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This article analyses the representation of Muslim–Coptic relations in the Al-Ahrām newspaper between 2005 and 2010. The primary goal is to assess the strategies and discourses used by this newspaper to represent sectarianism. As scholars note, negative representations of the ‘other’ in the media can contribute to shaping and prolonging conflict. Therefore, Al-Ahrām's representation of sectarian incidents is significant for the analysis both of the dynamics of Muslim–Christian relations in Egypt, and of state and church policies towards communal violence. Three are three central discourses. (1) The use of selective narratives of history to construct a collective understanding of national unity as a natural state of relations between Muslims and Christians in Egypt. (2) Displacement of blame, which means constructing inter-religious conflict as alien and external through the use of an ‘us versus them’ paradigm in order to shift responsibility for Egypt's sectarian incidents to ‘outsiders’. (3) The control of extreme religious views through a discourse of ‘extremists versus moderates’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of personal hygiene and domestic cleanliness occupied Protestant missionaries working in Egypt during the first half of the twentieth century. Remarks on hygiene can be found not only in writings published for the interested public but also in personal documents such as diaries. This article illustrates that, in missionary sources, descriptions of cleanliness appear mainly in the female sphere, implying a deficient domesticity. The causes of this shortcoming were seen in the crisis of the Egyptian - and in particular the Islamic - family, in which, in the missionaries' perception, the husband ruled despotically over his wife and impeded a healthy family life. Missionaries tried to impart a new female role model - their ideal of a competent housewife and wise mother - and thereby aimed to empower women by teaching them habits of cleanliness. This paper examines the missionaries' methods and arguments for spreading ideas and practices related to hygiene and shows how cleanliness was closely linked to values such as orderliness, discipline and punctuality. It also explores the role of cleanliness in missionary accounts of Egyptian converts and examines how conceptions of personal hygiene and domestic cleanliness were linked to moral and religious purity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of their dogmas concerning the Jesus conflict, Muslims and Christians seldom collaborate in examining the actual records of Jesus' and his followers' lives, within and beyond the New Testament, in an atmosphere of respectful, critical discussion. The article summarizes the content of a course at the American University in Cairo that does just that, engaging Muslim and Christian students together in a nuanced analysis of the human, historical Jesus of Second Temple Judaism/early Christianity, applying historical and literary-cultural criteria to the study of, principally, the canonical gospels. The students are thereby also introduced to the major intellectual enterprise known as the 'quest of the historical Jesus'. The article reviews the pedagogical problems and pleasures of teaching the material in this context, noting that most students, regardless of background, are genuinely interested in repositioning Jesus historically in order to gain a fresh apprehension of his person and message. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Christian evangelization among Muslims in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries and traces its relationship to the global and local dynamics of Western imperialism. Focusing on Egypt, where Anglo-American Protestant missionaries were active, the article examines why missionaries encountered fierce resistance from Muslim audiences despite the small number of Muslim conversions and how they inadvertently galvanized Egyptian anti-colonial nationalist and Islamist movements. Reflecting on this history of cultural encounter from a postcolonial perspective, the article then discusses the challenge of assessing missionary motives, social influences, and long-term legacies given the sharp differences of interpretation that have often prevailed among Christian and Muslim scholars and polemicists. It draws special attention to an Arabic postcolonial genre of anti-missionary treatises that portray Christian missionaries as neo-Crusaders whose legacies have posed a continuing threat to the integrity of Muslim societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]