Anglican Archbishop Mouneer proposed the title Comparing inclusive Citizenship in Egypt with Europe. The comparison with Europe was important to the Archbishop since it is not all rosy in Europe, yet Mr.Belder chose to focus on Egypt alone.

Mr.Bas Belder is a former journalist for the Reformatorisch Dagblad, a conservative Christian daily newspaper in The Netherlands, who has been a member of the European Parliament between 1999 and 2019 representing the conservative Christian SGP Party. Our webinar on ‘Comparing inclusive Citizenship in Egypt with Europe’ was financially supported by the Dutch SGP Party with funding through Shiraka fund of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Shiraka fund aims at bridgebuilding, encouraging Dutch political parties to be engaged in democratic processes in different Arab countries. In this construction, it is expected that members of the SGP participate in the events organized abroad. Dr. Otmar Oehring, previously working on Christians in the Middle East at Missio and later the Konrad Adenauer Foundation and a long-time friend of Arab-West Report had earlier recommended us to invite Mr. Bas Belder since he was the only member of the European Parliament who has repeatedly shown interest in the position of Christians in the Middle East. Mr. Belder participated in our 2018 summer school at Heliopolis University for Sustainability where he responded to questions of students. No references were made to Coptic activists. Mr. Bas Belder agreed to participate again in September 2020 and presented us with a paper that showed how deeply he was influenced by the reporting of European and American Coptic activists. Archbishop Mouneer was furious about the deeply one-sided presentation and the quote of Adel Guindy that showed distrust of Christian church leadership in Egypt. Also, Catholic Bishop Dr. Yohanna Qulta, Fr. Dr. Giuseppe Scattolin, Dr Kamal Boraiqa Abdelsalam, Dr. Hoda Awad and other speakers were disappointed about Belder’s paper.  Cornelis Hulsman started writing a response and sent this to Mr. Belder to which he was unable to respond for family reasons. There was little that we could do, except for delaying the publication of his paper in Arab-West Report. But now the discussion is back with the verbal attack of Coptic Solidarity on Egyptian Christian leader Rev. Dr. Andrea Zaki, President of the Protestant Council of Egypt in which all Protestant Churches of Egypt are united. This made us decide to publish the paper by Belder now in Dialogue Across Borders. Belder’s paper is available in both English and in Arabic.