Cops and Copts

The answer to the question “Did Naser Siddiq jump or was he pushed?” like many other questions, depends on who is doing the answering. His family says the cops pushed him out of the window. The cops say he jumped.

The attention the story has been getting doesn’t seem to have dropped off in the last couple of days. The media coverage is nowhere near the level of the Marianne and Christine case, the two Coptic girls who converted to Islam, or according to some, were kidnapped into Islam. However, the fact that Siddiq was a Copt is certainly fueling the debate.

According to Mariam Munir Ayub, Siddiq’s wife, the cops broke down the door at 4 am and “asked” Siddiq to forget about his complaint against their colleague Amir Yahya. Siddiq, who had alleged that Yahya had stolen 90 pounds and a mobile from him a week before, was then thrown out of the fourth floor window. Siddiq’s wife and son were in the room at the time.

The police had received a report about a fight in which Siddiq’s brother Ishaq had been involved. The Siddiq family say that once the cops saw this, they told their superior that there was a fight between Muslims and Christians in the area, and hurried over. Although it now seems like the fight was about a tuk-tuk, and that Naser was not involved.

Inevitably, the Christian/Muslim issue has been brought up a lot since then, despite the fact that at least one member of the family has said that this is about justice, not religion, and pointed out that the lawyers who will be presenting their case are Muslim, and that the Brotherhood in Giza are supporting them.

The misgiving about the police in Egypt is nothing new. The fact that the word used for “police” in areas like this is also the word used for “government” might be indicative of the suspicion many Egyptians have of the police and the government. So, you would expect this incident to be placed in the context of the countless, and increasing, reports on the problems in the Egyptian police force.

However, it seems it is often much simpler to reduce this to an issue of copts against cops. Or cops against copts.

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