Today, friends, I redirect you to Tik Root over at the blog Reports from Egyptians, whose analysis of the recent developments regarding the Supreme Military Council’s reforms are pretty on-spot:
On Sunday, it was announced that the committee will leave the following two contentious religious articles untouched:
-Article Two: ”Islam is the Religion of the State. Arabic is its official language, and the principal source of legislation is Islamic Jurisprudence (Sharia).”
– Article Five: “The political regime of the Arab Republic of Egypt is based upon the multi-party system within the framework of the basic principles and components of the Egyptian society stipulated by the Constitution. Political parties shall be organized by law. The citizens have the right to form political parties according to the law and no political activity shall be exercised or political parties shall be formed on the basis of religion or on discrimination due to gender or race.”
The aim of the committee appears to be getting the country to elections, leaving the religion issue to the new officials. However, keeping these two articles in place raises two concerns. First, Article Two discriminates against the Coptic Christians, who comprise roughly ten percent of the population. By maintaining that Islam is the official religion of the State, any Coptic presidential candidate would be at an inherent disadvantage, by running to become the leader of an Islamic nation. Second, by failing to address Article Five, the political status of the Brotherhood, an issue that has long plagued Egyptian politics, will remain unresolved. The group will either continue to be disallowed as a political party or will need to be deemed secular, neither of which provides a viable solution.
The role of the Copts throughout the revolution has been a primary concern of my Coptic students, who question the sincerity of the Brotherhood and its influence in the larger context of the revolution. Stateside Egyptian friends have been almost stridently critical, and their comments seem largely Da Vinci Code-esque: there are no Christian military leaders (untrue), no one knows which leaders are Muslim Brothers are (untrue…mostly), and the Brotherhood advocates a form of Islam oppressive to other minorities.
I’ve written elsewhere my views on Article 2 in the wake of the New Year’s shootings in Sidi Bishr: sharia is a tricky element to introduce to a constitution — not because it does not recognize the validity of other creeds of confession, so much as it does not recognize all of them. This has been the basis of the long-contentious identity card issue that requires Egyptians put their religious affiliation as “Muslim, Christian, Jewish” on state-issued documents — only recently have other confessions been permitted to put an em-dash (an omission of their religious background, rather than a genuine acknowledgement). Having sharia as the “official basis” of the Egyptian constitution not only restricts a Coptic president from office, but it perpetuates the same sectarian problems that occurred under the old guard.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is genuinely surprising, considering that the there were shouts in the street for a “civil” government — “one neither Islamic nor Western nor military” — and the presence of a Coptic judge, Maher Samy Youssef, on the military council. You would think that the Copts would pounce on this as an opportunity for deep-seated reform.
Something that Tik Root failed to point out, though I suppose you can extrapolate it: the continuation of Article 5 (political parties based on religion are banned), while restricting the movements of the Muslim Brotherhood as a viable political party that may officially go after the presidency, also eliminates the possibility of putting forward an opposition party for the Copts and their interests as a minority group.
Does anyone else hear the ‘smack’ of hypocrisy as a religiously-based constitution bans political parties based on religion? While the intention is most likely democratic — rather than the insidious creep of Islamism, as right wingers would like you to think — the contradiction creates problems.
Let’s see what happens over the course of the next week.
the occidental orientalist - المستشرق الغربي 