Deriding Revealed Religions?: Baha'is in Egypt
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30                                                                                     Religious Affairs                                                        ISIM NEWSLETTER 10/02

Deriding Revealed
M id dl e E a s t
J OH AN N A P I N K

When on 10 May 1925, the appellate sharic a court of
Biba annulled the marriages of three Upper Egyptian
Baha'is to their Muslim wives, declaring that the Ba-
ha'i faith was not part of Islam and therefore Muslims
Religions?
Baha'is in Egypt
embracing it were to be considered apostates, this
verdict was, paradoxically, hailed by the internation-
al Baha'i community as 'the first Charter of the eman-
cipation of the Cause of Baha'u'llah from the fetters
of Islamic orthodoxy'.1 The National Spiritual Assem-
bly (NSA) of the Baha'is of Egypt and the Sudan, one
of the first NSAs to be founded worldwide, felt in-
spired by the verdict that finally made the Egyptian                marriages annulled on grounds of apostasy.         any concrete action that violated the law in       deriding or mocking one of the revealed
public aware of the existence of an active Baha'i com-              In 1952, the State Council, the highest ad-        question, but rather on the defendants' ad-        religions […] or harming national unity or
munity in their country. It was clear to everyone now               ministrative court, issued a judgment              herence to the Baha'i faith. In the case of        social peace'. Art. 98 allows prison sen-
that the Baha'i faith could no longer be regarded as                against a Baha'i government employee               Tanta, many of the accused finally chose to        tences of up to five years, which exceeds the
an Islamic reform movement, as had been the case                    whose employer had refused to pay him the          profess Islam; most of them still being            limits set by Law No. 263/1960.
before World War I, when Abd'ul'baha's visits to                    marriage and family allowances to which he         pupils or students, they feared that repeat-         Since Farag Fuda was shot in 1992, no-
Alexandria had caused a first wave of interest in the               was entitled. The court held that the plain-       ed postponements of the final verdict              body in Egypt – including the local human
new religion.                                                       tiff was an apostate and that therefore his        would make them miss important exams.              rights organizations – has taken to publicly
marriage was null and void. It considered            The Supreme Court passed its decision in         defending the Egyptian Baha'is' right to
The Baha'i community of Egypt began to            the question of freedom of belief, which           1975. It declared Law No. 263/1960 consti-         freely practise their religion. With Law No.
flourish in the 1920s. Their publishing           was guaranteed in the Egyptian Constitu-           tutional. The court held that the law in ques-     263/1960 still in force, added to a penal
house, Matba cat as-Sacada, distributed Ba-       tion, but came to the conclusion that the          tion did not trespass on the right of freedom      code allowing arbitrary arrests of persons
ha'i religious writings throughout the Arab       legislator had not meant the principle of          of belief as it did not prevent anyone from        adhering to a heterodox faith, it is not likely
world. In the 1930s, Egyptian Baha'is pre-        freedom of belief to protect apostates or          being a Baha'i, i.e. internally believing in the   that the Egyptian Baha'is will, in the coming
sented their faith in various independent         members of any faith other than the re-            principles of the Baha'i faith. As for the right   years, experience a change for the better.
liberal secular newspapers and managed to         vealed religions accepted by Islam. The            to confess and practise one's religion, the
have their NSA registered at the mixed            court furthermore declared the supremacy           court maintained that the legislator had
court2 of Cairo, though their attempts to ob-     of the sharica over secular laws.                  granted this right only to the three revealed
tain any form of official recognition by na-         Things definitely took a turn for the worse     religions recognized by Islam. The court also
tional political or juridical institutions were   for the Egyptian Baha'is shortly afterwards.       declared that Law No. 263/1960 was not a
in vain. In 1939, two Baha'i cemeteries were      The first reason for this was the foundation       case of religious discrimination, as the state
opened in Cairo and Ismailiyya. In the 1940s,     of the state of Israel in 1947 and the fact that   was only obliged to treat equally those citi-
the NSA inaugurated their own building, fi-       the international centre of the Baha'i com-        zens having a comparable status, e.g. Chris-
nanced by donations, in Abbassiyya, a quar-       munity was situated in Haifa. From the be-         tians should be treated equal to other Chris-
ter of Cairo. More and more new members           ginning of the 1950s onward, accusations           tians, etc. This is an extremely restrictive in-
joined the faith, sometimes after having          were raised by journalists as well as Muslim       terpretation of the Constitution which basi-
gotten hold of one of the Baha'i publica-         theologians that the Baha'i faith was in real-     cally strips the relevant articles of any mean-
tions which were disseminated in great            ity not a religion, but a disguised instrument     ing.
numbers through bookshops and libraries,          of Zionism in order to corrupt and weaken
sometimes after having read about the new         the Arab and Muslim world by perverting              Increasing publicity
religion in the liberal press, sometimes after    God's revelation and by promoting pacifism            The Supreme Court's verdict opened the
having attended a public lecture on the           and internationalism. This conspiracy theo-        way for more arrests. The next one followed
faith. The converts came from all the major       ry spread rapidly and by the 1960s reached         in 1985. About 50 Baha'is were arrested and
religions present in Egypt. Their educational     general acceptance in Egyptian public opin-        charged with violating Law No. 263/1960.
background was generally rather elevated,         ion, with extremely few exceptions.                The case received extreme amounts of pub-
many of them being academics. All these                                                              licity, virtually every Egyptian newspaper
developments made Shoghi Effendi, great-            Nasserism                                        and magazine covering the topic, often sev-
grandson of Baha'u'llah, express, in 1944, his      The second reason for the increasingly           eral times as the proceedings continued.
firm belief that 'the establishment of […]        problematic situation of the Baha'i commu-         The only voice that spoke in favour of the
[the Baha'i] faith on a basis of absolute         nity in Egypt was Nasser's repressive policy       Baha'is was that of Mustafa Amin, eminent
equality with its sister religions' in Egypt      in the religious sector. His aim in dealing        writer and journalist, who reminded the
was only a question of time.3 Between the         with religious communities of all kinds was        readers of his daily column in Al-Akhbar that
1950s and the present day, however, Shoghi        to either submit them to government con-           freedom of religion was a basic human
Effendi's optimistic forecast has not been        trol or eliminate them. The second option          right. Most of the press chose to ignore this
fulfilled.                                        was usually chosen for groups that were            comment. However, newspapers with an Is-
suspected of having ties to Israel; not only       lamist tendency, like An-Nur or Ash-Shacb,
Arrestation for vice and                        the Baha'is, but also Jehovah's Witnesses          violently attacked Amin for his opinion.
debauchery                                      suffered from this. In 1960, a presidential           The defendants were released on bail
In January 2001, Egyptian newspapers re-       decree (Law No. 263/1960) was issued by            shortly after their arrest. In 1987, a court of
ported the arrest of 16 Baha'is from the area     which the Baha'i centres were dissolved and        first instance sentenced each of them, with
of Suhag in Upper Egypt. The accused had          their properties – including their building in     the exception of two who had chosen to re-
allegedly indulged in promiscuous sexual          Abbassiyya and a valuable piece of land in         nounce their faith, to a three-year prison
activities, which were, the press claimed, in     Maadi, south of Cairo – were confiscated.          term, which was the highest possible sen-
accordance with Baha'i religious rites. Cari-     The law also made any attempt to continue          tence. As the judgment contained blatant
catures depicted the Baha'is as obsessed          the Baha'i centres' activities liable to punish-   legal errors, the most prominent one being
with women and sexuality. In June 2001,           ment.                                              the fact that the court had made no effort to
eight of the accused were still in prison           In several cases, Egyptian Baha'is were          prove the individual guilt of the accused,
without having been officially charged. The       charged with violating this law. In 1972, the      the ruling was, without much public atten-
accusations do not seem to have been lifted       Baha'i community of the delta city of Tanta        tion, reversed by the appellate court in
since then.                                       was at the centre of the attacks. This case        1988.
The high expectations the Egyptian Ba-         gained a certain amount of publicity. The             After that, the Egyptian Baha'is tried to re-
ha'is had held for the future of their faith in   judgment, however, was delayed, one of the         main as inconspicuous as possible. As their          Notes
their home country have indeed been               reasons lying in the fact that a number of         faith dictates them to follow the laws of the      1. Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmette: Baha'i
crushed. After years of failed attempts to        Baha'is had shortly before turned to the           land, they have always accepted the ban on           Publishing Trust, [1944] 1970), 366.
achieve legal recognition, they had initiat-      newly founded Supreme Court, contesting            their organization; the charges raised             2. The mixed courts had been founded in order to
ed, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, several    the constitutionality of Law No. 263/1960,         against them could never prove any activi-           handle cases which concerned two or more states;
lawsuits through which they hoped to              which was the basis of the charges against         ties exceeding occasional private meetings.          the staff was international.
reach, at least partially, their goal. Their      the Baha'is of Tanta. The court decided to         Still, as mentioned above, last year the Ba-       3. Shoghi Effendi ([1944] 1970), 367.
main concern was the validity of Baha'i mar-      postpone its verdict until the Supreme             ha'is of Suhag were arrested. The accusa-
riages. The problem was twofold: not only         Court had issued its judgment. Interesting-        tions in this case do not seem to be based           Johanna Pink is a researcher in Islamic studies.
were marriage contracts that followed Ba-         ly, all the defendants who publicly declared       on Law No. 263/1960, but on Art. 98 of               She recently finished her Ph.D. thesis on new religious
ha'i personal status law not accepted by the      to be Muslims or renounced the Baha'i faith        the penal code which rather vaguely bans             communities in Egypt at the University of Bonn,
Egyptian state, but Baha'is with a Muslim         were immediately released, which shows             'the distribution or support of extremist            Germany.
background also ran the risk of having their      that the charges were not really based on          ideas with the intention of invoking strife,         E-mail: mail@johanna-pink.de
-- Deriding Revealed Religions?: Baha'is in Egypt (Used by permission of the curator)