Egyptian men married to Israeli women can be stripped of citizenship

June 6, 2010 11:09 PM

"A court in Cairo has upheld a ruling urging the government to consider stripping Egyptian men who are married to Israeli women of their citizenship."
posted by bluedaisy (44 comments total)

And in Israel (in the West Bank and Gaza), Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens are specifically singled out to be denied citizenship. Wikipedia and SFGate.
posted by andoatnp at 11:26 PM on June 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

Sorry, here is the SFGate link.
posted by andoatnp at 11:27 PM on June 6, 2010

Doesn't anyone ever seem to notice that collective punishmentS of this sort DON'T FUCKING WORK!?
posted by fatbird at 11:29 PM on June 6, 2010 [2 favorites]

Doesn't anyone ever seem to notice that collective punishmentS of this sort DON'T FUCKING WORK!?

It depends on what your goal is, I should think.
posted by davejay at 11:33 PM on June 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

This isn't news. News is when something rational happens in the Middle East.
posted by Behemoth at 11:34 PM on June 6, 2010 [7 favorites]

In many Progressive Democracies, Citizenship by Birth cannot be revoked by any authority for any reason. In my country, India, only citizenship bestowed upon immigrants by the State can be revoked by the Government or a Court of Law.

If Egyptian Govt. strips its citizens of their citizenship and make them stateless subjects, where do they want them to go? into the sea?

The whole 'patriotism', 'nationalism' thing is one disease of mankind like (most) religions which has and continue to be the cause for a whole lot of wars and misery.
posted by Jagan at 11:35 PM on June 6, 2010 [6 favorites]

Nobody tell Arizona about this.
posted by Artw at 11:36 PM on June 6, 2010 [13 favorites]

This is racist and terrible, especially when you consider that Egypt is one of the major recipients of US foreign aid.

The US ought to pass a law cutting off foreign aid to any country that passes laws that discriminate based on race or ethnicity.

I wonder why that hasn't happened?
posted by orthogonality at 11:38 PM on June 6, 2010 [3 favorites]

A mean, spiteful, petty and vindictive policy, directly aimed at harming a set of people who have a meaningful personal stake in Middle Eastern peace.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 11:40 PM on June 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

I read a brief snippet about Egypt Israel yesterday while perusing htp://iconicphotos.wordpress.com. What could have been...

He reinstitute the multi-party system and launched an open-door policy towards Israel. Although he started the Yom Kippur War together with al-Assad of Syria to regain the Sinai Peninsula, he later pursued peace openly with Israel. Sadat became the first Arab leader to officially visit Israel and he spoke before the Knesset

However, his peace agreement made him extremely unpopular in the Middle East and led to Egypt being expelled from the Arab League.
posted by uncanny hengeman at 11:43 PM on June 6, 2010

Religion and nationalism are such a wonderful mix! It's like the racism just springs up from the ground when they meet!
posted by Pope Guilty at 11:54 PM on June 6, 2010 [4 favorites]

The US ought to pass a law cutting off foreign aid to any country that passes laws that discriminate based on race or ethnicity.

I wonder why that hasn't happened?

Aside from being guilty of such ourselves at every level of government, this would effectively end US foreign aid.
posted by Saydur at 12:37 AM on June 7, 2010 [5 favorites]

... the virtue of the vicious, hard at work.
posted by dazed_one at 12:41 AM on June 7, 2010

Could we just have a moratorium on Middle East posts until the whole thing is settled? We'll know the moratorium is lifted when there's a post like "Glowing clouds enveloping Earth surely a sign of Yahweh's or Allah's approval."
posted by pracowity at 1:01 AM on June 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

"Bull" and "shit".
posted by rodgerd at 1:09 AM on June 7, 2010

"weak" and "sauce."
posted by kaibutsu at 1:35 AM on June 7, 2010

How totally ridiculous can you get? Incidentally, what happens if an Egyptian woman marries an Israeli man? And what is this supposed to achieve?
posted by bardophile at 1:37 AM on June 7, 2010

Since when has politics in the Middle East been about achieving?
posted by brokkr at 2:14 AM on June 7, 2010

So THERE.
posted by Salvor Hardin at 3:03 AM on June 7, 2010

Incidentally, what happens if an Egyptian woman marries an Israeli man?

Islam allows Muslim men to marry khaffirs, but khaffirs may not marry Muslim women. (Because the father determines the religion of the children.)
posted by orthogonality at 3:08 AM on June 7, 2010

How totally ridiculous can you get?

In Israel it is not possible for people of different faiths to marry because thre is no form of civil marriage. They have to go abroad to get it done.

Marriage is generally pretty ridiculous everywhere.
posted by srboisvert at 3:16 AM on June 7, 2010 [6 favorites]

PALE BLUE DOT PEOPLE! PALE BLUE DOT!
posted by Salvor Hardin at 3:44 AM on June 7, 2010

No hatred there, nope, not a bit.
posted by caddis at 3:54 AM on June 7, 2010

orthogonality: In fact, Muslim men are not permitted to marry kafirs, either. Muslim men are, however, permitted to marry Christian or Jewish women. Islam makes a clear distinction between kafirs "deniers (of God)" and Peoples of the Books. While the Quran does not explicitly prohibit Muslim women from marrying Christian or Jewish men, the vast majority of Muslims and Muslim scholars are of the view that it is not permissible. And yes, of course, I would expect that Egyptian law, like that of most Muslim countries, therefore does not permit Muslim women to marry outside their faith.

However, more to the point of the thread, are Arab Israelis not considered Israeli citizens? Not snarking, genuinely curious. And if they are, what happens if/when a Muslim Egyptian woman marries an Arab Israeli? Or if a Christian Egyptian woman marries an Israeli, Jew or Arab?
posted by bardophile at 3:57 AM on June 7, 2010

If Egypt wants to help the Palestinians, perhaps they should consider not helping Israel blockade Gaza. This is quite stupid.

Also, what's the deal with only applying this to men? Do they just think women are too soft headed to control themselves, or something? Or do laws like this apply to women and it's just so obvious they don't even need to talk about it?

Very strange.
posted by delmoi at 4:03 AM on June 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

However, more to the point of the thread, are Arab Israelis not considered Israeli citizens? Not snarking, genuinely curious. And if they are, what happens if/when a Muslim Egyptian woman marries an Arab Israeli? Or if a Christian Egyptian woman marries an Israeli, Jew or Arab?

From the article:

The ruling requires officials to send all such cases to the cabinet, to be decided on an individual basis.
...

It calls on the cabinet to determine whether to remove the nationality of the men concerned, as well as that of their children.

The court said the government should consider whether the Israeli woman was an Arab or a Jew.

posted by delmoi at 4:06 AM on June 7, 2010

Islam allows Muslim men to marry khaffirs, but khaffirs may not marry Muslim women. (Because the father determines the religion of the children.)

So if a Muslim man marries a Jewish woman, their children can be both Jewish and Muslim according to the respective religions/cultures?
posted by acb at 4:38 AM on June 7, 2010

So if a Muslim man marries a Jewish woman, their children can be both Jewish and Muslim according to the respective religions/cultures?

Yes, and since neither religion allows you to convert out you can very easily pick up a third and end up with <>cough> a trinity. I once read a kids' book in which one character was a demonologist who made a point of being a good and sincere member of a whole lot of religions - because each religion had its own demons that could only be propitiated by the correct rites.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:54 AM on June 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Egypt is helping to blockade Gaza, because Israel may simply say screw it, and cede it to Egypt whether Egypt wants it or not - and they don't. Palestinians tend not to play nice with their "host" countries.

Bibi is nuts, and he's hard-right enough to get away with giving away land for peace without threatening his position in his party. The goal isn't self-determination for the people of Gaza, the goal is to threaten to bomb the hell out of Cairo if they can't keep their new "citizens" from lobbing rockets over the border. Let the Egyptians take the heat from the global community for being inhumane to the Palestinians in an effort to keep Hamas on a chain.

Middle Eastern politics is very multi-faceted, at once fascinating and horrible.
posted by Slap*Happy at 4:55 AM on June 7, 2010

acb: Well, yes and no. Mainstream Islam assumes that children will follow the religion of their fathers. However, you're not actually considered a Muslim unless you believe in one God and that Muhammad was His prophet. In contrast, as I'm sure you're aware, if one has a Jewish mother, one is a Jew, whatever one's beliefs might be.
posted by bardophile at 5:01 AM on June 7, 2010

Mainstream Islam assumes that children will follow the religion of their fathers. However, you're not actually considered a Muslim unless you believe in one God and that Muhammad was His prophet. In contrast, as I'm sure you're aware, if one has a Jewish mother, one is a Jew, whatever one's beliefs might be.

Are Jewish Muslims (Jumus? Jewslims?) a notable phenomenon anywhere?
posted by acb at 5:07 AM on June 7, 2010

acb: I've met people who had one Jewish and one Muslim parent. I know of others. All of them self-identified as Muslims. In general, I have found that when people have one Muslim parent and one non-Muslim (usually the Muslim parent is the father, but not always), they pick one religion or neither, not both. So there may be Jewish Muslims, but as far as I know, no, they are not a notable phenomenon anywhere.

Obviously, all of this is complicated by what Joe in Australia pointed out, i.e. that leaving Islam is a problematic thing from the perspective of most Muslims. I've always had a problem with the conventional Muslim view of apostasy. I can see how one can view it as an unforgivable sin, but I don't see how you can insist that it's not possible to convert out, given that Islam is about belief.
posted by bardophile at 5:20 AM on June 7, 2010

Is there some pan-Middle Eastern tournament for state stupidity going on that the rest of us are unaware of?
posted by MuffinMan at 5:25 AM on June 7, 2010

In contrast, as I'm sure you're aware, if one has a Jewish mother, one is a Jew, whatever one's beliefs might be.

How so? By some Rabbinical fatwa? Which is about as meaningful as any other made up fact.
posted by london302 at 5:25 AM on June 7, 2010

Delmoi wrote: If Egypt wants to help the Palestinians, perhaps they should consider not helping Israel blockade Gaza.

Yes, but Egypt does not want to help Hamas, and Hamas would benefit from an end to the blockade. At least, you'd think so - but Hamas itself refuses to take steps that would end the blockade.

I did some research a while back for a FPP on the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, but I didn't post it because I didn't want another I/P thread. The situation is amazingly cynical. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.

Basically, the crossing is controlled by Egypt at one end, and by a multi-party control room at the other. In theory, representatives of the EU operate it under the direction of representatives of Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The Europeans refuse to operate the crossing because they haven't received authority to do so from Israel and the PA. Why? Well, Hamas will not let Mahmoud Abbas' Presidential Guard into the Gaza Strip, and Mahmoud Abbas won't let Hamas operate it. It's quite likely that Israel would shut it down anyway - but it's telling that Hamas and the PA can't cooperate even to the extent required to make Israel look bad. But notice what everyone is keeping quiet about:

Israel is keeping quiet about the fact that Hamas could allow the PA into Gaza to operate the control room. Why isn't Israel taking advantage of this propaganda victory? I think there are two reasons: Israel doesn't want to advertise how weak the PA is; but more importantly Israel doesn't want Hamas and the PA to cooperate and allow further pressure to be placed on Israel.

The PA is keeping quiet about the fact that it could authorise Hamas to operate the control room. That's not surprising, but why is Hamas keeping quiet about it? I suspect that it's because Hamas actually benefits from having an economic choke hold on Gaza. Hamas can operate the tunnels; Hamas can extract "taxes" (that would otherwise go to the PA); Hamas can be the conduit through which relief flows to the Palestinians.

The EU is keeping quiet about the fact that the PA refuses to cooperate with Hamas. I suspect that it's because it doesn't want to strengthen Hamas, and it doesn't want to weaken the PA. Also, it probably doesn't mind pressure being placed on Israel - which would likely refuse to allow the crossing to be opened, anyway.

Egypt is keeping quiet about the fact that (a) it could form a new border agreement with Hamas, if it wanted to; and (b) it can open a hole in the fence at any time. So why is Egypt doing this? Because Hamas is part of the Moslem Brotherhood political organisation, which is hated and feared by the Egyptian elite.

So there's a lot being carefully unsaid by the parties to the blockade. Nobody really wants the crossing open, except the actual residents of Gaza and perhaps part of Hamas. Who, it should be remembered, are the ones that actually got Israel angry enough to institute a blockade from the Israeli side and still refuse to do the things that Israel conditioned an end to the blockade upon: releasing Gilad Shalit and stopping the rocket attacks, I think.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:26 AM on June 7, 2010 [3 favorites]

In contrast, as I'm sure you're aware, if one has a Jewish mother, one is a Jew, whatever one's beliefs might be.

How so? By some Rabbinical fatwa? Which is about as meaningful as any other made up fact.

Actually, I said that because I know so many Jews who have no religious beliefs that one would call specifically Jewish (in some cases they are actually atheists), and yet they identify themselves as Jews. The whole notion of being Jewish as an ethnicity/race/culture is not one that simply imposed by some rabbi, it is a commonly held notion amongst non-religious Jews, as well. The "cultural Muslim" however, is a comparatively rare phenomenon. I'm sure they exist, but it's really not common.
posted by bardophile at 5:50 AM on June 7, 2010

The idea that you're Jewish if you're mother is Jewish developed through Jewish law, going back thousands of years, and has been considered the status quo for most of them.

(There was a concept of apostasy though, where if you deliberately adopted certain other religions, some Rabbis would have required you to do some sort of conversion procedure to come back, or not permitted it at all).

That 'fact' is meaningful for Jews who care about it and for people who care about the opinions of those who hold that fact. Prayer required a quorum of 10 (traditionally male) Jews, so this is a way that the community decides whether you count or not. If you don't care and would never show up anyway, that fact is completely not-meaningful to you.

If two Jews (according to this tradition) are married and then divorce, the woman would need a religious bill of divorce from the husband to be free to marry again. If neither of them care then it's not meaningful that they are considered Jewish by a big group of Jews. If the woman happens to become religious or later wants to marry someone more religious, then it could matter to her that Jewish law considered her marriage a Jewish one because it considered her ex Jewish, and she would need to figure out how to get that divorce - even if her ex doesn't identify as Jewish at all.

How so? By some Rabbinical fatwa? Which is about as meaningful as any other made up fact.

Made up facts are not meaningful if they don't have power to affect your life. It's very easy to talk about marriage being between a man and a woman as an not-meaningful made up fact if it doesn't affect your ability to form your family, take care of your loved ones, and benefit from civil rights. Otherwise, the fact that it's made up doesn't take away from its real-world meaningfulness.
posted by Salamandrous at 6:02 AM on June 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

Perhaps that puts the whole thing into perspective. A thousand years from now the law in Egypt will become an established 'fact' just like the 'fact' that you are Jewish if your mother is Jewish despite its irrationality and 'meaninglessness'.
posted by london302 at 6:12 AM on June 7, 2010

I wonder if Egypt is allowed to do this. AFAIK this would be OK if someone takes 2nd citizenship from Israel but UN regulations don't allow a country to strip citizenship if this results in being stateless.
posted by yoyo_nyc at 6:29 AM on June 7, 2010

Just to keep this in perspective, Egypt's Personal Status Laws dictating family law, conferral of citizenship to children/spouses and divorce laws, have been a bizarre mix of ottoman, sharia and European legal conventions since 1874. This ripple is not even close to the most draconian action to be taken by the courts in Egypt in recent history. But was anyone arguing that Egypt was a democratic, progressive state?
posted by Lisitasan at 6:36 AM on June 7, 2010

Conversely, maybe there should be mandatory randomized marriage between different peoples of the world. Certainly within a few generations people would no longer be able to think of anything to fight about.
posted by Daddy-O at 6:37 AM on June 7, 2010

I was going to post about Egypt's concerns about the Muslim Brotherhood and its links with Hamas, but Joe in Australia did a pretty good post on that already. If Hamas does well, the Muslim Brotherhood do well, and the Egyptian government do badly.

They are engaged in some pretty-much textbook realpolitiking with Israel over Gaza and are very much not in agreement with the mood on the Egyptian street, this court case will be one of the release valves on the pressure cooker of public opinion that will keep the odious Egyptian regime in power.

One thing from Joe's post that I feel is important to challenge so as not to repeat the received wisdom about the Gaza conflict is related to the part I have put in bold below:

So there's a lot being carefully unsaid by the parties to the blockade. Nobody really wants the crossing open, except the actual residents of Gaza and perhaps part of Hamas. Who, it should be remembered, are the ones that actually got Israel angry enough to institute a blockade from the Israeli side and still refuse to do the things that Israel conditioned an end to the blockade upon: releasing Gilad Shalit and stopping the rocket attacks, I think.

I always trot it out, but the truth is that rocket attacks had all but stopped during the (Egyptian negotiated) ceasefire prior to Operation Cast Lead. Hamas had really cracked down, but due to the homemade and amateur nature of these rockets, they would be unlikely to ever stop all of them. This chart shows what I mean.

And what happened in November that brought the number of rockets back up to large numbers? An Israeli military incursion into Gaza that killed 6 Hamas members.

I don't think either party is operating with totally honest intentions on this matter...
posted by knapah at 9:58 AM on June 7, 2010

Since the BBC is apparently not going to tell us, I'm wondering if anyone here knows - is there a higher court in Egypt that can rule on this? If so, is it the final word, or can the issue be played out even further?

The US ought to pass a law cutting off foreign aid to any country that passes laws that discriminate based on race or ethnicity.

I wonder why that hasn't happened?

Because we don't hand out foreign aid primarily to help people, we hand out foreign aid to promote our own national interests, real or perceived.
posted by IndigoJones at 10:01 AM on June 7, 2010 [2 favorites]

And who decides if another country's law is discriminatory?

A law like that would produce more debate than anything. Are the banning of religious veils in some European countries discriminatory? Affirmative action? Obviously there are lost of clear cut cases, but probably a lot more gray.
posted by rosswald at 11:31 AM on June 7, 2010