ASSIUT, Egypt (AP) — In one case, an Egyptian Christian
man stabs his wife after she converts to Islam with the support of
hard-line Islamists. Then after surrendering to police, he dies in
mysterious circumstances, falling from a court building window.
At about the same time, a Muslim woman in another small village converts to Christianity
and elopes with a Christian man. A crowd of Muslims attacks the local
church in outrage. None of the attackers are prosecuted, but police
arrest the Christian man's family.
The case is elevated to a national issue as angry Islamist lawmakers
in parliament dedicate a whole committee session to demanding the
conversion be stopped and decrying an alleged foreign plot to convert
Muslims.
The two recent instances that took place in southern Egypt illustrate the deep sensitivities surrounding conversions in Egypt's conservative society.
But they also demonstrate the discrepancies in how the cases are
treated. Christians say politically powerful Islamist hard-liners have
stepped up efforts to encourage Christians to embrace Islam. Meanwhile,
the rare cases of Muslims turning to Christianity often bring violence
against the community. In either case, authorities tend to turn a blind
eye.
That has heightened Christians' sense of siege amid the increasing influence of Islamists since the 2011 ouster of autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Under Mubarak, there were two or three cases a month nationwide of
Christians converting to Islam, says Ibram Louiz, an activist who tracks
conversions and disappearances of Christian women.
"But now I hear at times up to 15 cases coming from just one province," he said.
He estimated some 500 conversions since Mubarak's fall, 25 percent of
them involving underage Christian girls, some as young as 15, who end
up being married off to older Muslim men.
Public conversions to Christianity are far rarer. Technically, it is
not illegal for a Muslim to become Christian — though under Islamic law
it can be punishable by death. But in the handful of cases the past
decade, converts were imprisoned for insulting religion, threatening
national security or other charges.
With communal feeling strong in Egypt, conversions are rarely seen as
simply a matter of personal choice. Among Christians and Muslims alike,
families are outraged when a loved one switches religion and often
react violently. Questions of honor become mixed in when it involves a
daughter or wife.
What begin as domestic family dramas easily spin into wider sectarian
tensions as each community tries to punish converts or "defend its
own." In 2011, for example, a Cairo church was burned by Islamists
determined to protect a woman they believed was being held there to
force her to renounce her conversion to Islam.
President Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, frequently
declares that Muslims and Christians are equal before the law, and the
Brotherhood is not known to be involved in conversions. But hard-line
Islamists known as Salafis, allied to the Brotherhood, prominently
defend converts to Islam, and they have a powerful presence in
parliament. The Christian minority, about 10 percent of the population,
has far less political power.
Romani Farhan Amir,
an impoverished Christian day laborer, had little choice but to accept
when his wife marched into a police station in the southern city of Assiut,
accompanied by members of the hard-line Gamaa Islamiya group, and
registered her conversion to Islam in February, his family says. Amir
just told police that he did not want her anywhere near their four
children, they say.
On May 11, when she showed up at the school of one of their sons, he
believed she was trying to snatch the boy — something she denies. He
stabbed her in the principal's office, leaving her wounded.
Amir surrendered to police, and while he was at a court complex
waiting to be questioned, he fell from a fourth-story window. Police say
he committed suicide and deny any foul play.
The provincial security chief acknowledges that, while tragic, Amir's
death averted Christian-Muslim violence. If the wife had died "there
would have been grave consequences," Abul-Qassim Deif said. "So in the
end, that he died and she lived quickly ended the whole affair."
His family is convinced he was killed in retaliation for attacking a Muslim, though they balk at accusing anyone specifically.
At a memorial prayer for him in the family's tiny apartment in
Assiut, his mother argued with one of his six sisters whether to speak
out. The sister tried to silence her, fearing retaliation from
Islamists. Even the priest who led the memorial prayer advised them to
lay low and avoid trouble.
But the mother, Maria Sourial, screamed, "Romani went into the
building walking on his own two feet but came out dead. My son never
committed suicide. How could he with so many policemen and suspects
around him?"
The Gamaa Islamiya, which waged an armed insurgency in the 1990s but
has since forsworn violence, has championed the cause of Amir's ex-wife,
Azza William — now called by her Muslim name Habibah Shaaban.
A local Gamaa leader, Shaaban Ibrahim Ali, denied his group pushes Christians to convert.
"They keep coming and we keep telling them to go back and consider the consequences," he told AP.
But he said if someone is determined to become Muslim, the group is
morally obliged to protect them. He said Christians converting is a
source of "happiness" for him and that his dream is to see Egypt's
entire Christian population turn to Islam.
William disappeared from her husband's home in January and took
refuge with the Gamaa, according to the Assiut security chief. Three
weeks later, Ali and other Gamaa members accompanied her to the police
station, where she registered her new Muslim name and sought a
restraining order against Amir.
Speaking in her hospital room, recovering from stab wounds to the
chest, arms and thighs, she told AP her husband first found her praying
as a Muslim a year ago. He beat her, then got her a job as a cleaner at a
church nursery, hoping that would dissuade her from becoming a Muslim.
"It didn't," she said, with Ali standing near her during the brief interview.
When her husband attacked her May 11, "I did not duck to avoid his
stabs, I stood still in front of him when all the other women at the
room were screaming," she said, with drips connected to both arms and
her entire body — except her eyes — cloaked in a dark brown veil and
robes.
Now, with Amir's death, she now gets custody of her four children.
"May God show them the way to Islam while they are with me," she said.
The other conversion story, in Beni Suef province north of Assiut, provides a telling contrast.
In this case, a 22-year-old Muslim woman Rana el-Shenawi disappeared and is believed to have converted and fled abroad with a Coptic Christian she fell in love with.
In retaliation, Muslim mobs hurling rocks and firebombs attacked the
Mar Girgis Church in her hometown of Wasta in late April after her
father accused a local priest of using witchcraft to convert her. A
priest's car was set on fire. Islamist hard-liners forced Christian
businesses to shut down for more than a week.
"We want to raise the banner of Islam and not sit and watch our
Muslim daughters getting kidnapped and converted to Christianity," said a
leaflet distributed in Wasta by Islamists.
Ten people were initially detained for the church attack but were later released. The church is now guarded by police.
Police detained the father, mother and cousin of Ibram Andrews, the
Christian with whom el-Shenawi allegedly eloped. They are under
investigation on suspicion of helping her disappearance, inciting
sectarian tensions, disturbing security and blasphemy.
Salafi groups, meanwhile, drummed up a nationwide uproar, warning of a
foreign plot to convert Muslims. Even parliament took an interest. A
committee held a hearing April 30, with Islamist lawmakers demanding
action to retrieve el-Shenawi. The session devolved into furious
arguments between Christian and Islamist lawmakers.
The el-Shenawi family's lawyer — a member of the Salafi Watan Party —
was granted meetings with senior aides at the presidency to discuss
efforts to retrieve the woman and investigate alleged foreign
proselytizing.
The lawyer, Ashraf el-Sissi, told the AP he doesn't want the case to
fuel sectarian tensions. But "what I am concerned with is whether there
are foreign groups trying to undermine our nation."
In Wasta, the priest of Mar Girgis church, Father Angelos, said he
didn't understand why his church was blamed for el-Shenawi's
disappearance. Andrews never attended services there and lived in the
city of Beni Suef, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) away.
"Here, rumors swiftly get treated as facts," said Angelos. Mar Girgis
is separated by a narrow alley from a mosque from which Salafis have
launched protests against the church.
"Attacks on churches continue to happen because the culprits act with
impunity, knowing that there is no law and there is no punishment," he
said. "Generally, we suffered as Christians under Mubarak but nowhere
near what is happening to us now."
