http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2011/06/16/153583.html
“The Sultan personally is the only one who has the right to authorize building and renovating churches and non-Muslim cemeteries,” said article three of the 1856 Ottoman law known as the Hamayouni Decree and which was meant to introduce a series of reforms to what was becoming modern Egypt. More reform was needed, of course, so the 1933 law for the regulation of the construction of churches—aka how to make Christians prefer having Judas as their liberator to thinking of building a church—was issued. The law consisted of 10 clauses, the most striking of which for me was that churches are not to be built next to mosques nor in a predominantly-Muslim neighborhood or a neighborhood that has another church nearby and that a report has to be made about the number of Christians in the area in which the church is to be built and whether the location chosen for building the church is close to a bridge or a canal or any public utilities the church might obstruct. And still the head of state—Sultan or not—has the final say in the procedure under which the church will probably be ready for the coming generation, if ever. As part of a series of sweeping reforms implemented during the past three decades and which aimed at achieving equality between Muslims and Christians, the former president delegated the authority to grant permission for renovating churches to governors and kept the authority to approve construction to himself. The fair distribution of dictatorial duties is, as we can see, the first step towards a full democracy. As they say, the devil is in the details so regardless of which law was issued when and under what circumstances, one fact remains: building a church in Egypt is similar to reaching a destination on time during the rush hour in Cairo.
Now, let’s take a look at the other side of the spectrum. There is a mosque every other block in all kinds of neighborhoods, which makes it very rare to find a Christian who does not listen to the call for prayers five times a day from his or her own bedroom. That could be okay with Christians, yet if this is the case, why shouldn’t it be equally okay for Muslims to listen to church bells from the very same room? On Fridays, mosques spread prayer rugs across the street so that no cars can pass until the prayer and the sermon are finished and just give a try and object and if you’re still in one piece, let me know what happened? How different is a bridge or a canal from a street? And was there ever a request to build a church right in the middle of any of those “public utilities” anyway? And if the obstruction of public services is such an issue and places of worship are not supposed to contradict with the interests of citizens, how come thousands of garages are turned into mosques and, consequently, thousands of cars end up cramming the already congested streets without anybody—individuals or government—objecting to the nuisance this causes? How about the observation made by several people—Muslims and Christians alike, resentfully or boastfully—that with every new church a new mosque is built shortly after across the street in a not-very-implicit “we are there” gesture. “No need to remind us. It is obvious you are there,” say the resentful from both faiths. “Yes, we are here and this should stay the case,” say the boastful from one faith.
With the toppling of the regime at the hands of a revolution that made equality and social justice its top priority and with the breaking of sectarian clashes in which fundamentalist Muslims made public the hostile sentiments that have for long harbored against Christians and in which Christians got unprecedentedly adamant about obtaining their long robbed rights, rectifying shameful and obsolete laws that place endless restrictions on building churches became as necessary as drafting a new constitution. The law that political activists and human rights organizations have been calling for since time immemorial—the unified law for the building of places of worship—finally saw the sun. Well… during an eclipse it seems!
Using the word “unified” is quite misleading since it gives the impression that the application of the law will result in Muslims and Christians obtaining equal rights as far as places of worship are concerned. This is not the case simply because the number of mosques is a million times bigger than that of churches and because the law will not be applied retroactively so mosques that are now considered in violation of the law will not of course be demolished. The law, therefore, starts with the status quo, that is from a situation in which extreme inequality seems to be the rule. In other words, the new laws might curb the building of future mosques, but still does not grant churches enough existence opportunities and does not offer a real departure from the old laws. The fact that the request to construct a new mosque or church requires the approval of the Ministry of Local Development and the governor and that applicants need to get the approval of the body to which the place of worship is affiliated—the Ministry of Religious Endowments in case of Muslims and the authorized representatives of the relevant sect in case Christians—deprives those places of any kind of independence and makes it totally up to the government and the whims of officials—who can happen to be begrudged Copts or Salafi Muslims—to decide what should be built and what should not.
If we assume that the officials involved in making the decision are totally unbiased—well… in Egypt this means they need to be Hindu—approving or rejecting the request will be according to a set of rules. The number of places of worship in a given governorate or town or district should be proportional with the number of residents following the religion this place is supposed to serve. However, the law did not specify a percentage so we don’t really know how many Muslims deserve a mosque and how many Christians have the right to build a church, but it seems that it should not be necessary for a town with 10 percent of its population Christian to have a church and that having a hundred mosques in a town with 90 percent of its population Muslim seems like commonsense. As for the article stipulating that each place of worship should be built on an area of minimum 1,000 square kilometers, this sounds to me like setting an exam with questions that you know very well the students cannot answer and then blame them for failing. The same applies to prohibiting the building of places of worship on arable land and which I guess excludes almost all Egyptian villages and ushers a new era of making the desert the best place to worship.
I guess it would have been much better to replace the phrase “places of worship” with the word “churches” because this law will by no means have a negative impact on mosques, with which Egypt already abounds, yet is in fact adding more restrictions on churches, which are already too few for the existing number of Christians. What will happen then will be that a few mosques and very few churches will be added to the already existing ones. So if we had 10 mosques they will be 15 and if we had three churches we will end up with six. I wonder how this equation can arrive at anything that can be labeled “unified.”
I am personally not sure what “unified” should mean, but I guess it can be something along the lines of lifting all restrictions related to where Muslims and Christians are concentrated or how many of them live where or how far is one church from another or whether the mosque is built in a Christian area. For me, “unified” means anything that is contrary to the exclusion implied in the law’s division of Egypt along sectarian lines through its reinforcement of the concept of percentages, proportions, and distances separating one place of worship from another. “Unified” means mosques and churches should be everywhere and anywhere as long as they do not violate laws applicable to all construction works, be they places of worship or schools or beauty spas. Until this happens, let’s keep the old name or maybe we can add the year so it would be Hamayouni 2011 or let’s call it Hamayouni-posing-as-unified law.
The law, however, provided me with some comic relief when it specified that places of worship are those dedicated only to performing the rituals pertaining to the religions “recognized” in Egypt. That really made me laugh. As if somebody might come up and submit a request for the construction of a Buddhist temple or a Masonic lodge. I would love to imagine what would happen then. That would be extremely “unified” indeed!
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