BY : Anugrah Kumar, Christian Post Contributor
Egyptian authorities arrested a Coptic Christian engineer at his home in Alexandria, Egypt, and accused him of speaking against Islam after he objected online to the teaching of Islam in the country’s schools.
Officers from Egypt’s National Security agency took Sherif Wagih Fahmi, 41, after posing as gas company workers to get him to the door, according to the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern.
Two men in plain clothes arrived at his building around 1 p.m. on Oct. 5, and neighbors directed them to his apartment, ICC said.
His sister, Emy, told Coptic Solidarity, a group that campaigns for the rights of Egypt’s Copts, in an interview that Fahmi’s young daughter spoke to the men through the closed door. The girl said nobody else was home and her father was asleep, and the men told her to wake him.
Fahmi left with them. The last thing he said to his daughter was that he was going downstairs to settle the gas bill, his sister said.
The men carried no arrest warrant, according to Emy. Neighbors filmed them leading Fahmi along the street behind the building and putting him in a white minibus, but fear of trouble kept them from telling the family at first.
Fahmi’s wife began phoning his friends when he did not come back. She then went from street to street near the house, speaking to people who had seen the men, and learned of his arrest by 10 p.m.
Relatives turned to friends and to priests at their church. The priests said Fahmi was first taken to a National Security office in Alexandria’s Smouha area, where Emy believes he spent over a week.
He has since been moved to the Montaza First Police Station in Victoria, Alexandria.
Relatives may leave food, clothes and other basic items there on Tuesdays and Fridays. They are not allowed to see him or talk to him by phone.
The family does not know how Fahmi is being treated. When his wife brought money so he could buy food at the canteen, an officer told her he knew Fahmi liked his tea with two spoonfuls of sugar. Emy said the family could not tell what he was hinting at.
The family hired a lawyer, and the case has a number, Emy said. The lawyer has yet to share the details.
Emy said her brother was charged with publishing false information on the internet. Her brother’s post dealt with what she called the Islamization of education in Egypt.
Fahmi was upset that schools had dropped the national anthem at morning assembly in favor of a religious one, she said. She added that the state plans to bring in kuttabs, or Quranic schools, and that every student, Muslim or not, would be expected to learn roughly one-quarter of the Quran by heart.
Egypt’s Penal Code, in Article 98(f), makes it a crime to use religion to spread extremist ideas with the aim of causing sedition, insulting any of the divinely revealed faiths or harming national unity.
Fourteen people have been arrested in Egypt since September for voicing beliefs outside Islam.
Priests who intervened were told Fahmi would be freed after two or three weeks. The family has heard nothing since.
Emy said the detention looked like a warning to young people, Copts in particular, to say nothing about the state or their faith.
She has spoken about the case on independent media programs, and some lawyers have told her to stop posting and talking about it.
She listed other people held for their views, including Augustine Samaan, Romany Gharib, Saeed Abu Mostafa and six young men tied to a play called “Khalawis.” “There is no freedom of belief or freedom of expression in Egypt,” she said.
Mahmoud Shalaby, a researcher covering the region for the human rights group Amnesty International, said earlier this year that Egyptian authorities “must stop criminalizing discussions about religious beliefs.”
Emy urged Copts and moderate Muslims in Egypt to speak up for their rights. “What is happening to your Coptic brother today will happen to you as well,” she said.
Photo Courtesy :
