“We wonder about the beneficiary of igniting Egypt and putting it in the midst of bloody incidents leading to the unknown,” read the Muslim Brotherhood’s statement. “How did the attackers know that there was a bus carrying children, women, and innocent souls,” the statement asked rhetorically, implying that the government had coordinated with the terrorists.
The Brotherhood isn’t alone in pushing this conspiracy theory. Ayat al-Oraby, a New York-based Islamist who boasts over 400,000 Facebook followers and lobbied Congress earlier this month, added a sectarian rant to the mix. “The whole issue,” she wrote, “is [meant] to establish superficial oppression against Christians in Egypt, and try to export the image that they are persecuted.” She added that Coptic Pope Tawadros II is complicit in this nefarious and callous plot.
Prominent Muslim Brotherhood youth Ahmed el-Moghir was perhaps the most explicit. “Whether those avenging Christians’ crimes or the ruling regime is responsible for today’s incident, the result is the same,” he wrote on Facebook. “Christians are paying the price for their alliance with the Egyptian regime, and there is no solution for them but to step back and reconcile with Muslims or their blood will continue to run like rivers and nobody will care.”
El-Moghir’s statement reflects a typical Egyptian Islamist pathology, according to which Christians are primarily responsible for the July 2013 overthrow of Egypt’s first elected president, Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Morsi, and for the severe repression of the Brotherhood that followed. In reality, the Coptic pope was only one of many, mostly Muslim figures — including the sheikh of Al-Azhar University, the leader of a Salafist party, non-Islamist politician Mohamed el-Baradei, prominent youth activists, top military leaders, and others — who stood with then-Defense Minister Abdel Fattah el-Sisi when he announced the coup. But because the Brotherhood equates its mission with Islam, it regards Morsi’s overthrow as an anti-Muslim act driven by non-Muslims and their allies. So, if jihadis were responsible for Friday’s attack in Minya, then they were merely avenging, in el-Moghir’s words, “Christians’ crimes” — namely, the coup and its aftermath.
