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Right to Convert Spotlighted Again in Egypt

Now, Riad and his wife, who has changed her name to Rahel, are on the run from Egyptian authorities and are currently in hiding outside Cairo.

Their story began a couple of weeks ago when Mohamed, who works at a local hair salon in the middle-class Shobra area of Cairo, was stopped by police on the street and whisked away to the local police station for questioning over her marriage to Riad.

Upon entering the police station, the officers began demanding information on her husband’s whereabouts, which she refused to reveal.

According to Riad, who spoke with The Media Line (TML) shortly after the initial incident, his wife was abused in order to extract information from her before she was taken to her family’s house and was accused of having married 38-year-old Riad when she was a minor.

“I want my wife back, no matter what the price is,” Riad said before the couple’s successful escape last Tuesday.

Controversy has erupted over the couple’s marriage, including their alleged ages at the time. Police accuse the woman of being under 18 at the time she signed an Urfi marriage contract three years ago. Riad denies the charge, saying Mohamed was 18 and of legal age at the time.

An Urfi marriage is commonly used in the Arab world as a means of getting around state legislation in order to have sexual relations. In Riad and Mohamed’s situation, it was the only possible means for the two to be wed because under Egyptian law a Muslim woman cannot marry a Christian man.

According to Riad and his legal adviser Naguib Gobrael, Mohamed converted at an unspecified church in order to marry a Christian man.

Under Shari’a (Islamic) law, Muslim women are forbidden from marrying non-Muslims. Riad dismisses this accusation, arguing that his wife had been the one to convert and that she was Christian at the time.

However, Muslims in Egypt are not allowed to convert from Islam. Christian men can, and often do, convert to Islam on paper in order to marry Muslims in the country. Had Riad converted to Islam, a proper marriage license would have been possible.

Speaking through her husband, Mohamed told TML that she was taken to the Shobra police station where officers abused and electrocuted her and threatened to rape her if she did not tell them her husband’s whereabouts, which she refused.

Police then transferred her to her family’s home in accordance with the law. Any minor who gets married is removed from her husband and immediately taken to her parents’ house.

According to Riad, Mohamed claims that her family abused her upon her arrival and tried to erase the cross tattoo she had on her wrist – a mark common among Egypt’s Coptic community.

Riad and Mohamed’s family were neighbors before the two fell in love and fled the neighborhood three years ago. They were married in secret after Mohamed converted.

Last Tuesday, she and her husband escaped together from her parents’ home and have since been on the run. TML attempted to contact them, but their mobile phones were switched off. 

The case has led many to question Egypt’s laws regarding conversion, which remain stringent.

George Ishaq, a Kefaya (Enough) opposition leader and prominent Copt, says there are a number of solutions to the ongoing problems facing the country’s religious groups.

He says that whenever he meets a group of Copts he tells them to stop complaining about the discrimination they receive at the hands of the government and “start to move.” This, Ishaq argues, is the best means of creating a society that will breathe life into the stale religious dialogue that is persisting in Egypt.

“Copts and Christians need to get out there and make the country a part of their life. They cannot live separated from society like what happens in Lebanon because that leads to tension and violence. To say that Copts are the only people under threat is to avoid the truth,” he says.

“We live in a country where the government doesn’t give anyone their rights, so people need to be realistic.”

Ironically, Riad does not shy away from the fact that at his church he volunteered for many years helping Christian girls who had converted to Islam as part of the church’s “bring them back” efforts.

“Some of them did it to get divorced or for financial reasons, but most of all they do it because they fall in love with a Muslim man,” he says, while admitting that the church often offers monetary compensation to the girls in order to bring them back.

An Egyptian court is expected to hear the case of Maher Al Gohary, 56, who claims to have converted to Christianity over 30 years ago and now wants to have “Muslim” changed to “Christian” on his ID card. He filed his case in August last year and is appealing an earlier court’s denial.

The case will be a litmus test for the Egyptian judiciary which continues to walk a fine line between the increasingly conservative Islamists and Copts and the liberal activists who continue to stream onto the streets in anti-government demonstrations.

Gohary is trying to follow in the footsteps of Mohamed Hegazy, who filed a similar case in August 2007, but was later denied the ability to change his ID card because the court ruled that it was “against Islamic law for a Muslim to leave Islam.”

“He can believe whatever he wants in his heart, but on paper he can’t convert,” the judge told the administrative court, according to a member of Hegazy’s legal team.

Gohary, who has already changed his name to Peter, says he converted to Christianity 34 years ago when he was attending the police academy in Cairo, but later dropped out of the academy because he was scared.

Judges often base their decisions on religious freedoms on Article II of the Egyptian constitution, which states that Islamic law is the source of national laws. The judge in the Hegazy case said that “according to Islamic law, Islam is the final and most complete religion and therefore Muslims already practice full freedom of religion and cannot move to an older belief,” such as Christianity or Judaism.

If Gohary is victorious and allowed to have his ID stamped Christian, then couples like Mohamed and Riad will be allowed to live peacefully within society