Overview
- Examines negated spaces, practices, and relationships
- Highlights the contradiction between the centrality of sin to the (Coptic) Christian tradition and theology
- Acknowledges the recent anthropological work
Part of the book series: Minorities in West Asia and North Africa (MWANA)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
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.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Identity, Marginalisation, Activism, and Victimhood in Egypt
Book Subtitle: Misfits in the Coptic Christian Community
Authors: Mina Ibrahim
Series Title: Minorities in West Asia and North Africa
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10179-3
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-10178-6Published: 01 December 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-10181-6Published: 01 December 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-10179-3Published: 30 November 2022
Series ISSN: 2946-4250
Series E-ISSN: 2946-4269
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XXI, 326
Number of Illustrations: 3 b/w illustrations, 8 illustrations in colour
Topics: Politics and Religion, Middle Eastern Politics, Religious Studies, general, Christian Theology