A new film seeking to smash Egypt's sectarian taboos takes a light approach to Muslim-Christian relations but critics say it fails to lay the blame for religious tensions where it belongs -- with the state. The big budget "Hassan wi Morkos" (Hassan and Morkos) traces the lives of Hassan, a Muslim sheikh played by the legendary Omar Sharif, now 76, and Morkos, a Christian priest played by comedy veteran Adel Imam.
The film opens with a scene at an annual Muslim-Christian dialogue convention, openly underlining the mistrust each has of the other through conversations on the sidelines. As two priests discuss the lack of building permits for churches because of antiquated laws, two Muslim sheikhs whisper about Christians controlling the country's wealth, in a stab at Egypt's powerful real-life Christian tycoons.
A series of events puts both the lead characters' lives in danger and they are ordered by a senior state security official to go into hiding and take on new identities from the other side of the sectarian divide. But despite the attempt to discuss such a sensitive topic, particularly at a time of deep tensions, the film fails to truly explain the root of the problem, ignoring the reasons behind Muslim hostility or Christian anger.
"The problem with the film is that it does not tackle the issue with depth, ignoring the political, economic, historical and security challenges facing national unity," film critic Tarek Shennawi told AFP. It only tackles one facet of Muslim-Christian relations, said critic Ola Shafei, adding: "You like the other until you find out their religion."
-- 'The state is behind the spread of corruption'-- Egypt's Copts -- the largest Christian community in the Middle East -- account for an estimated six to ten percent of the country's 80 million inhabitants and complain of systematic discrimination and harassment. In June, the Coptic Ecclesiastical Council issued an unusually strong statement urging President Hosni Mubarak to guarantee the safety of Christians in Egypt after a violent attack on a monastery in May in which four Copts were injured and a Muslim killed.
The film "does not come anywhere near to dealing with the problem because it is too deep, especially in the last few years, as opposed to the 1930s and 1940s when Hassan and Morkos would have loved each other," Shennawi said.
Egypt's Muslims and Christians have traditionally had good relations, often celebrating each other's holidays together, but the rising fundamentalism of recent decades has seen each community adopt increasingly entrenched positions.
Shennawi said the state's security-heavy approach to social issues has caused Muslim-Christian relations to turn sour. "The state itself is behind the spread of corruption among the security apparatuses who have taken on the sectarian issue, turning the tensions into the full-blown crisis that we are witnessing today," Shennawi said.
"When a Muslim man finds that he cannot marry or live a reasonable life, he turns to the mosque and when a Christian man finds that he cannot obtain his rights in society, he turns to the church. All this leads to extremism," he said.
Social issues become religious because Christians often cannot reach senior official positions without the backing of the church, because the state wants men of religion, be they Christian or Muslim, to show loyalty, Shennawi said.
While the Muslim Brotherhood is the largest political opposition grouping in Egypt, Mubarak's regime has sought to retain its own Islamist credentials by making many senior religious appointments political. Today, the Grand Imam of Cairo's Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's main seat of learning, and the Mufti, the government appointed interpreter of Islamic law, play political roles for the benefit of the state in order to retain their jobs, Shennawi said.
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