In Copts and the Security State, originally published in French, Laure Guirguis turns her attention away from Islam and religion as a source of intercommunal violence and focuses on the role of the Egyptian state. While previous works on interreligious violence have addressed the state's handling of sectarian incidents, the sectarian dynamics fostered by the state have not featured prominently. Guirguis looks at the relationship between state authoritarianism and the maintenance and continued replication of what she calls “identitarian logics,” which originate, she argues, from the ethnicization of community identity that began in the 1930s. Both the state, she argues, and sectarianism “reinforce each other and constitute a matrix of meaning that establishes security as a normative concept” (p. 6). Such dynamics, Guirguis argues, self-replicate and produce a cycle of fear and suspicion. The counterrevolution of 2013 simply continued this identitarian logic as “the structuring principle of the Egyptian state” (p. 169).

This is an extremely rich work and is an important read not only for those interested in Coptic–Muslim relations but also for scholars of Egyptian politics, society, and history. Based on Arabic, French, and English primary and secondary sources, the book covers a very wide terrain of issues across six main chapters. Among them is an in-depth analysis of the complex internal rivalries of the Coptic community and its relationship with the regime. In Chapter 3, she argues that the church has effectively been an ally of the regime, since Pope Shenuda “knew that he could exert more influence over government decisions by being closer to the ruling circles” (p. 88). She argues that the pope's theological–political outlook was in some senses compatible with a “state governed in reference to Islamic religious principles,” since this has enabled the church's legislative authority over the personal status matters of Christians (p. 92). She also shows that the state, the church, and society are “in agreement on the requirement that individuals maintain the ‘status quo’” which involves members of religious communities not leaving their own religion (p. 88). This explains why Wafa Constantine was returned to the church after her alleged conversion in 2004.

In Chapter 4, Guirguis covers the process by which the Coptic laity became marginalized. Such marginalization enabled Pope Shenuda to skillfully establish himself as the sole representative of the Coptic community. The dissolution of the umma qibtiyya (Coptic Nation) under ʿAbd al-Nasir marked the “end of the laity's role as intermediary between Copts and the country's political leadership” (p. 104). The author also addresses how Protestant churches and the emergence of charismatic Coptic Orthodox priests are challenging the church's hegemony over religious and social practices. She charts the rise of the lay movement in the last decade and discusses organizations that have attempted to break the cycle of “identitarian” dynamics while running up “against the ethnicized conception of Coptic identity” (p. 159).

While all this material—and more not covered here—gestures at the state and its policies, the particular focus on the state and its policies comes later in Chapter 6. Guirguis shows that the state and government actors “constantly make use of the ‘religious issue,’ thus exacerbating tensions” (p. 161). They have pursued a policy of maintaining order and the status quo but avoiding—and carefully managing—excessive violence. In so doing, she argues, they missed the opportunity to resolve the issue.

Among the regime's strategies for handling the Coptic question include “pacifist discourse.” Such pacifist discourse uses “Christian–Muslim unity as an allegory for the nation” (p. 178). Guirguis argues that the problem with this discourse is that it is still governed by “identitarian logics” since the nation-state constantly defines itself based on what she calls “a foundational fracture” or the unity of the two elements of the nation (p. 179). The Egyptian state also appropriates the concepts and rhetoric of critical discourse by trying to act as the sole guardian of the rule of law and of the principle of citizenship, and by competing with the Muslim Brotherhood by acting as the guardian of morality and religion.

Guirguis effectively shows how the regime manages the scandal of conversion—and the emotive nature of such events—to strengthen itself. The figure of the young woman converted by force is often the focal point for scandals related to conversion. Scandal, she argues, “is the apparition of paradox. Scandal makes visible a break in the normative order, while reasserting the norm and the order, and, as such, it consists in a mode of social self-regulation” (p. 164).

Importantly, the work highlights the dialectical nature of the dynamics between Copts and Muslims. The author argues that both the proliferation of Islamist narratives along with a kind of formation of a Coptic identity centered on communitarian values occurred simultaneously. The implication is that this occurred because of state and nation-making processes. In addition, the pope's opposition to the “publication and public representation of any figure of a Copt or the church that was not exemplary [emphasis in the original]” (p. 82), she argues, “appears as the mirror-image of the Salafist and Muslim Brotherhood's shumūliyya (totalitarian) project that aims to expand supposed Islamic norms and behaviors into public as well as private spaces” (p. 74).

The author is particularly skillful in looking at discourse in terms of the political function that it fulfills and in terms of whose interests it serves. Copts, she argues, function as “an empty signifier that is used by both sides to different ends” (p. 117). The “Coptic issue” has become a means by which other parties, including Salafist and Brotherhood members, have positioned themselves with or distanced themselves from others (p. 139).

The author descriptively narrates key personalities and key events. She describes Shenuda's ability to balance his broad appeal with his religious authority and she relates key moments when the pope's movements and silence—this often involves retreating to the desert—communicate his disapproval and anger over a number of confrontations with the regime and the president.

The breadth and detail of this work is impressive: a tapestry of rich and perceptive analysis on the state of Coptic–Muslim relations in Egypt. It will be of immense benefit to many. The author raises the question of the link between Egyptian nationalism, the state, and Coptic cultural specificity. While Guirguis maintains that “sectarianism depends on a legal and political order inherited from the Ottoman Empire,” she also argues that “this legacy does not explain its contemporary specifities” and that the modern state has consolidated and modified this sectarianism (p. 8). She gestures towards a link between Egyptian nationalism and sectarianism and argues that “during the nineteenth-century nation- and state-building processes religion became an identity marker, defining both the nation and state in position to the occupying powers which were considered ‘Christian’” (p. 45). The question is an extremely important one and could have been probed more deeply partly by taking recent postcolonial literature, such as that of Saba Mahmood, on the concept of “minority” into account. A further examination of the link between nationalism and Coptic cultural specificity and how the state promotes and appropriates such nationalistic discourse, including how this modern incarnation differs from Ottoman times, would have pushed the question of the source of such sectarianism—and the state's involvement in it—much further.