand the dismissal of lives that are dominantly labelled as sinful while simultaneously studying Copts as agents or victims of history and in today’s Egyptian society. Drawing on many years of fieldwork accompanied and preceded by periods the author spent as a student and a lay servant in different forms of services in the Coptic Orthodox Church, the book acknowledges the recent anthropological work that is critical of how the secular West and its academia misrepresent God and His believers in the Middle East. However, the fact that this book extends its arguments from “ethnographic confessions” collected from who deal with God on a daily basis since their childhood, it investigates the implications and consequences of inviting God to be part of an anthropological study that complicates aspects of repentance and salvation among the largest Christian minority in the Middle East.

Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt

Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt
Title Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt PDF eBook
Author Mina Ibrahim
Publisher
Pages 0
Release 2022
Genre
ISBN 9783031101809

Download Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book, first ethnographic attempt, examines negated spaces, practices, and relationships that have been intentionally or unintentionally dismissed from academic and non-academic studies, articles, reports, and policy papers that investigate and debate the experiences of Coptic Orthodox Christians in Egypt. By taking the Coptic identity and faith to bars, liquor stores, coffeehouses, weed gatherings, prisons, casinos, night clubs, brothels, dating applications, and porn sites, this book argues that airing out this "dirty laundry" points to the limits of victimhood and activist narratives that shape the representation of Coptic grievances and interests on both national and international levels. By introducing misfits who exist in the shadows of the well-studied Coptic rituals, traditions, miracles, saints' apparitions, and street protests, the book highlights the contradiction between the centrality of sin to the (Coptic) Christian tradition and theology, on one hand, and on the other hand the dismissal of lives that are dominantly labelled as sinful while simultaneously studying Copts as agents or victims of history and in today's Egyptian society. Drawing on many years of fieldwork accompanied and preceded by periods the author spent as a student and a lay servant in different forms of services in the Coptic Orthodox Church, the book acknowledges the recent anthropological work that is critical of how the secular West and its academia misrepresent God and His believers in the Middle East. However, the fact that this book extends its arguments from "ethnographic confessions" collected from who deal with God on a daily basis since their childhood, it investigates the implications and consequences of inviting God to be part of an anthropological study that complicates aspects of repentance and salvation among the largest Christian minority in the Middle East. Mina Ibrahim is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Marburg and an affiliate researcher at the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO). He is also the project coordinator of the MENA Prison Forum (MPF) and the founder of SARD for History and Social Research (Shubra's Archive).

Devotion to the Administrative State

Devotion to the Administrative State
Title Devotion to the Administrative State PDF eBook
Author Mona Oraby
Publisher Princeton University Press
Pages 328
Release 2024-03-26
Genre Social Science
ISBN 0691250669

Download Devotion to the Administrative State Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Why the pursuit of state recognition by seemingly marginal religious groups in Egypt and elsewhere is a devotional practice Over the past decade alone, religious communities around the world have demanded state recognition, exemption, accommodation, or protection. They make these appeals both in states with a declared religious identity and in states officially neutral toward religion. In this book, Mona Oraby argues that the pursuit of official recognition by religious minorities amounts to a devotional practice. Countering the prevailing views on secularism, Oraby contends that demands by seemingly marginal groups to have their religious differences recognized by the state in fact assure communal integrity and coherence over time. Making her case, she analyzes more than fifty years of administrative judicial trends, theological discourse, and minority claims-making practices, focusing on the activities of Coptic Orthodox Christians and Baháʼí in modern and contemporary Egypt. Oraby documents the ways that devotion is expressed across a range of sites and sources, including in lawyers’ offices, administrative judicial verdicts, televised media and film, and invitation-only study sessions. She shows how Egypt’s religious minorities navigated the political and legal upheavals of the 2011 uprising and now persevere amid authoritarian repression. In a Muslim-majority state, they assert their status as Islam’s others, finding belonging by affirming their difference; and difference, Oraby argues, is the necessary foundation for collective life. Considering these activities in light of the global history of civil administration and adjudication, Oraby shows that the lengths to which these marginalized groups go to secure their status can help us to reimagine the relationship between law and religion.

Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt

Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt
Title Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt PDF eBook
Author Sara Salem
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 317
Release 2020-04-30
Genre History
ISBN 1108491510

Download Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Through Gramsci and Fanon, Salem centers anticolonial politics by exploring the connections between Egypt's moment of decolonization and the 2011 revolution.

Exiled Activism

Exiled Activism
Title Exiled Activism PDF eBook
Author David McKeever
Publisher Routledge
Pages 167
Release 2020-10-29
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1000209032

Download Exiled Activism Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

This book examines the relationship between exile and activism. Drawing on interviews with activists exiled to England following the military coup d’état in Egypt as an illustrative case, it considers whether exile presents any barrier to meaningful political participation. Through a comparison of activism in Egypt with exiled activism in England, the author explores the mechanisms mediating the changes in the activists’ activities, tracing the conditions for exile in institutions of dictatorship and shedding light on the process by which activism is decertified and fear of repression becomes internalised within a movement - a process that is counteracted in the sanctuary and stability of a host country in which activist networks are founded and the exile repertoire is expanded. A significant contribution to social movement theory, this book will appeal to sociologists and political scientists with interests in political mobilisation and contentious politics.

Inside the Muslim Brotherhood

Inside the Muslim Brotherhood
Title Inside the Muslim Brotherhood PDF eBook
Author Khalīl ʻAnānī
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 225
Release 2016
Genre Political Science
ISBN 0190279737

Download Inside the Muslim Brotherhood Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Inside the Muslim Brotherhood provides a comprehensive analysis of the organization's identity, organization, and activism in Egypt since 1981. It also explains the Brotherhood's durability and its ability to persist in spite of regime repression and exclusion over the past three decades.

The Myth of Persecution

The Myth of Persecution
Title The Myth of Persecution PDF eBook
Author Candida Moss
Publisher Harper Collins
Pages 247
Release 2013-03-05
Genre Religion
ISBN 0062104543

Download The Myth of Persecution Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In The Myth of Persecution, Candida Moss, a leading expert on early Christianity, reveals how the early church exaggerated, invented, and forged stories of Christian martyrs and how the dangerous legacy of a martyrdom complex is employed today to silence dissent and galvanize a new generation of culture warriors. According to cherished church tradition and popular belief, before the Emperor Constantine made Christianity legal in the fourth century, early Christians were systematically persecuted by a brutal Roman Empire intent on their destruction. As the story goes, vast numbers of believers were thrown to the lions, tortured, or burned alive because they refused to renounce Christ. These saints, Christianity's inspirational heroes, are still venerated today. Moss, however, exposes that the "Age of Martyrs" is a fiction—there was no sustained 300-year-long effort by the Romans to persecute Christians. Instead, these stories were pious exaggerations; highly stylized rewritings of Jewish, Greek, and Roman noble death traditions; and even forgeries designed to marginalize heretics, inspire the faithful, and fund churches. The traditional story of persecution is still taught in Sunday school classes, celebrated in sermons, and employed by church leaders, politicians, and media pundits who insist that Christians were—and always will be—persecuted by a hostile, secular world. While violence against Christians does occur in select parts of the world today, the rhetoric of persecution is both misleading and rooted in an inaccurate history of the early church. Moss urges modern Christians to abandon the conspiratorial assumption that the world is out to get Christians and, rather, embrace the consolation, moral instruction, and spiritual guidance that these martyrdom stories provide.