Religion in Egypt

Religion in Egypt permeates many aspects of social life and is endorsed by law. Egypt is predominantly Muslim, with Muslims comprising about 80% of the population. Almost the entirety of Egypt's Muslims are Sunnis. Most of the non-Muslims in Egypt are Christians, the majority of whom belong to the native Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Although there are no up-to-date figures on the number of christians in Egypt, due to the fact that last census did not obligate citizens to write their religion , Coptic sources say that christians represent about 20% of the Egyptian population. There is also a small, but nonetheless historically significant, non-immigrant Bahá'í population, and an even smaller community of Jews. The non-Sunni, non-Coptic communities range in size from several thousand to hundreds of thousands. The original Ancient Egyptian religion has all but disappeared.

The Adhan (Islamic call to prayer) that is heard five times a day has the informal effect of regulating the pace of everything from business to entertainment. Cairo is famous for its numerous mosque minarets and church towers. This religious landscape has been marred by a history of religious extremism, recently witnessing a 2006 judgement of Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court, which made a clear legal distinction between "recognized religions" (i.e., Islam, Christianity, and Judaism) and all other religious beliefs. This ruling effectively delegitimizes and forbids practice of all but the three Abrahamic religions. This judgement had made it necessary for non-Abrahamic religious communities to either commit perjury or be denied Egyptian identification cards (see Egyptian identification card controversy), until a 2008 Cairo court case ruled that unrecognized religious minorities may obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents.

Religions in Egypt

Recognized religions

Islam

Main article: Islam in Egypt

Cairo's unique cityscape with its ancient mosques

Islam has been the state religion in Egypt since the amendment of the second article of the Egyptian constitution in the year 1980, before which Egypt was recognized as a secular country. The exact number of muslims is not known because the last census did not obligate the citizens to mention their religions like previously, so their number is not known. It is estimated that muslims make up about 80% of the population as of 2007. The vast majority of Egyptian Muslims are Sunni, with a small Shi'ite community making up the remainder. A significant number of Sunni Egyptians also follow native Sufi orders. Egypt hosts the most important Sunni institution in the world, Al-Azhar University. It is the oldest Islamic institution of higher studies (founded around 970 C.E.), and is considered by many to be the oldest extant university in the world.

Egypt's various social groups and classes apply Islam differently in their daily lives. The literate theologians of Al-Azhar generally reject the popular version of Islam practised by religious preachers and peasants in the countryside, which is heavily Sufi-influenced. Sufism has flourished in Egypt since Islam was first adopted. Most upper- and middle-class Muslims believed either that religious expression is a private matter for each individual or that Islam should play a more dominant role in public life. Islamic religious revival movements, whose appeal cuts across class lines, have been present in most cities and in many villages for a long time.

According to the constitution of Egypt, any new legislation must at least implicitly agree with Islamic law. The mainstream Hanafi school of Sunni Islam is largely controlled by the state, through Wizaret Al-Awkaf (Ministry of Religious Affairs). Al-Awkaf controls all mosques and supervises Muslim clerics. Imams are trained in Imam vocational schools and at Al-Azhar. The ministry supports Sunni Islam and has commissions authorised to give Fatwā judgements on Islamic issues.

Christianity

Main article: Christianity in Egypt

Christian

More than 95% of Egypt's Christians are members of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, an Oriental Orthodox Church, established in the 1st century AD by Saint Mark. The Coptic Orthodox Church claims a membership of about 13 million in Egypt and another 3-4 million in the diaspora. Significant minorities within Egypt's Christian community include the following denominations:

• The Coptic Evangelical Church (a Protestant Church) has between 750,000 and 800,000 members in Egypt.
• The Coptic Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church) has about 700,000 members in Egypt and roughly 50,000 adherents abroad. It is in union with the Pope in Rome. It is headed by the Coptic Catholic Patriarch of Alexandria, currently Antonios Naguib.
• The Greek Orthodox Church of Alexandria (an Eastern Orthodox Church) has between 250,000 and 300,000 adherents in Egypt, out of whom approximately 45,000 are of Greek (Hellenic) descent. The Church has another 1.5 million adherents in Africa and between 10,000 and 15,000 ex-patriates in Europe, North and South America. The current Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Alexandria is Pope Theodoros II.
• The Melkite Greek Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church) has about 125,000 members in Egypt. The eparchy of Egypt is looked after by a Protosyncellus, and has between 35,000 and 50,000 ex-patriates in Europe, North and South America, and Australia.
• The Armenian Apostolic Church (an Oriental Orthodox Church) has between 45,000 and 50,000 adherents in Egypt. Most of them follow the Holy See of Echmiadzin in Armenia, rather than the Holy See of Cilicia in Lebanon.
• The Roman Catholic Church has between 15,000 and 18,000 adherents in Egypt. Most are citizens born in Egypt but of foreign descent, like Italians, Maltese and French, or members of the foreign diplomatic corps in Egypt. There are very few native Christian Egyptians who adhere to the Roman Catholic Church, and those who do (several hundreds) do so mainly through marriage.
• The Episcopal Church in Jerusalem and the Middle East (a Protestant Church known in Egypt as the Anglican Church) has between 10,000 and 15,000 members in Egypt.
• The Maronite Church (an Eastern Catholic Church) has between 9,000 and 11,000 adherents in Egypt.
• The Armenian Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church) has about 6,500 adherents in Egypt.
• The Chaldean Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church) has about 4,500 members in Egypt.
• The Syriac Catholic Church (an Eastern Catholic Church) has about 1,500 adherents in Egypt.
• The Syriac Orthodox Church (an Oriental Orthodox Church) has a very small population in Egypt, numbering between 450 and 500. Most are students of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, or foreign students studying in Egyptian universities.

Other Protestant churches also exist in Egypt, bringing the total number of Protestant denominations in Egypt to 17. In addition, some Egyptians are followers of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which was granted legal status in the 1960s.

A common religious scene in Egypt: a mosque next to a church; Christians are not permitted to build churches next to existing mosques, but the reverse is a common practice.

Judaism

Main article: History of the Jews in Egypt

Egypt was once home to one of the oldest Jewish communities in the world. Egyptian Jews, who were mostly Karaites, participated in all aspects of Egypt's social, economic, and political life; one of the most ardent Egyptian nationalists, Yaqub Sanu' (Abu Naddara), was Jewish, as were the famous musician Dawoud Husni, popular singer Leila Mourad, and prominent filmmaker Togo Mizrahi. For a while, Jews from across the Ottoman Empire and Europe were attracted to Egypt due to the relative harmony that characterized the local religious landscape in the 19th and early 20th centuries. After the 1956 Suez Crisis, a great number of Jews were expelled by Gamal Abdel Nasser. Their Egyptian citizenship was revoked and their properties were confiscated. A steady stream of emigration of Egyptian Jews followed, reaching a peak after the Six-Day War with Israel in 1967. Today, Jews in Egypt number fewer than 200.

Unrecognised beliefs and religions

Bahá'í Faith

Main articles: Persecution of Bahá'ís in Egypt and Egyptian identification card controversy

The number of Bahá'ís in Egypt is estimated to be between several hundred and a few thousand. They have been traditionally marginalized as a religious community in Egypt, and recently found themselves in court battling for the right to indicate their faith on their identification cards. On 6 April 2006, however, "a landmark ruling by the Administrative Court recognis[ed] the right of Egyptian Baha'is to have their religion acknowledged on official documents." On 3 May 2006, the Khaleej Times reported that "[t]he Egyptian government will appeal against a court ruling in favour of the rights of the country’s small Baha’i minority."

Notable quotations from ministers in the Egyptian government and Muslim Brotherhood parliamentarians taken from the article include:

Religious Endowments Minister Mahmoud Hamdi Zakzouk told parliament the government would base its appeal on the opinion of the :country’s leading Muslim cleric, the Sheikh of al-Azhar, that Baha’ism [sic] is not a “revealed religion” recognised by Muslims.

One member of parliament, Gamal Akl of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, said the Baha’is were infidels who should be killed on the grounds that they had changed their religion.

“The problem with the Baha’is they are moved by Israeli fingers. We wish the Ministry of the Interior would not yield to the cheap blackmail of this deviant group,” added another Muslim Brotherhood member, Mustafa Awadallah.

“there is an interest in them being known rather than unknown so that they do not succeed in infiltrating the ranks of society and spreading their extremist and deviant ideology.”

According to Reuters Alertnet, the judgement of 6 April was suspended on 15 May: "Egypt's Supreme Administrative Court decided on 15 May to suspend the implementation of an earlier lower court ruling that allowed Bahais to have their religion recognised on official documents."

On 16 December 2006, after only one hearing, the High Court of Egypt ruled against the Bahá'ís, stating that the government would not recognize their Faith in official identification cards. The ruling left Bahá'ís unable to obtain ID cards, birth certificates, or death certificates. They cannot get marriage or divorce certificates or passports, nor can they be employed, educated, treated in hospitals, or vote.

On January 29 2008 Cairo's court of Administrative Justice, ruling on two related court cases, ruled in favour of the Bahá'ís, allowing them to obtain birth certificates and identification documents, so long as they omit their religion on court documents. The ruling accepted the compromise solution offered by the Bahá'ís, allowing for them to obtain identification papers without the Bahá'í Faith being officially recognized.

Atheism and agnosticism

There are Egyptians who identify as atheist and agnostic, but their numbers are unknown as openly advocating such positions risks legal sanction on the basis of apostasy (this occurs only if a citizen takes the step of suing the person engaging in apostasy, not automatically by the general prosecutor). In 2000, an openly atheist Egyptian writer, who called for the establishment of a local association for atheists, was tried on charges of insulting Islam in four of his books.

Religious freedom and human rights

While the Egyptian constitution guarantees freedom of belief and practicing of religion, the government places restrictions on these rights in practice. Religious freedom in Egypt is hampered to varying degrees by extremist Islamist groups and by discriminatory government policies.

Copts are by far the largest religious minority in Egypt and thus the most negatively affected: until recently, Christians were required to obtain presidential approval for even minor repairs to churches. Although the law was recently eased, by handing down the authority of approval to the governorate level, Copts continue to face many obstacles in building new or repairing existing churches. Copts have faced increasing marginalization since the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Prominent Copts in the cabinet presently include Finance Minister Youssef Boutros Ghali and Environment Minister Magued George. In addition, Naguib Sawiris, an extremely successful businessman and one of the world's wealthiest 100 people, is a Copt. In 2002, the Coptic Christmas (January 7) was recognized as an official holiday. Nevertheless, the Coptic community has occasionally been the victim of hate crimes and physical assaults. The most significant was the 2000-2001 El Kosheh attacks, in which 21 Copts and one Muslim were killed. In 2006 three simultaneous attacks on three churches in Alexandria left one dead, and were allegedly perpetrated by a mentally disturbed Muslim. In addition, many Copts continue to complain of minimal representation in law enforcement, the state security services, and public office, and of being discriminated against in employment on the basis of their religion.

Bahá'ís also face discrimination and hardship; the government denies them civil documents displaying their religion. Without valid identity cards Bahá'ís encounter difficulty registering their children in school, opening bank accounts, and establishing businesses. Police also regularly detain those without correct documentation and thus some Bahá'ís frequently stay home to avoid possible arrest.

Egyptians who convert to Islam face no complications, but those converting from Islam to another religion face great trouble with the government. Public officials, being conservative themselves, intensify the complexity of the legal procedures required to recognize the religion change as required by law. Security agencies claim that conversions from Islam to Christianity may stir up social unrest and they therefore take steps to prevent it from occurring, sometimes by detaining the subject.