Controversy surrounds new Egypt report on forced conversion of Christian women

ICC Note:

Human rights report “documents dozens of cases of Christian women who were kidnapped and forced into marriage, often after being raped.”

By Joseph Mayton

11/14/2009 Egypt (BikyaMasr) – A new report published by Christian Solidarity International and the Coptic Foundation for Human Rights has said Egypt largely ignores the forced conversion of Christian women in the country. The new report has sparked a media frenzy, but the controversial report has many detractors, who argue the coverage of the report does not fully grasp the realities on the ground in the North African country.

The report, titled “The Disappearance, Forced Conversions and Forced Marriages of Coptic Christian Women in Egypt” documents dozens of cases of Christian women who were kidnapped and forced into marriage, often after being raped.

Research on the report was done in Egypt by American anti-trafficking specialist Michele Clark and Egyptian women’s rights activist Nadia Ghaly. The report argues that the violence against Egyptian Christians corresponds to the internationally recognized definitions of human trafficking.

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One case in the report stands out. A 17-year-old woman, called “R” in the report, says that she received a phone call from a man who wanted to meet her in a church. After meeting him there, she told investigators that she was drugged and kidnapped. When she refused to marry a man named Mahmoud, someone she did not know, the man’s family allegedly held her down while he raped her. According to her, she began to bleed profusely and can no longer have children as a result.

Investigators interviewed a local priest who claimed there were over 50 cases of forced conversions of Coptic women and girls to Islam and forced marriages to Muslim men in the past year alone from his church.

“The phenomenon of abductions, forced conversions and marriages of Coptic women by Muslim men remains relatively undocumented, under-reported and generally ignored by the international human rights community,” the report states.

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Once returned to their families the women’s absences often remain unexplained and the ongoing controversy has served as flashpoints for long-simmering tensions between the Coptic and Muslim communities. Some argue that when they get back to their families, they tell of rape and other horrific experiences in order to argue away what had happened.

“It is not necessarily a societal problem; it is more religious issues that face women in our society,” said Abul Komsan. “Women face leaders that force them to do things that they do not have any desire to do. They do certain things, such as running away from their family and converting to Islam, because it is the only way to get out of their designated role their family has for them.”

Laura, a Coptic woman in her mid-20s living in Alexandria who asked that her surname not be used, agreed. She said that while a few of the kidnappings may be authentic, most of the media reports are based on fabrications made by the families to disguise their daughters’ dissatisfaction.

“We, as Coptic women, have to deal with what our priests tell us and force upon us on a daily basis and often many women just can’t take it any longer so they just leave their families and run off with a Muslim man,” she says.

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George Ishaq, a Coptic scholar and head of Kefaya (”Enough”), the nonviolent opposition movement, says the country’s minority religious groups need assistance if Egypt is to move forward in creating a more just society based on universal rights, not simply those of the Muslim majority.

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