Minorities can act as a society's conscience, as they are less prone to adopting an idea just because it is prevalent in the larger society.
However Copts in the past 50 years have been isolated to the point of being unable to communicate with society, silencing that 'conscience'. Other minorities exist of course, & some have been carrying out their role fine.
Not Copts though, no, we became wholly "other", or so we liked to think!
You see, we are completely oblivious to the larger Egyptian society's issues, but that doesn't mean they don't affect us. Our isolation did not - as it could not - protect us from the rest of society, it merely reduced our contribution to it, and so lessened our effect on it, not the other way round.
So Copts got infected with all of society's flaws alright, we just didn't want to think of it that way. After all, we're 'different'. Of course, we had no way to identify with the bigger and similar issues in society, we knew nothing about them.
So we neither understood what was wrong with Society - or us, for that matter - nor could communicate with it properly. So far from being society's conscience, we became a burden on it, and society had no choice but to treat us as such.
True, our isolation was not solely of our making. The Islamization of society's culture contributed to our lack of belonging to it.
Ironically, Copt Leadership believed that to protect us from the effects of that Islamization, they should promote the Coptic identity. The sad result was we only made the Islamist's job easier by shutting ourselves away, while at the same time getting Islamized ourselves!
Today, after Jan25 and the national call for an awakening of the Egyptian identity, we find ourselves confused.
For we've never truly believed there's a thing called the Egyptian identity, the idea was perceived to be at best foolish, at worst un-Christian. This isn't very different from the Salafi idea that "Islam is a Nation, allegiance to another is infidelity". See how Islamized Copts are?
Yet to those of us who are less isolated Coptic identity was not enough. We saw in Jan25 a hint of something bigger we can belong to.
After years of isolation though, integration is difficult & all sides are sensitive towards it.
We know what to expect & we don't like it.
Church groups debate 'our role in society' in endless loops, all afraid to take an actual step outside their comfort zones. And when a rich Copt makes an old joke about Niqab & beards, he gets instantly flamed. The response reads like: Stay in your shell, will ya!
So it seems we're required to slip slowly and inconspicuously back into society. Our role as 'conscience' is not yet acceptable.
Which is expected, I suppose. This role will only be aceptable when our contribution to society is visible & we are fully integrated.
So now, I believe that we must force ourselves to get entangled in all the shit outside Church - as a change from the shit inside - and share in the pain of the Nation, argue for it - rather than for 'us'- & re-enforce the Egyptian identity with our allegiance to it, until someday we become indispensable to society, and it to us... then we can confidently address society's issues as a part of it.
And as bonus, I promise you we'll resolve our own "internal" issues, all the while realizing they aren't really ours alone, but part of a whole that we Copts failed (and in some cases actively refused) to see.
