World Challenges for the XXIst century

This is an update on this story.

El-Gohary was not present at the hearing, as attendance would put him at extreme personal risk. He had planned to obtain papers authorizing attorney Nabil Ghobreyal to act as his proxy representation in court, but staff members at the registry office swore at and beat him, lawyers said.

Judge Hamdy Yasin was forced to adjourn the case until March 28 because El-Gohary did not obtain the necessary proxy representation documents.

“I am now in a position where I can’t do anything else,” El-Gohary, who has been in hiding, told Compass. “I have to go [to court] despite the danger. I believe God will protect me. It’s a very hard decision, but I have to go.”

Copts and Christian converts have to face such systemic prejudice daily in the battle for their rights, he said.

“Our rights in Egypt, as Christians or converts, are less than the rights of animals,” El-Gohary said. “We are deprived of social and civil rights, deprived of our inheritance and left to the fundamentalists to be killed. Nobody bothers to investigate or care about us.”

El-Gohary, 56, has been attacked in the street, spat at and knocked down in his effort to win the right to officially convert. He said he and his 14-year-old daughter continue to receive death threats by text message and phone call.

But he also has received text messages, he said, of encouragement from other Muslim-born converts too fearful to take a similar stand.

“Everyday I get calls from people who have converted but are secret,” said El-Gohary. “They ask me every day about what is happening, because it affects their future.”

via Compass Direct News : EGYPT – ISLAMIC LAWYERS URGE DEATH SENTENCE FOR CONVERT.

BosNewsLife adds:

“His legal challenge is motivated by concerns for his daughter. About one year from now, at age 16, she will be issued her national Identity Card and the religious registration will follow that of her father,” advocacy group Middle East Concern told BosNewsLife.

“At present she must attend Islamic classes at school despite having been raised as a Christian. Also, [El-Gohary] does not want her to be subject to Islamic family law, which would include denying her the right to marry a Christian,” MEC said.

El-Gohary was reportedly in hiding after receiving death threats from Muslim extremists. Another Muslim-born Christian, Mohammed Hegazy, who also tried to have his new religion registered, was also forced to flee to safety, rights activists said.

More:

El-Gohary also has charged that his nephew was denied a position in state security agencies because of his uncle’s religious “double life.”

(…) Hegazy, who filed his case on Aug. 2, 2007, was denied the right to officially convert in a Jan. 29 court ruling that declared it was against Islamic law for a Muslim to leave Islam.

The judge based his decision on Article II of the Egyptian constitution, which enshrines Islamic law, or sharia, as the source of Egyptian law. The judge said that, according to sharia, Islam is the final and most complete religion and therefore Muslims already practice full freedom of religion and cannot return to an older belief (Christianity or Judaism).

This type of reasoning has also been used again El Gohary:

“[El-Din] started to talk about the Quran being in a higher position than the Bible,” one of El-Gohary’s lawyers, Said Fayez, told Compass. “[El-Din said] people can move to a higher religion but not down, so people cannot move away from Islam because it is highest in rank.”

Memos submitted by opposing lawyers asserted that cases such as El-Gohary’s form part of a U.S. Zionist attack on Islam in Egypt, that Christianity is an inferior religion to Islam and that Copts protect and defend converts from Islam at their own peril.

Related links: BBC, European News, Berean Christian, Religion News Blog.

1. Egyptian mother will appeal court’s decision: Madre egipcia apelará la decisión del tribunal: the woman lost custody of her twin sons on September 24 last year, after the Appeals Court in the coastal town of Alexandria issued a final decision “granting custody over them to their father who had converted from Christianity to Islam.”
2. Apostasy in Islam: Wikipedia.
3. Apostasy: current issues in Iran and in Egypt.
4. Political Islam: Bulletin of Christian Persecution.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 10:10 am and is filed under Islamism, Islamization, Religion.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.