WATANI International
23 August 2009
Last March the Supreme Administrative Court issued a final ruling which stipulated the right of Egyptian Baha’is to ID cards and birth certificates that carried a blank field for religion, signifying the holder belonged to none of the three religions recognised by the State: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The ruling was applauded by rights activists in Egypt, who saw in it the end of the agony suffered by Baha’is at the hands of the official apparatuses where any official documents were concerned. The citizenship rights due to Baha’is had been withheld, subject to the condition that they borrow a religion they did not believe in—Christianity or Islam—to cite in their official documents. Only then would their documents be valid, a precondition for the State to deal with them as Egyptian citizens. A human rights organisation described last March’s ruling as: “It puts an end to government policies that force Baha’is to change their belief or lie about it in exchange for the rights and services they are entitled to as Egyptian citizens.”
A case in point is the father who was stunned to find out that his daughter, who was to sit for her Thanawiya Amma (Secondary School Certificate) exam, was not assigned a seat number as were all her colleagues. When he rushed to investigate the matter he was dryly informed that his daughter’s application was not accepted because she cited her religion as “Baha’i”, a religion not officially recognised. She had to change her religion entry into “Islam” or “Christianity” for the application to be accepted, he was told. Rights groups rose to confront the issue, demanding that the Education Ministry should not deprive student of the opportunity to sit for the exam on account of her religion.
I do not know what happened with the young lady’s exam; I assumed then that the Education Ministry had solved her predicament. I got to know, however, that, on 29 October 2008, a “personal and confidential” letter was sent to the directors of Education directorates in all Egypt, signed by the head of the central security management affiliated to the Education Minister’s office. The letter said: “Since some Baha’is have complained that they are not able to obtain computerised ID documents that carry a blank field for religion, and are thus deprived of the right to enrol their children in school, the Education Minister has decided to accept hard-copy birth certificates which carry a blank religion field in case of Baha’is, who may then choose either Islam or Christianity for the mandatory religion exam they would sit for.” A hand-written note accompanied the letter asking all student and examination affairs departments to implement the minister’s decision.
So this is how the Education Ministry decided to resolve the problem. It would accept documents proving Baha’is were not, Muslim, Christian, or Jewish, then it would require them to take an exam in Islamic or Christian religion. I could not help wondering whether the rights activists who defended the right of Baha’is to claim their faith knew that they are still being forced to lie about their faith in order to be granted basic rights. Obviously, there is a need to monitor how court rulings are implemented, in order to defend them against being trifled with or got around.
It is self-evident that religion classes are taught at schools to the adherents of each faith to teach them the principles of their respective religions. It is not a topic that non-believers of a given faith are forced to study. If the highest administrative judicial authority in Egypt rules that the religion field should be left blank in Baha’i ID documents, it means that it recognises their special status even if it does not recognise their religion. It does not oblige them to be Jewish, Christian, or Muslim. So why should the Education Ministry force them to choose between attending Islamic or Christian religion classes?
Last March I asked: “Are the Baha’is there yet?” Today it is obvious the answer is negative.
