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| Africa: North |
| Egyptian Moslems Debate With Egyptian Christians About Religion |
| 2005-01-16 |
| From Compass Direct The Egyptian Christian director of a home for troubled Coptic girls goes on trial January 16 on criminal charges before Cairo's Abbassiya Criminal Court No. 15. Shafik Saleh Shafik, 57, is accused of allegedly holding a 16-year-old Coptic girl against her will and without her parents' permission, and also of trying to rape her. But according to Shafik, who holds both Egyptian and American citizenship, the "clearly false" case against him is an attempt to close down his recovery ministry among Coptic girls who are being enticed to leave their Christian families and convert to Islam. "The state security police wrote on their report about me that I am a 'very dangerous man,' because I am preaching Christianity," Shafik told Compass. The case began four months ago when one of 27 girls living in his "safe-house" residence in Cairo's El-Salam district escaped from the facility the morning after her family placed her there. Shouting wildly at a nearby coffeehouse, the girl demanded police protection from Shafik and other Christians who she claimed had beaten and mistreated her. It was a parish priest who had brought Magda Refaat Gayed to Shafik on September 5, saying that the police had returned the girl to her Coptic family after she had run away with a Muslim boy. The youngest in a lower middle class family of 10 children, Magda had been reported missing and feared kidnapped. But two weeks later, she was found living with an Islamic group who were teaching her Muslim rituals, promising that the boy who eloped with her would marry her after she converted to Islam. Her traditional Coptic cross tattoo on her wrist had already been surgically removed. At the request of Magda's male relatives, who were at a loss how to handle her after the police brought her back, Shafik agreed to accept her in his safe-house. But the following morning, Magda escaped from a bedroom window and went to a nearby coffeehouse, where she began screaming, "Christians have beaten and raped me!" She named Shafik as her attacker, displaying chains she said he had used to confine her. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |