The Copts of Egypt: The Challenges of Modernisation and Identity Reprint Edition

H.E. Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Former Secretary-General of the United Nations (1992-1997)

This book represents a major departure in the current historiography of modern Egyptian history and is a very significant contribution to the field. Vivian Ibrahim presents a fresh and much needed study on the Coptic community, highlighting the internal division vis-à-vis the process of modernisation. She presents an extraordinary case involving a group of Coptic youths who kidnapped the Coptic Pope, in post-revolutionary Egypt, in order to push their political and religious agenda, clearly showing the necessity to break away from past policies, de facto presenting a new portrayal of what has been often presented as a homogeneous and vulnerable community. The book will be of interest to all scholars of modern Egyptian history and politics but also to those interested in the history of the Copts as a Christian minority in the Middle East.

Roberto Mazza, Assistant Professor of History, Western Illinois University

This is an important and timely book which challenges the standard portrayal of identity politics in the modern history of Egypt and of the Arab Middle East. By bringing together a multiplicity of Coptic voices, groups and tensions Vivian Ibrahim skilfully deconstructs and questions a number of assumptions on the Copts including the persecuted minority discourse and essentialist representation of the community as a unified religious entity. She does so meticulously through a diligent mining of an impressive range of Arabic and English sources which allow the author to unveil unexplored facets of community state/relations and, most originally, the changing socio-economic, institutional and ideological foundations which underscored the evolution of a fractured Coptic polity. This book is community history at its best, an essential critical read for those interested in Egyptian nation and state building as well as in the history of Middle Eastern Christians.

Nelida Fuccaro, Reader in the Modern History of the Arab Middle East, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London

An informative and insightful description of the roots and evolution of modern Coptic identity and how it responded to and, at times, managed to influence the Egyptian state’s national narrative. This story gains special importance with the increasing sectarianism in Egypt and political Islam’s ascent to power. –Tarek Osman, author of Egypt on the Brink