Was an incident involving a priest's wife allegedly converting to Islam totally overblown? Reem Nafie investigates Although the priest's wife re-appeared, and the Coptic protests that surrounded her initial disappearance have died down, the current calm belies a lack of clarity regarding the saga as a whole. Wafaa Constantine, the wife of a Coptic priest in the Beheira village of Abul- Matameer 150 kilometres north of Cairo, resurfaced on 8 December, ending nearly two weeks of protests claiming that she was kidnapped and allegedly forced to convert to Islam. The story began on 27 November, when Constantine, the wife of Father Joseph Moawad, was reported missing by her brother. Her husband was ill at the time and seeking treatment in Alexandria. Five days later, the Beheira governor and local police officials informed Constantine's family that she had converted to Islam and was currently in Cairo with a Muslim family. Already anxious about her disappearance, Abul-Matameer's Copts began to protest. Many were highly sceptical of the scenario suggested by the police. Another story quickly evolved, that Constantine, 47, had allegedly fallen in love with her engineer colleague Mohamed El-Margun, who had convinced her that the only way they could get married would be if she converted to Islam. When the police questioned El-Margun, he said that he had no idea that Constantine had converted to Islam; he also claimed that there was no "relationship" between them. Many Copts, like Youth Bishop Moussa, a high-ranking Coptic official, remained unconvinced. El-Margun had probably "tackled sensitive issues in her life", namely that her bed-ridden husband was suffering from diabetes and has had both his legs amputated, "and played on them to convince her" to convert, Moussa told Al-Ahram Weekly. The issue could have easily been resolved in Abul-Matameer, Moussa said, if the police had returned Constantine to the church when she first disappeared, and allowed her to be questioned. "If she really did want to convert, then she is free to do so," he said, "but we need to ask her, and these are the legal procedures." The procedures he was referring to involve having anyone seeking to convert to Islam discuss his or her decision with a priest before his or her conversion is officially acknowledged. Moussa suggested that the police had acted in an "irresponsible and strange manner", by allowing Constantine to be taken to Cairo, even though they were aware of the fact that hundreds of angry Copts had gathered at the Abul- Matameer Church awaiting her arrival. "This is not just any woman, she is the wife of a priest," Moussa said, which meant, "the police cannot just announce that she has decided to become a Muslim, and expect that young, angry protesters will let the issue pass." Police officers at the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo said Constantine was brought to the capital because the police felt that she would not be safe in Abul-Matameer, especially after protesters waiting for her arrival had gathered in front of the church. "We needed to move her somewhere where we could provide her with protection," one officer said. Hundreds of Copts had also gathered at the cathedral compound in Abbasiya. By Tuesday 7 December, Moussa said, the situation had escalated because "the police kept promising us every day that Constantine would return to the church for us to talk to her, and every day we would wait, and she never came." The issue was finally resolved on Tuesday night, when Pope Shenouda III called Zakaria Azmi, chief of the presidential staff, and asked him to inform President Hosni Mubarak about the escalating situation. Only then did the church get a phone call from the police saying Constantine would be available for discussion the next day. On Wednesday, the 1,000 Copts at the cathedral started to hurl stones at riot police, allegedly injuring nearly 21 officers. Nearly a dozen protesters were also injured, as the police threw the stones back at the protesters. Around 30 young men were arrested on charges of participating in illegal demonstrations and causing unrest. Moussa claimed that those arrested were not amongst the demonstrators, and were only ordinary people leaving the church. Police officers said they were amongst those who were throwing stones from the cathedral's courtyard. Constantine was supposed to be back by the afternoon of 8 December, just before the Pope's weekly mass. "The Pope was to assure the protesters that she was back so that they could now leave in peace," Moussa said. She did not, however, return till late that night, and by then the Pope, "distressed" that she was not there on time, had left to a nearby monastery and did not address his weekly mass, as he "did not know what to say to the protesters," Moussa said. After Constantine was finally handed over to the church, she was transported to another undisclosed church where a committee is currently meeting with her on a daily basis to try and find out the entire truth. This church is surrounded by heavy security, and no outsiders are allowed to enter or meet with her. According to Moussa, who is one of the committee members that have met with her several times over the past week, Constantine seemed "drugged the first few days, and was unable to speak". Although Moussa implied that security forces had drugged her while transporting her to the church, security officials spoken to by the Weekly denied those claims, saying she was "lucid and fine" when she was handed over to the church. Moussa said most press reports claiming that Constantine had become a Muslim of her own free will, after watching several Islamic programmes on television, were untrue. Last Thursday's London-based Asharq Al-Awsat, claimed that Constantine had told the paper that she believed in her new religion, and that her alleged "love story was not true", and that everything that had been said about her was "rumours". According to Moussa, the press reports were untrue because "when she came to her senses and started to speak to us, she seemed to be convinced that she is still a Christian." Apparently, she was also worried about her son and daughter, who are both college students, and expressed concern about the rumours that had spread about her. Moussa told the Weekly that Constantine is "still a Christian, married to Father Joseph, and had never become a Muslim. It was all just a thought that came to her as a result of pressure from her colleague at work." Recent Coptic-Muslim tensions are the result of a deeper wound that has existed for the past 20 years or so, said Nabil Abdel-Fattah, the chief editor of the annual The State of Religion in Egypt Report, issued by Al-Ahram's Centre for Political and Strategic Studies. The under-representation of Copts on the political scene, their feeling that they are second class citizens, and their inability to express their viewpoints, are all factors that have contributed to the escalation of an individual incident, he said. Because the government has provided Copts with little room to participate in the political domain, Abdel-Fattah said, they are expressing themselves politically on issues of a social nature. Thus, when a woman decides to become a Muslim, this social issue takes on a political nature where the "church" expresses its feelings of persecution and under representation in civil society. Other complaints include restrictions on building churches. Moussa referred to this as a problem that needed to be solved; as long as it is buried, he said, it would continue to erupt every once in a while. In the Southern governorate of Assiut, for instance, priests are complaining that governorate officials have not given them permission to build new churches. The officials denied the accusations, saying that no new requests were received, and that there was not a need for new churches in Assiut. Moussa spoke of the general bureaucratic delays experienced by Christians who want to build churches in Egypt. He blamed a 1934 law that requires Christians to fulfil ten conditions, as well as obtain presidential permission, before a church is built. Moussa said one possible solution would be for "the government to create a committee to look into the problems of Coptic Christians and reach a fair reconciliation". Abdel-Fattah agreed, saying the Copts should return to the "political scene".
