It's a Start

Good news out of Egypt for those practising religions other than the state-recognized-and-sanctioned ones. Cairo's Court of Administrative Justice has granted Baha'is the right to obtain government identification documents. One little thing: they must, in the process of filling out the requisite forms, omit that portion which requires a faith designation. Don't fill it in, just scribble in a little dash mark; religion? doesn't exist.

And that's perfectly all right. Better than utter non-recognition and lack of required documents. "this is the first good news that Baha'i Egyptians and their defenders and supporters received in a very long time", according to Hossam Bahgat, a rights-activist whose Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights was right there in the political fray, representing the Baha'is in court.

"It is an end of a very long and unnecessary ordeal for citizens whose only fault is their refusal to be falsely identified or to lie in official documents." So, then, leaving the religion portion blank represents a little conspiratorial wink, a fib perhaps, not an outright, damnable lie. The estimated 500 to 2000 Baha'is in Egypt had formerly been refused official identity papers.

For Muslim deem Baha'i to be heretics, traditionally ostracized in Islamic society, and worse, although they only faced persecution in Egypt, which is considered to be a socially conservative Muslim country, elsewhere in the world of Islam Baha'i are on the receiving end of dramatic types of punishment; imprisonment, even death sentences.

By an odd quirk of Islamic justice, an Egyptian Muslim wishing to leave Islam in favour of Christianity - or even, heaven forfend, Judaism; as though - is not permitted to legally, although the state formally recognizes the three monotheistic or as some would have it, Abrahamic religions only: in order of their historic appearance. Judaism having given birth to Christianity; finally Islam, to complete the triad.

Under Egypt's Islam-based legal system people simply cannot convert "to an older religion". For as the court would have it: "Monotheistic religions were sent by God in chronological order.... As a result, it is unusual to go from the latest religion to the one that preceded it", the assumption being obvious, that each succeeding religion is superior to the one preceding it.

All of which is of no help to the person wishing to convert to Christianity. An abhorrent act in most Muslim societies, one for which Shariah law has a solution: death for apostasy. In Egypt, at least, a much condemned aberration: "The person who has such an attitude is straying from the right path and threatening the principles, values and precepts of Islam and of Egyptian traditions."

Of course in Egypt it's not a very good idea to criticize Islamic theology, in any event, much less to leave Islam in favour of another religion. One Egyptian Internet blogger who posted insulting personal views of Shariah law, the religious academic institute he had himself attended, and his contempt for his theological instructors is paying a dear price for his intellectual independence, in deep incarceration.

And one wonders, in one's idle moments, how Egypt's kindly offer to relent on its anti-Baha'i recognition will resonate with Iran, with whom it has re-kindled diplomatic relations, and in which country the Baha'i are truly embattled and in fear for their lives. For that matter, it will be more than a little interesting to see how Egypt will balance its peace agreement with Israel now that it's cuddling up to a radically Islamist state that calls for Israel's annihilation.

Just wondering, that's all....