Egypt: The Baha'is With Another Court Date

The Daily Star - Egypt of The International Herald Tribune published an article on 23 December 2006 reporting on another case for the Egyptian Baha'is to be decided in court on 23 January 2007.

This case is in regards to an ongoing three year litigation concerning the 13 year old twins named Emad and Nancy. Their Baha'i parents have been attempting to acquire Egyptian birth certificates for them.

The children were born to their Egyptian parents in one of the gulf States, and were issued birth certificates from that country which were certified by the Egyptian consulate, but since they now reside in Egypt they are required to present Egyptian birth certificates in order to attend school.

The Daily Star article reports again on the controversy regarding the Baha'i identification matter in Egypt. It presents the arguments put forth by those who insist on their flawed point of view, and the rumor-mongering being propagated by these extremists. Furthermore, the reporter presented the response by some of the Baha'is interviewed and their clarification of the issues at hand.

In the printed version of the report, a separate article entitled "A brief look at the Baha'i Faith" was also published as a compilation done by "The Daily Star Egypt staff." Both articles can be seen by clicking on the accompanying images. The article published on the newspaper's website can be accessed here....

The compilation published by The Daily Star staff quotes from the following passage:

"...'Abdu'l-Bahá expounded, with brilliant simplicity, with persuasiveness and force, and for the first time in His ministry, those basic and distinguishing principles of His Father's Faith, which together with the laws and ordinances revealed in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas constitute the bed-rock of God's latest Revelation to mankind. The independent search after truth, unfettered by superstition or tradition; the oneness of the entire human race, the pivotal principle and fundamental doctrine of the Faith; the basic unity of all religions; the condemnation of all forms of prejudice, whether religious, racial, class or national; the harmony which must exist between religion and science; the equality of men and women, the two wings on which the bird of human kind is able to soar; the introduction of compulsory education; the adoption of a universal auxiliary language; the abolition of the extremes of wealth and poverty; the institution of a world tribunal for the adjudication of disputes between nations; the exaltation of work, performed in the spirit of service, to the rank of worship; the glorification of justice as the ruling principle in human society, and of religion as a bulwark for the protection of all peoples and nations; and the establishment of a permanent and universal peace as the supreme goal of all mankind -- these stand out as the essential elements of that Divine polity which He proclaimed to leaders of public thought as well as to the masses at large in the course of these missionary journeys...."
(Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 281)