Points of convergence: Islamist conceptions of citizenship and the struggle of Egyptian Christians for their rights as a religious group

The concept of an Islamic state has often been criticized on account of its failure to articulate full and equal citizenship for non-Muslims. It is also often assumed that non-Muslims in Islamic societies would want a form of individualist citizenship modelled on liberal democracy. This article contends that it is mistaken to suppose that non-Muslims in the Islamic world would automatically aspire to a universal form of citizenship founded exclusively on the political thought and political experience of liberal societies in the West. Using contemporary Egypt as a case study, it illustrates that there are points of convergence between the type of citizenship that is advocated by moderate Islamists and the type of citizenship that the Coptic Orthodox Church is striving for. Drawing on Coptic and Islamist political theory as well as the historical struggle of the Coptic Orthodox Church for their rights as a religious group, this paper points to important similarities between moderate Islamist conceptions of citizenship and those of conservative Coptic Christians. This paper considers such points of convergence with reference to communitarian political theory and addresses the implications of a communitarian form of citizenship for narratives that position Islamist conceptions of citizenship as antithetical to the interests of religious minorities.