This decision also applies to Christian minors who were “administratively converted” because one of their parents converted to Islam before they reached the age of 18.
Arab-West Report contacted the lawyers Ramsīs al-Najjār, along with his son Peter, and was informed about the lengthy legal struggle they have been involved in.
Between 2005 and 2006, Peter al-Najjār was able to obtain 25 National ID cards for Christians who had converted to Islam for various reasons and subsequently decided they wanted to return to Christianity. These ID cards are important because they show whether someone is Muslim or Christian, which in turn plays a major role in marriage, as well as in determining whether children receive a Muslim or Christian religious education in public schools where such education is obligatory.
It is generally easy for Christians who convert to Islam to obtain a Muslim ID. But for Muslims who were born in a Muslim family and who convert to Christianity this is impossible. And for Muslims who were originally Christian this is very hard. This is because some Muslim legal experts have been working to make it impossible for Christian converts to Islam to return to their faith of origin.
Counselor al-Ḥusaynī of the Council of State issued a verdict in 2006 that prevented Muslims who had been born Christians from returning to the faith of their parents. At that point, al-Najjār was no longer able to obtain new ID cards with a Christian identity for people who wanted to return to the faith of the Christian family they were born into. Al-Najjār sought to overturn this verdict, which resulted in a two year legal struggle.
On February 2, 2008, an administrative court issued a ruling that overturned the verdict of Counselor al-Ḥusaynī and thus Muslims who were born in a Christian family could again return to their original faith and obtain a new national ID card stating they are Christian.
This verdict was, however, never executed until February 12, 2011 - when three ID cards were obtained for people returning to Christianity, their faith of origin. Peter al-Najjār stated that all Egyptian citizens have the right to obtain their ID’s without going to court using their birth certificates that states specifies whether one is born in a Muslim or Christian family. Based on this, Peter was able to extract 3 IDs for people returning to the Christian faith. However, the Fatwá Committee in the Council of State said that all citizens must file a report on their case individually, which means that a verdict for individual citizens on reconversion cannot be generalized, but that each individual request will must be judged individually.
However, the Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court ruled on July 3 that this decision of the Fatwa Committee of the Council of State was not legal. In other words, similar cases should be treated similarly and not individually. With this decision, they confirmed their verdict of February 12, 2011.
The court, however, did more. It also stated on July 3 that the Ministry of Interior must implement the order automatically in similar cases without reverting to the judiciary for individual verdicts, criticizing the ministry for refusing to implement similar verdicts passed previously. This court verdict is extremely important since the Ministry of Interior had not implemented the verdict issued on February 2, 2008.
"The problem with Egypt's judicial system is that each judge interprets the laws based on his own biases and personal beliefs," al-Najjār says in the Daily News Egypt of July 4. This inconsistency means that different judges do not deal with similar cases in similar ways. The ruling of the Egyptian Supreme Administrative Court tries to end those differences in interpretation. Al-Najjār is optimistic and believes that this ruling will be executed this time.
This is a major step forwards.
This news was first reported by Hibah Fahmī for the Daily News Egypt on July 4. Unfortunately, Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch website took her text and gave it a very different slant. Jihad Watch published the same news under the title “Coptic bishop: People who claim that Egypt's Copts exercise their full freedom of religion and expression are delusional.” This title makes it very clear that Jihad Watch does not trust the ruling. Of course, Robert Spencer is continuously negative about developments in Egypt and refuses to accept that Egypt is a country where different streams are trying to gain influence - as is obvious from the contradictory verdicts of the Supreme Administrative Court and the Council of State’s Fatwá Committee.
Being consistently negative and cynical risks turning this story into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not that the influence of Jihad Watch is extensive in Egypt, but if large numbers of Copts engage in such responses, (which seems to be the case) then they risk contributing to the strengthening of the very Islamic streams that they oppose. I thus agree with al-Najjār that the verdict of the Supreme Administrative Court must be welcomed. On the other hand, it will need to be monitored to see whether this decision is indeed carried out. And only when it has become clear that the verdict has not been carried out, is it appropriate to highlight this point.
Furthermore, the “bishop” that Jihad Watch refers to is not, in fact, a bishop. Philopater is a Coptic Orthodox priest who acts as a political activist with al-Katiba Tabiya, a publication that frequently engages in exaggerations about stories of Coptic discrimination. While Father Philopater’s comments should not be automatically disregarded, they should always be read with caution and continuously be verified.
Father Philopater is correct that previous experiences have shown that the decision does not automatically guarantee that judges will act accordingly or be held accountable for not complying. Father Philopater refers to six Christians (who had converted to Islam and then back to Christianity) who had filed a complaint in February 2008 to the prosecutor general against the minister of interior and his assistant (the head of the Civil Status Organization) for not implementing the court order issued on February 2, 2008, allowing them to be identified as Christians on their national ID cards. Al-Najjār said the complaint is currently being investigated in the light of the Supreme Administrative Court decision of July 3. Al-Najjār says that "failing to implement a court order without any justifiable reason is a crime. If the interior minister and his assistant are proven guilty, they can receive jail time." With the verdict of July 3, the minister of interior and his assistant should thus think twice before they would fail to implement this court order, which is giving out national ID cards with a Christian identity.
Father Philopater complains about a long-existing double standard in dealing with conversions in Egypt. "When Christians decide to convert to Islam, they receive support from everyone including the authorities and their ID cards are changed to include their new religion in no time," he said. "When it's the other way round [Muslims becoming Christian], Christians face obstacles and difficulties that obstruct their freedom of belief and the lifestyle they choose to have," he added. This is correct but one should still see the current court verdict as a step forwards.
Father Philopater, apparently deliberately, neglects the role of the Coptic Orthodox Church in driving to Islam those Christians who have serious marriage problems and who wish to receive a divorce. Civil marriages are nonexistent in Egypt. Marriage and divorce is only possible within your respective community of faith. We have once hosted in our family Āmāl, a 20-year-old Christian woman who had been married for three to four years, but whose marriage had turned very sour. Her husband had several times threatened to kill her. Before she came to us through a servant of the Coptic Orthodox Church, her husband had thrown hydrochloric acid in her direction. Thankfully, he missed and she escaped. However she could not go to her own family because that would have been the easiest place for her husband to find her, and thus we were asked to take care of her for two weeks. She wanted a divorce but her priest decided otherwise. I am generally not in favor of divorce, but if one’s husband has threatened and mistreated his wife in such a serious way, should divorce then still be refused?
In 2004 Wafā’ Constantine, the wife of a Coptic Orthodox priest in Maṭāmīr, Damanhūr, wanted to divorce her husband following serious marriage problems. She turned to Coptic Orthodox bishop Pachomius of Damanhūr, who refused to grant her a divorce. Following this rejection, Constantine decided to go to the police to state her “wish” to become Muslim. This was of course no love for Islam, but she saw this as a necessary step to obtain a divorce, since neither the church nor Islam accepts that a “Muslim” woman is married to a Christian. Constantine’s step resulted in false Christian claims that she was “forced” to convert to Islam, which in turn resulted in fierce Muslim-Christian polemics and tensions. Pope Shenouda forced Egyptian authorities to find Constantine and bring her to the church. He did so by withdrawing to his monastery and threatening not to celebrate Christmas, which would have seriously increased tensions between Muslims and Christians. Constantine was brought by security to a church-owned house, where she spoke for four days with different bishops who tried to make her recant her decision to convert to Islam. Only after four days was she ready to make a statement that she wanted to remain Christian. The fact that she needed four days to make this decision suggests that it may not have been entirely made of her own volition. It was also not convincing that Constantine was not allowed to meet with any media to tell her own story. This episode has contributed to worsened relations between the church and the state. (Arab-West Report, 2005, week 51, art. 13). Bishop Armiyā, the secretary of Pope Shenouda, told me on April 8 that the government, out of a sort of revenge, has either destroyed all official documents about Constantine or made them inaccessible. Constantine is, for this reason, not able to obtain a passport to leave the country.
The struggle is not merely about Wafā’ Constantine. Egyptian diplomats have also told me another case where a court agreed upon the divorce of Nājī William and Hālah Sidqī. Pope Shenouda, however, refused this court’s verdict and claimed that this was the church’s authority and not the court’s. AWR has written several articles about this controversy.
It is clear that the issue of re-conversion from Islam back to Christianity is related to the struggle between the church and state regarding who is the ultimate authority in deciding who is allowed to obtain a divorce.
Al-Najjār continues his struggle. Following the court verdict of July 3, he filed another complaint to the prosecutor general demanding that Coptic teenagers whose fathers converted to Islam be allowed to choose the religion documented on their national ID cards when they turn 16 without a court order. Children of fathers who convert from Christianity to Islam are automatically registered as Muslims on their ID cards when they turn 16. That is the age that Egyptians obtain ID cards. The Christian opposition to such administrative conversions is understandable. They can be turned back in court but why submit Christian youth to such procedures simply because a parent converted to Islam?
