Earlier this month, on 15 September, the Jewish community in Cairo gathered at the Heliopolis Synagogue in Cairo to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.
The occasion, which marks the start of the Jewish New Year, is always significant, but in this context it was even more meaningful, as it marked the first time in 70 years that the community has been free to publicly celebrate it in all of Egypt.
It had been a while coming, as in recent years the Egyptian government has implemented a number of initiatives to benefit the Jewish community. For example, just over two weeks before the community gathered for Rosh Hashanah in Cario, the Egyptian Prime Minister, Mostafa Madbouly, joined Tourism Minister Ahmed Issa to re-open the Ben Ezra Synagogue – also in the capital – after years of careful restoration.
It is one of the oldest synagogues in the country and had been largely untouched for three decades until renovations began in April 2022. Now, it stands once again as a proud symbol of Jewish heritage in Egypt, and also as a sign of the government’s continuing commitment to renovating and preserving Jewish – as well as Islamic and Coptic – religious and cultural sites across the country.
All three of the major Abrahamic religions are recognised in the Egyptian constitution. While it is a Muslim majority country, Egypt has taken several positive steps towards the promotion of the right to freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) for Christians and Jews in the near-decade since Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi was elected president.
I met President Sisi in February 2014, shortly after the removal of President Morsi following huge nationwide protests. A member of the Muslim Brotherhood, Morsi’s policies were inimical to human rights in general and to FoRB in particular. Sisi was the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces at the time, and as the main person behind the removal of President Morsi, he was being widely encouraged to run for the presidency.
He told me that he believed in religious freedom, and acknowledged that Christians had always been treated as second class citizens in Egypt, but added that he didn’t believe this should be the case. He also explained he was determined to address Islamist extremism, but was in a very difficult situation.
Since he was sworn in on 8 June 2014, he has become the first serving president in the country’s history to attend Christmas Mass at St Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo, and he has made repeated personal commitments to combatting sectarianism and religious discrimination between citizens.
In 2016, the Egyptian parliament approved the Church Construction Law, which aims to make the process of building and restoring churches easier. The law resulted in the creation of a government committee to oversee the legalisation of churches in the country, and over 2,500 places of worship have been granted legal status since the committee began its mandate in 2017.
The country appears to be moving in the right direction gradually, although hostility to non-majoritarian religions persists at a societal level. Nevertheless, to further erode societal hostility, I would encourage President Sisi to go further still. While Christianity, Islam and Judaism are afforded rights under the constitution, other unregistered religious and belief groups, including Ahmadis, Baha’is, Quranists and atheists, are not.
All Egyptians are required to carry ID cards, but Christianity, Islam and Judaism are the only available religious designations. Others may mark their documents with a ‘dash’ to indicate that they belong to an unrecognised religious or belief group, but this brings with it a raft of difficulties and discrimination, including restrictions on meeting for worship, denial of legal registration of marriages, and denial of burial rights.
In education, there is still a need to remove material that is insulting to non-Muslims from the existing curriculum, as this creates an environment where young Egyptians are raised to view other religion or belief groups as inferior, and therefore provides a fertile breeding ground for sectarian tension, and in extreme cases, violence.
Even as churches continue to be legalised across the country, there have been numerous cases in which local Muslims have blocked attempts to renovate or build them, particularly in Upper Egypt where sporadic outbreaks of mob violence have resulted in destruction of property, injuries, deaths and a climate of fear and self-censorship among some Christians.
The authorities have also increasingly cracked down on those they perceive as critics or dissidents, with numerous activists arrested and detained and many non-governmental organisations forced to cease their operations as legislation limits their activities exclusively to ‘societal development’ whilst outlawing ‘political’ and ‘religious’ activities.
The Sisi administration has made progress, but has also made errors – several of them severe, including questionable issues involving certain Members of the US Senate – but as the president approaches the completion of a decade of rule, I would encourage him to do all he can to prioritise leaving a legacy of justice, prosperity and security and an environment in which all Egyptians can enjoy equality of citizenship, regardless of their religion or belief.
By CSW’s Founder President Mervyn Thomas CMG
Featured Image: Rosh Hashanah celebrations at the Heliopolis Synagogue in Cairo. Credit: Facebook/JCC Cairo
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