Since Islam arrived to Egypt, successive regimes have been trying follow the Pact of Umar 1300 years ago as well as the Hamayouni Decree set by the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Majid I. However those documents contradict with Human Rights and the charters and resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly, the modern governments insist to follow them more than constitution and law. In fact, they give the fanatics a license to attack the Copts under the auspices of police and teachings of Islamic scholars.
The Egyptian Constitution is full of bugs that were added over the years including the articles added by President Sadat who declared that he was a Muslim President of a Muslim country. He announced in 1965 that he will eliminate Christians out of Egypt in ten years. However he couldn’t fulfill such promise, he gave another license to the fanatics to attack Christians.
The Egyptian Constitution amended by the fifty-members Committee considered the Salafis a national trend and gave them the chance to pass their articles including: Article I that considered Egypt part of the Arab Islamic nation and ignored the ancient Pharaonic identity including the Coptic one.
Article II stated that Islam is the official religion of the state and the principles of Islamic Sharia are the main source of legislation. The Islamic parties struggled to keep this article in the new constitution in order to grant the Islamic identity of the state. This article made non-Muslims suffer for a long time and ridiculed the clergy to serve the ruling regimes.
Article 235 states that the House of Representatives should pass the law of building and renovation of churches. This law contradicts with the Charter of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Persons Act belonging to national or ethnic minorities. In fact, this law was made to hinder building the churches following the conditions of the Salafis and Azhar.
Such constitutional errors are used to incite sectarian incidents and the United Nations should investigate that Egypt doesn’t respect its rules considering the religious minorities.
Finally, it should be known that a good constitution should help developing a country, but having a wreckage of a Constitution should bring failure of the country sooner or later.
