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By Michael Kaplan, On
02/03/16
Incense
smoke fills the air as a priest with a salt-and-pepper beard and a
billowing white gown recites Arabic hymns at the pulpit. Rows of
red-cushioned wooden pews gradually fill, and a group of mostly young
women carrying their children squeeze themselves into a
standing space in the back.
Aging
Egyptian men with scruffy chins meet outside by the parking lot, speaking
Arabic. In the lobby, latecomers for a simultaneous English prayer service
upstairs, many of them second-generation Egyptian-Americans, make way for the
staircase, dodging little boys chasing one another in unpredictable directions.
It's a Sunday morning at the Coptic Orthodox Church of Saint Mark in
Jersey City, New Jersey, and the faithful have gathered to pray.
Egyptian
churches across New York and New Jersey have seen their communities swell in
recent years as Egypt has faced political turmoil, a slumping economy and
a growing militant insurgency. The exodus has intensified fears for the future
for Christianity in the Middle East, as some now worry for the fate of Egypt’s
Christians, one of the world’s oldest Christian communities.
“Mostly
they’re coming to find better opportunities because of uncertainties in Egypt,”
said Rev. Markos Ayoub, a priest who leads the Sunday liturgy at
St. Mark in English. “It’s not easy to be a Coptic Christian in the Middle
East these days.”
Asylum
statistics from 2013, the most recent year for which government statistics
are available, show that the number of asylum claims granted to Egyptians
in the U.S. climbed almost 10 times from their 2010 level to 3,102 in
2013. Only Chinese asylum seekers accounted for a greater number of granted
claims, and although the statistics do not separate asylum claims based on
religion, several immigration lawyers said Copts accounted for a vast majority
of their Egyptian clients. Those numbers do not account for people who
came on other types of visas. The New York City region is home to one of the
nation's largest Egyptian enclaves.
Copts
have been flooding out of Egypt since country strongman Hosni Mubarak was
ousted from power as part of the protest movement that swept several
Arab countries in 2011. A void in leadership left by the unrest
allowed hard-line Muslim preachers unrestrained freedom of speech, which often
targeted Christians. In the months that followed, Christian businesses were
attacked, churches were fire-bombed and Christians kidnapped and ransomed.
In
2012, in Egypt’s first democratic election in 30 years, a Muslim
Brotherhood-affiliated party came to power. Christians say the government, led
by Mohammed Morsi, did little to protect them from mob attacks and
increasingly frequent abductions. They charged the newly elected
Islamist government with inciting a new wave of anti-Christian violence
targeted against churches, homes, businesses, shops and schools, and demanded
Morsi take action. Anger rose among Christians after clashes broke out at a Cairo cathedral, resulting
in the death of six Christians. Morsi vowed to protect Christians after
the attack, but many felt his words were hollow.
Jacklyn
and her husband, who declined to give their family name, lived in the
Mediterranean port city of Alexandria and fearfully watched the news,
tracking developments in Muslim-Christian relations. At first the
political turmoil felt far-off, and Jacklyn hardly paid attention to the
political unrest even as Mubarak's regime toppled.
“There
were reports of murders and growing tensions, and that really scared us,”
Jacklyn said in Arabic, speaking in the basement of a crowded Jersey City
church on a recent Sunday.
She
and her husband later won the visa lottery, and they excitedly jumped
on the opportunity to relocate to the U.S., where she joined hundreds of
other Copts, as Egypt's Christians are known, who had recently arrived and were
watching events unfold in Egypt closely.
Back
home, the country’s economy plummeted, and Egyptians widely blamed Morsi for
poor leadership skills amid a gas shortage and surging inflation. They took to the streets in numbers that harkened back to the
protests that ousted Mubarak a year earlier, and as if the prayers of
Christians had been answered, a charismatic military general named Abdel-Fattah
el-Sisi swept in and announced a military takeover in 2013. It was widely
welcomed by Christians and during a carefully choreographed televised address
to the nation, the Coptic pope, Tawadros II, joined the new leader onstage. For
the first time in decades, Egypt had a leader who vowed to mend relations.
Christian
support for Sisi, however, has come with a price. Sisi’s government has been
accused of major human rights abuses, including handing
down mass death sentences to opponents, particularly those from the Muslim
Brotherhood and left-wing activists, who continue to contest his
leadership. After nearly 1,000 Muslim Brotherhood supporters were
killed in 2013 protesting Sisi's military takeover, angry activists went on a
rampage attacking Christians for their support of the new
government. At least 42 churches and many more businesses and homes
were targeted.
Years
later, Christians continue to complain of rampant and systemic discrimination,
and they are virtually shut out from the political sphere. All church construction
and repairs must be approved by authorities, and Christians in rural areas have
frequently been on the receiving end of violent attacks. Human rights groups
say crimes against Christians regularly go unpunished.
“What
they’ve experienced in the past is such a low bar that jumping that bar is not
exactly a feat," Maryam Meseha, vice president of the Coptic Lawyers
Association said, noting that Sisi is widely popular among Copts. "So
when you take Sisi in comparison, of course he’s going to be better than a
40-year dictator or the blubbering disaster that Morsi was."
All
the while, the government faces a growing Islamic insurgency, and extremist
attacks have stretched beyond the Sinai, where an affiliate of the Islamic
State group is based. In Libya last year, 21 Egyptian Christians were beheaded
by ISIS, sending chills through Coptic communities worldwide. And as
of 2015, all Christians in the northern Sinai had fled.
“People
are extremely worried about the future,” said Samuel Tadros, a senior fellow at
the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., who is
himself an Egyptian Christian. “Yes, Egypt looks stable today, but they’re
worried about tomorrow and the day after.”
The
political turmoil of the last five years has hit Egypt’s economy hard. The
government’s fragility has scared off potential investors, and low oil prices
have dampened hopes for a re-emergence on the energy market. Unemployment
remains high, and more than a quarter of the population lives in extreme
poverty. Egypt’s tourism industry, too, has been
affected as terrorist attacks have scared away foreigners. That has
particularly impacted Copts, who frequently took jobs at tourist resorts and
hotels for their relatively high percentage of English speakers and their
willingness to serve alcohol, unlike many of their Muslim compatriots, Tadros
said.
The
instability in Egypt has been felt in New York and New Jersey, where Arabic is
now more commonly spoken in Coptic churches than English. Church populations
have ballooned beyond their capacity, and a steady flow of immigrants has
required churches to start up volunteer wings, hire new priests and expand
their operations. In the Rev. Anthony Basily's tight basement office,
dozens of garbage bags are piled up along the wall with donations for
newcomers, as St. George & St. Shenouda Coptic Orthodox Church in Jersey
City has recently begun a fourth Sunday liturgy to accommodate a population
that has doubled over the last five years.
“We
are still seeing new families sometimes every week, it’s growing very fast,” he
said.
The
flood of Christians out of Egypt comes as other Middle Eastern countries
have seen their populations dwindle in the last few decades. A
century ago, they accounted for some 15 percent of the population in the Middle
East, whereas today they make up just 4 percent, according to the
Economist. They have nearly disappeared in places like Iraq, where
minorities have in particular been targeted by extremist groups.
Copts
make up around 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 80 million, making them
the Middle East’s largest Christian community. They trace their history back to
the very earliest days of Christianity, read some prayers in an ancient Coptic
language and elect their own pope. Their numbers, which range in the
millions, ensure that Christianity won't fade away anytime soon from
Egypt, church leaders said, but fears remain strong as some of the most
influential and wealthy in the community have left.
Sam
Mikhail, who volunteers to help settle new immigrants in the New York City
borough of Queens, said his church has tripled in size with immigrants in the
last five years. St. Mary & St. Antonios Coptic Orthodox Church in
Queens has started up programs to help newcomers with everything from
housing and education to psychological support and welfare
applications. Immigrants often arrive clueless of what to do once in the
U.S. and reach out to churches for help while waiting at the airport with
their belongings and children.
"It’s
a lot of people coming very fast, and it’s not easy to accommodate every single
family or all of their needs,” Mikhail said. “They have to eat, they have to
live … and at the same time, these people are coming from a completely
different culture, a different environment.”
Areas
surrounding churches now teem with people speaking Arabic, who often run their
own grocery stores or fast-food restaurants. Churches are more than just a
place to pray: They often form the core of Coptic social life, with their
congregants generally living in homes and working in shops surrounding the
church.
Neveen,
a mother of two from the northern Egyptian city of Ismailia who declined to
give her full name, said her Jersey City church is the only place she feels
comfortable. It reminds her of her Coptic community back home, which she left
three and a half years ago, just before the Muslim Brotherhood came to power,
as she heard about stepped up attacks against Christians.
Even
as she was ready to board her plane to the U.S., ticket in hand, she kept
second-guessing the decision. She said she had a good life in Egypt up until
the revolution — her husband worked at the post office and made a decent
living — and she was conflicted over leaving her extended family.
Ultimately, she left because she wanted to pave a better future for her two
sons, aged 9 and 12, she said.
“It
was terrible,” Neveen said. “When you leave everything familiar and all that
you love, and then you come to a place you don’t know anyone, you know nothing,
you don’t know what the future holds — I couldn’t process it all.”
Neveen
lives in one of the apartment buildings not far from the church, in a
neighborhood that has filled up with Egyptians in recent years. She rarely ventures
out of the Coptic community, has not yet learned English and hopes some day to
move out to the suburbs. But she longs to eventually return to
Egypt, though she's not sure her children would agree.
“Sometimes
we wonder if we had stayed in Egypt, maybe that would have been better,”
Neveen said. “It was a very hard decision to leave, and for now, the church is
the main thing that helps me. I don’t feel like I’m in America when I’m here.”
“In
my heart, I want to return,” she said.