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“Article 46 of the Constitution stipulates that ‘the State guarantees freedom of belief and freedom of practicing religious rites’. There is nothing in Egyptian Laws that restricts freedom of belief or hinders the individual from changing his religion. Freedom of belief is associated with freedom of practising religious rituals. On this subject, it is worthy to note the fact that the Egyptian government issued decrees to license the building of 138 churches during the period from 2005 to mid July 2009. In addition, in 2005, the Government issued a decree delegating governors, each within his respective governorate, to issue to the Christian religious denominations the approval to demolish a church and erect a church on its site, or to erect a new building, or to carry out modifications or extensions to an existing church. It is worthy to note also in this respect that the building of mosques is carried out according to a plan laid down by the Ministry of Awqaf according to its regulating resolutions and laws. And there is a plan which is being implemented by the Ministry to put all private mosques under its jurisdiction. This means that building mosques in Egypt is not free from licensing restrictions- and in any case, the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights presented a draft Bill unifying the regulations for building and renovating places of worship, which is currently under consideration for the assessment of suitability and the extent of adapting such a law in the future.”

We thoroughly examined some of the things mentioned in this official document.

The report states that the number of decrees to license the building of new churches issued from January 2005 to mid July 2009 is 138. To verify the truthfulness of this statement we carried out a meticulous search through all issues of the official newspaper (in which all new laws and presidential decrees are published) issued during 2005 – 2007, as well as the reports on religious affairs issued by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights Centre for the years 2008 – 2009, which are generally reliable reports. The result of this research showed that:

Firstly, there were only 122 decrees until July 2009 or 126 decrees until the end of 2009. Therefore there is a difference of 16 decrees between the figure mentioned in the government report and the figure we arrived at.

Secondly, of course this difference is not an issue worthy of causing a problem, but what makes it an issue and also a problem is that the government decrees mentioned were not all licenses to build new churches as the report claims- but only 37 of them were- that is, less than a third of their figure. The distribution of them over time is as follows:

13 in 2005

18 in 2006

6   in 2007

0 in 2008

0 in 2009

The distribution am0ng the denominations are as follows:

22    for the Orthodox who represent about 90% of the Christian population

10 for the Anglicans with all their denominations

 5 for the Catholics

As for the remaining presidential decrees, their breakdown is as follows:

55 decrees were for the licensing of churches already in existence, that is, to legalise churches that had been built in the past (prior to 1971 when the State had ignored the ‘Hemayoni Line’ to the point of omitting it)- 19 of those were for the Orthodox, 29 for the Anglicans and 7 for the Catholics.

34 decrees were concerning the refurbishment and repair of churches- such as refurbishing the fence and amenities of El-Balamoun, Beni Suef, or refurbishing the waterworks at El-Gabal El-Sharqy, or building a kitchen with its amenities in the village of El-Hanan, Beni-Suef, or repairing the ceiling of Sadfa, Assiut, or building monks’ cells in St Mena’s Monastery, Abanoub Mount, Assiut, or building a house for service or a charitable hospital or demolishing a church and rebuilding another on its site within the same area. And in fact, the majority (31) of these decrees, were carried out in 2005 before the presidential decree delegating governors the authority for licensing, was issued in December 2005.

Thirdly, the respectable Egyptian document presented to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations states that “…It is worthy to note also in this respect that the building of mosques is carried out according to a plan laid down by the Ministry of Awqaf according to its regulating resolutions and laws. And there is a plan which is being implemented by the Ministry to put all private mosques under its jurisdiction. This means that building mosques in Egypt is not free from licensing restrictions…”.

Of course, there is no logical relationship between the plan of the Ministry of Awqaf to include private mosques under its jurisdiction and the obtaining of licenses for the building of a mosque, whether it be a state or a private mosque. To compare the condition of building churches with those of building mosques is an untrue statement. Mosques, not only do not need licenses, but the mere changing of a basement of any building into an Islamic place of prayer results in the automatic exemption from taxes and from electricity and water charges for the whole building. There is no state building nor school nor establishment in Egypt that is without an Islamic place of prayer. Undoubtedly, the Egyptian government is aware that the land of Egypt has in excess of 900,000 Islamic places of prayer. This is in addition to the mosques, 104,000 of which are now under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Awqaf, and the rest are private mosques.

Moreover, the Egyptian government not only makes it difficult for Christians to build churches but prosecutes those who gather in their own homes to pray.

On 27 October 2009, the security forces arrested Maurice Salama, a teacher in the village of Samalout, Egypt, with the following charge: ‘Carrying Out Prayer Inside his House in the Presence of a Religious Christian Clergyman, Without a License’, case number 8651, because he, together with members of his family, had gathered together to commemorate the anniversary of the memorial of the death of his uncle, in his house as the village has no church. The authorities made him sign a declaration that he would not carry out such an event in future, and appointed guards at his house to ensure the implementation of this order! This is only an example of many other similar incidents.

Fourthly, the author (Dr Mufid Shihab) of the Egyptian report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, continued, “… and in any case, the Egyptian National Council for Human Rights presented a draft Bill unifying the regulations for building and renovating places of worship, which is currently under consideration for the assessment of suitability and the extent of adapting such a law in the future”.

His statement indicates that this draft Bill already exits. Moreover, Dr Ahmed Kamal Abul Magd, the former Vice-President of the National Council of Human Rights, stated that the draft Bill has been submitted to the People’s Assembly (Watani Newspapter 28 February).  However, Mr Serour, the President of the People’s Assembly, completely denies the existence of any trace of such a draft Bill!

During the session of 7th February 2010 of the Advisory Council (the Upper House of Representatives) of Egypt, and in response to questions about the aforementioned draft Bill, Minister Shihab said, “There is always someone who insists on the existence of obstacles in the building of churches. We must not be dragged into such rumours”, and said that there has been a law organising the building of churches since the era of Mohammed Ali (150 years ago). In fact he now denies any need for a new Bill to organise the building of places of worship.

The problem is far deeper than the number of churches. Is the number of churches, whether already in existence or those having been given licenses to be built, sufficient for the need? The answer is unquestionably, ‘No’. 

Put simply, the State, under Sadat and Mubarak, has brought back to life the Hemayoni Line, adhering literally to the Shari’a Principle which places an obligation “not to build either a monastery or a church, neither a cell nor a closet for a monk, and not to refurbish what has been demolished, without permission from the relevant authorities”. That is why we find that the decree of 2005 speaks of ‘delegating’ and not of ‘transferring’ the authority to the governors of issuing licenses, meaning that the president delegates to the regional governors authority which he alone possesses.  The permission (license) to build a new church is always difficult and takes many years to obtain- if ever. Some licenses have taken 25 years to obtain.

There is no doubt that the State is insisting on increasing its humiliation of the Copts in order to prove to everyone that it (the State) is more extreme than the Islamic extremists?