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.

In the latest hearing of a Muslim-born Egyptian’s effort to officially convert to Christianity, opposing lawyers advocated he be convicted of “apostasy,” or leaving Islam, and sentenced to death.

More than 20 Islamic lawyers attended the hearing on Sunday (Feb. 22) in Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary’s case to obtain identification papers with Christianity designated as his religious affiliation. Two lawyers led the charge, Ahmed Dia El-Din and Abdel Al-Migid El-Anani.

via Transfigurations: EGYPT: ISLAMIC LAWYERS URGE DEATH SENTENCE FOR CONVERT. via Steynianism/Free Canuckistan.

To know more about this man go to The Free Copts, where they have covered his story from the beginning.

The Malaysian government will issue a new decree restoring a ban on Christian publications using the word “Allah” to refer to God, officials said Sunday.

Home Affairs Minister Syed Hamid Albar said a previous Feb. 16 decree that allowed Christian publications to use the word as long as they specified the material was not for Muslims was a mistake, the national Bernama news agency reported.

The about-turn came after Islamic groups slammed the government and warned that even conditional use of the word by Christians would anger Muslims, who make up the country’s majority. (blackmailing and menacing with violence as ever…).

A senior ministry official confirmed Syed Hamid’s comments, saying there were “interpretation mistakes” in the Feb. 16 decree that led to the confusion.

“‘Allah’ cannot be used for other religions except Islam because it might confuse Muslims. This is the ministry’s stand and it hasn’t changed,” the official, who declined to be named citing protocol, told The Associated Press.

via FOXNews.com – Malaysia Restores ‘Allah’ Ban for Christians – International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News.

There is something I don’t understand though: what Christian would indeed call God Allah? Well, there is a little problem: in Malaysian language there is no word for God other than Allah…

A Christian milkman has been murdered in Pakistan after demanding his pay cheque from his Muslim employers, according to International Christian Concern.

Ashraf Masih, 30, from the village of Shajwal was hired two months ago by three Muslim men to collect milk from neighbouring farms and houses.

In January, after working for one month Ashraf came to collect his wages. However his employers, brothers Muhammad Arfan, Muhammad Nadeem and their nephew Muhammad Imran, said that they would pay him two months wages after one more month.

With the need to support his family becoming more urgent, Ashraf returned on 1 February and again demanded his wages.

The three Muslims reportedly responded angrily to Ashraf’s request, saying, “You are Esai [a derogatory term for Christians] and you demanded your pay from Muslims, what courage you have. We will finish you right now. Then go to your Esa [Christ], He will give you everything.”

The three men then killed Ashraf and fled the scene.

via Christian milkman murdered by Muslim employers .

Did they think he was a slave? There is nothing said in the press release, but I just can’t truly comment this. It’s so shameful and outrageous…

I have read a lot of critics towards San Valentine’s Day but nothing so comical as being considered as an insufferable virus that “the more Muslim celebrate its Day, the More the Jews and Christians Are Happy, and the More the Prophet Muhammad is Sad“.

via Muslim cleric Warns Muslim Youth Against Valentine’s Day – Says its ‘More Dangerous than AIDS, Ebola, and Cholera’ :: Understanding Islam :: Hyscience.

But don’t worry, Islamists have already found the cure, apart from not celebrating it, of course… …

Technorati Tags: Islamism, San Valentine’s Day is a virus, Islam.

“Western countries called on Saudi Arabia on Friday to halt floggings and amputations, allow religious freedom and abolish a system of male guardianship sharply limiting women’s rights.”

(…) Zaid Al-Hussein, vice president of the state-affiliated Saudi Human Rights Commission, told the forum much remained to be done to ensure that individual followers of Islam uphold human rights standards, as required by sharia law.

(…) Hussein said non-Muslims could follow their faiths in private in the kingdom, but it would be difficult to allow non-Muslim houses of worship as “Islam is the final religion“.

This expression is absolutely final about what we’re dealing here. Some days ago, Saudi blogger Hamoud

Bin Saleh has been arrested because he announced his conversion to Christianity in his blog Saudi Christian, which was also blocked:

Based on information obtained by ANHRI, the Saudi authorities jailed the young blogger at the infamous Eleisha political prison in Riyadh; a prison which in 2004 witnessed the arrest of the reformists Matrouk el Falih, Ali el Domini and Eissa al Hamed.