The Egyptian government will issue a law exclusively addressing church construction, as distinct from a law for building houses of worship currently being drafted, a National Democratic Party (NDP) leader said on Saturday.
State-run news agency MENA quoted Moustafa al-Fiqqi, the head of the Shura Council's Committee on Arab, Foreign and National Security Affairs, as saying that the law will be issued. The draft law on building houses of worship, on the other hand, may take some time to prepare.
Egypt’s Christians have long complained of heavy bureaucratic restrictions for building churches due to government policy.
The Unified Houses of Worship draft law was first proposed by the ruling NDP in 2005 in an effort to regulate the construction of mosques and churches in Egypt, but was never officially endorsed.
The current law, dating back to 1856, requires presidential approval for building a church. Although President Hosni Mubarak issued a decree authorizing governors to permit church building in 2005, many Copts claim it failed to change the status quo. They say there are widespread fears that building new churches could provoke Muslim residents, especially in Upper Egypt.
According to the Ministry of Religious Endowments, there are over 93,000 mosques in Egypt, while the number of churches is around 2,000–not enough, apparently, to serve Egypt's Copts, who constitute roughly seven percent of the national population.
