CAIRO — The Supreme Constitutional Court issued a ruling Feb. 5 granting Christian employees a one-month paid vacation to visit Jerusalem, just as as their Muslim counterparts get time off to go on pilgrimage to Mecca. In March 1980, Pope Shenouda III of Alexandria, the 117th pope of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and patriarch of the See of St. Mark Cathedral, had prohibited travel by Orthodox Christians to Jerusalem in protest of Israel’s oppressive practices against the Palestinian people.

The court ruling opened the door for controversy, with proponents saying that the order aims at achieving equality between Muslims and Christians, and opponents arguing that it aims at indirectly normalizing relations with Israel and circumventing the Israel travel ban issued by the Orthodox Church.

Naguib Gobrail, the attorney for the Orthodox Church, told Al-Monitor, “Under this ruling, the state is bound to allow Copts a one-month vacation to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land with the aim of achieving equality with Muslim employees who are allowed a one-month vacation to make pilgrimage to Mecca. But at the same time the ruling is not binding to the Orthodox Church. The latter had issued an order to ban travel of Christians to Jerusalem after the Israelis got their hands on the Deir Es-Sultan Monastery in the Old City of Jerusalem, which belongs to the Coptic Orthodox Church, and in rejection as well of the Zionist occupation of Palestinian lands and of Israel’s practices of the most horrible crimes against the unarmed people of Palestine.”

Gobrail said whether it concerns an administrative order or a religious one, as long as “it was issued by a church,” an order is binding for all church members, as “they are spiritual orders from the pope.”