Egypt Facebook campaign favors separation of church and state (VIDEO)
An Egyptian anti-government demonstrator sleeps on the pavement under graffiti that reads ‘Al-Jazeera’ and ‘Facebook’ at Cairo’s Tahrir square on February 7, 2011 on the 14th day of protests calling for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak.
A bold new Facebook campaign has Egyptians blacking out their religious identities on government documents, telling authorities such information is "None of Your Business."
The project comes in the wake of violence against Coptic Christians earlier this month.
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The campaign protests “against interference in citizens’ private lives by the state, and by other citizens," according to The New York Times' blog The Lede, citing the group's Arabic Facebook page. "We are for the removal of religion from official documents — the most important of which is the personal ID card — as a small but important step towards ending discrimination on the basis of religion," organizers said.
Some participants have already uploaded photos of the newly-obscured documents, The Lede pointed out.
Organizers even produced a video advertising the anti-sectarian campaign. Director Aalam Wassef told The Lede:
"The idea was simply to invite Egyptians to mask the mention of their religion on the back of their ID (where the 'religion field' is compulsory), as a statement that faith is a personal issue, and that it should stay that way.
From where I stand, starting such a campaign was a way of sparking a necessary public debate around the equality between Muslims and non-Muslims, freedom of speech, governance and religion…. Masking your religion on your ID is also a strong message sent to society at large, and not only to Islamists. Social pressure and domination over anyone who is not a Muslim man is, truly, a suffocating reality."
Watch the video here: