“At every new beginning, I stop at the same point to ask the same questions: When will they find out [that I am a Baha’i]? How will they react? Will things go normally? There is always a hidden possibility of rejection, as if something is going to derail everything.”

With these words, 24-year-old Jamila began her response when asked if she had fears about the future as a young Egyptian Baha’i. She continued:

“For example, if I want to travel, live abroad, or study abroad—and I am planning for that—I feel that something might prevent me simply because I am a Baha’i. Every time I start a new job, I wonder: will people accept this fact or not? Not because I seek their approval, but so that I can continue my work, or so that anything I start would run smoothly. Then there is marriage—this is a terrifying subject. If that moment comes, I will be anxious about 5,000 different things. Naturally, the first thing I will think about is a civil marriage contract outside of Egypt as a precaution. I know it won’t be officially registered here, but at least there will be some kind of contract... in some country; we will need any country to witness the contract. Even after I get past this stage, there is a new set of fears in the next phase of my life: children. Their birth certificates, their schools... who knows, we might even face problems with their vaccinations. God only knows. And what if my husband is not Egyptian? That is a completely different problem: trying to document the contract in Egypt or prove the marriage... it will turn into a massive and complex ordeal. Or my father—may God prolong his life—if he passes away, what will happen to my mother’s pension? Will she be able to claim it? Will we face issues regarding inheritance? Will things go the way they should? Because, in the end, he is our father. And what if I want to travel, just travel? There are Baha’is who are registered [on watch lists] and have been interrogated. God only knows if all Baha’is are also under constant surveillance or not. God only knows; I do not know, but it is not unlikely. As you can see, there is always some fear... something that must be taken into account.”

At this early stage of her twenties, Jamila is preoccupied with these anxious questions that have no definitive answers. Questions fueled by the experiences she has witnessed among other Egyptian Baha’is around her. To be a Baha’i in Egypt is to carry a legacy burdened by the constant struggle to adapt to the absence of the most basic rights. From birth until death, you face obstacles that make every simple step in your daily life a potential arena for struggle, even if you did not seek it. The journey of exclusion begins with a dash (-) in the religion field on identification documents. This dash makes marriage contracts between Baha’is, whether customary, religious, or civil contracts concluded abroad, a mere piece of paper that the state does not recognize. It turns the process of obtaining a child’s birth certificate into an arena of procrastination by executive authorities. In the workplace, this “dash,” with all its implications, deprives

them of the opportunity to find a decent job in a market where opportunities are already suffocating for everyone. Even in death, Baha’is face hardships no different from those in life, as governorates refuse to allocate plots of land for Baha’is to purchase and use as burial grounds. Even with all the dash implies regarding the inevitability of difficult lives, it remains a distant dream for Baha’is who have not met the “conditions” for its inclusion in their identification papers.

Since the 1960s, the most prominent legacy passed from one Baha’i generation to the next has been institutional exclusion, which over time has transformed into administrative erasure. In this reality, marginalization has become the default state of life for the Baha’i community, while the exception is what members of this community create by vindicating their rights through available channels.

Behind every stage of this life stands a complex maze of procedures, errands, meetings, and the intransigence of state employees—and sometimes their refusal—to consider a request, affix a stamp, or issue an official document. This bureaucratic maze is wrapped in administrative arguments that reflect an administrative infrastructure designed to limit the right to belief “recognition” to the three Abrahamic religions, which are referred to in the constitution, laws, and judicial rulings as the “heavenly religions.”

Over the decades, a succession of legal memoranda, petitions, court rulings, and administrative decisions has effectively constructed a “public order” equipped with institutional mechanisms of exclusion. These mechanisms rigidly dictate the boundaries of Baha’i life in Egypt. As Wagdy puts it, a Baha’i finds themselves “fighting for nothing; spending a whole lifetime on nothing.” He adds, “We are not asking for anything difficult. We are not asking the state to recognize our religion, for example. We just want our ID cards, to get married, to get divorced... to live a normal life.”

This report aims to trace the footprint of this “public order” in the lives of Baha’is in Egypt following the landmark Supreme Administrative Court ruling in 2009. That ruling acknowledged the right of adherents to religions other than the three recognized Abrahamic faiths to obtain identification documents without being forced to declare a religion they do not adhere to. It further led to an amendment in the bylaws of the Civil Status Law, allowing a dash (—) to be entered in the religion field on identification documents such as birth certificates, death certificates, and national ID cards. However, this right was granted exclusively to individuals who had previously held—or whose father or both parents had held— identification documents listing “Baha’i,” “—,” or “Other” in the religion field.

The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR) accompanied members of the Baha’i community throughout their struggle to secure this ruling. Following this milestone, EIPR continued its local and international advocacy for Baha’is’ rights, providing legal aid whenever the need arose. These sustained efforts have yielded a body of studies, policy recommendations, and ongoing documentation of the critical issues that have emerged over the years.

During the period covered by this research (2009–2025), Egypt’s legislative, judicial, and executive structures, alongside its political and economic conditions, witnessed profound changes that impacted the exercise of freedom of religion and belief at both the individual and collective levels. This is by no means an exception; the spaces where religion—as discourse and practice—is shaped have always been a political arena par excellence for state intervention. Sometimes the state intervened to nationalize it entirely (as in the era of President Gamal Abdel Nasser), sometimes to unleash certain actors within it in a calculated manner—even if the consequences were ultimately unfavorable (as in the era of President Anwar El-Sadat), and other times to control the boundaries of its diversity so as not to threaten the continuity of the existing political regime (as in the era of President Hosni Mubarak). However, throughout all these approaches, the state’s monopoly on the role of the “Imam ruling over religious affairs” remained a fundamental feature, transcending its diverse strategies in dealing with religious pluralism. This situation changed partially due to the slippage of the security apparatus’s grip, which had managed the process of controlling religious diversity, following the January Revolution. However, the policies of the Muslim Brotherhood during their year of rule (2012–2013) quickly reinstated the same approach to managing religion and its institutions centrally, even with the attempts to involve some of their Islamist allies.

Following the ousting of the Muslim Brotherhood from power on July 3, 2013, the current regime established the same centralized approach. In a pivotal moment in Egypt’s contemporary history, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi carefully selected the figures who would become the pillars of the new regime. At the press conference announcing the July 3 statement, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar and the Pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church were present in the front row. This conference was the fruit of a previous discussion in which both had participated with Sisi, then-Minister of Defense, and others, agreeing on steps for the ‘return of Egypt to the Egyptians.’

Their presence in the conference was not merely symbolic; rather, it carried a clear message regarding the framework through which the new regime would operate: preserving the religious identity of the Egyptian state is one of the foundations of the new governing alliance and a guarantee of its stability in the face of political Islam. Religion in this new regime is a subject of reclamation; it is to be reclaimed by the state and official religious institutions to purify it from the impurities that have befallen it, and reintroduce it in its ‘correct’ form.

In the midst of this reclamation process, this alliance was not without internal frictions that occasionally reached the level of conflict.9 However, the political regime eventually succeeded in tightening its hegemony over the levers of religion, reasserting state control over any and all components of religion, both institutional and discursive.

This reclamation process created the socio-political conditions that have shaped the reality of the Baha’i community over the past thirteen years. During this era, developments occurred that altered the situation of Baha’is in issues affecting their lived reality, including the issuance of identification documents, the recognition by state executive agencies of Baha’i marriages, security surveillance of community members, and the allocation of land for Baha’is to purchase for use as cemeteries to bury their dead.

Throughout these years, Baha’is have never ceased their attempts to claim their most basic rights as Egyptian citizens by engaging with Egypt’s legislative, judicial, and executive structures. This engagement has taken various forms, whether through domestic litigation, the utilization of regional litigation mechanisms (such as the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights), repeated letters and meetings with government officials to present practical solutions to solve their problems, or repeated visits to government offices, turning bureaucratic spaces into arenas for directly demanding their rights.

Read the full report here!