Egyptian MP Wants Religion Removed from National ID Cards

Egytian MP Ismail Nasr El-Din reportedly stated that he's working towards the removal of religious identification from national identification cards and other official governmental documents.

Nasr El-Din said that in order to achieve a civil state, the Parliament must start with official state documents. According to Egypt's 2014 constitution, all Egyptians have equal rights and duties.

“We have to commence with [amending] the official documents if we want to establish a civil state that respects the values of citizenship. We omitted, for instance, the mention of divorce on the national ID card and we have to [remove] the mention of religion,” El-Din said. Egyptian national IDs contain the carrier's profile, including details like age, residence address, education, marital status, and religious identity.

"President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi spoke in front of the whole world last week about freedom of belief and the right of every citizen to freedom or worship," Nasr El-Din added, refering to last week's World Youth Forum in which Sisi had said that he doesn't "differentiate between Muslims and Christians."

"This is a clear message from the president of the nation," Nasr El-Din said.  "We, as a legislative body, must convert what the president says into facts on the ground."

Nasr El-Din is working on swaying the rest of the Parliament into creating a draft bill.

This will be the second time that an MP attempts to omit religious identification on the national IDs in Egypt. In 2016, MP Alaa Abdel-Moneim drafted a similar bill; however it never went trough.

Main image from PhotoShelter.