U.S. Urged To Aid Egyptian Family Facing Prison For Converting To Christianity

ICC Note: Religious freedom advocates are calling on Egypt to release a woman and her seven children who were given a 15 year prison sentence for converting to Christianity. “We are deeply concerned with Egyptian laws that infringe on an individual’s universal right to choose his or her religion and call upon the Egyptian government to promote and protect universal freedoms,” said U.S. State Department spokesperson Ariel Vaagen.
By Benjamin Weinthal
01/22/2013 Egypt (FN) -Supporters of an Egyptian woman sentenced with her seven children to 15 years in prison for converting to Christianity say the U.S. government must do more to stick up for her and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
Nadia Mohamed Ali and her children drew the shocking sentence this month from a judge in Beni Suef, a city of 200,000 located about 75 miles south of Cairo. Ali, who was raised a Christian and converted to marry her Muslim husband, sought to return to her spiritual roots when he died. But the Egyptian government zeroed in on her effort to have her and her children’s national ID cards altered to mark the conversion.
Rep. Frank Wolf, (R-Va.), co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, said the Obama administration has failed to confront the growing crackdown on Christians in Egypt. President Mohamed Morsi, who was elected last year after the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak ended with protests and Mubarak’s arrest, has overseen a startling decrease in tolerance for the nation’s approximately 8.5 million Coptic Christians.
“We have a strategic and moral imperative to protect and preserve these ancient faith communities, which this administration has failed to do,” Wolf said. “Too often we in the West have turned a blind eye to the suffering of persecuted people of faith.”
U.S. State Department spokesperson Ariel Vaagen said the Obama administration is concerned about the rights of Christians in Egypt.
“We are following reports of a number of Egyptians sentenced to imprisonment for forging identity documents to alter their religious identity from Muslim to Christian,” Vaagen wrote. “We are deeply concerned with Egyptian laws that infringe on an individual’s universal right to choose his or her religion and call upon the Egyptian government to promote and protect universal freedoms, including freedom of religion, for all its citizens.”
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“It is interesting that the State Department, in its attempt to tone down the gravity of the problem in Egypt, chooses to ignore a document such as the Egyptian Constitution, with its many problematic clauses that limit freedom of religion, speech and thought,” Tadros said.
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