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Published: 15:00 GMT Daylight Time - Tuesday 24 July 2012

Kidnap, forced conversion and marriage of Egyptian Christian women rising

Country/Region: Egypt, Middle East and North Africa

A new report has found that the cases of Christian girls and women disappearing, being forcibly converted to Islam and married against their will in Egypt have escalated since the Arab Spring uprising.

The report, Tell My Mother I Miss Her, released on 18 July, was co-authored by Nadia Ghaly, an Egyptian Christian human rights activist, and Michele Clark, a professor at George Washington University.

It found that the Christian community has “become more vulnerable to persecution on account of the upsurge of militant Islam following the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak”, with women in particular at greater risk. The numbers of disappearances and abductions are rising, with fewer girls returning to their families; minors and mothers of young children are increasingly being targeted.

The title of the report was a direct quote from a victim made in a recorded phone conversation to her father after her abduction. “D” disappeared on 20 May 2011. Her mother reported the 19-year-old missing, and later that evening the police came to the family home and told them that D had married a Muslim man.

A month later, D managed to phone her father. Crying down the line, she asks him to tell her mother that she misses her before the teenager is interrupted by someone entering the room. The line goes dead, and when the father calls back, a man answers, saying:

She is unconscious now but let me tell you something, this girl is more important to me than anything else. I swear to God, if something happens to her, I will kill all of you and I will burn the church. You know that I can do that.

D has since phoned her father eight times, saying that she is abused and mistreated, and asking for help to escape. In desperation he told her to cut herself so that she would be taken to hospital, where her family might be able to see her. But a doctor was brought to the house, where she is imprisoned in a room, instead.

D’s case was one of 14 that human rights lawyer Stefanos Milad Stefanos brought before the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior in September 2011, requesting investigations, but there had been no follow-up by the time he met with the report’s authors.

Four lawyers reported over 550 cases asking for the restoration of Christian identity following disappearances, forced marriages and forced conversions over a five-year period, with cases escalating since 25 January 2011, when Arab Spring protests began.

Tell My Mother I Miss Her follows a report written by the same authors in November 2009 called The Disappearance, Forced Conversions and Forced Marriages of Coptic Christian Women in Egypt. While that report comprehensively outlined the problem, cases are often disregarded by both the Egyptian authorities and the international community; detractors claim that the disappearances are “nothing more than petulant acts of young women seeking to leave oppressive home environments and that there is no criminal activity involved”.

The aim of the new report is to challenge the notion that the testimony of victims is made up of mere allegations, and calls for investigations and strong preventative measures.

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In another chilling sign of Egypt’s move towards becoming an Islamic state, it was announced in March that a religious police force had been established to uphold Muslim morals. The Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice shares its name with the notorious religious police of Saudi Arabia. For some months previously, vigilante Salafist gangs had been operating as self-appointed enforcers of morals, raiding shops and harassing staff and customers. The Christian community is concerned that it may now be subjected to the demands of sharia law. Pray that this will not happen and that the Islamisation of Egyptian society will be checked and then reversed. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed 21 hours ago

Christian girls in Egypt are extremely vulnerable to being kidnapped by Salafists who forcibly convert them to Islam and marry them to Muslim men against their will; over 500 have been victims of this heartless campaign since the revolution of January 2011. The Association of Victims of Abduction and Enforced Disappearance (AVAED), an Egyptian Christian organisation, says that the authorities collude with the Salafists. Give thanks for the safe return of Agape Essam Girgis (13), who was abducted from el-Ameriya on 23 December 2012. Sadly, most cases do not have a happy ending. Pray that the Lord will comfort those families whose daughters are still missing and intervene mightily to deliver the Christian girls from the hands of their captors. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Tue, Jun 2013 00:00

Pray for our brothers and sisters in North Africa living in the shadow of militant Islamism. Following the French intervention against Islamist groups who had taken over large parts of Mali, militants attacked a gas facility in Algeria in January and killed 37 people. An Algerian employee who managed to escape said, “We were told that because we were Muslim we would not be killed, and it was only the Christians they were after.” The Islamists associate Christianity with the West, so Christian targets and individuals as well as Western ones are especially vulnerable to attack. Ask that the Lord will protect Christians in the region against violence and the oppressive grip of sharia law. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Mon, Jun 2013 00:00

“I had just cooked my last meal, and there was no food in the house, nor money, nor any other way of obtaining grain. Thank the Lord for this aid, which has saved me and my children.” Bâh Kamaté, a Christian widow with six children in Mali, was “completely overwhelmed” when her pastor told her that she was going to receive corn and rice funded by Barnabas. Thousands of Christians fled the north of the country after the Islamist takeover in 2012, and their plight was worsened by food shortages resulting from drought. But praise God that Barnabas has helped to supply food for more than 5,100 Christians, as well as meeting other needs. Pray for His continuing provision for His people as Mali continues to face an uncertain future. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Sun, Jun 2013 00:00

Those who become Christians in Laos risk losing everything. A couple from Chumpoy in the Sanamsai district of Attappeu province were thrown out of their village on 23 January for converting to Christianity. Pray for Sakien and his wife Dong, who came to Christ after hearing the testimony of their son and daughter-in-law, Sanien and Pitsamai; they had become Christians after Pitsamai was healed after prayer. Sakien and Dong are currently sheltering in a partially constructed church building in another village; pray that they will either be able to return to their home or find adequate housing elsewhere, and that the Lord will sustain them in their new faith throughout this trial. Subscribe to the prayer points rss feed Sat, Jun 2013 00:00

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