The Middle East in the News
•Your Name & Date Victoria Wilmarth 10/2/08
•Title of Article/Editorial/Column (indicate which type)
A Mixed Bag
The International Religious Freedom Report 2008 is greeted with the usual claims and counter-claims, reports Mohamed El-Sayed
•Source of Article — Include a Link
Al-Ahram (weekly online newspaper based in Cairo) http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2008/916/eg6.htm
Time: Week of September 25th
Place: Cairo, Egypt
Key People
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US State Department
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Bahaais (religious minority in Egypt)
Vocabulary
Main Ideas
The US State department released its 2008 International Religious Freedom Report, which criticized Egypt for limited religious tolerance and often prominent religious discrimination. The article goes into depth about the plight of the Bahaais religious minority and also touches on anti-Semitism and the discrimination Egyptian Christians face.
In response to the report, the State Department said, “No foreign party should interfere in Egypt’s domestic issues.”
•Your Response to Article
Although I think it is important that someone be observing the role of religion in different countries, I do not think it is necessarily the US State Department’s place to do so. It may be more appropriate for NGOs to do so.
One of the things I found most compelling about this article was that it helped give concrete examples of both how seriously religion is taken in Egypt as well as religious discrimination. For example:
“The Bahaais featured prominently — “The government at times prosecutes members of religious groups whose practices are deemed to deviate from mainstream Islamic beliefs and whose activities are alleged to jeopardize communal harmony” — and the government was condemned for a court ruling stating that anyone who adopts the Bahaai faith is an apostate and for denying “civil documents, including identity cards, birth certificates, and marriage licenses, to members of the Bahaai community”. “
This type of religious discrimination is somewhat surprising to me because it denied basic aspects of identity in society from Bahaai (example: birth certificate).
{ 3 } Comments
Tori, thanks for posting this piece! As a Christian living in Egypt twenty years ago, I can vouch for the discrimination, which is often subtle and not fully visible (churches having trouble securing building permits from local authorities to make repairs, for example). Sometimes, the discrimination is quite overt, however, and very visible: as in the time I saw someone turn a hose on a group of Sudanese Christian refugees who were visiting a church.
First, Tori, let me say that my editing on your post consisted only of altering the formatting a little bit; there was no picking at your content.
Second, I wonder if the official and semi-official (tolerated) discrimination toward non-Muslims in Egypt is a way for the government to blunt the appeal of Islamists to the general public. Is it a way for the government to seem to be less hostile to Muslim politico-religious concerns? I hope that others will weigh in on this question.
Yes, Peter, I think so.
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