Egypt Constitution recognizes only three religions on national ID cards

From Advocates For The Persecuted

[See also Egyptian court rules in favor of Baha'is - against Muslim convert and Copts appeal religious identity ruling.]

June 27, 2007  – In his Dec. 15, 2006 article, “Test for Egypt religious freedom in Baha'i verdict,” Jailan Sayan lists the consequences facing one Egyptian, whose religious beliefs put him outside the nation's Identity-Card law:

“Ragi Labib, a young Egyptian university graduate, cannot find a job, buy a car, or open a bank account. By next year, he may not even be able to prove his identity.” Those words proved true the next day, when the Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court overturned the Baha'i verdict, once again casting a shadow of oppression over the nation's religious minorities.

Labib's religious belief - He's a Baha'i - places him outside the three officially recognized religions in Egypt, which are Islam, Christianity and Judaism.

In “Rendered faithless and stateless,” an article published in the Al-Ahram weekly Dec. 21-27, 2006 edition, author Gamal Nkrumah said the Baha'is had “suffered a disastrous setback” as a result of the court's December decision. The Supreme Administrative Court, upon appeal, overturned an April 2006 ruling by the Egyptian Administrative Court that recognized the right of Baha'is to have their faith listed on national ID cards.

Labib Iskandar, a prominent Egyptian Baha'i, told Nkrumah: “We move about without personal identification cards. That is a criminal offence in Egypt. We could be stopped by police at any moment, anywhere and asked for our ID.”

According to another source quoted in Nkrumah's article - Basma Moussa, a Cairo dentist - not producing an ID card carries up to a five-year prison sentence, and “the Egyptian legal system criminalises both employers and employees who do not have computerised ID cards.” Egypt is in the process of enforcing a switchover to the country's new electronic ID cards, which will bring even more hardship to those whose religious affiliation falls outside the three officially sanctioned religions, which are the only religions mentioned in the Koran.

On Dec. 23, 2006, U.S. Rep. Mark Stevens Kirk (R-Ill.) said he had “joined with U.S. Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.) to write a letter to the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States, expressing disappointment at the court's decision and urging the Egyptian government to remedy the situation.”

Kirk said he was, “alarmed when I learned of the action the Government of Egypt recently took towards the small Egyptian Baha'i community. The Supreme Administrative Court of Egypt decided last Saturday to uphold the Egyptian government's discriminatory policy of prohibiting Baha'is from obtaining a national identity card. The court's ruling denies Egyptian Baha'is their rights as citizens of Egypt and would subject them to particular hardship in obtaining education, employment, and social services.”

The U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom Report 2006, says, that at age 16, Egyptian citizens, under Law 143/1994, must obtain a new identification card with a new national identification number.

Egyptian police do inspections at random, including on public transportation systems. Those without identity cards are detained until the document is provided to the police. As a result, Baha'is, and other religious minorities who refuse to carry the religious identity card of a religion they do not adhere to, are essentially forced to hide at home in order to avoid arrest.

Christians impacted by ID card law, too.

Just because Christianity is recognized as one of the Koran's three heavenly religions doesn't mean that the ID card issue isn't a grievous issue for the nation's Christians, either.

Someone who is born to a father whose identity card is Christian, at age 16, must obtain the new card, and will be able to list Christianity as the religion on the card. In some cases, teen-aged children have discovered that, unbeknownst to them, their fathers had quietly converted to Islam years earlier. In such cases, these children face an uphill legal battle in order to list Christianity on their ID cards.

If either a 16-year-old applying for a first-time ID card, or an adult, wants to convert to Islam from another religion, it is a very simple, one-day process to get a Muslim identity card, regardless of the father's religious affiliation. However, if he was born to a Muslim family, he cannot change his religious identity, period.

For Muslim converts to Christianity, not only do they face the potential rage of family members, who often view the convert as an apostate subject to severe punishment and even death under the strict interpretation of the Koran, they also cannot change the ID card affiliation. A Muslim convert attempting to marry a Christian - whether a Christian by birth affiliation or by conversion - must do so through a Koranic-laced ceremony, which Christians find objectionable, and interpret as a public denial of their faith.

Additionally, there have been numerous cases of alleged forced conversions of Egyptian teens and young women to Islam through kidnapping, or entrapment. When the victim is forced, under compulsion or trickery, to officially change her identity card to Islam, then, later, she may find it will be very difficult for her to change the ID card back again to reflect an affiliation with Christianity.

These situations all stem from Egypt's legal reliance upon Sharia - Islamic law as derived from Koranic teachings. According to Sayan, there is “a loophole in Egypt's constitution, which assures that all citizens are equal before the law but also states that laws are to be derived from Sharia - Islamic law - which recognizes only three religions.” The result is a dual personality in the government, and explains why the ID card issue is both volatile and elicits seemingly contradictory verdicts within the nation's court systems. An expanding pool of radical Islamists in the nation vigorously defend strict adherence to Sharia, even though this has resulted in a situation where Egypt's constitution contradicts itself.

Elizabeth Prodromou, who visited Egypt in 2004 as part of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, told the U.S. Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Nov. 16, 2005, that the ID card issue was one of the three “most serious issues that the Commission feels deserves immediate attention,” along with violence and lack of protection for Egypt's Christians, and persistent anti-Semitism in the media and educational system.

“The Egyptian government's computerization of the national ID card system reportedly goes into full effect by the end of this year [2005]. If Baha'is cannot obtain ID cards, they would be subject to arrest at anytime while in public and essentially be denied all rights of citizenship. From a recently dated official document obtained by the Commission, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior makes it clear that it not only does not allow the Baha'i faith to be accorded recognition on identity cards, but it also does not allow individual Baha'is to identify their religion as 'other.'” said Prodromou.

“In addition, individuals who change their religion from Islam to Christianity fear government harassment if the conversion is registered. Reportedly, converts have altered their own identification cards and other official documents to reflect their new religious affiliation. However, if the altered ID cards are discovered by authorities, criminal charges can result,” she said.

She urged the U.S. to “ensure that every Egyptian is protected against discrimination on the national identity card by removing religious affiliation.” In order to accomplish this, she suggested “the U.S. government should have to ability to directly fund civil society and human rights groups without vetting by the Egyptian government.” She argued for U.S. funding of human rights groups directly, without having the approval of government officials before issuing funds to these indigenous watchdog groups.

One Egyptian Christian - a young woman who converted from Islam to Christianity - lost her Muslim ID card in the panic of the exit from her Islamic family. If she goes to the authorities to request a new card, her family will find her, and may use extreme measures - even to the point of beating her, or killing her - in order to force her back into official adherence to Islam. Without an ID card, she must live the life of an illegal alien, yet she is a native daughter of Egypt.

If she could acquire a Christian ID card, she says she would be willing to have a new identity even though it may mean relinquishing her academic credentials - in essence giving up her Bachelor's Degree, and her years of formal education. “This is what Christ means to me,” she said.