مقالات الدكتور سليم نجيب

[ELSHIEKH]

Kidnapping a village girl, mostly under age, forcing her to
change her religion to Islam and marrying her by force, to a Muslim man,
under threats and intimidations, are against every tradition and every
religion. They threaten the safety of Coptic Christian families and their
daughters.
Such crimes are committed in daylight under the sight, hearing and protection of the police and the National security forces. Such forces
are supposed to protect the individuals and the families from any kind of
crime, and not to protect the such criminals whose crimes are below the
animal level.

Such crimes are increasing with an alarming rate since the
Nineteen Seventies, up to this day. When the news of these crimes surface
inthe Egyptian and/or the foreign media, some Egyptian officials reject and
ridicule them. We would be told; such incidents are sporadic and rare; a
Christian girl was in love with a Muslim man; the girl converted to Islam by
Christians in Egypt.

Evidence show that these crimes are planned to terrify
Christian families living in Upper Egypt, destroy and force them to
immigrate to the poorest districts in Cairo, such as the "Garbage Village".
Such a goal, is well planned and well executed since the time of the late
President Sadat, the fruit of which are now collected at the present time
of President Moubarak.

There crimes are stated in items 44 - 47, in the Egyptian CivilLaw no. 131
of 1948. Such laws specify that the mature age of a girl is 21
years, while item 2 of the Civil Law no. 12, 1996, specify that the mature
age of the boy is 18 years. Moreover, the Imam of Al-Azhar, Dr. Tantawystated in a Fatwa that it is illegal to force a Christian girl under age to
marry a Muslim man and she should not declare her conversion to Islam
beforereaching the age of 21. It is up to her guardian to represent her before

In spite of all that, the Al-Azhar authorities accept the
conversion to Islam of Christian girls who are under age. The Christian
girl need only to recite the phrase "There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is
his prophet", and she is converted to Islam. Such reciting is forced upon
the Christian girl under threats. Immediately after that, the girl is
threatened that if she changed her mind and abandon Islam she would be an
apostate and be subject to death. If the girl escaped and went back to her
Christian family, the family as well as the Coptic Priests involved in the
problem, would be subject to insults, intimidation and threats even from
the police force