The Political Lives of Saints: Christian-Muslim Mediation in Egypt by Angie Heo (review)

In this book, Angie Heo examines the relationship between Coptic Christians and their fellow Egyptian citizens who are Muslim, as well as the Coptic Orthodox Church and the Egyptian state. She unpacks how Coptic relics (Part 1), apparitions (Part 2), and icons (Part 3) are mediums to understand how social imaginations are formed, understood, and negotiated in relation to questions of community, territory, and security. At the heart of Heo’s argument is the articulation of wider concerns relating to national and religious belonging for a Christian minority in a predominantly Muslim country. In her unique approach to examining politics through saints, Heo unravels the complex convergence and variance of understanding sainthood in both Coptic Christianity and Islam and how narratives of sainthood are used to speak about religious and national identities.

Heo makes a compelling argument through her ethnographic accounts of the ways that relics of the saints are not only theological expressions for understanding the resurrection of Jesus Christ but also modes for understanding how the memory of both contemporary and ancient martyrs are a means by which Copts make sense of their own citizenship as a minority within Egypt. In her juxtaposition of the relics of Saint Mark to the embalmed corpse of Pope Shenouda III on the papal throne (pp. 45–50), Heo demonstrates how papal authority is viewed as a continuity of apostolic succession from one pope to the other. This principle translates to popes in contemporary times, particularly Kyrillos VI (1959–71) and Shenouda III (1971–2012), as both spiritual and political leaders of the Coptic community, resulting in murky boundaries between “spiritual work” and participation in politics (p. 50).

Heo’s text also speaks to apparitions as events that at times propagate narratives of national unity and at others foment sectarian strife. The Virgin Mary appeared over her church in Zaytun from 1968 to 1971, and Heo argues that Zaytun became a site for national inclusivity and unity for both Christians and Muslims in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. The alternative narrative of apparitions is that of Copts as a persecuted minority, on account of which the Virgin appears to comfort her children amid sectarianism and marginalization. This is the case with the Virgin’s apparition in Warraq in 2009, where territorial boundaries are forged between Copts and Muslims, especially in relation to the construction of “illegal” churches (p. 112). While ground-level tensions between Christians and Muslims are apparent, the Church continues to emphasize that churches are sites of “national” and not “communal” unity (p. 113). Through these narratives, especially those of apparitions of the Virgin, not only the Church but all of Egypt is a sacred site, shedding light on the paradox of Coptic belonging, marginalization, and “territorial imaginaries that exist on the margins of nationalism and sectarianism” (p. 141).

Heo’s ethnographic account of the miraculous events of Samiya Yusuf Basiliyus (Sister Alisabat) and the miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary in Port Said (Chapter 5) offers a provocative analysis of public order and security in Egypt. The miraculous events surrounding Samiya, namely her oil-emitting hands and the oil-producing icon in her cell, threatened both the Church and the state. For the former, as a woman, she complicated ecclesiastical authority; for the latter, Samiya’s public appearances could potentially lead to Muslim conversions to Christianity (pp. 190–91). Samiya was eventually moved to a monastery out of the public eye. Though Samiya no longer appeared in public, the icon of the Virgin Mary that belonged to her, now housed in the church, is visible to all. Thus, Samiya’s experiences are related to the Virgin, who is the “owner” of the icon (p. 197). Ultimately, as Heo wrote elsewhere, “the publicity of religion is transformed, through the regulation of imagination and material action.”¹

While this ethnography offers rich and new insights to examining the Coptic community in Egypt, I have...