Samīr follows up his article from last week in which he stated that the American reports on religious freedom issued between 2000 and 2005 are more important than the one issued on November 17th.

He explains how the former reports explained the main ideas adopted by the Egyptian government to deal with various local issues, while the latter is merely observational. The former, says Samīr, advocates Lord Cromer’s 100 year old idea of Egypt consisting of a number of religious groups, making it almost impossible to become a secular state. He calls the idea a “time-bomb” that was planted in the early reports.

Samīr also talks about the report’s history and how it was born from the United States Religious Freedom law. He then discusses the differences of this year’s report, including how Egypt's status on the religious freedom “watch list” was not mentioned for the first time since 2004.

Finally, Samīr argues that there are many other important points that the report should have discussed.