Tag: religion

Since there’s been some interest in today’s protest to give Egyptian Bahais full recognition under the law, I am pasting below a press release from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, one of the NGOs that has campaigned on the case (they also campaign on behalf of Egyptian Shias as well as anyone else who is discriminated against because of personal belief or condition, as well as work on public health issues.)

The Supreme Administrative Court has unfortunately refused to force the Ministry of Interior to recognize Bahais, echoing the opinion of the Mufti of Egypt Ali Gomaa that Bahais do not deserve recognition — this from a supposedly more open-minded cleric. It’s sad to see such a confluence of bigotry and gestapo mentality: the sheikhs cling on to some abstract idea of what’s a religion or not while the security types are too attached to their system and too obsessed with religion to change the system. Just look how nervous this regime is about the whole Muslim-Coptic thing.

(Update: Don’t miss this story by the wonderful Jailan Zayan or this post by Hossam, who was at the demo had experience a bunch of nastiness first-hand.)

I think it’s worth highlighting that this is not the first time the issue goes to court. In 1924 an Egyptian appeals court recognized the Bahai faith as independent of Islam and therefore worthy of its own categorization:

“The Bahá’í Faith is a new religion entirely independent…. No Bahá’í therefore can be regarded as Muslim or vice versa, even as no Buddhist, Brahmin or Christian can be regarded as Muslim.”

There’s more info about that at the Bahai World News Service and this page in particular.

The public debate about this is rather narrow-minded, unfortunately. I had noted a few months in my personal notes that an al-Gomhouriya columnist, Mohammed Abdel Hafez, had written:

According to the Constitution, the main source of legislation is Islamic law, which recognises only the religions of the book: Christianity and Judaism. If Bahaism is officially recognised, worshippers of cows, the sun and fire will want to jump on the bandwagon.

This is both an attempt to belittle Bahais and take a jab at “pagans” — Hindus, Zoroastrians, Yazidis and others. Not very classy, Mr Abdel Hafez. I hope the rest of the discussion of this issue is a little bit more enlightened — to be fair I may have happened upon an unusually obnoxious commentary.

Incidentally Bahais are sometimes reproached in the region because they have a major presence at Mount Carmel, in Israel. Aside from their attachment to Jerusalem and its environs — surely understandable to Egyptian Muslims and Christians — it’s hardly their fault if they are mistreated elsewhere in the region, is it?

Anyway, here’s the EIPR press release.

Government Must Find Solution for Baha’i Egyptians

Egypt’s Supreme Administrative Court today found the government may not recognize the Bahai’i faith in official identification documents, leaving Baha’i Egyptian citizens unable to obtain necessary documents that must include a citizen’s religion, such as birth or death certificates and identity cards.

Continue reading Court denies Bahais legal recognition

The oddest controversy has been taking place in Cairo over the last few days. Last Friday, al-Masri al-Youm published an interview with Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni in which he regretted that the veil had become so popular in the country. By Friday afternoon, the Muslim Brotherhood had already issued a scathing statement condemning Hosni and accusing him of having insulted the Egyptian people. On Sunday, he did not attend the opening of parliament and Hosni Mubarak’s speech there (more on that later), allegedly because of “high tension.” On Monday, parliament discussed the scandal and a coalition of Muslim Brotherhood and NDP MPs – 130 altogether – put out a joint petition calling his resignation. He was attacked in parliament by top NPP figures such as Speaker Fathi Surour, presidential chief of staff Zakariya Azmi and Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Moufid Chehab. At least two MPs accused Hosni of being gay, and many more wanted him to resign or be sacked. Rarely has an attack against a minister gotten so personal. Even though Hosni had issued an apology (albeit a pretty mild one), the government promised to bring him to parliament to answer MPs’ questions. There are even lawsuits being prepared against him, although I’m not sure on what grounds. Yesterday, Hosni told the press he would refuse to come out of his home “until I have been rehabilitated and my honor restored by the Assembly.”

Farouk Hosni has been culture minister since 1986. He is known for being close to First Lady Suzanne Mubarak, and was protected by Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif (read: someone higher up) last year after calls for his resignation over the Beni Suef theater fire scandal. There must be some interesting conversations taking place around the presidential dinner table these days…

One thing that strikes me about all this is that religious politics have been coming back with a vengeance for the last third of this year. For the first six months, all the MB could talk about was political reform. Now they grab every opportunity to score points on the religious issues. And why is the NDP tagging along? Who in the regime wants to get rid of Hosni? To make room for another Gamal Mubarak acolyte maybe?

Dan Murphy goes to the Badawi moulid in Tanta after a run-in with the US Ambassador in Egypt.

Al Azhar and the Brotherhood don’t like it, though:

They lean their foreheads against the metal cage that surrounds the tomb, and murmur prayers for health, better financial fortune, or a child’s success in school. The practice – similar to Catholic prayers to the Virgin Mary seeking intercession with God or Shiite prayers to Imam Ali – is strictly at odds with Sunni Islam, which is generally thought to prevail here.

Indeed, the leaders of Al Azhar University, the arbiters of Sunni orthodoxy in Egypt, have long assailed this and other popular moulids, or saint’s festivals, like the ones to mark the Prophet Muhammad’s birthday or the death of Zeinab, his granddaughter, whom the faithful believe is buried in Cairo. To these leading Sunni imams, praying to saints or even celebrating Muhammad’s birthday is akin to idolatry.

But their long-standing efforts and those of groups like the Muslim Brotherhood to discourage expressions of popular Egyptian Islam have gained very little traction. A senior Brotherhood official rolls his eyes when asked about the moulids. “We’re against it, it’s a relic of jahaliya,” he says, using the Arabic term for the age of ignorance before Muhammad’s time. “We would really like this to stop.”

And people say the Brothers are more in touch with the people.

I really don’t want to promote Tarek Heggy‘s delusions of grandeur (see his bio, which describes him as “being amongst the members of the first echelon of the contemporary Arab liberal thinkers”), but I find his constant references to “security services mentality” in this piece on Copts interesting.

This security-service mentality is one of the factors that contributed to the collapse of objectivity and rationality in our thinking, and which [cause this kind of thinking] to be so far removed from objective and civilized modes of analysis which are one of the achievements of human civilization.

The basic issue is: ‘Do the Copts in Egypt suffer from serious problems in their own country?’ The only possible answer is: ‘Yes’.

Perhaps he’ll be sharing those views with his friend and next-door neighbor, Omar Suleiman.

Why aren’t people who issue death threats not more frequently taken to court? From the EOHR:

EOHR is very concerned about the aggressive campaign being waged against Dr. Souad Saleh, a professor of Islamic jurisprudence at the Azhar University, following her publicly stating her opinion on the Niquab (the Islamic full body veil), saying it is not compulsory in Islam. Her statement angered many fundamentalists, some of whom have called for the “shedding of her blood”.

Saleh, a former dean at Azhar University, stated her opinion in late October 2006 on a television programme called “Amma Yatasa’loon” (“What are they asking about?”), aired on the channel Dream TV. Saleh stated that the Niquab is not compulsory for Muslim women, and she supported her point by citing the Prophet and Islamic customs.

Also:

EOHR is deeply worried about the increasing tendency to accuse individuals of being “infidels”, and the accompanying calls to “shed the blood” of such individuals, when they express critical views, whether ideological or political.

Accordingly, EOHR denounces the calls by Member of Parliament Ali Laban for the execution of the prime minister, the endowment minister and the investment minister, on the charges of “attacking Islam openly”, which came as a reaction to their issuing an administrative decision to demolish a mosque and privatize a public company.