Baháʼí Faith in Egypt

Abu'l-Faḍl also became friends with writers and magazine publishers, and many articles that he authored appeared in the Egyptian press.

[25] ʻAbdu'l-Bahá traveled to Egypt in September 1910 after being released following events of the Young Turk Revolution.

[30] ʻAbdu'l-Bahá then set sail 11 August 1911,[31] reached as far as London, and returned in early December to rest for the winter.

[34] One of the earliest Baháʼís of the west and a Disciple of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Lua Getsinger, died in 1916 and she was buried in Egypt.

[15] Meanwhile, Tudor Pole was stationed in Egypt and was directly involved in addressing the concerns raised by Ottoman threats against ʻAbdu'l-Bahá.

At the death of ʻAbdul-Bahá in 1921, Shoghi Effendi left England with the assistance of Lady Blomfield and stopped in Egypt to change boats for Haifa.

[30] The assembly of Alexandria was formed in 1924 for the first time and Subhê Eliçs was among the elected – he was re-elected until 1961 and left an oral history recorded from his experiences in the community in 1977.

[43] Marie of Edinburgh, another western Baháʼí, was able to stop at Egypt for a time but failed to make landfall in Haifa.

[44] In early 1934 Sabri Elias[45] pioneered to what was then called Abyssinia, (see Baháʼí Faith in Ethiopia)[46] where he was soon joined by further Egyptians by mid-1934[47] – enough to elect the first Assembly in Addis Ababa.

[52] Nossier, being a public servant, appealed for a change in residence and serve in another district and was at first refused despite his good reputation.

However, when it came time to take the casket to the cemetery a large angry crowd made travel impossible despite police protection.

[62] After many efforts by the National Assembly, the confiscated copies were released on condition that this book should not be distributed in Egypt or sent out of the country.

The Censorship Bureau of the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior requested the Assembly to renew their guarantee every fifteen days that the said book will not be put in circulation.

Also in 1942 Hand of the Cause Abdu'l-Jalil Bey Sa'd, a notable student of Abu'l-Faḍl, died and was buried with memorial services called for in the east and west.

[69] A public lending library was established in Cairo to satisfy inquires being made but anti-Baháʼí pamphlets were published and posted in Tanta instigating violence and individuals in other cities were actually attacked.

[75] And a wave of pioneers left Egypt in 1951 for North and Central Africa (see Baháʼí Faith in Uganda for a start.

[20] However, since a regime change in 1960, the Baháʼís lost all rights as an organized religious community[4] by Decree 263[5] which specified a minimum sentence of six months' imprisonment or a fine for any assembly-related activities.

[1] This law came into being seven years after the declaration of the Arab Republic of Egypt, at the decree of then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser.

[84] In 1963, Baháʼí communities were still counted in Abu Qir, Mansoura, Alexandria, Port Said, Cairo, Zeitoun, and Ismaïlia.

[20] From 1965 to 2001 there were 236 arrests of Bahaʼis, charged under Article 98(f) of the Penal Code which proscribes "disparaging contempt of any divinely-revealed religion or its adherents, or prejudicing national unity or social harmony".

[87] The religion entered a new phase of activity when a message of the Universal House of Justice dated 20 October 1983 was released.

"[95] In the summer of 2012 Dwight Bashir, the Deputy Director for Policy and Research at the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, called the Baháʼís in Egypt a "litmus test" as "a compelling indicator of the trajectory" Egyptian society was turning following the 2011 Egyptian revolution and outlined a number of myths about the religion showing examples of these myths being repeated in Egypt.

[96] In late 2012 Dr. Ibrahim Ghoniem, acting Minister of Education and member of the Muslim Brotherhood stated his opinion the Baháʼí children would be excluded from the Egyptian school system.

According to news coverage, in December 2014 a government ministry organized a workshop for Muslim imams held in ʻAbbassia's Al-Nour Mosque to "raise awareness" of the "growing dangers of the spread of Bahaʼism," to maintain "national security and stability" as Bahaʼi thought allegedly "threatens Islam specifically and Egyptian society in general," and "teach young imams how to respond to Baháʼí thoughts and arguments.

"[98] Minister Mohamed Mokhtar Goma of the Ministry of Religious Endowments continue to portray the Baháʼís as a threat to society in April 2015.

[99] Even listing the religion on purely administrative paperwork was considered a "threat to public order" in recent developments.

[102] Ramadan's first two books were short story collections - Khashab wa Nohass (Brass and Wood, 1995) and Manazel el-Kamar (Phases of the Moon, 1999).

Her first novel Awraq Al-Nargis (Leaves of Narcissus) was published to great acclaim in 2001 and won the Naguib Mahfouz Medal.

She is a founding member of the Women and Memory Forum, a non-profit organisation, and teaches English and Translation at the National Academy of Arts in Cairo.

[90] The Universal House of Justice, the highest governing body of the Baháʼí Faith, paid tribute to his contributions to Egyptian society after his death in 2002.