Egyptian Law and Human Rights

Cases: Egyptian laws limiting Bahá’í institutions and practices; Lautsi, Dahlab, Refah Partisi, Şahin, Kokkinakis, and Otto-Preminger-Institut judgments.

Case Synopsis: Egypt regards Islamic sharia to be a source of all its laws; historically though, its legal tradition is based on European (primarily French) law. The twin lineages are ostensibly irreconcilable, while the former seeks to uphold sharia as a legal principle, the latter understands itself to be secular. Yet their combination reveals a shared paradox, for both maintain that religion should be immune from state intervention while at the same time placing the state at the center of the ongoing regulation of religion and civic institutions that entwine religion with politics. Egyptian jurisprudence has had to negotiate adjudicating the constitutionally guaranteed right to religious liberty against ideals of public order, especially in its regulation of minority religions. 

These tensions are evident in the historical regulation of the Bahá’í religious community in Egypt. Unlike Judaism and Christianity, which the Egyptian state formally recognizes, the practice of the Bahá’í faith is prohibited in Egypt, a ban that places certain limits on the civil and political rights of the Bahá’ís. This module focuses on the status of the Bahá’í community, who constitute a tiny proportion of the population (less than 1 percent), but which has stood at the center of the most significant legal challenges of the Egyptian state to balance competing prerogatives of freedom and control in the name of public order.

This case originates in the work of Saba Mahmood and Peter Danchin.