Egypt's Ministry of Interior Will Not Appeal Ruling on Baha'is

Egypt's Ministry of Interior has announced, through its sources, that it will not appeal the 29 January 2008 administrative court ruling that allowed the Baha'is of Egypt the issue of ID cards and birth certificates.

Based on its interview with sources in the Ministry of Interior, an article in Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper revealed the news today. It states that the Ministry has approved the ruling and decided not to appeal even though the law permits it to do so.

Its opportunity for appeal had already lapsed since, under Egyptian law, the defendant is entitled a period of two months to file an appeal. The Ministry had elected not to do so based on its assessment of the merits of the case and that the ruling has provided the government with a reasonable option to solve this complex matter.

The Ministry will issue ID cards without religious identification indicated, or with "--" in the religion field. The Ministry affirmed that "this does not imply that it recognizes the Baha'i religion."

At this point, the responsible government agency will start issuing ID cards to those whom the ruling applies to. It did not research yet the possibility of granting ID cards to others who request no mention of religion in their documents.

The same article reported also on the issue of religious identification on official documents required for high school graduation exams. The Ministry of Education source stated that the students will be given the choice to be either examined on Christianity or Islam. The question of what the students will be allowed to enter--as religion--in the application forms remains to be resolved.