I’m not Arab, I’m not Muslim: Egyptian Orthodox Christian Disidentification Practices

• In Event: 430 - Regular Session. Religion and Intersecting Identities

Abstract

Because of their national origin background, Egyptian Orthodox Christians (Copts) face presumptions about both their racial and religious identities. Often mistaken for Arab and Muslim, Copts in the United States adopt disidentification strategies as a means to distance themselves from the category of Arab-Muslim. Based on 19 in-depth interviews with Egyptian Orthodox Christians, this study focuses on the interaction of racial and religious categories. My project suggests that racialization transforms cultural, national, ethnic, and religious differences into forms of racial difference by engaging the ways in which structural positions and racial categories become enmeshed with the politics of collective identity such that certain labels become battlegrounds for identify and community formation.

Author

• Bradley Zopf, University of Illinois-Chicago