Mobilizing religious differences and terrorism, negotiating civil rights in Egypt

Abstract The Egyptian state's publication of its first National Human Rights Strategy 2021–2026 (NHRS) (2021) on the anniversary of the September 11th attacks came at the crossroads of Western pressure to improve human rights and the state's use of counterterrorism to silence voices. The recent arrests of Coptic activists, dubbing them “terrorists” on the pretext of disturbing public peace and instigating sectarianism, follows the regime's capitalization on Egypt's history of battling Islamic radicalism and sectarian strife. The regime has additionally used societal instabilities post the 2011 revolution to demonstrate Egypt's unique case of human rights. This paper analyzes the ways in which the language of the NHRS entangles terrorism to negotiate the interpretation of civil rights and social justice. In doing so, the thesis of NHRS posits civil rights and social justice to be the responsibility of the collective in general, and religious institutions in particular, as preservers of public peace and national unity. While the publication of the NHRS is inscribed in the feigning of democratization to Western donors, assigning Coptic activists as terrorists, as this paper argues, plays up religious differences, broadens the purview of counterterrorism, and expands state power.