Abstract
On October 9, 2011, a group of 200 primarily Coptic Christians marched from the Shubra district in Cairo to Maspero Square, demonstrating against the demolition of Saint George’s church in the Aswan province in Upper Egypt a few weeks prior.1 What was intended to culminate in a peaceful sit-in on Maspero Square turned into violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces, as the latter beat protesters with canes and crushed others by driving through crowds with armored vehicles. The clashes, which left 26 people dead and many more injured, caused domestic and international outrage and has popularly been described as “the Maspero Massacre.”2
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Notes
See Ahram Online, “Justice Denied: Egypt’s Maspero Massacre One Year on,” Ahram Online, September 7 2013. Accessed at: http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCon-tent/1/64/5482 l/Egypt/Politics-/Justice-denied-Egypts-Maspero-massacre-one-year-on.aspx.
Jayson Casper, Mapping the Coptic Movements: Coptic Activism in a Revolutionary Setting Date (Cairo: Arab West Report, 2013), 3
J. D. Pennington, “The Copts in Modern Egypt,” Middle Eastern Studies 18, no.2 (2006): 160.
P. E. Makari, Conflict & Cooperation: Christian-Muslim Relations in Contemporary Egypt (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 117.
Z. Munson, “Islamic Mobilization: Social Movement Theory and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood,” The Sociological Quarterly, 42, no. 4, (2001): 501.
See BBC, “Egypt’s Muslims and Christians Join Hands in Protest,” BBC, February 10, 2011. Accessed at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12407793 on September 10, 2013.
D. McAdam, S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly, “To Map Contentious Politics,” Mobilization: An International Journall, no. 1 (1996): 17.
D. McAdam, S. Tarrow, and C. Tilly, Dynamics of Contention (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 5.
See D. De la Porta and M. Diano, Social Movements: An Introduction, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 20,
and J. Freeman and V. Johnson, Waves of Protest: Social Movements Since the Sixties (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999), 1–2.
S. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 3rd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 9.
C. A. Rootes, “Political Opportunity Structures: Promise, Problems and Prospects,” La Lettre de la maison Française d’Oxford 10 (1999): 5.
P. Eisinger, “The Conditions of Protest Behaviour in American Cities,” The American Political Science Review 1 (1973): 11–28.
Over his 30 years in power, Hosni Mubarak cultivated an absolute loyalty from the army. Stephan Roll describes that loyalty as an “ingrained habit,” (September 1, 2010). Gamal Mubarak and the Discord in Egypt’s Ruling Elite, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace [online] Available from: http://carnegieendowment.org/2010/09/01/gamal-mubarak-and-discord-in-egypt-s-ruling-elite/6bcv.
M. Strasser, “The Army and the People Were Never One Hand,” Foreign Policy, January 24, 2012.
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© 2015 Fawaz A. Gerges
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Delgado, M.C. (2015). Contentious Copts: the Emergence, Success, and Decline of the Maspero Youth Movement in Egypt. In: Gerges, F.A. (eds) Contentious Politics in the Middle East. Middle East Today. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137530868_11
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