Problems on hold:Citizenship, politically yours

Last February the bishopric of Shubral-Kheima, Qalyubiya, held a conference to discuss citizenship rights. The conference, which was sponsored by the bishop of Shubral-Kheima Anba Morqos, hosted Qalyubiya governor Adly Hussein, head of Parliament’s foreign affairs committee Mustafa al-Fiqi, head of the Coptic Orthodox Melli (Community) Council Tharwat Bassili, as well as figures from the political, partisan, and clerical circles. Predictably, a large portion of the participating public was Coptic. Also predictably, the discussions centred around the grievances of Copts where citizenship rights—or the lack of them—are concerned. These grievances are all too familiar, so I will not go into them, but I will stop at the governor’s remarks, which obviously warrant comment.Governor Hussein commented on the Coptic complaint about the difficulty of building churches and Parliament’s undue lingering in passing a unified law for building places of worship, by saying that the Church should feel honoured to obtain building permits for new churches from the President. The Coptic Church, the governor said, is living its golden age during President Mubarak’s rule, since the number of church building permits issued by Mubarak exceeds the number issued during the entire Ottoman era. If such permits are left to officials of lower rank to issue, the governor said, not a single church would be built in Egypt. But the governor contradicted himself when he said that President’s Mubarak decision to delegate the permitting of restoration or renovation of existing churches to the governors achieved a leap in the number of permits issued. Governor Hussein’s remarks gave rise to countless exclamations. Some have described the Egyptian president’s prerogative to exclusively issue building permits for churches as a legislative flaw that discriminates between Egyptian Muslims and Christians, and which ought to be eliminated. Others described the practice as discriminatory in that Muslims have no trouble whatsoever in building mosques while Copts face an all but impossible task to build a church. And yet others drew attention to the fact that the applications for church building permits which find their way to the President’s office are but a wee portion of the number of nationwide applications that never manage to pass security scrutiny. I have frequently heard these arguments before, but I admit I never heard any Copt, church, or human rights council say that it was an honour for the Church to have building permits issued by the President.The allegation that the number of churches built in the Mubarak era exceeds the entire number of churches built since the Ottoman to the Mubarak time called to mind similar allegations. Parliament Speaker Fathi Sorour once declared that Copts are today better off than they have ever been since Amr Ibn al-Ass conquered Egypt in the 7th century, and Shura Council Speaker Safwat al-Sharif alleged that the number of churches built during the Mubarak era exceeded their number since the Mohamed Ali years in 1805. My only comment is that, if such allegations were true, Copts would be extremely interested to know the source of information they come from and the substantiated statistics supporting it. It would at least make them realise how good things are today.I would like to consider that Governor Hussein was courteously complimenting President Mubarak when he claimed that no churches would have been built had officials other than the President been in charge of permitting them. But it is only fair to admit that Egypt is not devoid of moderate officials who would probably issue the required permits. Such officials deal with Copts on a daily basis in an admirably tolerant, non-discriminatory manner.What Governor Hussein skipped admitting, however, was the plethora of problems Copts in his governorate face whether they need permits to build new churches, restore existing ones, or build houses for social and health services. I invite the governor to open this file which is at present with the security authorities in his governorate. The Shubral-Kheima conference tackled other problems concerning the citizenship rights of Copts in Qalyubiya. These problems will have to wait for some future article, however, since they lie beyond the space of this one.