According to [CFI President Jim] Jacobson, “When it comes to human rights and the treatment of minority Christians, Egypt has an extremely poor track record. The president should have a lot to talk about with Egyptian president Muhammad Hosni Mubarak, one of the longest-serving leaders in the Arab world. We hope he uses this as an opportunity to speak out for persecuted, minority Christians in Egypt.”

Most recently, Egypt’s State Council has expressed outrage at the attempt by an Egyptian convert from Islam to Christianity to have his conversion legally recognised, calling the case “a threat to societal order” and a violation of sharia.

Doug Bandow reminds us that Christian persecution is an ever-present reality throughout the Muslim world.

[N]o [interfaith] conversation will have any meaning if it does not address Islam’s brutal reality: the consistent persecution of Christians, Jews, and members of other minority faiths.
[…]
[P]ast Western dialogue with Islam has consistently missed the elephant in the room: Pervasive religious persecution.
[…]
In fact, it is unusual to find an Islamic nation where religious minorities are not discriminated against, both legally and socially. One of the best predictors that a government persecutes, or fails to protect religious minorities from persecution, is that the majority faith is Islam.

We shall see whether Obama cares about “Islam’s brutal reality” and the plight of Christians in Muslim nations when he delivers his speech on 4 June.

On the morning of Sunday, 26 April, hundreds of Egyptian State Security officers demolished a service building belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church.  When news of the attack was disseminated to local Christians, people gathered at the scene to prevent further damage, but then the officers turned on them as well.  Coptic priests were assaulted; men and women were tied up and beaten.

In a phone call with the Middle East Christian Association, a member of the Coptic Orthodox Church in Marsah Matrouh confirmed the news that the State Security forces attacked and demolished the services building of the Coptic Orthodox Church there.

“They have also assaulted the Coptic priest, Father Matta Zakaria, who tried to defend the demolition of the services building, as well as those present in the building”, added the Church member.

Thirteen Security lorries with a 700-man force of the State Security went into the one storey services building, attacked a homeless Coptic family who was sheltering there, and whose head was assigned to guard the building. They tied up the screaming women to chairs after beating them, until the full demolition of the building was undertaken. The family men, including the guard who were outside the building were beaten, tied and then loaded unto the State Security lorries.

The matter deteriorated further when the Christians knew of the news, and flocked to the place, in order to prevent the demolition work. They clashed with the Government forces; the forces have beaten them with sticks, and the people retaliated in self-defense.

The local council says it has no knowledge of a demolition order.  It would then appear that a high-ranking state security official took it upon himself to order a 700-man crew with trucks and bulldozers to destroy a privately owned building without warning and without authorisation.

It’s hard to reconcile this and many other incidents of official persecution with the recent claim by President Hosni Mubarak that all Egyptian citizens enjoy equal civil rights.

Photo from Middle East Christian Association.

In last week’s letter, Mubarak referred to himself as president of all Egyptians and stated that, while religion is a personal matter, the state governs all equally.

My question would be, is Mr. Mubarak using “Taquiah” when he is addressing Copts and non Arabic Muslim states? The reason of my question is based to certain facts occurred in Egypt. The facts reported here represent a very small part of the Copts’ daily dilemma.

Less than ten months ago a barbaric attacked [sic] by Arab Muslims took place in an ancient Coptic monastery, Abu-Fana. The Egyptian government did nothing to protect the unarmed monks or the valuable and historic building. Three monks along with a farmer who was working at the monastery were kidnapped. The monks were released after twelve hours of torture but no word has come out about the farmer.

The important thing is no official statement was released to condemn such a barbaric action.

Girls were kidnapped, raped, and forced to convert with the blessing of Mr. Mubarak’s law enforcement. In these four months of 2009, nine Coptics girls were kidnapped.

More examples follow of persecution and discrimination of Copts that are either ignored or even abetted by Egyptian authorities. These examples are “typical in the daily life of the country”, but it is also important to remember that Copts have been oppressed since the armies of Islam conquered Egypt 1400 years ago.

Another piece recently posted at Voice of the Copts points out that Article 2 of the Egyptian constitution, naming Islam the religion of the state and Islamic jurisprudence the principal source of legislation, was only added in 1980, during the presidency of Anwar Sadat. How can Christians be treated equally, as Mubarak claims, when the constitution grants Islam state privileges?

Voice of the Copts is joining the freedom lovers in Egypt and demanding the removal of the second article of the Egyptian constitution.
[…]
Few days ago, in a letter sent to Copts in the Diaspora, Mubarak indicates that “all citizens enjoy their civil rights and an individual’s faith is a personnel [sic] matter; the country is for all.” I wonder how a citizen could enjoy his civil rights and his personal faith when the constitution indicates the opposite.

Thus, Hosni Mubarak is accused of Taquiah.

Fourteen people have so far been taken into custody for questioning in Gaborone, Botswana police chief, Assistant Superintendent, Selebatso Mokgosi told Press TV Sunday.

“Eight business consultants and six other suspects believed to be part of the trafficking of 1,000 Botswana nationals are already in police custody and will appear in court this week,” said Mokgosi, who has been working with the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) on the case.

The Botswana police chief said that foreign traffickers targeted vulnerable young women and girls, who could be susceptible to force and deception, using business consultancy offices as a front for their operations.

“Police have discovered that a number of illegally and legal registered business consultancies run by foreigners … that are a front for international human traffickers who often lure victims into phony moneymaking opportunities, then hold them in slavery-like conditions in Canada,” Mokgosi asserted.

Canadian police recently arrested a woman from Botswana trafficked to Canada to work in a brothel.

ANHRI also alleges that the arrest “occurred with the collaboration of the Church in [his hometown of] Naga Hammadi”.

The controversy began on October 1st 2008, when some young Muslims were browsing Hani’s blog and found a link to another site containing an electronic novel called “Azazil’s Goat in Mecca” which included an attack on Islam. This work was written by an anonymous author under the name of “Father Utah.” The novel came in response to Yusuf Zidane’s famous novel “Azazil,” which was considered by some conservatives as offensive to Christianity.

Some young people in Hani’s village became very angry and thought he was the author of the story. Security Forces took this opportunity to arrest Hani Nazeer in order to get rid of the problems raised by his blog because of his strong opposition to both Muslim and Christian hardliners.
[…]
The crime against Hani was further agravated [sic] by Anba Cyrilus, Bishop of Naga Hammadi, when he asked the family to keep silent in order not to upset the state security.

Since Mr Nazeer’s arrest, “Father Utah” has continued to post at other Christian blogs. Nazeer’s own blog has been emptied of content.

Nazeer is an inmate at Burj Al Arab prison, where at least two other bloggers are currently imprisoned.

h/t: Religious Intelligence

What’s more, the police carried out the arrest even though they don’t have a copy of the marriage contract.

Christian convert Raheal Henen Mussa and her Coptic husband are hiding from police and her Muslim family for violating an article of Islamic law (sharia) that doesn’t exist in the Egyptian penal code.

Police arrested Mussa, 22, on April 13 for marrying Sarwat George Ryiad in a customary marriage (zawag al ‘urfi), an unregistered form of matrimony in Egypt made without witnesses. It has gained popularity among Egyptian youth but is not sanctioned by most Islamic scholars.

The two signed a marriage contract between themselves. Only Ryiad and their attorney have a copy. Police have not obtained a copy of the contract, but they used its existence as a pretext for arresting Mussa.

So, under Egyptian law, no crime was committed, and Islamic scholars don’t even recognise the marriage. Why exactly was Raheal Henen Mussa arrested?

This is the latest in a long series of incidents of official persecution of Christian converts by Egyptian authorities.

Ex-Muslim Martha Samuel was arrested in December as she was about to leave Egypt with her family. She was reportedly raped and tortured while in custody. In January, she was granted bail by a judge who told a lawyer he wanted to kill her.

In November, a Coptic priest was sentenced to five years for marrying a Christian man and a woman who had converted from Islam to Christianity. In March 2008, a Christian husband and his wife were sentenced to ten years for getting married. She was a convert from Islam.

Exactly what law did these people violate?

“Eritrea’s government is turning the country into a giant prison,” said Georgette Gagnon, Africa director at Human Rights Watch.
[…]
Based on more than 50 interviews with Eritrean victims and eyewitnesses of abuses in three countries, the report describes how the Eritrean government uses a vast apparatus of official and secret detention facilities to incarcerate thousands of Eritreans without charge or trial. Many of the prisoners are detained for their political or religious beliefs, others because they tried to evade the indefinite national service or flee the country.

Torture, cruel and degrading treatment, and forced labor are routine for conscripts as well as detainees. Detention conditions are appalling, with detainees typically held in overcrowded cells – sometimes underground – or in shipping containers that reach searing temperatures by day and are freezing at night.

Those who try to flee risk severe punishments and the possibility of being shot while crossing the border. The government also punishes the families of those who escape or desert from national service with exorbitant fines or imprisonment. Despite these severe measures, thousands of Eritreans are trying to escape their country.

The Eritrean government has long been known as one of the world’s worst persecutors of Christians. Thousands of believers, including children, are confined in shipping containers or jail cells. At least eight are known to have died in custody in recent years. Eritrea ranks high in lists of countries that trample on the human rights of followers of Jesus.

Last December, authorities conducted another round of mass arrests of Christians, bringing the total in custody to about three thousand.

Earlier this month, Eritrea hauled human rights activist Dania Avallone into an Italian court for daring to demonstrate at Eritrean government sponsored events in Italy.

The HRW report can be downloaded or read online via this page.

[T]he day turned bloody in Gwada, where three churches were burnt while about 26 Christians were injured. In Minna, the Niger Baptist Church was the target of the fanatics who injured five Christian youths and damaged more than five cars.

Our correspondents gathered that the incident in Gwada happened as Christian youths from all churches marched round the town, drumming and rejoicing over their ability to see another resurrection day of Jesus Christ.

It was learnt that as the procession continued, some Muslim youths, who apparently had pre-planned their action, appeared and started attacking the Christian youths, injuring some of them.

Police arrested 110 people for theft and causing public disturbances. All pleaded not guilty; the magistrate ordered them held in custody until the next hearing, scheduled for 28 April.

h/t: Associated Baptist Press

Maher al-Gohari, who is seeking to change his religion on his official documents from Muslim to Christian was asked by a court to provide a conversion certificate from the Egyptian church.
[…]
It is only the second time that such a request has been formally made in a country where converting to Christianity, while not illegal, is practically impossible.
[…]
Highlighting the sensitivity of the topic, the church would not comment on Gohari’s case specifically.

“In general, the church cannot turn away anyone who reaches out to it, otherwise it would be abandoning one its role as a church.”

In other Muslim-majority countries, churches are reluctant to acknowledge Muslim conversions to Christianity for fear of reprisals from Islamic militants.  In some places, Christians risk their lives for publicly confessing Jesus.

The first effort by a Muslim-born Egyptian officially to change his religious affiliation to Christianity ended in failure in January 2008 when a court refused to rule on Mohammed Hegazy’s petition.

Maria Daniela (Dania) Avallone is due in a Rome court on 15 April accused amongst other things, of referring to the Eritrean president as a dictator, continually ’disturbing’ Eritrean government sponsored events in Italy through protesting, and insulting the organisers in Italian and Tigrinya, an Eritrean language.

The charges stem from an incident that occurred last year on 26 October, when around fifty Eritrean government supporters pelted human rights activists who were picketing an Eritrean festival that was opened and attended by the Eritrean Minister of Defence. During the assault Ms. Avallone lost consciousness after a stone struck her in the kidneys, and was kept in hospital overnight for observation.

The legal complaint against Ms Avallone was ostensibly brought by “the Eritrean Community in Italy”. However, signatories to the complaint are said to include at least two members of the Eritrean diplomatic entourage.

Photos taken at the festival protest are posted here with a report in Italian.

The government of Eritrea is one of the most repressive and religiously intolerant in the world. Thousands of Christians, including children, are held in deplorable conditions. At least eight are known to have died in custody in recent years. Eritrea regularly shows up on lists of countries that trample on the human rights of believers.

Last December, authorities conducted another round of mass arrests of Christians, bringing the total in custody to about three thousand.

Reporters Without Borders has ranked Eritrea the worst nation on the planet for press freedom, worse even than North Korea. An estimated 20,000 political prisoners are held in Eritrean jails.

Gospel singer Helen Berhane, who escaped to Denmark in 2007 after two years of imprisonment and torture, last week urged the European Union to withhold a €122 million foreign aid package to Eritrea. She joins an international chorus of objections to the aid proposal, including Reporters Without Borders and the US ambassador to the UN.

Eritrea thumbed its nose at the International Criminal Court last month by inviting the international pariah Omar al-Bashir, President of Sudan, for a state visit—his first since the court issued a warrant for his arrest on charges of crimes against humanity.

More news stories of persecution in Eritrea can be seen here and here.

h/t Religious Intelligence

Last week in court, according to Mr Athanasius’ lawyers, state attorneys demeaned Christians and Christianity and insisted that Islam is a superior religion.

“In their contempt of Christianity they argued that Islam is the ‘better’ religion and therefore, it is better not to move from Islam to Christianity for the sake of public interest. The true religion for Allah is Islam”, commented [attorney Howaida] ElOmda.

One of the plaintiff’s attorney team objected to the judge by saying: “I am an Egyptian citizen and a lawyer like him, stand beside him in the street and in the Bar Association and also here in court; he wants to make me feel I am inferior to him, just because I follow an ‘inferior’ faith to his, according to his thinking. Why is he demeaning me and my religion?

Despite the fact that several death threats have been made against Mr Athanasius, presiding judge Hamdi Yassin ordered him to appear in court in person.  At one point in the session, he declared: “I am a Christian, my brothers, and you could also kill me!”

Peter Athanasius is 56 years old, has been a Christian for almost 35 years, and raised his daughter in the Christian faith.

One of the plaintiff’s attorneys says that the outcome of the case is eagerly awaited by “thousands of Muslim-born Egyptians who have converted to Christianity” and want to have their religious affiliation officially changed.

A ruling is expected within two months.

Speaking in Kano, while delivering lecture on challenges of shariah implementation, Fagge said, ” the commissioner of police is posted to Kano to protect the state laws. Therefore, as a Muslim, you should remember that you can die or retirement could force you out of office. However, Sharia legal system would remain in the state forever.”

That sounds like a threat.

For good measure, Kano’s Ulama Council also ripped into the police commissioner.

The Council of Ulama in Kano yesterday warned the Commissioner of Police, Muhammad Aminu Yesufu, to stay clear of the way of full implementation of sharia or face the wrath of the people.

The Chairman, Kano Council of Ulama, Sheik Ibrahim Umar Kabo, accused the police of sabotaging the effort of Hisbah to curb “evils” in the state.

Kabo stated that the police boss turned several offers from the Hisbah Board to train the Hisbah corps on the rudiment of maintenance of law and order.

He added that the police boss also rejected other complimentary services rendered by the sharia corps.

Beware sharia corps bearing “complimentary services”.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports.

“After the wedding, my husband told me he wanted me to sleep at his house. When I told my father I did not want to, he locked me in the house and left me there. I was so shocked and angry that I poured kerosene on my genitals and the front of my body and set myself on fire. I wanted to die.

“The neighbours heard my cries. They thought my father was beating me and because the door was locked, they broke it down and entered. I was already burned when they found me. They called my father and when he saw me with my burns he hit me and said there was nothing left for me but to die.

Mariam spent 14 months recuperating in two hospitals. She says her father never came to see her. She is now living with her parents, but her father refuses to permit her to divorce..

The forgery accusation arises from the fact that Mrs Abdo foolishly converted to Islam in 1994 following a marital dispute. The two children continued to live with their Christian father, and she returned to her husband and Christianity in 2001. During the separation, the religious affiliation of the children was surreptitiously changed on official documents.

[T]he big surprise came when her children went to get their national identification number document after reaching the age of 16 years!!!

In 2006 when they applied to get copies of their birth certificate which are necessary for the issuance of the new national identification number, they found out that they were registered as Muslims under the new names of Rami and Refka Hussein Elsayed, although their father’s name is Emil Asaad.
[…]
Surprisingly, when the mother converted into Islam her documents showed that she was the only one in the family who changed her name, in addition, a letter sent in 2006 from the Cairo State Security to the Director of Administrative Affairs stating that the children did not convert into Islam.

The arrest of the children’s mother appears to be an attempt to cover up the underhanded alteration of official documents and to intimidate the family into dropping their fraud suit against the Civil Registry.

A Shiite Muslim sect is engaged in gun-running and training of militant youths drawn from 13 states in the predominantly-Muslim northern Nigeria as well as neighbouring Niger Republic at its headquarters in Zaria, northern Kaduna state, the police have alleged.

The allegation, published by the private Guardian newspaper Thursday, was contained in an intelligence report sent to the country’s Inspector-General of Police, Mike Okiro, by the Kaduna state police boss, Tambari Muhammad.

Sheikh Ibrahim Zakyzaky, leader of the Islamic Movement of Nigeria, denies everything.

He explained that “it is moving from the traditional Islam of fraternities, to an Islam marked by the Wahhabite movement,” a Muslim sect founded in Arabia in the 18th century by Muhammad ibn-Abdul Wahhab.

The priest explained “these are more fundamentalist movements that have arrived in Nigeria from Sudan and are now coming here from Nigeria. So the Muslim world is being reformed in Cameroon.”
[…]
“Traditionally relations between Christians and Muslims have been good and continue to be good,” concluded Father Zielenda. “However, both Christians and Muslims are very worried over the influence of Wahhabites, which is increasingly visible.”

Speaking yesterday in Yaoundé, Pope Benedict XVI praised peaceful co-existence and co-operation between Muslims and Christian in Cameroon as an example to the rest of Africa. If Wahhabist Islam continues to grow, watch for peaceful co-existence to decline and the beginning of Muslim violence against Christians, as frequently occurs in northern Nigeria.

When Azazeel was first published, Coptic Christians denounced it as the Arabic version of The DaVinci Code and an attempt to discredit Christian doctrine. Those criticisms were repeated in the wake of the prize.

[Coptic apologist] Father Bassiet said the novel ‘Azazeel’ is an insult to the history and the symbols of the Coptic Church, as it says that the Church has darkened the world, and that its priests took all the food and filled life with ugliness. It also says they were snakes that killed in the name of the Lord anyone who was not Christian.

Bishop Bishoi, Secretary of the Holy Synod and Bishop of Damietta, said:

“This confirms intolerance of Christians. The administration of the award should have more consideration for the Coptic Church, as we stood against any scorns of Islam. We also condemned the cartoons that scorned the prophet.”

Blogging at Babylon and Beyond for the Los Angeles Times, Noah El-Hennawy has more about Mr Ziedan’s motivation in writing the controversial novel:

Ziedan, in an interview in Alexandria, said in a defiant tone that his work aimed at challenging the monopoly claimed by different religious institutions over the truth of faith and history. “I don’t deconstruct the text, but I reexamine the religious institution and religious heritage,” said Ziedan. “I analyze religious knowledge and consciousness.”

Yet, this is not the crux of Ziedan’s views. His critique goes beyond the role of religious institutions to the essence of monotheistic religions: “The substance is the same; it is based on the superiority of oneself over others under the pretext of possessing a god who owns the truth. This element of superiority is the same in all three religions, which gives rise to violence. As long as religions last, violence will persist. ”

So, Ziedan says he wants to challenge “the essence of monotheistic religions”, and which specific religion does he take on? Not the one followed by 90 percent of his countrymen, and the one he follows himself—Islam. He’s seen what radical Muslims can do when someone challenges Islam. Islamists commit mayhem and murder over that kind of thing,

No, best to take on the peaceable Christians. That way he can offend believers while avoiding death threats from religious leaders. A very courageous writer, that Youssef Ziedan.

A worker with Voice of the Martyrs Canada recently met with the leader of a group of Christians from Muslim backgrounds in the Saharan nation.

“Anwar” and his small band of courageous Christians trek across miles of sand so they may assemble secretly in a Muslim land. This group of Muslim background believers regularly endures the scorching Mauritanian sun to pray, learn more about Jesus and sing praise songs.
[…]
Despite government restrictions, perhaps the greatest threat to Anwar and the band of Christians comes from militant Muslims. They have warned Anwar he will be killed if he does not stop telling Muslims about Christ. He recently received this threatening letter from a group calling itself the Islamic Committee:

“We’ve been following and keeping an eye on this cunning group. We’ve discovered that there is a group trying to convert people in the public areas or underprivileged people to Christianity. We promise to eliminate them as we are commanded in the Quran. It seems that those so-called Christians are taking advantage of how weak the Islamic world is in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine these days.”

The article also reports that a Muslim family repeatedly assaulted and humiliated a young Mauritanian woman who became a Christian.  In seven months of confinement, she refused to renounce Christ, so they threw her out.  She is now married and ministering to other Christians from Muslim backgrounds.

The full article is published in the March 2009 issue of VOMC’s monthly newsletter, but is not available online.  Click here for subscription information.

“We should be expecting more crises because there are trainings going on in the bush and the security people know about this.

“There are terrorists and fundamentalists that have invaded this country and if care is not taken, definitely this country may not remain one….We are leaving in a dynamic society. Many of our youths today are becoming educated and that is a potential time bomb because most of them are jobless.

The terrorists in training are said to come from Niger, Chad, and other foreign nations.  Elder Dogo blames them for abetting recent Muslim attacks on Christians in the city of Jos, Plateau state, and in Bauchi state.

In Dogo’s view, a state of emergency should be declared in Bauchi in order to keep the peace. He charges that the Bauchi state government is continuing to ignore thousands of persons forced to flee their homes and live in military camps.

“We are watching to see the action of the Federal Government regarding the carnage and destruction unleashed on helpless and defenceless Christians whose properties were looted and their houses set ablaze by mindless Islamic fundamentalists.

“It is time for us to know whether President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua is the President of Nigerians or the President of Muslims, the action he will take regarding the Bauchi mayhem will determine whether he is a President of all of us.

In related news, Dutch MPs Geert Wilders and Martin Bosma warn that Nigeria is well on its way to an “Islamic takeover”.

h/t for link to Digital Journal: Jihad Watch