Dear Friends,

We are very pleased to publish a recent long-form interview with Professor Candace Lukasik on Coptic migration, the U.S. Diversity Visa, and Christian-Muslim relations. Dr. Lukasik is an assistant professor of Religion and faculty affiliate in Anthropology and Middle Eastern Cultures at Mississippi State University. Her research focuses on the transnational politics of migration, violence, and indigeneity in the Middle East, specifically Egypt and Iraq, and its US diasporas. Her first book, Martyrs and Migrants: Coptic Christians and the Persecution Politics of US Empire (NYU Press), is forthcoming in 2025. 

Our interview explores Professor Lukasik’s extensive fieldwork in the village of Bahjūra near Nagʿ Ḥammādī in Upper Egypt, the U.S. Diversity Visa/Green Card lottery as it operates in Egypt, the varied experiences of Coptic Orthodox Christians who immigrate to the United States, the impact of immigration on Christian communities in Egypt, and some of the ways these migration patterns impact American perspectives on Islam, Muslims, and Christian-Muslim relations.

The interview is full of informative and surprising insights, but I would like to highlight one here. I suspect that many in the United States might guess that most Egyptian Christians who immigrate to the U.S. come through asylum applications based on claims of religious persecution. As Professor Lukasik reveals, however, more Egyptian Christians who immigrate to the U.S. do so because they were selected through the U.S. Diversity Visa/Green Card lottery or related family reunification visas. As its name suggests,  the U.S. Diversity Visa/Green Card lottery operates through an almost completely random selection process and is unrelated to asylum claims. At the same time, Professor Lukasik has also followed asylum cases in her research and reveals much that is of interest about those as well. Our interview can be found here.

We are grateful to Professor Lukasik for providing us with such a rich interview and trust that our readers will also find it valuable. In August, we will publish two additional long-form interviews with Professor Jon Hoover on the influential medieval Muslim theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d.1328) and Rev. Andrew Wheeler on the complicated history of modern Sudan.

All the very best,