Persecution of minorities under Islamist Egypt
Kamal Gaballa's article about Egypt told of an 'Arab spring' that began with such high hopes, but ended with a collapse of restraint and the rise of violence that Mubarrak threatened would come if the Islamists had their way. (It is always embarrassing when a dictator is proved right….) Now, despite promises by the new president, an Islamist-backed constitution threatens the rights of minorities and a Christian woman appointed to the Upper House, has resigned on those grounds.
Egyptian Christians are an estimated 6%-10% of the population and the rise of the Islamists have, there as elsewhere, provided excuses for extremists to kidnap, murder and act violently against individuals, churches and congregations. No wonder people of all faiths and none are extremely concerned about the direction in which the country is heading.
The founder of the non-governmental Christian organisation Association of Victims of Abduction and Enforced Disappearance (AVAED) reports, “In every Egyptian province there is a Salafist association which handles the kidnapping of Christian girls. They have homes everywhere where they keep them. If we inform the police where the kidnapped girl is being kept, they inform the Salafists, who then move her away to another home and then we lose all trace of her.†Since January 2011, over 500 Christian girls have been abducted and forced into conversion and marriage. What used to happen occasionally before has now become systematic.
Under Egyptian law, a person may not marry or change their religion until the age of 18 but the lawyer of AVAED says the age of the abducted girls is becoming younger at typically 13 -14 years old. One girl was returned after being forced to wear Islamic dress and beaten because she refused to say the Islamic creed but her family and supporters staged a demonstration. But fear of abduction means that her parents, like others, have stopped her going to school.
It seems to prove the truth of the story Jesus told of a man who cleared a devil out of his house but the devil went away and got 7 other devils, worse than himself, and re-occupied the house… It is not enough merely to overthrow a dictator!
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