State Institutions for the Control 
of Church Life

The Egyptian State has an elaborate apparatus for controlling church life. The appointment or election of senior church leaders, such as the Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox Church and the President of the Protestant Union, is done by Presidential decree. Responsibility for the day to day supervision of church activity belongs to the Interior Ministry and its State Security Bureau. Agents of the Ministry attend church functions and infiltrate church organizations. Bishops, priests and pastors are expected to brief Interior Ministry officials about their activities. Approval of the Ministry is required for contacts with foreign churches and religious organizations. No foreigner may preach in an Egyptian church without the prior approval of the Ministry. Failure to cooperate in this way with the Ministry inevitably leads to harassment for the offending pastor, usually by long interrogations and threats. When clergymen do not yield to the wishes of the Interior Ministry, its agents harass vulnerable church members and misuse their broad powers to regulate the use of church property. On the basis of the security powers legislation of 1981, the Interior Ministry is entitled in practice to detain those suspected of threatening national security and unity indefinitely and without trial. The legislation is been used to intimidate Christians from following Christ's injunction to share one's faith with all peoples.

Christian associations fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry for Social Affairs. This Ministry has the legal right to:

1) send representatives to general membership meetings;
2) approve in advance the agendas of such meetings;
3) invalidate resolutions on agenda items not approved in advance by the Ministry, and any article of an association's constitution;
4) dismiss or appoint directors of boards;
5) dissolve associations without recourse to courts of law. (Law 49 of 1945; Law 384 of 1956; Law 32 of 1964.

Thus deprived of their legal autonomy and subject to manipulation by the Islamic state, the free functioning of churches and related associations is impossible.