[JURIST] The Egyptian Parliament [official website, in Arabic] on Tuesday passed [report, in Arabic] a new law regulating church building, purportedly to support the nation’s Christian minority. Church building has long been contentious in Egypt, where only a tenth of the nation’s population of 90 million practices Christianity. Hardliners in the majority Muslim country traditionally oppose church building as a threat to what they call the country’s “Islamic character.” President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi [Britannica backgrounder], supported by Egypt’s Christians, heartened his supporters when he promised to help them escape what they characterize as a second-class status. Under the new law, Christians must apply to their local provincial governor to build, and the church is to be limited to a practical size, and by an interest in the preservation of public order. This leeway gives critics pause, as it “empowers the majority to decide whether the minority has the right to hold their religious practices,” said Ishaq Ibrahim, researcher for the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. The law ultimately passed with a two-thirds vote.

Egypt has long experienced political turmoil, partly to blame for the power-disparity between Christianity and Islam, even before el-Sisi ousted former-president Mohamed Morsi in 2013. Earlier this month, Egypt’s public prosecutor issued an order [JURIST report] for the arrest of 13 people accused of committing profiteering, forgery and embezzlement as part of a national wheat import scandal. In December Egypt’s former Agriculture Minister was detained [JURIST report] after an investigation headed by the country’s prosecutor revealed that the minister and others received bribes amounting to over USD $1 million. In July 2015 an Egyptian court sentenced [JURIST report] former prime minister Ahmed Nazif to five years in prison during a retrial graft charges. Nazif served during the presidency of Hosni Mubarak until the start of the Egyptian Uprising in 2011, and was convicted of using his position to make illicit gains in excess of 64 million Egyptian pounds, or approximately USD $8.2 million. In February 2015 the Cairo Criminal Court acquitted [JURIST report] Nazif and former minister of interior Habib el-Adly of all charges against them. Both defendants were charged with “squandering public funds and profiteering” after allegedly making an illegal deal with German Company UTSCH to sell license plates for higher than market value.