![]() The percentage rise is attributed to tens of thousands of non-Egyptians flocking to the country as it modernized, especially from the Levant, Greece and Italy. A similar figure would be repeated throughout the years in the official census conducted by Egypt’s British overlords. ![]() ![]() This figure included both small minority Christian groups such as Armenians and Levantine Christians as well as Egypt’s Jewish community. The French estimate of Egypt’s population at the time was two and a half million, including 215,000 non-Muslims who paid Jizya or 8.6% of the population. The first semi-official estimation of Egypt’s population took place in 1798 when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered the country. However, leaving aside individual incidents and the possibility of human error, the Copts’ claims of figures widely divergent from government statics, suggest an impossible conspiracy stretching for over 200 years and involving every regime that has governed the country from Napoleon to the current one. Given the long history of persecution and discrimination that Copts face, as well as documented incidents throughout the years of Christians being issued identification cards with their religion marked as Muslim, such mistrust is not to be unexpected. Part of this may be simply the natural phenomenon of members of minorities being disproportionately surrounded by their coreligionists and assuming that is a reflection of society, but largely it is a reflection of Copts’ mistrust of the Egyptian state and bureaucracy. State Department’s figure of around ten percent.įor Copts and their church, that the government numbers are inaccurate is nearly a tenant of faith. International bodies and news agencies have attempted to sidestep the controversy by quoting the U.S. Islamists who seek to deny Egypt’s ethnic and religious diversity in service of their totalitarian project are quick to downplay the number claiming five percent of the population as Christians, while Coptic activists fighting for their peoples’ rights throw in figures from 15 to 20 percent with some claiming numbers as large as 35 percent of Egypt’s population. It is thus no surprise given the absence of an official figure since 1986, that the percentage of Christians in Egypt would become a highly contested matter with a wide range of numbers floating. The number is of course not merely a demographic figure, but for a minority struggling to survive in its ancient homeland has acquired important political significance. Ever since, as the joke goes, you can know the number of cars in Egypt, but not the number of Christians. The Coptic outcry at what they perceived as a gross undercount has driven the Egyptian government to simply ignore the number in the three subsequent censuses. The last official Egyptian census to state the number was released in 1986 and put the percentage of Christians in Egypt as slightly less than six percent. While hardly the first time a Coptic clergy member or the Pope himself had remarked on the number, the statement deserves careful consideration, not just because it is factually wrong, but because it is dangerous for the future of the Coptic Church.įor nearly forty years, the number of Christians in Egypt has been shrouded in mystery with the figure highly contested across Egypt’s political spectrum. Two weeks ago, during a meeting with Egyptian journalists working on the Coptic portfolio, the Pope declared that there are fifteen million Christians in Egypt with another two million Copts residing abroad. Amidst the excited coverage of his historic visit to the Vatican and the warming ties between the Sees of Rome and Alexandria, little attention has been given to Coptic Pope Tawadros II recent statement on Christian population figures in Egypt.
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