Speaking at an International Institute for Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) lecture on 3 March, Dr Chawkat Moucarry said such definitions could suppress religious freedom or discriminate against those who wanted to embrace another religion.

"If you invest your ethnic identity with religion, you are giving a religious value to your identity," Moucarry told The Nut Graph after the lecture.

He said there was a tendency for arrogance when an ethnic identity was defined by a particular faith. This was because if one was born into a faith which one considers the truth, then one is likely to assume superiority for being born into the truth.

"How can you challenge something that occurred by birth?" he said.

During the lecture, Moucarry, who is a Syrian Christian, related his own negative experience when he travelled to Algeria in 1982: "[The name in my passport] is Chawkat George Moucarry as I was born into a Catholic Syrian family and was given the second name of George.

"The [Algerian] immigration officer asked me, 'Are you Arab?' I said, 'Yes'. Then he asked, 'Are you Christian?' I said 'Yes'. He told me, 'That cannot be. You are either Arab or Christian, you cannot be both.'"

Moucarry was detained for several hours and initially not allowed to enter Algeria due to the officer's disbelief about his ethnicity and religion.

"It was a humiliating experience," he said. "For the first time in my life, I was denied my Arab-ness, as being Arab was defined as being Muslim [only]."

Moucarry said a person should not have to give up their ethnic identity just because they have another religion.

Read the rest of the article at The Nut Graph