Egypt's sectarian issues have turned the country into kind of large minefield, where no one knows when and where the next sectarian clash will explode. The roots of sectarian tension are intricately intertwined with the Egyptian social fabric, and are therefore deep and complex. Where do you start? We in the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth believe that the most effective treatment of Sectarianism is long-term, we also believe that the matter.
Egypt's sectarian issues have turned the country into a large minefield, where no one knows when and where the next sectarian clash will explode. The roots of sectarian tension are intricately intertwined with the Egyptian social fabric, and are therefore deep and complex. Where do you start? We in the Egyptian Union of Liberal Youth believe that the most effective treatment of Sectarianism is long-term, we also believe that the matter is urgent, and something has to be done to prevent the situation from getting worse. Therefore, we put before the Egyptian public opinion a three-pronged legal proposal, which we believe to be sufficient for the alleviation of sectarian strife, in a way that will help create the proper climate to start dealing with the deeper roots of the problem. This is not to say that the sectarian problem is reducible to a legal issue, but it's an action plan, describing where to start.
First: Returning to Property Rights as the Solution to the Problem of Church Building
There is no need to go here on a detailed analysis of the legal and historic complexities of this issue; reality speaks better than any argument. First of all: Egypt’s Christians suffer greatly in order to obtain a permit for the building, expansion or renovation of a church, and second: even after obtaining the permit, the church keepers are often faced with serious harassment by local authorities or Muslim inhabitants of the church neighborhood, which may lead up to bloody confrontations, as occured several times in recent years. The solution presented now is a Unified Law for Houses of Worship that determines the conditions for granting permits to all houses of worship, and which we believe to be an intrusion of government on the private sphere and an entrenchment of sectarianism in general and of Christian difficulties in particular. In our view, first, Private Property is an inalienable right, and whoever owns the land should have the right to do with it as he pleases, without infringing upon public safety. In other words, houses of worship should not require any special building permits, different from those of residential or administrative buildings. Second, most proposals of the Unified Law are based on the logic of quotas, linking church building permits to the ratio of Christians to Muslims in a particular area, or that of churches to mosques, which is an arbitrary and meaningless restriction. Third, the mere notion of needing a special permit involves great risk, especially since existing laws and most proposals for a Unified Law grant the permit upon the discretion of a public official (President, Governor, etc.), which opens the door to accusations of bias against this religion or that, and thus to violence and rioting. Fourth, even if we assume that the law will be applied without bias, it would practically mean complicating Mosque building rather than simplifying church building.
In conclusion, we propose the removal of all restrictions on building places of worship in Egypt, considering legal possession to be the sole basis for determining the right to build a place of worship, regardless of all other concerns. Similarly, we suggest that any attack on a house of worship should be considered an assault on private property, whose perpetrator should be held accountable under the provisions the Egyptian Civil and Criminal Codes in this regard.
Second: Validation of Religious Conversion at the General Register Office
While we vehemently reject the identification of individuals on the basis of their religious affiliation, and though we strongly believe in absolute religious freedom, we cannot wish away the tension accompanying cases of religious conversion in Egypt. Hence, we call for the drafting and adoption of a law that would stipulate for the validity of religious conversion that the person converting should sign a documented statement at the General Registrar Office, provided that he or she is of legal age and in full possession of his or her mental faculties, and that the signing is witnessed by the declarant’s attorney, regardless of all other proceedings taken at a religious institution. Therefore, only one with such statement can be legally considered a convert. In this way, it should be much easier to ward off allegations circling around cases of religious conversion, e.g. with regard to abduction of minors or females, and legal action could be taken against those who bring about these allegations in case they were proven false.
Third: Enacting an Anti-discrimination Law
It is the prevalent conviction in the Egyptian Christian Community in Egypt that Christians are subject to systematic persecution by the State and public and private institutions (e.g. in administrative appointments, university hirings of staff and faculty, team member selection in sports clubs, etc.), which - although not void of exaggeration in many cases - has prompted Christians to a semi-voluntary isolation in community-based private networks. We therefore propose a law to ban religious discrimination in public and private institutions, expediting the legal procedures in cases of discrimination and addresses them by correction and compensation together (and not compensation only), and also providing detailed and specific descriptions of the exceptions where discrimination is permissible, e.g. jobs of religious nature. The objective of this proposal is not only to lift the injustice in cases of discrimination, but also to alleviate the sense of persecution among Christians, pushing them to interact positively with the community even through litigation.
