"Stop Beating About the Bush"

Al-Arabiya has posted an article on recent calls in Egypt for the secularization of the country's constitution. Among other things, it claims that there is no basis for the rising discrimination against Copts in Egyptian life in sharia. This seems disingenuous as churches are required to acquire government approval for the fixing even of broken toilets on church premises, the government's recently interference in church marriage despite the supposed constitutional recognition of Coptic Orthodox customary law, and the customary taxation of Christians as dhimmis ("protected" second-class citizens in Islamic law), although that last is not observed in modern Egypt (as far as this author knows). How these and a host of other things contribute to the marginalization of Egypt's Copts is not difficult to see.