Earlier this week, Egypt’s Committee of 50, its Constituent Assembly charged with amending the suspended 2012 constitution, finished its work and submitted its draft constitution to interim President Adly Mansour for his eventual adoption and holding of a national referendum. This referendum, assuming the draft remains as is and is not amended once more (a difficult possibility), is set for the middle of January 2014. The draft’s contents have been a cause for both applause and criticism. Obviously, there is a lot to cover regarding the charter, and perhaps here is not the space to be fully comprehensive or detailed.

Instead, here is a brief look at some of the main features of this newly proposed charter (Note that this article might be updated with any important points deemed necessary):

Preamble: The introduction to the charter has some noteworthy points. First, it refers to to the “January 25-June 30 revolution,” putting the two uprisings together as one continuous revolution. There has been debate in Egypt between whether the uprising that began June 30 is considered a separate “revolution” from Jan. 25 rather than “another wave of the revolution,” and some of the more politically conservative even see it as a correction of what Jan. 25 had supposedly “ruined.” It also links the “January 25-June 30 revolution” to a host of widely recognized Egyptian uprisings and popular movement from the 19th century onward, and explicitly celebrates the military’s support of the “sweeping popular will of J25-J30.” Another interesting note is a reference to the constitutional court’s body of interpretations of the “principles of Sharia” mentioned in Article 2 as the “primary source of legislation.” This was a compromise made with the Salafis, who necessitated some official interpretation of what these “principles” meant in exchange for dropping the controversial Article 219 of the 2012 charter. The court’s interpretations of the “principles” are predominantly understood to mean “those rulings of Islam that are of definite proof and meaning.”

Religion and minorities: Article 3 remains, explicitly mentioning the principles of the religious laws of Egyptian Christians and Jews as their primary source of legislation on personal status issues. And while the constitution specifically allows for complete freedom of religion (making it “absolute” as it was in 1971 rather than “protected” as was in 2012), it still retains the right of public religious practice and to build houses of worship only for Christians and Jews. The secular leaning members of the assembly apparently saw that changing this article to be more inclusive would have little practical value in Egypt and could cause a lot of political backlash against the draft document in a conservative country, and ceded the debate with the Salafis and Al-Azhar.