Epilogue

The epilogue centers on the Libya Martyrs, the twenty-one migrant laborers who were beheaded in 2015, and the alarming rise of ISIS across North Africa and the Middle East in 2013–14. It shows how the terrorist execution of Copts and its immediate aftermath activated older strands of religious mediation that have been described throughout this book: the communal dynamics of martyr commemoration, Arab nationalism versus Christian Rome as competing referents of political belonging, the outbreak of contests and threats tied to church territory, and the cult making of contemporary martyrs in the Coptic Church. By recounting the Libya Martyrs' various contexts, the epilogue invites reflection on how acts of violence that exceed the Egyptian national frame—through impoverished Coptic migrants and pan-Islamic militant groups—exacerbate old structures of sectarian tension in a new era of post-revolutionary militarization and the global war on terrorism.