I caught a glimpse of this on Forbes earlier today, but now it seems to be all over the place. Mariam Fam of the Associated Press has just put up a great story about the situation of the Baha’is in Egypt:

Tucked away in Labib Iskandar’s pocket is a neatly folded slip of paper with fraying edges that tells the story of a community fighting for recognition. It’s a receipt Iskandar got when he applied for the computer-based identification card Egypt had just then begun issuing — more than five years ago.

Iskandar is a Bahai, a member of a religious community that regards a 19th-century Persian nobleman, Baha’u'llah, as a prophet — a challenge to the Muslim belief that Muhammad is the last prophet. Given the pivotal role of Islam in Egyptian life, the government will not issue an ID card to a Bahai, but only to Muslims, Christians or Jews.

Interestingly, while surfing around to try and find a photo to go with this post (you’ll see I didn’t come up with anything) I came across this piece from from Egypt’s Al-Ahram weekly from back in September of 2004. It’s a look at The US State Department’s 2004 International Religious Freedom Report, and in it writer Reem Nafie notes that the Egyptian Baha’i community found it’s way into the report because:

Supposedly, when the Interior Ministry recently began to upgrade its automation of civil records, including national identity cards, Bahais found themselves left out by the new software that was used in the process, which only categorised citizens as Muslims, Christians or Jews.

So it’s not the Egyptian government that’s denying Baha’is their rights, it’s Egyptian computers that are the problem.

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