CAIRO: In a landmark case, an Egyptian court has ruled that the state must recognise the right of Christians who convert to Islam to change their minds and revert to Christianity.
Until now, Egyptian courts have upheld a traditional reading of Islamic law in such cases, prohibiting the conversion from Islam to any other faith, regardless of the convert’s original religion.
While Egyptian law is largely secular and modelled on the French legal system, personal-status issues such as conversion, marriage and divorce are governed by the religious laws of the relevant community. Egypt is mainly Muslim, but has a substantial number of Coptic Christians.
The ruling by the Supreme Administrative Court on Saturday said 12 people who had converted to Islam from Christianity and then back again could have their reversion to their original faith stated on their government identity papers.
Authorities had allowed the 12 to change their religious status on their identity documents when they converted to Islam, but had so far refused to allow them to change it back.
“This opens the door of hope to hundreds of Copts who converted … and were then unable to return,” said Mamdouh Nakhla, a human rights lawyer.
Mr Nakhla said there were about 450 similar cases in litigation, and estimates of the number of people who wished to revert to Christianity from Islam ranged up to several thousand.
The court ruling, which cannot be appealed, overturned a lower court decision in April, which said the state had no obligation to recognise a convert to Islam’s decision to revert back to his original faith because it violated Islam’s ban on apostasy.
The higher court’s decision now obliges Egypt’s Ministry of Interior to issue the plaintiffs with birth certificates and identity papers identifying them as Christians.
But the paperwork will note their previous conversion to Islam – a caveat one human rights activist said was an invitation to discrimination.
“This may solve some procedural issues, but … will open the door to discrimination against those citizens by extremist officers or civil servants when they see in the entry that they left Islam,” said Gamal Eid, the head of the Arabic Network for Human Rights.
The Koran does not explicitly prescribe a penalty for apostasy, but considers it one of the gravest sins. However, traditions of the prophet Muhammad and some of his companions call for the death penalty in some cases of apostasy.
