The International Religious Freedom Report 2008 is greeted with the usual claims and counter-claims, reports Mohamed El-Sayed Egypt was criticised in the US State Department's 2008 International Religious Freedom Report, released this week, for discriminating against minorities and for official attitudes to religious conversion. On Tuesday the Foreign Ministry dismissed the report in a short statement, rejecting the contents as "mistaken and confused" and insisting that it dealt with subjects that are "the exclusive concern of the Egyptian people and government". "No foreign party should interfere in Egypt's domestic issues," the statement concluded. Although the report points out that, "there were some positive steps in support of religious freedom," it notes that "members of religious groups that are not recognised by the government, particularly the Bahaai faith, experience personal and collective hardship." It cited a lower court ruling that apparently excludes Muslims who wish to convert to another religion from constitutional guarantees of religious freedom: "Separate court rulings," it said, "included requirements effectively identifying the Christian converts and Bahaais as apostates, potentially exposing them, if implemented, to risk of significant discrimination by both governmental and societal agents." The Egyptian authorities were further criticised for detaining converts from Islam to Christianity, religious freedom advocates and Christian children of parents who had converted to Islam: "The [Egyptian] government again failed to redress laws and governmental practices that discriminate against Christians, effectively allowing their discriminatory effects and their modelling effect on society to become further entrenched." "Resistance to such conversions by local officials -- through refusal to legally recognise conversions -- constitutes a prohibition in practice." The report also highlighted growing sectarian tensions: "an attack by Bedouins on the Abu Fana Monastery, arson attacks on Christian- owned shops in Armant, and an attack on a Coptic Church and Coptic-owned shops in Esna". 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 jeopardise 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 licences, to members of the Bahaai community". "Reconciliation sessions", held by the authorities to address grievances between Muslims and Christians following sectarian attacks, were characterised as a piecemeal solution to an increasingly systemic problem. "Coptic leaders have begun refusing to participate, reportedly out of concern that the sessions did not result in restitution for losses incurred or in the perpetrators being brought to justice," the report notes. The construction of churches "continued to be hindered by lengthy delays, often measured in years. Although government officials maintain that President Mubarak approves all requests for permits presented to him, independent critics charge that delays by the Ministry of Interior and/or local authorities cause many requests to reach the president slowly or not at all. Some churches have complained that local security officials have blocked church repairs or improvements even when a permit has been issued... Many churches face difficulty in obtaining permits from provincial officials." Discriminatory practices cited include the fact that "there are no Christians serving as presidents or deans of public universities and they are rarely nominated by the government to run in elections as National Democratic Party [NDP] candidates." "Government practices discriminated against Christians in hiring for the public sector and staff appointments to public universities, and barred them from study at Al-Azhar University [a publicly funded institution]." The report added that the security services "reportedly maintain regular and sometimes hostile surveillance of Muslim-born citizens who are suspected of having converted to Christianity". The report identified anti- Semitic sentiments in both the government-owned and opposition press. "Anti-Semitic articles and opinion pieces appeared in the print media and editorial cartoons in the press and electronic media." While finding anti-Semitism less prevalent in the media than in recent years, "anti- Semitic editorial cartoons and articles depicting demonic images of Jews and Israeli leaders, stereotypical images of Jews along with Jewish symbols, and comparisons of Israeli leaders to Hitler and the Nazis were published throughout the year." Alongside the accusations the report lists improvements and positive developments. "The Cairo Administrative Court ruled in three cases brought by members of the country's small Bahaai minority that the government must issue official identification documents containing a dash or other mark in the religion field -- the decision has reportedly resulted in progress for other Bahaais seeking government identification documents, including the issuance of birth certificates and passports." The report also praised the April 2008 reappointment of the country's only Christian governor in Qena and praised a statement issued in July last year by the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa in which he said a Muslim has the right to choose a religion other than Islam. Nabil Abdel-Fattah, author of the Religious Status in Egypt Report, does not think such surveys should be taken seriously. "Most of these reports issued by international human rights organisations or the US Department of State mix criteria of freedom with political goals." The end result, he told Al-Ahram Weekly, "shows the influence of Jewish, Christian, as well as US-based Coptic lobby groups". While Abdel-Fattah argues that, "there has been tangible progress on the part of the Egyptian government in dealing with these religious issues, putting into practice the principle of citizenship, which was incorporated in the constitution, would put an end to such practices once and for all."
