Exploring the Communal beyond the “Copts and Muslims Paradigm”

This article considers the place of Egypt’s Coptic Christian community in modern Egyptian historiography. Reviewing scholarly literature on Egypt’s colonial period (1882–1956) reveals an overall trend to obscure and ignore Coptic communal experiences that are both distinct and intertwined with the trajectory of Egyptian national history. I highlight the common trope within scholarly literature to primarily refer to Copts in the phrase “Copts and Muslims,” a euphemism for the Egyptian nation that deploys cross-sectarian relations to evaluate national unity. The Copts and Muslims paradigm, I argue, stems from an overwhelming historiographical tendency to emphasize the Egyptian nation and Islam as the primary lenses for approaching Egyptian history. In narratives defined by these currents, the utility of Copts is to serve as signals of the ebbs of flows of national unity or as objects of Islamist discourse, ultimately limiting the place of the Coptic community as a historical subject.