A bit more religious freedom

Feb 14th 2008 | CAIRO
From The Economist print edition

TWENTY-SEVEN years ago, Egypt revised its secular constitution to enshrine Muslim sharia as “the principal source of legislation”. To most citizens, most of the time, that seeming contradiction—between secularism and religion—has not made much difference. Nine in ten Egyptians are Sunni Muslims and expect Islam to govern such things as marriage, divorce and inheritance. Nearly all the rest profess Christianity or Judaism, faiths recognised and protected in Islam. But to the small minority who embrace other faiths, or who have tried to leave Islam, it has, until lately, made an increasingly troubling difference.

Members of Egypt's 2,000-strong Bahai community, for instance, have found they cannot state their religion on the national identity cards that all Egyptians are obliged to produce to secure such things as driver's licences, bank accounts, social insurance and state schooling. Hundreds of Coptic Christians who have converted to Islam, often to escape the Orthodox sect's ban on divorce, find they cannot revert to their original faith. In some cases, children raised as Christians have discovered that, because a divorced parent converted to Islam, they too have become officially Muslim, and cannot claim otherwise..............

Small steps, perhaps, but they point the way towards freedom of choice and citizenship based on equal rights rather than membership of a privileged religion".

أجمل ما في مقال الإيكونوميست هو أخر سطرين, التطورات الحاصلة في مصر حالياً هي خطوات صغيرة ولكنها تسير نحو حرية الأختيار ومواطنة مبنية علي المساواة في الحقوق وليس التميزالديني.

إلي الأمام مصرنا الحبيبة في طريق الرقي والتقدم طريق العدل والمساواة طريق الوحدة بدون تعصبات