Parliament committees competent to discuss Building and renovating churches bill ended a project to build and renovate churches law,concluded discussions in which Judge Majdi Agati Minister of Legal Affairs and the House of Representatives participated.
And has approved the bill of the government, in ‘ legislative – the local administration – religious- culture media – Housing “committees meeting, except for the repeal of Article VI, and merging it with Article V.
The committees at the meetings, headed by Judge Baha Abu shaka, Chairman of the Committee on Constitutional and Legislative Affairs, in the presence adviser Majdi Agati, Minister of Legal Affairs and the House of Representatives, replaced the word respect to “competent” with “abide” in the text of Article V.
The law consists of nine articles only, in addition to two of passing the law articles, is scheduled that legislative committee to prepare the final report, and handed over to the parliament Bureau today, to begin debate in the plenary session of the parliament, in preparation to approve it before the resolution of the first cycle.
Article 1 gives definitions of the words “church” and “a sect leader”. Article 2 states that the size of the church should be in proportion to the number and need of Christians living in the affiliated neighbourhood. Articles 3 and 4 state that the legal representative of a Christian sect is the one who submits an official request to the affiliated provincial governor to obtain a permit for building or demolishing a church.
Article 5 was amended to state that provincial governors must – rather than consider doing so – give a final say on the church building request within four months only. If the request is rejected, provincial governors must give detailed reasons for this rejection.
The remaining articles state that all existing churches, their annexes or affiliated worship places should be considered licenced and viable for exercising all Christian rituals.
