Arab West Report Egyptian press summaries and media research for dialogue

The State

Commissioners Authority has submitted its report on the controversial issue of Bahā’īs to

the Supreme Administrative Court.

Last April the Administrative Judicial Court, headed by Judge

Fārūq ‘Abd al-Qādir, forced the Egyptian minister of interior Major General

Habīb al-‘Ādlī, the head of the Civil Status Department [Reviewer: no name

mentioned] and the head of the Passports and Immigration Agency [Reviewer: no name mentioned], to allow

Egyptian

Bahā’īs to have their religion acknowledged on official documents, including birth

certificates and identity cards.

The minister of interior and the heads of the Civil Status

Department and

the Passports and Immigration Agency contested the ruling before the Supreme Administrative

Court, which referred

the challenge to the State Commissioners Authority to give its legal opinion on the

case. On Thursday, the

authority issued a 24-page report in which it called on the court to consider the

challenge and to overturn its

earlier ruling.

The report, made by Judge ‘Abd al-Qādir

Qandīl, the deputy

president of the State Council, examined a number of articles of Egyptian law and the

constitution, which are

related to freedom of faith and worship and on which the Bahā’ī

claimants had relied. It

called on the Egyptian government and the legislative authority to maintain the

unity of the Egyptian people and to

reject all ideas that would undermine the stability of the

country.

The report outlined that article 40 of

the Egyptian constitution provides that all citizens

are equal before the law [Reviewer: Article 40 reads: "All

citizens are equal before the law. They have

equal public rights and duties without discrimination between them due

to race, ethnic origin, language,

religion or creed"]. Article 46, the report added, guarantees freedom of worship

to all citizens. [Reviewer:

Article 46 reads: "The State shall guarantee the freedom of belief and the freedom of

practice of religious

rites"]. An amendment to the second article of the constitution was recently proposed to

further guarantee

the right of followers of the heavenly religions to practice their religion freely, the report

stated.

According to the report, freedom of worship is the right to practice what one accepts as

divine,

provided that their practice does not compromise the country’s security and stability. Scholars of

fiqh

[Reviewer: The report is most probably referring to Muslim scholars] have unanimously agreed

that the

Bahā’ī faith is not a heavenly religion. Therefore, it is not possible under the

civil

status law to acknowledge the Bahā’ī faith on official documents, the report noted.