Last week, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ratified a long-awaited church-building law, to organise the construction and renovation of churches. The law, which had been passed by parliament in August, is criticised by human rights groups for being vague and unclear and disadvantaging Coptic Christian communities in the country. For decades, church-building has been an ordeal for Coptic Christians, met with bureaucratic delays and neglected by the state.

Last week, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi ratified a long-awaited church-building law, to organise the construction and renovation of churches. The law, which had been passed by parliament in August, is criticised by human rights groups for being vague and unclear and disadvantaging Coptic Christian communities in the country. For decades, church-building has been an ordeal for Coptic Christians, met with bureaucratic delays and neglected by the state. But recently, actual or alleged church building has often been prompted and sometimes preceded by anti-Christian violence, which left one person dead and several injured.  

Human Rights Watch criticised the parliamentary memo that came alongside the law, which states that governors should take “security and public safety” into account when deciding on church-building applications. The organisation voiced concern that this would allow mob violence to decide whether a new church is being built or not.

Researcher Ishak Ibrahim, from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights agrees with this assessment, fearing that a state attitude that burdens Christian places of worship with additional conditions will  foster sectarianism. Our reporter Jihad Abaza spoke to Ibrahim and churchgoers in Cairo to find out more.