[Editor: One needs to be extremely careful with
stories about forced conversions to Islam. Too often Coptic Christians claiming this presented stories that were simply not
true. One should not conclude it thus cannot happen, but it certainly needs to make one extremely cautious about such claims.
See for example articles in RNSAW, 1999, week 26, art 37; RNSAW, 2001, week 1, art. 4; AWR, 2003, week 30, art. 34; AWR,
2004, week 28, art. 21, 22, 37, 38; AWR, 2004, week 36, art. 28; AWR, 2005, week 53, art. 8 and 9. One continuously needs to
investigate individual claims and when one does so thoroughly one discovers social problems, domestic violence in Christian
families, girls tying to escape and Muslims offering support but also using it to then convince a young girl to convert to
Islam].
During the 1980’s, ‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman announced a fatwá which authorized
killing Copts, robbing their properties, and imposing extra taxes on them to support the Da‘wah of Islam
and spread jihād. Consequently, many Copt goldsmiths were attacked and robbed especially in Upper Egypt where
many rich Christians were subject to terrorists bargains to oblige them to pay taxes [Editor: A reference to the itawa
practices in those days. These practices that frequenly occurred in the 1980’s and 1990’s practically ended after the
Egyptian police cracked down on militant extremism following the attack on tourists in Luxor in 1997].
The same
‘Umar ‘Abd al-Rahman declared that if Najīb Mahfūz had been punished, Salmān
Rushdī would have never dared publishing his book. This fatwá was the main reason for attacking
Najīb Mahfūz in 1994. ‘Abd al-Rahman got involved in a huge number of terrorist fatwás
against the political and the tourist systems in Egypt, and against former Egyptian President Anwar al-Sādāt
before escaping to the United States. He continued along the same lines there and led huge international terrorist attacks,
causing him to be sentenced to serving life in prison in the United States Federal Prison.
His successors in the
jihād, ‘Usāmah Bin Lādin and Ayman al-Zawāhirī who established ‘The International
Front for fighting Kāfirs and Crusaders,’ later known as al-Qā‘idah, issued a
fatwá authorizing killing Westerners and Americans anywhere in the world and overcome their properties to exploit
them in order to support the jihād. [Reviewer: The real name of the front is The International Front for
Fighting Jews and Crusaders; see link http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/america_under_attack/terror/groups_iftext.... ]
As such, Copts in Egypt seem to have suffered a long time ago from the same terrorism from which the whole world is
suffering now. It seems to be the same vicious circle going round and round from the era of al-Ma’mūn, the Abbasid
caliph, to this of ‘Usāmah Bin Lādin.
At the same time and since the mid 70’s, another phenomenon
spread; namely the “Islamization” of Coptic girls. The Coptic Church has officially complained to the government during a
Coptic clergymen meeting in Alexandria in 1976. At that time, Father Bīshūy Kāmil used to roam in the
streets to rescue those endangered girls.
It was an involuntary Islamization where Coptic girls were manipulated,
deceived and endangered. Such deeds can be classified as “organized crimes.” The girls were petrified, threatened,
blackmailed, forced, hypnotized, raped, in addition to many other abuses, to oblige them to take a path that they would have
never taken of their own free will.
Apparently there were girls who had converted of their own free will, and in this
case it is a personal matter related to the freedom of creed, but this is not the subject of this article [Editor: that is
apparently Majdī Khalīl’s response to research in claims of forced conversions]. This phenomenon of islamizing
Coptic girls has been increasing during the last three decades [Editor: an increase in conversions]. However, it has
witnessed ups and downs depending on the political circumstances and the degree of the government neutralism, and the moral
conditions in Egyptian society. During the latest three years declarations of such incidents were increasing in numbers for
three main reasons:
First, the phenomenon reached middle class Coptic girls; before it was restricted to the lower or
higher social classes. The middle class is supposedly the most stable and homogeneous of all the other classes. It is
considered to be the guardian of values. This is the reason why people were against the public declarations of the
Islamization of girls from the middle class. The exposure of middle class Coptic girls coincides with a general degradation
in the Copts conditions with the repeated attacks against their churches and themselves. The French periodical Paris
Match mentioned: “Copts were a silent minority until the moment came where they decided to have their voice raised. They
considered no more the Egyptian anti protest laws, nor the emergency situation imposed over 25 years ago. The new Coptic
generation does not fear security forces; for it determined that he was going to extract his rights that its predecessors
neglected since more than fifty years ago.”1
The second reason is the decreasing belief in “shame.” At the
beginning of the phenomenon of the islamizetion of Coptic girls, families of the girls were not announcing it because they
feared shame and scandals [Editor: honor and shame certainly plays an important role, see the various reports in RNSAW/AWR].
Some factors, however, encouraged these families to announce it when feeling that it was not out of the free will of the
girl, but because of organized political and religious motivations. Many of the families could secretly meet their daughters
and hear their cries of grief without being able to do anything. These families announced that their girls were kidnapped to
cover the shame; so, whether the girl was really kidnapped or whether she went out of her own free will, the family announced
that the girl was kidnapped [Editor: often families claimed their daughters were kidnapped to avoid shame in their own
Christian community. The well investigated case of Injī Edward Nājī is an example, see: AWR, 2004, week
28, art. 21, 22, 37, 38; AWR, 2004, week 36, art. 28].
The third reason is the role of the Egyptian media in pointing
out the phenomenon. Egyptian media used to ignore the Copts problems and comply with the government, especially in the case
of the islamized Coptic girls. However, the increasing specialized Coptic web sites and the neutralism of some Arabic media,
mainly ‘’Īlāf, al-‘Arabīyah net2 [Reviewer: home page on link
http://www.alarabiya.net/] and al-Hiwār al-Mutamaddin [The Civilized Dialogue] pointed out that in a way, this
phenomenon revealed the subjectivity of the Egyptian press dominated by the government and the majority. [Reviewer: The
article mentions nothing about what majority; hints are made to the Muslim majority.]
The reasons for this phenomenon
were previously discussed in more than one article [Reviewer: The author of this article seems to have written several
article on the same subject but with different points, no titles mentioned]; the following lines, however will concentrate on
the absence and the weakness of the deterrents, and the factors that may restrict and diminish this phenomenon which is in
violation of Egyptian law.
One: The security deterrent. It is known that the Islamic and the
Jihād groups who used to attack the Copts during the last three decades were established by the government,
depending on a suggestion of ‘cUthmān Ahmad ‘Uthmān, Yūsuf Makkāwī and
Muhammad ‘Uthmān Ismā‘īl. A Newsweek periodical mentioned in its issue of
October 26, 1981, that “The former governor of Asyūt Muhammad ‘Uthmān Ismā‘īl
used to distribute weapons to the Muslim Brotherhoods and other Islamic groups there.”
3
During those decades, the Egyptian police interfered only when the crimes were already
committed, without exerting any effort to arrest the murderers or trial them. This provoked some political analysts to
believe that there was an agreement between policemen and the fundamental groups concerning planning and executing such
attacks.4
The same scenario of policemen were repeated in the majority of the cases since al-Khānkah
in 1972, until Alexandria in 2006, passing by more than 120 violent attacks against Copts where the police needed to
interfere, according to the Ibn Khaldūn Center.5 In some attacks a direct police provocation was suspected.
Bishop Wīsā said that he “Knew from a Muslim friend that in the evening of Saturday, January 1, 2000, police
leadership represented in the State Security controller, Sa‘īd Abū al-Ma‘ātī,
and the Security Director Mustafá Ismā‘īl called on Muslim families to meet in order to discuss
these matters. The General Mustafá Ismā‘īl said that he did not know how those things took
place, meaning the accidents of destroying and burning Christians’ shops in al-Kusheh. General Abū al-
Ma‘ātī, however, exclaimed: ‘How could you see the shops of your Muslim brothers get destroyed and
keep silent?’ Abū al-Ma‘ātī’s words aroused people’s disapproval in al-Balābīsh
village.”6
The Egyptian Association against Torture [Reviewer: See link
http://www.aloufok.net/article.php3?id_article=484 ] reported and published what happened in al-‘Udaysāt in
February 2006, saying that the security forces were involved in the attacks. The report mentioned that the attacks did not
stop at the church but seemed to be a collective punishment of Christians, their families and properties. Security men were
involved in petrifying Copts of the village and giving the green light to al-‘Udaysī to gather his
followers from the village and the surroundings to lead the attack. Finally, the security forces balked to set off the fire
and disperse the attackers during four full hours. It was not the first, nor will it be the last time, where the sectarian
sedition in Egypt blazed in front of the security forces’ eyes without being able to stop it; on the contrary, they
participated in enforcing it.7
In another report from the Cairo Center [Reviewer: the article mentions only
‘Cairo Center’ without any further information. Checking the internet revealed that it is most likely Cairo Center for Human
Rights: see link http://www.hrinfo.net/egypt/cihrs/2006/pr0509.shtml] about the attacks of Alexandria, entitled ‘The Sedition
of Alexandria: It is not the End,’ it was also mentioned that the security forces were involved in the attacks against
Copts.8
Furthermore, the journalistic report of Helsinki Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe
[Reviewer: The article mentions the commission as Helsinki Commission on Euro-American Cooperation. The official name found
was the previously mentioned. See link: http://www.csce.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Home.Home&CFID=25840645&CFTOKEN....
Also, going to the date the article mentions: November 9, and no articles could be found. ]issued in November 9, 2005
mentioned that more than five thousand Muslims attacked Christians in Alexandria after a Muslim filed a claim with the
Investigation Department of the Security of State against a play that attacked Islam. The department told him to “Go and
revenge for your religion from the Copts.” The report also mentioned that there are accidents of kidnapping and abusing
Coptic girls to compel them to embrace Islam. “Before all this, the Egyptian Government does nothing but use words to stop
the attacks and violations against the Copts,”9 the report concluded.
Another report by the U.S. Department
of State in 2005 about the freedom of religion mentions that the Egyptian Ministry of Interior stood against Copts to defend
the Islamization of Coptic girls. It stated that in 2005 there were 49 cases of Christians who were obliged to embrace Islam
and wanted to return to their original religion, and that only eight could do so. The Ministry of Interior appealed two of
the sentences.10
Furthermore, there are reports asserting marriage cases of Christian underage girls and
Muslim men. Some Coptic activists assert that officials do not respond positively to the claimed
kidnaps.11
To that, Egyptian police forces arrested seven Copts who were going to pay the ransom to get
back the kidnapped Dumyānah Makram Hannā. Moreover, the police accused them of kidnapping the girl, arousing a
sectarian sedition and attempting to kill.12
In the same context the police men interrogated
Sa‘d Sa‘d Allāh, a Muslim man who protected the kidnapped Lawrence Wajīh ‘Imīl
instead of interrogating the kidnappers themselves. Watanī, a Coptic periodical, mentioned the details of this
story.13 As a result, Milād Hannā declared to al-‘Arabī newspaper that “The
State Security is involved in sectarian sedition and it is the real inductee. Husny Mubārak is responsible because he
has left it all to the State Security.”14
In many cases of the Islamization of Coptic girls, the State
Security gets involved to facilitate the crime, misleading the families and declaring them guilty while in fact they are the
victims.
In the cases of kidnapping Māriān (17 years old) and Christin (15 years old) in November 2003,
a claim was filed on December 2, and the State Security kept on manipulating their family for two years and forty days only
to reveal in December, 2005, the location of the girls, 24 hours after Husny Mabārak demanded they do so. The real
case indicated raping, Islamizing, and marrying an underage girl without her father’s permission. All of these are crimes
where the criminals were not trialed; for engaging in sexual relations with an underage girl is considered to be a crime even
if it met her own free will.
Two: The legislative deterrent. As was previously mentioned, there are some Coptic
girls who embrace Islam voluntarily due to their love story. However, the majority are targeted and victimized. The law calls
their case the ‘Forced Disappearance’, and according to the press term they are “kidnapped.” Nevertheless, the underage girls
do not have their own free will.
Despite all this, the Egyptian courts dealt with no cases of kidnapping, raping or
endangering an underage girl during the last three decades, even when all the elements of the crime are proved. During the
last year, however, Copts declared to security departments and the media announced cases like the two sisters
Māryān and Christin Nādir Kamāl (15 and 17 years old respectively), Lawrence Wajīh
‘Imīl (15 years old), Dīnā Amīn ‘Aīyād (17 years old), Jihān
Wanīs Qilādah(14 years old), Teresa Edward Kamāl (15 years old), Amānī Māhir
Qilādah (15 years old), Haīdī Nabīl Zakarīyā (20 years old), Muná
Ya‘qūb Quryāqus (23 years old), Nivine Māhir Albert(20 years old), Dumyānah Makram
Hannā [age not mentioned.], in addition to many others [Editor: A seeming impressive list of names but a few questions
should be asked: 1) when did these girls convert? There are indeed several examples of conversions of girls younger then 18
prior to the children’s law of 1996 (civil law no. 12, 1996) that made a child a minor up till the age of 18. Listing ages
without mentioning years strongly gives the impression of being misleading and 2) who reported these conversions? Were they
investigated by an independent party?]. The general attorney did not take any of the claims to the court. It is worthy to
mention that in every case of there was a violation of the law related to the underage girls or to girls getting married
without their father’s knowledge and marrying a girl engaged by an official engagement contract like in the case of Muná
Ya‘qūb. Even the Azhar law prohibits the conversion to Islam when the person is younger than 21
years old.
This is about the security, what about justice?
Upon the attacks of al-Khānkah in November
1972, an investigation committee was formed in the parliament headed by Jamāl al-‘Utayfī. The
committee came out with important recommendations, none of which were put in practice. Later on it was revealed that the
committee was formed due to political reasons to avoid the interior division before the October war.
Since then there
have always be demands to effectuate the recommendations of that committee and form investigating committees to investigate
recent violations like the violent attacks in Upper Egypt, the Kusheh attacks, the goldsmiths murder, Alexandria attacks and
the endangering and Islamization of Coptic girls. The parliament however, which is supposed to represent the people with all
its religions and beliefs, seems to be occupied with other stories like resisting the naturalizing the relations with Israel,
and the danger Nancy ‘Ajram and Hayfā’ Wahby poses to Egyptian national security. [Reviewer: Nancy
‘Ajram and Hayfā’ Wahby are two Lebanese pop stars known for their seductive looks and feminine beauty.
Their styles are totally contradictory to the restricted religious atmosphere of Egypt.]
Three: The religious
deterrent. Supposedly religion is a reference to a control of values and progress the human comportment to consequently
diminish crimes. However, religion for those who have been Islamized is a source of violence and a pretext of crimes; for
those who preached them Islam gave them permission to commit crimes under the name of jihād and in the support
of Islam.
In Egypt they adopted religious reasons for terrorizing Copts and robbing their properties and abusing their
women, brushing aside all laws and legislations. Those Islamized have made Islam into a magnetic power to attract criminals
and riots, using the fatwás as their pretexts and excuses.
In spite of the laws prohibiting the conversion
to Islam before 21 [Editor: which law states this? Christian lawyer Nargis Kamal Said explained in 2003 that the minimum
legal age for conversion is 18, not 21. See AWR, 2003, week 30, art 34], and in spite of the civil laws prohibiting the
marriage of a girl under 18 without the permission of her father, the chief of the fatwá committee in the Azhar,
Shaykh ‘Abd Allāh Mujāwir, declared to al-‘Arabīyah net that the Azhar
accepts conversion at the age of 16 for this is the puberty year, and a girl has usually hit puberty before 16 [Editor: when
was this statement made? The Azhar rulings follow the children’s law of 1996 (civil law no. 12, 1996) that made a child a
minor up till the age of 18]. As for marriage, Shaykh Mujāwir expressed that the
Sharī‘ah permits the marriage of the girls as soon as she is sexually mature regardless of her age,
and gave the example of ‘Ā’ishah, the prophet’s wife, who was ten when she married.15 As such,
religion turned from a crime deterrent to a motive to commit crimes. The question is addressed to the collective Muslim
conscience: do Muslims accept that their religion becomes a cover for crimes and deception?
Four: The
protective deterrent of the minority. Despite the increasing Coptic protests in Egypt during the last few years, it could not
oblige the Egyptian authorities to respect the law and the constitution concerning their rights. On the contrary, the
government seems to be more stubborn. The Ministry of Interior recently stopped the guidance and advising sessions that used
to be held for the Christians who had converted to Islam since the era of Sa‘īd Pāshā [1854-
1863]. Consequently, Christian girls will be secretly Islamized under the protection of the Security of the State in a way
similar to piracy.
What happens to Coptic girls is a forced disappearance defined as the deprivation of a
person’s liberty, in whatever form or for whatever reason, brought about by agents of the State or by persons or groups
of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State. This is followed by an absence of
information, or refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or information, or concealment of the fate or whereabouts
of the disappeared person.16
The forced disappearance is against the human rights declarations and two
international treaties about the political, civil, economic, social and educational rights. It is further against the United
Nations’ convention against torture, and its Declaration of the Protection of All Persons from Forced Disappearance, issued
in December 18, 1992.
Moreover, according to the 16th article of this declaration, forced disappearance
being considered an offense is continuous and permanent as long as the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person have not
been determined with certainty. [Reviewer: This is article 5.1; see link
http://www.disappearances.org/mainfile.php/undoc/50/]. “The perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of and other participants
in the offence of forced disappearance or the acts referred to in article 2 of this Convention shall not benefit from any
amnesty measure or similar measures prior to their trial and, where applicable, conviction that would have the effect of
exempting them from any criminal action or penalty,” as mentioned in article 17 [Ibid]. Any procedure or decision made by the
disappeared person is considered to be annulled because it was taken under pressure. Consequently all marriages and
Islamization are legally annulled legally.
On the other hand, the Copts are invited to increase the peaceful struggle
against these inhuman crimes.
Five: The social moral and human deterrents. The sexual harassments recently
committed against women in down town Cairo, and what happens to those Coptic girls, clearly reveal the remarkable degradation
in social, moral, and human values that used to protect society from moral collapse. On the other hand, these incidents
reveal the privilege of a kind of religious hypocrisy and superficial religious precedence. This reality was expressed by a
Coptic man, Nabīl, who declared to the French periodical Paris Match: “There are veiled girls wearing tight
exposing jeans at the time where the Coptic girls are insulted in public because they are not veiled. The country’s
conditions are bad, and I do not want a gloomy future for my daughter.”17
Another Coptic young lady from
Alexandria expressed to the French periodical Le Figaro: “I was spit at in the face and insulted because I do not wear
the veil. I feel that I am a stranger at home.18 Unfortunately we have no future in our country.” [Editor: This
quote was seemingly taken from Adel Guindy’s article in Watani International, AWR, 2006, week 23, art. 31 – see our comment
on that quote in that issue of AWR] In addition to the insults and the sexual harassment, many Coptic girls were stabbed in
their backs by unknowns; like in the cases of Mārīna ‘Ulfy ‘Azīz (17 years) who filed claim
No. 14242 in 2005 in al-Minyā, Māryān Nādir (17 years) who filed another claim in Minyā,
as well as and Mirāy Majdy (18 years).19
The problem is in the passive compassion of the Egyptian
society regarding these criminals who attack Copts. Sa‘d al-Dīn Ibrāhīm expresses this
saying: “What the Copts are facing ugly attacks; the disgusting details cannot be recognized by the collective reason of the
Egyptian society because it does not want to admit them. Such attacks are ugly and disgusting to the extant that this society
refuses to accept them to allow itself to be the image that it wants to. The government, as such, conspires with a huge
number of intellectuals to ignore the Coptic problem.”20 [Reviewer: Sa‘d al-Dīn
Ibrāhīm is an Egyptian human rights defender and president of the Ibn Khaldūn Center. He is a professor at
the American University in Cairo. Ibrāhīm was jailed, having been accused of receiving funds from abroad that
he used to deform the image of Egypt.]
Six: The international deterrent. There is a problem in the charters and
conventions of the United Nations, represented in the absence of any mechanism that oblige the different nations to adopt
these international decisions, at the same time as the supervision applied on those nations is very weak.
On the other
hand, Copts have no access to the big legislative organizations like Amnesty International, the Human Rights Watch and the
International Federal, and this explains the limited response of these organizations to the Copts problems. There is no
interior Coptic pressure and no influential international deterrents.
Finally, there is a real crisis facing Copts.
While security gets involved in one way or another in the Islamization of Coptic girls, the conversion of Muslim girls to
Christianity is fierily resisted. This is to the extent that the Ministry of Interior presented a Christian officer,
Indrāwus Mukhtār Fāyīz, to a military court where he was sentenced to a one-year prison because
he applied the law in the case of a Christian woman who had conversed to Islam and wanted to return to her religion. The
officer was accused of bribing a Muslim woman to convert from Islam.21
Husām Bahjat, from the
Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights [http://www.eipr.org/en/info/about.htm], expressed that the present era is the result
of the sectarian sedition planted by the Security of State who arrest whomever they think will convert to Christianity even
if s/he was baptized in an Egyptian church without having violated any pre-existed law prohibiting the
conversion.22
Paris Match mentioned that the Copts of Egypt have the original Egyptian roots and
will continue resisting the conversion to Islam in the same way that they adapted upon the Arab invasion of Egypt in 640
DC.
References:
1- Paris Match, translated by Mayy Samīr Egyptian al-Fajrof November 6, 2006.
2- Farrāj Ismā‘īl published many reports about the Islamized Coptic girls on al-‘Arabīyah net.
3- Newsweek, October 26, 1981.
4- Nabīl ‘Abd al-Malik, Majallat al-Aqbāt, January 2, 1992.
5- Minorities and Women in the Arab world, Ibn Khaldūn Center, series of Khaldūnian dialogues, January, 2006.
6- William Wīsā, ‘Al-Kushuh: The Absent truth,’ p. 180.
7- The report of the Egyptian Association against Torture about the attacks of al-‘Udaysāt village, February, 2006.
8- Cairo Center for Human Rights Studies, ‘Fitnat al-Iskandarīyah. Laysat nuhāyat al-Matāf.’ [The Sedition of Alexandria: It is not the End] [Reviewer: No date mentioned]
9- Helsinki Commission, Press Release, November 9, 2006.
10- he International Report on Religious Freedom 2005: Issued by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, translated by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
Report about Religious Freedom,
11- Ibid.
12- Watanī, October, 22, 2006.
13- Watanī, October, 8, 2006.
14- Mīlād Hannā, Sahīfat al-‘Arabī, Vol. 939, December,
19, 2004.
15- Farrāj Ismā‘īl, al-‘Arabīyah net, December 26, 2005.
16- Muhammad Amīn al-Maydānī, ‘Madkhal ilá Qānūn al-Huqūq al-Insānī al-Dawlī wa-Huqūq al-Insān,’ [An introduction to the Humanitarian Law and Human Rights] Cairo Center for Human Rights Research. [Reviewer: No date mentioned]
16- Paris Match, translated by
Mayy Samīr Egyptian al-Fajr of November 6, 2006.
18- Le Figaro, April 17, 2006.
19- Al-Kalimah Center for Human Rights, a Journalistic Report, October 3, 2005.
20- Minorities and Women in the Arab world, Ibn Khaldūn Center, series of Khaldūnian dialogues, January, 2006.
21- The International Report on Religious Freedom 2005: Issued by the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, translated by the U.S. Embassy in
Cairo.
22- Husām Bahjat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, al-Dustūr, November 2, 2005.
