WATANI International
6 November 2011
Following the Maspero attack against the Copts, the government has passed an anti-discrimination law and is in the process of passing one for places of worship
The recent law decreed by the ruling Military Council to criminalise discrimination has been lauded by human rights activists as a commendable step towards promoting equality and citizenship rights and values. Yet it is not in fact a law, but an article added to the penal code to toughen the penalty for discrimination
The question which appears to beg an answer is: Is it too little too late?
Devil in the detail
“The mere passage of an anti-discrimination provision,” National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) member Nasser Amin told Watani, “is an admission of the existence of religious-based discrimination.” Discrimination, he stressed, does not only harm those targeted by it but also destroys the basis of law and order.
Hafez Abu-Saeda, head of the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights, says the Military Council’s decision is a step in the right direction, but the legal provision against discrimination needs more elaboration. As it stands, it criminalises religious-based discrimination alone, penalising the culprit but saying nothing on the rights of the victim. Abu-Saeda says there ought to be a separate, independent and comprehensive law, not just an article in the penal code, to ban all sorts of religious, economic and social discrimination.
Farida al-Naqqash, editor-in-chief of al-Ahali newspaper, told Watani that it is not yet clear how the law will be applied. The saying goes that “the devil is in the detail”. If the details are not ironed out, Ms Naqqash said, it may be impossible to put the law into effect; it may remain toothless.”
The unified law
Freedom of belief is a constitutionally guaranteed right in Egypt; accordingly the right for all to an adequate and safe place to worship in. In practice, however, building a mosque is a simple process that involves easy regulations and even tax exemptions, while building a church requires a long, arduous and humiliating procedure that takes years on end. Instances where permits were not issued for some 30 or 40 years—if they are issued at all—are not uncommon. Not surprisingly, Copts resort to building non-licensed churches, especially in view of their naturally-growing congregation and the dilapidation of existing churches. These informal structures are never given permits for maintenance, restoration, or renovation.
The issue of church-building has constituted one of the major grievances of the Copts, and has also been a major cause for sectarian conflict. In 2005 a bill for a unified law for places of worship was proposed to parliament, but it was filed away and never saw the light of day.
Restrictions on mosques?
Interest in the unified law resurfaced with the succession of attacks on Copts following the January Revolution. Yet there is controversy over the details regarding the number of churches proportional to the numbers of congregations, and the proportion of churches to mosques and the respective Coptic and Muslim populations. These questions cannot easily be resolved, given that subsequent Egyptian governments have never announced a definite figure for the number of Copts in Egypt, and that almost half the churches in Egypt were built without licence.
When the issue of the unified law for places of worship was again brought up in the wake of the brutal attack against the Copts in Maspero on 9 October, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, Sheikh Ahmed al-Tayyib, who is a moderate and has excellent relations with the Church in Egypt, said that mosques had no problem whatsoever with the existing law and thus needed no new law. The State could ease regulations for building churches, he said, but a unified law would place restrictions on the building of mosques.
It is thus not clear if there will be a new law for building churches, or one unified law for all places of worship in Egypt.
The right to be there
“We live in a country with a Muslim majority,” says Hussam Bahgat, head of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “Cosmetic equality between churches and mosques might convey a positive message, but a special law for building churches may better solve the problem. It may be even preferable during the current sectarian conflict not to send a message to the extremists that the authorities place mosques and churches on equal footing.”
Others beg to differ. “A law for building churches and another for mosques is obvious discrimination,” Safwat Girgis, manager of the Egyptian centre for human rights, says.
Ihab Ramzy, a lawyer and the general coordinator of the Egyptian Coptic Union, believes that it is important to realise that the problem is that, because of the rampant extremism, the Muslim ‘other’ today sees the traditional church building as a provocation that ‘offends’ Muslim sensitivities. A unified law would serve to stress—even if this takes time—the realisation that churches have a right to be there.