Who Has the Right to Criticize the Church in Egypt?
- 49 minutes ago
- 5 min read
By: Ahmed Fathi
New York, NY: Egyptian writer Bassem El-Ganouby is back in his home. That should be welcomed news. But it does not answer the question posed by his arrest. If anything, it makes it sharper.
Who may criticize the Church in Egypt, and how far can such criticism go before a quarrel over words draws in the police?
El-Ganouby, whose legal name is Bassem Wahba Makary, was arrested following a complaint accusing him of insulting and defaming Bishop Aghathon, Bishop of Maghagha and El-Adwa in Minya, through social-media pages he administered.
For a period before his appearance before prosecutors, supporters and friends said his whereabouts were unknown, describing him as having been forcibly disappeared. That allegation requires further independent verification, but the Interior Ministry's own August 21 statement confirmed that he had already been apprehended and was still “being presented” to the Public Prosecution. (Wataninet)
The ministry said a lawyer representing a bishop in Minya had complained that El-Ganouby deliberately insulted and defamed his client through two social-media pages. Police detained him, the statement said, and he acknowledged the acts attributed to him.
That is the police version.
It is not a finding of guilt.
On August 22, prosecutors ordered El-Ganouby released pending investigation in Case No. 16368/2026, Boulak al-Dakrour misdemeanors. His lawyer, Said Fayez, publicly identified the complainant as Bishop Aghathon. El-Ganouby's mobile phone remains held as evidence, while the investigation continues. (Shorouk News)
Bassem is free.
The question is not.
Is a bishop above criticism?
El-Ganouby was not writing anonymously from some dark corner of the internet.
He wrote publicly, under his own name, about church affairs, pastoral leadership, and what he believed were failures within the Coptic Orthodox Church.
People are free to dislike his language. They are free to consider him unfair, provocative, or simply wrong.
And Bishop Aghathon has rights too.
If El-Ganouby made false factual accusations that damaged the bishop's reputation, the bishop has every right to challenge them through the law.
Freedom of expression is not freedom to invent facts.
But neither is religious authority freedom from criticism.
A bishop does not cease to have rights because he wears clerical robes. A citizen should not acquire fewer rights because the person he criticizes wears them.
That ought to be obvious.
Apparently, it isn't.
The Coptic Orthodox Church is one of Egypt's most important institutions. It has also borne the scars of discrimination, sectarian violence, and terrorism. Egyptian Christians have paid with their lives for their faith, and we cannot casually dismiss that history.
But protecting a vulnerable community is not the same thing as insulating its leadership from accountability.
The Church is strong enough to survive criticism.
It should also be strong enough to respond to it.
A pastoral question, not only a legal one
There is another dimension that should make Christians themselves uncomfortable.
A bishop does not merely exercise administrative authority. He preaches.
He speaks about humility, forgiveness, service, sacrifice, and loving one's enemies.
From Coptic pulpits, believers hear the teaching of Christ about turning the other cheek.
So there is a legitimate moral question for Bishop Aghathon himself:
What does a bishop teach his congregation about tolerating criticism when his own response to criticism is a legal complaint that ends with one of his flock in police custody?
That is not mockery of Christianity.
It is taking Christian teaching seriously.
Priesthood is supposed to be service and fatherhood, not power exercised over a congregation. If a bishop expects his people to accept correction, criticism, and suffering with humility, then scrutiny of his conduct cannot become sacrilege.
He may have been wronged.
If so, he deserves justice.
But justice and immunity are not the same thing.
Then the state entered the room
The more disturbing actor in this story, however, is not the Church.
It is the state.
Bishop Aghathon's lawyer could file a complaint.
Egyptian authorities decided to arrest Bassem El-Ganouby.
And that takes us directly from a church dispute in Minya to Geneva.
Egypt is now a member of the United Nations Human Rights Council, elected by the General Assembly in October 2025 for a three-year term running from January 2026 through 2028. (United Nations)
Cairo welcomed that election as international recognition.
Fine.
Recognition comes with scrutiny.
Egypt cannot use its Human Rights Council seat as evidence of global confidence while treating questions about what happens to critics at home as hostile interference.
For years, Egypt has promised Western governments, the European Union, UN bodies, and civil-society organizations that reform is underway.
There has been a National Human Rights Strategy. Presidential pardons. A National Dialogue. The closure of the long-running foreign-funding case against NGOs. Now, another national human rights strategy is being prepared for 2026-2031.
The European Union, meanwhile, has repeatedly described human rights, democracy, and rule of law as fundamental parts of its relationship with Egypt. EU documents this summer again encouraged meaningful participation by independent civil society and UN actors in Egypt's next human rights strategy. (Data Consilium)
Yet Egyptian and international rights organizations continue to say that those promises have produced little meaningful improvement, pointing to arbitrary detention, restrictions on civic space, pressure on journalists, and allegations of enforced disappearance. A coalition of organizations said in June that two years of the EU-Egypt strategic partnership had failed to deliver meaningful progress on human rights or the rule of law. (Committee to Protect Journalists)
At some point, another strategy document stops being reassuring.
At some point, Cairo must act.
Human rights have to survive criticism
Bassem El-Ganouby's case will not define Egypt's entire human-rights record.
Perhaps that is precisely why it matters.
Human rights are easy to defend in speeches when nobody powerful takes offense.
Their value is tested when somebody writes something irritating.
When somebody criticizes a president.
A minister.
An imam.
A bishop.
The proper response to bad journalism is to produce better journalism. The answer to an unfair argument is rebuttal. Defamation, where proven, has legal remedies.
But a society that instinctively brings police power into disputes over criticism creates something much larger than one criminal case.
It creates fear.
Egypt is asking its Western partners, NGOs, and the United Nations to believe that the country is opening a new chapter on human rights.
Then Egyptians should not have to calculate which institutions are safe to criticize.
And religious institutions should not want that protection.
The Church has every right to defend itself.
It cannot claim a right to avoid questioning.
Bassem El-Ganouby is home tonight.
His phone remains with the authorities, and the investigation remains open.
But the bigger question belongs to everyone:
Who has the right to criticize the Church in Egypt?
In a country serious about human rights, the answer should be simple.
Everyone.