In a previous article, Indictment of Egypt on Religious Freedom: The 2020 Pew Report, I presented the findings of the 2020 Pew (Pew Research Center) on the 2018 findings of government restriction on religion and social hostilities on a global level and with a particular focus on Egypt. I have found the miserable situation in Egypt, and said that on both government restriction index (GRI) and society hostilities index (SHI) Egypt ranked as very high in both of these, reflecting what the Coptic Christians in Egypt, and other religious minorities such as Shiites, Baha’I and Ahmadis, experience.
In that article, I have also shown that there is a strong association between authoritarian regimes and lack of religious freedom. For this, the Pew report used the Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index (DI), which measures the state of democracy in 165 independent countries and two territories around the world. It assesses these based on 60 questions broadly covering five themes: electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, the functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Each state is given a numeric score between 0 and 10 on the index and is classified into four regime types:
- Full democracies: scores higher than 8
- Flawed democracies: scores greater than 6, and less than or equal to 8
- Hybrid regimes: scores greater than 4, and less or equal to 6
In the above table the reader must take into account that countries are classified according to their GRI (Government Restriction Index) and SHI (Social Hostility Index) into having very high, high, moderate and low levels of restriction on religion. The table below shows that in detail:
| GRI | SHI | |
| Very high | 6.6 to 10.0 | 7.2 to 10.0 |
| High | 4.5 to 6.5 | 3.6 to 7.1 |
| Moderate | 2.4 to 4.4 | 1.5 to 3.5 |
| Low | 0.0 to 2.3 | 0.0 to 1.4 |
There are several observations here:
- There is no country in the 20 countries that are in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that is fully democratic.
- There are two countries in MENA that are regarded as flawed democracies (Israel and Tunisia).
- There are four countries in MENA that show hybrid regimes (Morocco, Lebanon, Palestinian authorities and Iraq).
- The rest of the MENA countries (14 countries) are authoritative with low scoring on the DI.
- Egypt is an authoritative country with a DI of 3.35, and is less on the democratic scale than Israel, Tunisia, Morocco, Lebanon, Palestinian authority, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait and Algeria.
- Countries in MENA with the highest DI are not necessarily better in terms of less religious restriction (both GRI and SHI). This includes Israel which has the highest DI (7.79): its GRI is 6.0 and its SHI is 8.5).
- Egypt occupies a very bad position on all accounts: its DI is low (3.35) and it scores very high on both GRI (7.7) and SHI (7.5). Both mirror the other. Both Egyptian government and the Muslim society, that forms the majority, are hostile to minority religions, with the Coptic Christians being oppressed by both Egyptian government and society.
- It is interesting to note that states in the Gulf Region, which score low on the DI, all being authoritative, have moderate or low levels on the SHI (though with very high to high to moderate scoring on the GRI). This may represent firm control of these states of their societies, as these societies are dependent on their securities on the “Christian” Western powers.
- Oman may have low SHI because its majority is not Sunni but belongs to the Ibadi school of Islam that is remarkable for its tolerance towards non-Muslims.
- Two other countries outside the Gulf Region with low SHI are Sudan (SHI, 1.9) and the Western Sahara (SHI, 0.0). Just compare these with Egypt’s SHI (7.5). I think this is due to the tolerant nature of these Western Saharan and Sudanese peoples.
All in all, Egypt is one of the worst countries in the Middle East and North Africa if you consider its Democratic Index, Government Restriction Index and Society Hostilities Index together. Egypt is both authoritative in government and restrictive of religious freedoms of its minorities, on both the governmental and societal fronts, particularly those of the Copts.
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