Notes on the long-awaited law
The long-awaited unified law for building places of worship looks finally destined to see light, following six years of freezing in Parliament, and despite numerous, occasional crises which erupted owing to the lack of a law of the kind. As we applaud the move, we ought to give credit where credit is due: the brave man who took the first step to issue such a law was former MP Mohamed Guweili, chairman of Parliament’s proposals and complaints committee in 2005. Guweili submitted to Parliament a bill that would place places of worship of all religions in Egypt on equal footing. Two years later, in the wake of the violent attack against the Copts of the village of Bemha in Ayyat, Giza, four then MPs—Sayed Rustom, Ibtissam Habib, Yassin Eleiwa and Mustafa al-Hawary—again submitted a bill to that effect to Parliament. In June 2007, the National Council for Human Rights (NCHR) formulated its own draft law, which proved more detailed, and charted the course for putting the bill into effect.