The Dhimmi narrative a comparison between the historical and the actual in the context of Christian-Muslim relations in Egypt today
Author: Martin, Gianstefano C.
Religious texts, narratives, and history often provide the template by which religious leaders and their communities of
faith frame actual events in modern times. In 2007, while conducting interviews in Egypt with leading figures from
the Muslim and Christian communities, the author noted frequent comparisons, both favorable and unfavorable,
between the dhimmi experience lived by Christians as separate millets in the past to describe the present conditions
of the sizeable Christian minority living in Egypt today. This thesis investigates to what extent the parallels and
analogies between the past and the present are valid and illuminating, and to what extent they are actually
confounding, conflating, and obfuscating what is really going on. After identifying the hallmarks of the historical
system by which the dominant Muslim authority managed its religious minorities in terms of spirit, ethos and
practice, there follows a comparison of the main characteristics of the historical experience based on chronicles of
Christians living as citizens in the modern Egyptian state. The thesis argues that although the origins of some current
practices can be validated in some particulars, the dhimmi narrative as analogy is largely essentialism, and a rhetorical
device, largely because it lacks the systemic, discriminatory intentionality and application exemplified by the millet
system. As a way of understanding historical connections between the present and the past it has limited and
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