The Arabization and Islamization of Egypt

Submitted by dhimmi no more (United States), Dec 9, 2017 at 08:47

Dr Pipes

Very interesting topic indeed

The great German historian C Becker and in his very celebrated conclusion: "Without Alexander the Great (read this as: Greek civilization) there would have been no Islamic civilization" He was able to debunk the claim by the Islamic historical tradition about al-Jahiliyya and that Islam was a new start and the past is not valid anymore or that Islam brought with it historical discontinuity after all, as in the case of Egypt, 4000 Arab nomads were able to invade Egypt and defeat the mighty Greeks (Byzantines) and the end result was the Arabization and Islamization of Egypt

However, in the case of Egypt one would expect that the Arab invaders would have become Egyptian/Coptic speakers and would have converted to Coptic Christianity But the exact opposite happened and why is that? Unless that the Arab invaders were a catalyst for a change that was happening for reasons we still don't understand And indeed the conversion of Egyptians to Islam as well as Arabization was a very long and uneven process that took hundreds of years and it is still going on

I believe that it went as follows: Islamization ------> Arabization. However. "old civilizations are never conjured away" or there is a tug war between Arabization and holding on to the real culture of Egypt and speaking a new language derived mostly from Arabic and that is Egyptian Arabic

So how does this relate to the Copts of Egypt? It really means that we are still witnessing the tug of war between the Arabization and Islamization of Egypt v Egyptians speaking their own real language or Egyptian Arabic and either discard Islam or reform Islam or more Islamization at least in the short term

In the short term many Copts will leave Egypt The long term? We might be witnessing a new historical shift and where would it end? We really don;t know

For readers interested in reading about the historical Arabization and Islaimzation of Egypt please check

http://mamluk.uchicago.edu/MSR_X-2_2006-OSullivan.pdf

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".