“Egypt’s version of the Hippocratic Oath, which all of the nation’s doctors—both Muslim and Christian—are required to take, contains wording that is not unlike the Islamic confession of faith,” says Coptic Solidarity, a human rights organization dedicated to ameliorating the plight of Egypt’s Christian minority.
This development is significant: Anyone required to recite the oath—including Christian physicians—will be compelled to become de facto Muslims, argue critics.
Whereas much of the oath is salutary sounding and makes mention of Allah—which is standard for Arabic-speaking Christians who also refer to “God” as “Allah”—at the very end of the oath (published in full on the Arabic website, Masrawy), reciters acknowledge “Allah and his Prophet.” The Islamic contour of the oath is evident in other ways, for instance by referring to “the Believers,” which is synonymous with “the Muslims.”
For a Christian to confess Muhammad as the Prophet of God is problematic on several levels. For starters, such wording is indeed not unlike the shahada, the Islamic proclamation of faith: “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah.”
Any non-Muslim who recites this simple sentence before Muslim witnesses becomes Muslim—with no turning back, no “apostatizing,” without penalty.
It is for this reason that Christians and other monotheists living under Muslim authority have been willing (sometimes grudgingly) to recite the first part of the shahada—that “There is no god but Allah”—but have been adamantly unwilling to recite its latter half, that Muhammad is God’s prophet or messenger: whoever acknowledges that Muhammad did in fact deliver God’s message to mankind—via the Koran and Sunna—must, by logical extension, also follow it. That is, must be considered Muslim.
Past and present, there have been many Christians who, for whatever reason—from fiscal and social inducements to mere threats—have uttered “the words” (as the shahada is colloquially known), and then tried to return to Christianity, only to be killed.
According to Coptic Solidarity’s Adel Guindy, an expert on the history of Christian/Muslim relations in Egypt, “This Islamized Oath, required to accredit new doctors, was introduced in the 1980s when the Doctors Syndicate was over taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists. Christian doctors vehemently complained, but Mubarak’s regime turned a deaf ear, in order to placate the Islamists.”
More recently—and more problematic for Christians—Dr. Hala Ziyad, Egypt’s Minister of Heath, newly appointed by president Sisi, has just “issued a decree that requires doctors in all health establishments (hospitals, clinics, etc.) to recite the oath on a daily basis, so that all hospitalized Egyptians hear it.”
Not only is this even more objectionable for Christians, but it will increase the chances of Christian doctors falling afoul of more zealous Muslim colleagues or patients, who, on hearing a Christian professes Muhammad as Allah’s apostle, will no doubt harass the physician to follow through and embrace Islam.
Only those unacquainted with the fanaticism that permeates Egyptian society—where rumors of churches being built or just repaired often prompt mass upheavals and violent riots—will deem such a scenario as farfetched.
Allah is NOT a name of the God of the Bible, and use of it is “problematic”: Allah or the earlier “Alla” are names of IDOLS that predate monotheism and was adopted by Muhammad on the instructions of the person he met in that cave whom he (almost certainly erroneously) believed was “Gabriel”; That was most likely Satan masquerading as an “angel of light” which we know he can do. The character of “Allah” as presented in the Quran is NOT the character of the God of the Bible at all; they aren’t the same person. “Allah” is a proper name, not a generic word like “god” is; that’s just another bit of taqqiya.
Thank you for bringing this form of persecution to our attention. I doubt Egyptian Christians have sufficient influence to stop this on their own. No doubt many will be martyred.
Good point! For many years Christian doctors graduating where forced to say this oath just to survive!
Being a Christian in the ME is precarious enough, but to impose the daily reciting of the Muslim oath on all doctors in Egypt sounds like a subtle way of forcing Christian doctors into the Islamic faith. It certainly is of deep concern.
Harassment and persecution of Christians is becoming prevalent beyond the ME and increasing in North America, where doctors are threatened with losing their practice licenses if they refuse to do abortions and euthanasia, not to mention small businesses ruined because they refuse to cater in certain ways to the homosexual community – certainly the case in Canada.
I can only be reminded that Jesus said in John 15:18 and Matthew 10:22 that ,”If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first………persevere…”. Christians everywhere have reached that point.