Disputing official accounts of early Islam became a dangerous activity during the last decade, as many Muslims feel that questioning their religion is an extension of Western political domination in Islamic countries. Yet the April conference suggested it was only after the Fatimid caliphate was set up in Cairo in AD 969 — more than three centuries after the 641 Arab conquest of Egypt — that the country's present Arab, Muslim identity took decisive hold.
Since the 1970s, a small group of Western scholars has been investigating the origins of the Koran, the meaning of its text and how Islam was formed after the Arab conquests. Islamic tradition, until recently accepted by most Western scholars, says that Islam emerged as a fully formed religion from Arabia during the Arab conquests. But new thinking says the monotheistic milieu of Iraq, the Levant and Egypt helped to shape the religion after it was united under Arab rule.
Muslim groups in the West have reacted angrily to the work, while most scholars in Arab countries remain unaware of it. Challenging religious orthodoxy is dangerous. An Egyptian academic who argued for an allegorical reading of the Koran was forcibly divorced from his wife in 1996 on the grounds that his theories proved he was no longer a Muslim, so could not remain married to his Muslim wife. Egypt's Nobel Laureate author Naguib Mahfouz was stabbed by zealots in 1995 because he wrote a novel, which the religious establishment deemed blasphemous. Since then, the Egyptian authorities have since prosecuted a number of people for forming groups with unorthodox views on central Islamic tenets concerning prayer, pilgrimage and fasting.
The idea that Egypt's Arab-Muslim identity was still in the balance three centuries after the Arab conquests is entirely absent from official discourse. Egypt now has a population of nearly 70 million people. But a trilingual tax demand issued to a Christian monk by the Arab authorities in the 8th century AD (the 2nd century of the Muslim calendar) shows the ancient Pharaonic tongue of Coptic as well as Greek and Arabic. Coptic is the term used to describe the last stage of this ancient Egyptian language after Christianity became the country's religion from AD 312. Greek had been in use together with it since Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 322 BC.
Arabic, which Egypt's new rulers made the language of administration, eventually ended centuries of linguistic schizophrenia. Greek disappeared and Coptic slowly receded, though one family claims to still speak the language today.
Frank Trombley of the University of Wales suggested Egypt's early Islamic rulers refrained from contributing to the annual Arab attacks on Christian Byzantium in modern-day Turkey because a mainly non-Arab, non-Muslim population could not be trusted. "Coptic sailors defected after the AD 717 siege of Constantinople. The caliphs relied on Christian crews, so they stopped operations after this," he told the conference.
Analysts said such research could be viewed as unsettling even today, as Egypt seeks to maintain a sense of national unity and patriotism despite outbreaks of sectarian strife. Although Muslims and Coptic Christians live side-by-side, the communities rarely intermarry and their cultures remain distinct. "There is a reluctance to talk about these issues," said prominent Coptic lawyer Mamdouh Nakhla. "We were a majority until the Fatimid caliphs, for three centuries," he added.
Many Copts, — who now are less than 10% of Egypt's population — still claim to be the true descendants of Pharaonic Egypt. Modern research suggests, however, that many if not most of Egypt's Muslims are the descendants of Coptic converts.
