Baha’is in Egypt: Citizens Without Rights

This investigation documents the sufferings of followers of Baha’is religion in Egypt. These begin from birth and continue till the day Baha’is die, when judicial rulings mean they have no assigned burial grounds. They are rejected by society, face difficulties in getting married, working and studying, and lose their rights to inheritance in what amounts to discrimination that violates both the constitution and the law.

Carmel Kamal El-Din is an Egyptian woman of over sixty. She has been married, had children and divorced, yet she is still listed as unmarried in her Egyptian identity document and civil registration papers. This is because Egyptian law does not recognize Baha’i marriage contracts.

It took Dr Carmel eight years starting in 2001, to officially register her children as Egyptian citizens. She married in 1985, under a Baha’i religious contract, which she was unable to register in Egypt. But she managed to do so in the Sharia Court in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). “I managed to obtain a marriage confirmation certificate in the Sharia Court in Dubai, after I travelled to work in the UAE, and I also obtained birth certificates for my children from the Sultanate of Oman, where the sign (-), was noted in the religion box of their document”, says Carmel.

The Egyptian authorities, however, refused to recognize the registration of her children, so Carmel faced problems enrolling them in school. Moreover, the Civil Registry threatened to file a “hisbah” lawsuit against her for “spousal separation”, on the pretext that her husband’s name is Christian, while Carmel’s is Muslim.

Carmel adds: “We then went to court and proved that we were married, and our children were of the Baha’i faith.” Dr Raouf Hindi, Mrs Carmel’s ex-husband, was able to obtain national identity cards for his children, born in 1993, with their religion marked as (-). But this was after years of litigation (under Case No. 18354/58) and after the children had turned sixteen, according to a statement from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). They finally received Egyptian birth certificates in August 2009, after five years of court proceedings.

The crises that confronted Carmel went far beyond being unable to register her and her family's papers. She was placed under investigation and members of her family went to jail. “My father was arrested in 1965 and again in 1973, when my mother was imprisoned. In 1985, my brother and sister were jailed for converting to the Baha’i faith. After my father died, my uncle became our guardian instead of our mother, who was not regarded as married in the eyes of the law,” she says.

“After I came back to Egypt, I worked in the school health system, which is part of the Health Insurance Organisation. In 2004, I was put under investigation on the grounds that I was unfit to work with students and that, as a Baha’i, I posed a danger to them. But the committee took my side, and I was able to go back to doing my work normally,” Carmel adds.

Members of the Baha’i sect in Egypt are unable to register their marriage contracts, even though some have judicial rulings in their favour. This deprives their families of personal rights and also makes it hard to enter a (-) sign in the religion section on their identity cards, indicating that they are of Baha’i faith.

The author of this report has documented six cases of Baha’is, who were unable to register their marriage contracts, and who are classified as “Muslim” on their identity cards. Some have complained of being persecuted in the workplace, forcing them to leave the country, or of being unable to bury their dead or enrol their children in school.

Baha'is face discrimination in Egypt, because official institutions refuse to recognize their rights, and because the religious and rights committees of the House of Representatives feign ignorance of the discrimination they are subject to. Some officials preferred not to even comment on the findings of this investigation. Among them members of religious and rights committees of the House of Representatives, the former Grand Mufti, Dr Ali Gomaa, in his current capacity as the chairman of the religious committee of the house of representative, despite our repeated efforts to hear his opinion on the matter.

The old practice in Egypt of using the courts to order couples to separate dates back to 1925, when the highest Sharia court at the time ruled that Hamida Farghaly should separate from her husband, Hafez Muhammad Falah. This came after the mayor of their village, in the Biba district of Beni Suef Governorate, took legal action against them and against two other converts to Baha’ism, according to their granddaughter Rawhiya Hassan: “My grandmother and grandfather were married under an Islamic marriage contract. But the court ruled in 1925 that he should be separated from his wife, on the grounds that he had committed apostasy and had no right to be married to a Muslim woman".

The most famous hisbah (Action to enforce religious law and practice against someone) case within the religious courts seen in Egypt was that was brought against Dr Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, when he submitted his research as part of an application for a professorship at Cairo University. The university set up a scientific committee to assess his application, but some of the members accused Dr Nasr of being an unbeliever, based on the contents of the research data and books he submitted for the professorial degree. A court case was brought to separate Dr Nasr from his wife, Dr Ibtihal Younis.

He was accused of atheism and, after the judgement went against him, he was forced to leave Egypt for the Netherlands in 1995.

In another case – No 164 of 2007 - the Ninth Circuit of the Sayyida Zeinab Family Affairs Court issued a judicial ruling on July 27, 2009, to remove a child named Aser Osama Sabry from the custody of his parents, because they had converted to Baha’ism, and to transfer the child to the custody of his maternal aunt, who was Muslim.

The rationale for the court’s ruling to remove custody of the child from his parents, a copy of which was obtained by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, states that “custody cannot be exercised by an infidel over a Muslim child, because custody amounts to guardianship, and God does not allow guardianship by an infidel over a believer... Muslim scholars are unanimously agreed that Baha’ism, or the religion of the Bab, is not an Islamic belief, and whoever embraces this religion is not a Muslim, but an apostate from Islam.”

Hazem Al-Hadi, a 54-year-old computer engineer who was born in Cairo Governorate, managed to register his marriage in both China and the United States, but was unable to do so in Egypt. In this, he was repeating the tragic situation of his parents, who were married under an Islamic contract in 1965, and converted to the Baha’i faith in 1978. Following the refusal by the Civil Status Authority to recognize their marriage, they were unable to register their status as a married couple on their national identity card, on which they had changed their religious affiliation to (-).

Al-Hadi says: “I got married to an American Baha’i woman in a civil ceremony in Hong Kong in 1992, and in 2016, I started the process of registering my marriage contract in Egypt. But the Civil Status Authority refused to authenticate the marriage, which forced me to go to court in 2019, and they issued a ruling confirming the marriage in 2020.”

According to Hazem, the Egyptian Ministry of Interior then took legal action to have the court ruling overturned, alleging that it was a violation of the constitution, the law, and public order, and that that court had been defrauded and that the religion of Hazem and his wife had not been disclosed.

“Are they going to take away personal rights from Egyptians who do not adhere to the three religions - Islam, Christianity, and Judaism?” asks Al-Hadi. He was forced to take legal action in September 2023, against the Ministry of Interior’s appeal of the original judgement. As of the date of publication of this investigation, this case is still before the court.

According to the Baha’i media chief Bahaa Ishaq, there are no official figures for the number of Baha’is in Egypt: “Ministerial Decree No. 520/2009 - which stipulates that Baha’is who were previously registered, or whose fathers were registered, with (-), or according to previous judicial rulings – applies to us.”

Ishaq maintains that Baha’is in Egypt suffer because the state does not recognise that they are married, so they are listed as “bachelor” or “spinster” on their national identity cards. As a result, their children do not enjoy family rights. Ishaq notes that, of the Baha’is in Egypt who were forced to go to court between 2018, and 2020, to prove the validity of their marriages, the courts upheld 25 out of 50 cases heard.

Bahaa Ishaq adds: “In five cases where the courts ruled in favour of the marriage, the authorities still refused to implement the ruling, and two of them were referred to the State Lawsuits Authority. About twenty Baha’is have managed to confirm their marriage on the identity cards, while over 80 percent of us (Baha’is) are classified as Muslim or Christian in the religion section of our ID cards, which is the opposite of the truth.”

When Hazem Al-Hadi and his family returned to Egypt in 2016, they settled for a time in Aswan Governorate. Then his father-in-law died, which meant he had to travel from Aswan to Cairo to bury the body in the one Baha’i cemetery available to them, in Basateen.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights has taken legal action to force the governors of Alexandria and Port Said, to allocate land for the Baha’i burials in these two governorates. However, the Administrative Court in Port Said - in Case No. 398 in 2022 - ruled against forcing the governorate to allocate a plot of land to establish cemeteries for the fourth category, “Baha’is.” The Supreme Administrative Court also rejected appeal No. 29171, against the decision by the Administrative Court in Alexandria, not to force the governorate to allocate a plot of land to establish alternative burial sites for Baha’is in the Shatby cemeteries.

The late President Gamal Abdel Nasser issued Law No. 263 in 1960, which stated that Baha’i religious premises should be closed down, their members prohibited from engaging in any activity, and that the funds and “assets” of these centres be transferred to parties designated by the Minister of the Interior. The Baha’i sect submitted a memorandum in 2011, to then Prime Minister Dr Essam Sharaf calling for these premises to be reopened. But 51 years after they were closed, nothing has changed.

Article 2, of the Egyptian Constitution stipulates that “Islam is the religion of the state, and Arabic is its official language. The principles of Islamic Sharia are the principal source of legislation.” Article 3, states that “The principles of the laws of Egyptian Christians and Jews are the main source of laws regulating their personal status, religious affairs, and selection of their spiritual leaders.”

Article 64, states that “Freedom of belief is absolute. The freedom to practice religious rituals, and establish places of worship for the followers of revealed religions, is a right regulated by law.”

According to Ishaq Ibrahim, senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, there is no law that states that inheritance can be distributed according to the precepts of each religion in Egypt. Inheritance is therefore, distributed according to Islamic law, regardless of the religion of the beneficiaries.

Ishaq Ibrahim describes as unjust and inhumane the failure to provide cemeteries for Baha’is to bury their dead. Some are forced to travel up to 900 kilometres from Aswan to Cairo for burials, with all the associated financial and psychological burdens, as though they are Egyptians deprived of full citizenship. Ibrahim calls on the Egyptian state to recognise Baha’is; grant them the right to acquire identity papers, and to document marriage and divorce contracts; allocate land for them to conduct burials; and allow them to freely organise their celebrations.

Dr Mohamed Mounir Megahed, one of the founders of the “Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination” movement, attributes the failure of the state to authenticate or recognize Baha’i marriage contracts to the fact that marriage in Egypt is part of religious status affairs run by the three recognised main religions (where the government does not interfere). He calls for a unified civil status law covering relations between all Egyptians irrespective of religion: “The state is not going to lead people to heaven.”

Because society rejects Baha'is and regards them as atheists and infidels, they resort to not disclosing their beliefs, to protect their families. Fifty-year-old Hossam Mohamed (not his real name), works in a food company in Cairo Governorate. He was born a Muslim and converted to the Baha’i faith and explains what happened. “I got married to a Muslim woman in 2010, and converted to Baha’ism soon afterwards. When I confronted her about it, she told me she would stay a Muslim, but we didn’t separate... I’ll never forget the conversation I had about Baha’ism with one of my colleagues, who accused me of being an atheist. That’s why I decided to keep quiet about it, so as not to lose my job.”

Nor has Hossam forgotten the problems faced by a friend of his because of his faith. “A Muslim friend of mine converted to Baha’ism, married a Muslim woman and then told her he was of the Baha’i faith. She was won over and converted to Baha’ism without her family knowing. For six years they continued to be listed as Muslims on their identification papers. But then the family found out about their religion and tried to take their son away to live as a Muslim, and not an infidel like his parents, as they put it. My friend, who works in a band, was forced to flee with his family to Australia, and he has not returned to Egypt since.”

Hossam goes on to say that his friend’s parents were forced to resign from their jobs after his father-in-law reported their son to the police, denounced him on television, and finally went to court to try to have his grandson taken away from the father. All this forced Hossam to conceal his faith from those closest to him, to avoid having to separate from his wife or lose his son: “The biggest thing I have to deal with is hiding my true religion. I take part in community and religious events for Muslims and in funeral prayers for the dead in the mosque, and my papers say I am a Muslim.”

Nermin Gamal (not her real name) is 37 years old. She almost lost her inheritance when her mother died in 2018. This was because her mother’s Baha’i marriage contract had not been registered. Nermin says: “When my mother died in 2018, we tried to have our details registered on the inheritance certificate, but the court refused to recognize her marriage contract. The judge then decided that her property should go to the Nasser Bank, because she had no legal heirs.”

Nermin appealed against the ruling, and the case remained pending for four years. In 2022, a final ruling was made establishing Nermin’s connection to her mother, and her right to her inheritance, to be divided according to Islamic law.

Like other Baha'is, Nermin's inheritance problems were not the only ones she faced. She could not register her son because the Civil Registry would not recognize she was married. So the family had to use hospital records to prove that he had been born. “For nine years, we couldn’t travel or stay in a hotel, because there was no proof we were married,” Nermin says.

A total of seven schools told Nermin they would not accept her child on religious grounds, when she approached them in 2022. She relates what took place between her and the principal of one of these schools: “He said: ‘I won’t admit your child and what’s more I’ll report you to the police. You don’t deserve to live.’ We were forced to inform National Security to get the principal to withdraw his threats. But he wouldn’t back down, so my son lost a year of schooling.”

Ishaq Ibrahim, the senior researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, says: “If the state were to include the marital status of Baha’is on official documents, this would amount to official recognition of Baha’ism as a religion. And that is something the state is avoiding doing.” Ishaq sees this as a violation of the human rights of Baha’is, because the resulting social problems force some Baha’is to put down on their identification papers a religion they do not believe in. And this breaches international human rights conventions, which stipulate the right of citizens to freedom of belief and practice.

Mustafa Mahmoud, a lawyer and legal researcher specializing in personal rights issues, describes the situation Baha’is find themselves in, as “racist and illegal.”

In November 2018, Dr Mohamed Fouad, a former member of the House of Representatives for the El Omraniya district, submitted an information request to Dr Ali Abdel-Al, the then speaker of parliament, regarding the problems faced by Baha’is in registering their documents, setting up their own places of worship, and allocating lands for burials. This failed to produce any result or even any significant discussion.

MP Moncef Suleiman, an undersecretary of the Religious Committee in parliament, says: “Absolutely not.. as a representative of the Religious Committee, to my knowledge there has been no discussion of the possible registering of Baha’i marriage contracts.”

The author of this investigation contacted both Dr Usama Al-Abd, undersecretary of the Religious Committee in parliament, and Muhammad Abdel Aziz, an undersecretary on parliament’s Human Rights Committee, regarding our findings. But they refused to make any comment on the issues raised. We also tried to contact the Chairman of the Religious Committee and former Mufti of Egypt Dr Ali Gomaa, by phone and WhatsApp. However, as of the date this investigation is published, we have received no response.

This investigation was completed with support from ARIJ