Belief in Miracles Unites Egypt's Muslims and Coptic Christians

CAIRO, Sept. 21 (RNS)--Three days a week, the hopeful pack a tiny courtyard in the Convent of St. George, tucked behind the dusty cobblestone streets of Cairo's Coptic Christian quarter.

The barren housewife, the man troubled by spirits, the depressed teenager--all await Abuna Farag, a frail Coptic priest with a flowing white beard and a touch, many say, that heals.

A sick brother brought Wafat Kamel here one recent afternoon, her blue headscarf marking her as one of a smattering of Muslims in the crowd.

"People told me there's an abuna who is good with God," Kamel said, using the Egyptian Arabic word for priest. "It's up to God to cure my brother."

Bloodshed and intolerance may divide Egypt's Muslim majority and Coptic Christian minority, but belief in miracles unites many of them. Both faiths crowd Cairo's narrow streets and rural villages during mouleds--feast days for popular Christian saints and Muslim sheiks.

Egypt's folk Islam and Christianity are peppered with relics and wondrous tales. And Egyptians from both religions wait patiently in unkempt lines for local healers like Abuna Farag to splash fistfuls of holy water as a blessing.

So when reported apparitions of the Virgin Mary surfaced in August, Muslims also figured among the Egyptians flocking by the thousands to the southern city of Assiut. The local Coptic clergy too has recorded sightings of a radiant Virgin hovering over St. Mark's church in Assiut, a city remembered best for violent sectarian clashes in the 1990s.

The sightings illustrate the complex play of faith and politics in Egypt, where 90% of the country's 65 million people are Muslim. Unlike the Coptic Church, government-sponsored Sunni Islam considers belief in saints and miracles to be idolatry. Yet in many instances, experts say, the state quietly tolerates and even profits from mystical beliefs common among rural and working-class Egyptians.

"Folk Islam is an extremely benign form of worship," said Egyptian anthropologist Hania Sholkamy, who studies the phenomenon. "Unlike militant Islam, it's never been associated with any kind of violence."

The Virgin's reported apparition in Assiut is one of three in Egypt recognized by the Coptic Church in recent decades. The most famous, in 1968, drew millions of Egyptians to Cairo, where the Virgin was said to be floating over the Coptic Orthodox church of Zeitoun. So large was the turnout of Muslims and Christians that local authorities organized food stalls and ambulances to care for the needy and the injured.

The 1968 sightings also came at a politically fortuitous moment.

Egypt was still nursing humiliating memories of the 1967 Middle East war, when Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula, East Jerusalem, and other Arab territories. "Religious leaders began to give their own interpretation to the sightings--that the Virgin Mary can't rest until the Muslims liberate Jerusalem," said sociologist Saad Eddin Ibrahim. "So it was a very convenient time for the government to mobilize support."

At St. George's convent, 45-year-old engineer Ellen Roushdy said she believed the latest reports of the Virgin were true. "I think she came for a reason, but I don't know what it is," said Roushdy, who is Christian.

But Roushdy said she had no plans to travel to Assiut to check the sightings for herself. "I have a strong relationship with Virgin Mary," she said. "I feel she's with me all the time. I don't need to see her with my eyes."

Nearby, however, tour guide Ashraf Naggar scoffed at the reports.

"Virgin Mary is a good lady and we believe in her," said Naggar, a Muslim, as he led a group of American tourists through the convent's church. "But why should she appear? Why not Jesus? Why not Moses? Why didn't the Prophet Muhammad appear again?"

Scholars trace popular faith in relics, shrines, and saints to pre-Islamic Christian Egypt, and even to the days of the pharaohs. The dynasties that later conquered and ruled the country also encouraged cultic worship as a way to extend their influence.

Continued on page 2: »