Morning Star

Egyptian crisis

Barnabas Aid points out the growing problem:

The problem of the forced conversion of Christian girls, who are then married to Muslim men, is a long-standing one in Egypt. But it has intensified since the January Revolution, with the number of Christian girls affected said to be soaring, amid wider efforts to Islamise the country. One church leader in Cairo estimates that at least 21 young girls have disappeared from his parish since the revolution, while another said that “more than two to three girls disappear everyday in Giza alone”. He added, “The cases that are brought to public attention are few compared to what the numbers actually are.”

The problem is not unique to Egypt; it is also common in Pakistan, and there have been consistent reports of its occurring in India and Sri Lanka. A Christian girl who has been forced to marry a Muslim man faces a virtually hopeless future, held captive by a family who treat her as nothing more than a slave. In Pakistan and Egypt, the woman’s name and identity is changed, with her Christian religious status being replaced with Islam on her identity card.

Please read the whole piece, keeping in mind the fundamental differences between the Islamic and Christian views of marriage. Christian marriage is the freely contracted exclusive union between one man and one woman, founded on mutual respect in order to build a stable and lasting home. The fact that Muslim marriages allow polygamy, unilateral divorce, and fundamental inequality between a husband and his wives makes a stable and respectful home impossible, while making it difficult for a woman to give her heart completely to her husband. Furthermore, when the cultural elements concerning honour are added, rape or any sexual activity on the part of the girl/woman limit her options, forcing her into very bad situations.

Living as a minority in the Umma

Raymond Ibrahim provides a few details from a recent Coptic Solidarity conference in Washington, DC:

Because the conference spanned two days, I spent lots of time surrounded by Christian minorities. The casual anecdotes I heard, spoken not with outrage—the province of the privileged—but simply as backdrops to more mundane stories, revealed how endemic anti-Christian sentiment is to the Muslim world, so much so that Christians themselves have almost become immune to it, expecting it, reserving their actual complaints for times of physical persecution (including but not limited to Islamist-inspired theft, kidnapping, rape, church attacks, etc.).

In other words, if the formal speeches held at the Capitol documented the hostility and discrimination Christians face under Islam, the informal conversations, held over food and drink, drove the point home.

Thus one Coptic businessman complaining about how he lost a legal case in Egypt, though he was clearly in the right, was quickly interrupted by the grinning fellow across him, who asked whether his opponent was Muslim or Christian; when the businessman, rather coyly, said Muslim, everyone laughed knowingly, some even suggesting he was a fool for even going to court.

A women discussing her baby's erratic sleeping habits revealed why: the mosque next door, which always blasts Koranic verses on the megaphone around 4 a.m., constantly wakes him up in terror and tears; and though the baby does not understand the words, the mother does, pointing out that most of the verses being blared are especially hostile to Christians, like 5: 17, 5:51, and 9:29.

Any number of Copts looked at me incredulously when I inquired why a well qualified Copt did not bother applying to an important post in Egypt that seemed almost tailor-made for him: I was duly informed—that is, reminded—that best jobs are reserved for Muslims.

One refined-looking woman expressed her resignation: though a Christian, she sometimes wears the burqa in Egypt, simply so she can go about her daily business without being sexually-harassed, molested, called derogatory names, or spat upon (this recent story certainly validates her reasoning).