Antisectarian Campaign in Egypt Urges Citizens to Remove Religion From ID Cards

[cbayer]

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/15/anti-sectarian-campaign-in-egypt-urges-citizens-to-remove-religion-from-i-d-cards/

April 15, 2013, 2:32 pm
By ROBERT MACKEY


An Egyptian citizen’s national identity card with the field for religion covered up by the phrase “none of your business.”

Egyptian activists have begun an online campaign against sectarianism in the wake of a deadly attack on mourners at Egypt’s main Coptic Christian Cathedral this month.

To begin the process of disentangling religion and citizenship, the “None of Your Business” campaign, driven by a Facebook group and a YouTube video, urges Egyptian citizens to cover up the section of their national identity cards that states their religion. The group’s Facebook page describes the initiative as “a campaign against interference in citizens’ private lives by the state, and by other citizens. 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.”

In response, supporters of the campaign have uploaded photographs of their ID cards to social networks with messages along the lines of “my faith is my own business” obscuring their religions. One inventive blogger even used text copied from the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants.”
One of the organizers, the British-Egyptian journalist and blogger Sarah Carr, explained in an e-mail to The Lede on Monday:

I reported on the Cathedral clashes last week, and was at Maspero when nearly 30 Christian protesters were killed; shot or run down by armored personnel carriers. I felt angry and powerless after both incidents until the idea of covering up the religion field on my ID card came to me. I couldn’t think of a single use for the religion field; the Egyptian state has a well documented thirst for bureaucracy and collecting information about its citizens but there is absolutely no need for it to have this information, which serves no purpose other than giving prejudiced state officials (and anyone else who sees the ID card) the opportunity to give a hard time to citizens.

more at link

[goldent]

1. I think defacing your ID like that might make trouble for you

Do something like that to your drivers license, and I have a feeling TSA wouldn't be amused.