Egypt's state-run National Human Rights Council (NHRC) this week presented recommended amendments to legislation governing personal status.
One of the council's proposed amendments called for indicating citizens' religion on national identification cards.
As it now stands, national identification cards only include a religion if the holder belongs to one of the three Abrahamic faiths, namely Islam, Christianity and Judaism. ID cards belonging to citizens of other religions, meanwhile, such as Baha’is, are marked only with a dash (-).
In a related development, NHRC Vice President Moqbel Shaker–when asked about recent government bans on religious satellite channels, some of which were accused of promoting sectarianism–said the council welcomed "all efforts on the part of the government to preserve national unity.”
Translated from the Arabic Edition.
