Citizenship is not an administrative condition, nor a rigid legal description. It is a moral relationship between the individual and the nation, based on mutual recognition: the nation’s recognition of the dignity of its citizens, and the individual’s recognition of their free belonging to this collective entity. When this relationship is disturbed, the flaw is not only in the texts, but in the awareness that precedes and follows them.
Constitutions are written to regulate reality, but they do not create it on their own. Reality is only sound when constitutional values transform into daily culture—manifested in language, public discourse, and the way society views its different members. Therefore, any unconscious violation of the language of citizenship, or any implicit classification among citizens of the same nation, is not an innocent linguistic error, but an indicator of a deeper flaw in understanding the very idea of belonging.
From this perspective, discussing citizenship becomes an intellectual necessity before it is a political demand—a continuous attempt to correct the compass, so that the nation remains a unifying entity that defines its people solely as citizens: equal in rights, different in convictions, and partners in destiny.
Citizenship is not a slogan raised on special occasions, nor an article written into the constitution and then forgotten. It is an existential, legal, and moral bond that makes a person a citizen because they belong to the nation—not because they belong to a religion, a group, or a majority. Before being a legal text, it is a deep sense of equal belonging, reflected in language, practice, and the way the state and society perceive the individual.
The greatest threat to the concept of citizenship is not explicit discrimination alone, but the hidden discrimination that seeps in through familiar words and possibly well-intentioned motives, yet carries within it an unspoken division of the national entity.
From here, I—like many others—was struck by what my friend, writer Ibrahim Awad, raised in his critique of the use of the term “our Christian brothers” in state language and official discourse. This critique deserves serious consideration—not as a linguistic debate, but as a matter of conceptual awareness.
This expression, despite its apparent warmth and respect, implicitly carries an inaccurate conception of citizenship. It assumes—unintentionally—that there is an unnamed “original” entity, and another entity defined by its religion, as if Egyptians are not united as a single entity except as “brothers” within a broader framework, rather than as original components of one nation.
Egyptians are not “brothers within an entity”;
they are the entity itself.
They are not united by religion, but by الوطن (the nation).
And the majority does not grant the right to exist, because existence precedes the majority.
Language here is not a marginal detail. Language shapes awareness and reveals what has settled in the collective mind more than intentions ever do. Precision in language is not cultural luxury; it is the protection of a fundamental constitutional concept: citizenship.
The Egyptian constitution—like those of modern states—does not grant rights on a religious basis, does not treat freedom of belief as a gift from one group to another, nor as a privilege granted by a majority to a minority. It clearly affirms that citizenship is the foundation of rights and duties, and that freedom of belief is an inherent right of the citizen, beyond guardianship or restriction.
Here, a frequently overlooked truth must be emphasized:
Freedom of belief in the modern state is not religious tolerance, nor a social favor. It is a constitutional right that precedes and transcends any religious or social interpretation.
Moreover, the concept of citizenship, in its human essence, is not confined to the three Abrahamic religions. Today’s world includes nearly eight billion people, more than half of whom do not belong to Islam, Christianity, or Judaism. Their humanity has not diminished, nor have their nations stripped them of their rights because of that.
Egyptians, like all peoples, may differ in intellectual and doctrinal identities and in their conceptions of existence, yet they remain full citizens with undiminished rights. Citizenship is not measured by the type of belief, nor by its social acceptance, but by belonging to the nation and commitment to its law.
The most dangerous forms of discrimination are not those practiced loudly, but those practiced in whispers—under banners of reassurance and in the name of preserving social peace. When rights are treated as concessions, and when the different are constantly asked to prove their good intentions, we move from a state of citizenship to a society of guardianship.
If we want citizenship to be alive rather than a constitutional clause, we must review our language, discourse, and daily practices. Citizenship is not tested in texts, but in the small details that shape people’s awareness and sense of belonging.
Citizenship is not about merely living together, but about living as equals—without labels, without classifications, and without permission from anyone.
I believe that the concept of citizenship in governmental awareness and in the language of some officials is in crisis. Citizenship is neither granted nor withdrawn; it is presumed by virtue of human belonging to the nation. But when citizens are distinguished as guests or “brothers” of the Egyptian entity, belonging itself becomes conditional upon belief rather than loyalty to the nation.
In this sense, religion is transformed from a spiritual experience into a civil access card, and from a relationship between the individual and their Creator into a relationship between the citizen and the official clerk.
What has been absent, in essence, is the philosophical understanding that freedom of belief is not merely a legal matter, but a question of philosophical awareness. A person’s freedom to believe or not believe, to choose their own meaning of existence, is what makes them human.
When the state intervenes—directly or indirectly, or through the repeated use of certain expressions—within this inner space, it violates not only the law, but the realm of consciousness itself.
In a true civil state, religion belongs to God and the nation belongs to all. When religion becomes a condition for full citizenship, we face a system that reduces the human being to belief, and measures belonging by an official scale of faith rather than national participation.
This is the slippery slope that begins in the name of protecting belief and ends in the exclusion of human beings.
A strong civil state does not fear diversity; it organizes it with justice.
A confident society does not fear difference; it protects it through law.
