January 8, 2010
By Alexander Weissink

Katreen cheerfully opened the door. She receives few visitors at her shelter in Cairo, where she lives with her two children. Father Mathias greeted her warmly. Katreen kissed the priest's hand. Back inside, Katreen fell apart. Since she converted to Christianity, she had felt alone and abandoned. The Coptic priest quietly listened to her plight.

Muslims who convert to Christianity are outcasts in Egypt, a country with a Muslim majority. Their ID-cards still read ‘Muslim,' in spite of their conversion, since apostasy is strictly forbidden in Islam. The children of converts are obliged to follow the Islamic curriculum in school.

Copts are menaced almost weekly

Death threats by fundamentalist Muslims are not uncommon for converts. That is why many of them fled the country in the past, but now Western nations no longer offer them asylum, they usually seek shelter in Egypt, fearing violence.

Violence against Christians, converts or not, is common in Egypt, but often goes unreported. Most attacks occur in the towns and villages south of Cairo, as did Wednesday's shooting (see box) in which six Copts were killed. According to a report published by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, attacks on Copts occur four times a month on average.

Six die in anti-Coptic violence

Three unknown assailants opened fire on Wednesday night on a crowd leaving Coptic Christmas mass celebrations at a church in the southern Egyptian town of Nagaa Hammadi. Six were killed and nine injured.

The shooting was one of the most violent clashes between Christians and Muslims in Egypt to date. The incident was followed by skirmishes between the police and 2,000 Coptic Christians who turned out to protest the massacre on Thursday.

According to the Egyptian ministry of the interior, the attack was meant as retribution for the rape of a small girl, allegedly by a Christian man.

The local bishop said he had feared an attack on his community was imminent." This is a religious war about how they can finish off the Christians in Egypt," he said.

Most conflicts originate in the non-religious sphere, relating to earthly matters like love affairs, kidnappings or rapes. But as soon as word gets out that the victim and the perpetrator are of different faiths, the entire Coptic community can become a target.

The regime claims that sectarian violence does not exist. Incidents are dismissed as little more than neighbourly spats that have spun out of control. But the fact that security forces are massively deployed following each incident proves that Egypt's rulers know the tension is real.

Copts and Muslims: world's apart

The number of people who convert annually is a mystery. "A few hundred at least," father Mathias said, but that might be mere wishful thinking. Even the total number of Copts is a closely guarded secret in Egypt, though it should be easy for the government to estimate the figure, since it keeps records of citizens' religious affiliation. It is commonly estimated that eight million Copts live in Egypt, comprising about ten percent of the population. This makes the Copts the Middle East's largest Christian minority by far.

Socially however, Muslims and Copts are slowly drifting apart, already inhabiting different worlds. Many Copts feel like strangers in their own land. Within their church, a call for a more confrontational stance is gathering strength.

Currently, Katreen cannot count on her church for protection. "They are afraid to get into trouble with the regime," said Matias, a priest with a rebellious reputation. The church enjoys the protection of the state as long as it remains on the sidelines and does not try to convert people, he explained. So much so, that some see the Coptic Pope Shenouda III as a stooge of president Hosni Mubarak.

A dangerous loss of faith

Katreen was baptised in July. Before the ceremony she went by the name of Nagla al-Iman. "I began to notice that violence against women was often justified by citing the Koran or other teachings," she said, trying to explain why her faith first began to waver. She started working for an organisation committed to helping women who had fallen victim to abuse.

She was married to a professor of Islamic law who taught at the Al-Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest and most renowned Sunni institution of learning in the world. She was able to hide her religious doubts from her husband until he caught her reading the Bible. They went their separate ways five years ago.

Katreen is not afraid of her husband, but she cannot say the same of his social circle. "When my conversion became public knowledge, he was immediately offered a job in Saudi Arabia," she said. "on the condition he would take the kids with him."

He refused, but outside meddling did not stop here. "When we were negotiating a custodial arrangement a lawyer working for the Muslim Brotherhood tried to interfere," Katreen said. "They want to preserve the children for Islam; that is their sole motive."

A mother fears her children may be kidnapped

In the meanwhile, her son Ibrahim (10) sat at the computer chatting on paltalk.com. "We are exchanging pictures of Father Shenouda," he said excitedly, referring to the 89-year old Coptic pope. In his online chat-group, Ibrahim had adopted the nickname "Little Convert." His mother said she feared that her son might be snatched from her in an unguarded moment.

Like Katreen, he is a great fan of the highly confrontational Coptic priest, Zakaria Boutros, a very vocal critic of Islam. Boutros fled to the US in the 1990s and has been calling on Egyptian Copts to defend themselves since 2003 on a satellite TV-channel.

The church's leadership has publicly denounced Boutros, as it has the Coptic diaspora who oppose Mubarak's regime and anti-Christian violence in Egypt from abroad. The Church's argument against them is the same as the regime's: their actions give Egypt a bad name.

For those that speak out: an uncertain fate

Katreen spoke to Boutros through paltalk.com. He encouraged her to convert to Christianity. "It took a while before I found someone willing to baptise me," she said. "A lot of priests were afraid of me, afraid of the trouble I might bring and afraid for their careers." Matias shook his head in disapproval. "It is a crying shame that the church is leaving new believers to their own devices just so they can keep the peace," he said.

When government security agents arrested the 28-year old Coptic blogger Hani Nazeer last year, dissenting voices were all but absent. He has been imprisoned ever since, without trial or even formal charges. The fate of Father Wahba offers another cautionary tale. He married an Islamic woman and a Christian man without knowing the women's true identity. The bride had pretended to be Christian. Still, the priest was sentenced to five years in jail. The Church has remained silent on the matter.

Father Matias is ready. "I say what the Church dare not. I do what the Church fails to do." He does not expect any support when he gets in trouble with the Egyptian regime. "Only God can help me.'"

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