Does prayer need a licence?

Readers who followed last month’s four editorials on the grievances of the Copts of Maghagha and Adawa in Minya, Upper Egypt, will have found no difficulty in spotting the root of the persecution and collective punishment they were regularly subjected to. The problems all boil down to the Copts being deprived of the freedom to pray or conduct religious rites. New churches, direly needed to meet the natural population growth, are denied permits. Existing ones are denied restoration or renovation permits for decades on end, thereby jeopardising the safety of the worshippers. The authorities lie in wait for the Copts until they catch them red-handed praying in buildings of Christian religious societies or associations, upon which they rush to close down the place under the pretext that it was not licensed to host performances of religious rites. Even houses built by Copts come under official disapprobation, sometimes to the point of being demolished by the authorities, out of fear that they may one day be turned into places to conduct Christian religious rites without licence. <BR>Maghagha and Adawa are not unique but are typical samples of the persistent suffering to which the Christian segment of the population is widely subjected.<BR>For the wise men in this country, Muslims and Copts alike, the way out of this dark tunnel is the unified law for building places of worship which they have long demanded. Strangely, the State is the main party standing in the way of promulgating the law while various religious and political currents in Egypt appear to have no problem with it. Now that five years have passed since the issue was first raised, only God knows how long we will have to wait until the law sees light. <BR>Given the recent security clampdown on Christians praying in places outside their licensed churches, the question which begs an answer is: does Egyptian law ban the practice of religious rites outside licensed places of worship? Numerous buildings all over Egypt now host a  zawya. literally corner, on the ground floor to act as a Muslim prayer house. These zawyas, apart from being widespread and legitimate, bring the owners of the building the added bonus of carrying a tax exemption. <BR>Contrariwise, Christians are banned from praying in places other than licensed churches as though this were an illegal practice. Authorities turn a blind eye to Constitutional provisions of equality and freedom of belief. They arrogantly terrorise worshippers who dare conduct services outside a licensed church, tyrannically treating them as law violators, despite the fact that the root problem lies in the authorities’ reluctance to permit the erection of new churches or restore existing ones.<BR>So does Egyptian law actually ban practising religious rites outside licensed places of worship? We need to be aware of legal provisions which secure religious freedom but which are frequently sidelined and obscured by the authorities. In this context, I received a letter from Watani reader Anwar Yassa Mansour, who is a lawyer, shedding light on previous Egyptian court rulings that guarantee and protect equal religious rights.<BR>Mr Mansour cites a ruling issued by the State Council (the highest administrative court in Egypt) on16 December 1952, which stipulated that people are entitled to pray in the places they specify for this purpose, and the Interior Ministry is not to prevent them from doing so. Hanna Soliman Girgis, who owned a plot of land in Qassasseen, had erected a building over part of the land for the purpose of holding prayer services with the community he belongs to, the Coptic Orthodox community. When the Interior Ministry ordered him to halt the practice until a royal decree to allow it is issued, he sued the ministry. Abdel-Razeq al-Sanhoury, the then head of the State Council and one of the illustrious figures in the history of the Egyptian judiciary, headed the judicial panel. Sayed al-Damarawy, Kamel al-Masry, Abdel-Rahman Nusseir and Taha Abdel-Wahab were member judges. The court ruled that the Interior Ministry was not entitled to ban religious gatherings or prayers since such a ban would breach the freedom of belief and the freedom to conduct religious rites, as well as individual freedom, all of which were guaranteed by the Constitution and the law.<BR>The Interior Ministry’s defence had cited the 1856 Humayouni Edict, which stipulates that the ruler should approve licences for churches, as a pretext to ban prayers in non-licensed places. The court, however, said in its legal reasoning that “the fact that building churches should be based on the Humayouni Edict should not be taken as a pretext to place unjustifiable obstacles in the way of building these places of worship. When the edict made the licence a necessity, it did not aim to hamper the practice of religion, but sought to fulfil conditions to guarantee that these places should exist in a respectable environment. Once these conditions are fulfilled, licenses should be granted within a certain period in accordance with the law. But until a law is issued to specify this period, the court should oversee the authorities’ practices to make sure they do not abuse their power through withholding or delaying licences.”<BR>This court ruling, issued in 1952 and followed by other rulings by Egypt’s judiciary in 1954 and 1958, is a cause of pride for its upholding of the constitutional rights and freedoms. But it is also a cause of deep sorrow since, 60 years later, we are unable to pass a unified law for building places of worship—despite the approval of the National Council for Human Rights—to uphold the same principles.