In a recent piece for the Guardian's "Comment is Free", Brian Whitaker writes about Egypt's new tool to oppress religious minorities: idiot computers.

You heard that right--from now on, the computer database in which each citizen's religious affiliation is recorded (reporting this affiliation is mandatory and appears on one's national ID card) will only recognize the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. A suit lodged against the government in protest by a family of Egyptian Baha'is was recently denied. (For the full story, see The Arabist--which by the by is a great source of alternative news on Egyptian and Middle Eastern politics, spearheaded by some of my old colleagues from Cairo Magazine.) 

The Egyptian government's rather manic relationship with religious labeling is something that everyone living here has a story about; being mislabeled can have either comical or disasterous results. You cannot choose not to be labeled--religion is mandatory. I remember vividly the first time I put 'Muslim' next to my name on an official form; it was for work papers I had to fill out shortly after I moved to the country. The act brought relief and fear at once: there it was, the faith I had adopted, in print next to my name. There was no turning back.  Or so I thought.

To my shock, when the processed forms were given back to me, I had been labeled 'Christian'. When I pointed out the mistake, the clerk who had processed my forms laughed in a kindly but patronizing manner--I couldn't just choose my religion. If I wanted to become a real Muslim, I had to register my conversion with the state. Until then, I, like all European and American foreign residents, would be considered a Christian.

I decided the divine lesson involved was not to take myself too seriously. Eventually I did undergo a state-sanctioned conversion, taking an extended Shaheda--on account of my Christian beliefs--before an Azhari sheikh. (Converts from Christianity are required, in Egypt, to declare not only that there is no God but God and Muhammad is His Prophet, but that Jesus born of the Virgin Mary, though a prophet, was not the son of God, and did not die on the cross but ascended to Heaven, etc, etc, such that the Shaheda takes about two full minutes.) It was, all things considered, funny: but for the unlucky, the increasing religious pressure of the state can result in disinheritance, forcible divorce, and fractured families.