Are those who fret over the religious conversion of a handful of Egyptians making a mountain out of a molehill? Gamal Nkrumah sounds out interested parties "Why is the United States so interested in religious freedoms? Why does it meddle in the affairs of other countries, ostensibly close allies? I strongly believe that the reason religious controversies are currently in vogue is that unfortunately certain Christian organisations abroad, especially in North America, are being used to foment trouble," Abdel-Moeti Bayoumi, a prominent member of the Islamic Research Academy of Al-Azhar, the country's highest Islamic religious institution, told Al-Ahram Weekly. "There are Muslims who are being bribed and brainwashed to become Christian. Foreign forces have a hand in all this. Call me a conspiracy theorist, but I am certain that this phenomenon is a calculated plot to destabilise the country." Bayoumi's unequivocal convictions are widespread. "I would say that the tensions, accusations and counter-accusations began in 1970, when the first efforts were made at a serious rapprochement between Egypt and the US. That was a turning point. Before that, relations between Muslims and Christians were amicable," Bayoumi explained. "The current confessional tensions must be regarded with utter seriousness as a question of national security. This is not merely something related to the freedom of religion and civic rights," he added. The modern history of confessional tensions between the Muslim majority of Egypt and their minority Coptic Christian compatriots first hit the headlines in the 1970s. These tensions, including acts of violence and communal strife, culminated in the 3 September 1981 presidential decree by former president Anwar El-Sadat ordering the Coptic Pope Shenouda III to be confined to the monastery of Saint Bishoi, the incarceration of eight bishops, 24 Coptic priests and a number of activist Christian laymen. The seeds of discontent were sown. Relations between Muslims and Copts were never quite the same again. However, in 1985, President Hosni Mubarak revoked Sadat's decree and relations between the two communities improved tremendously. It is against this backdrop that the current tensions have raised the alarm bells. There has been a marked increase in violence between the two communities in recent years. Tensions began to build up slowly in the 1990s with the rise of Islamist militancy, especially in Upper Egypt where the percentage of Copts among the population is significantly higher than in the rest of the country. Matters came to a head in January 2002 in the village of Al-Kosheh in the Minya governorate, Upper Egypt and in Alexandria last year. Rumours began to circulate of Muslims forcibly converting Christian women to Islam. The controversy of Wafaa Constantine, a Coptic Christian woman who embraced Islam, was the subject of heated and acrimonious debate. Then last month, the question of Mohamed Hegazi, a 25-year-old Muslim who has proclaimed that he has converted to Christianity and would like to officially be counted as a Christian caused something of a hullabaloo in the media. The contentious question of the new computerised identity cards on which Egyptians have to state their religion rose to the fore. "If a Christian embraces Islam, he or she is obliged to change his or her religion on their ID cards. This matter is of paramount importance as far as marital status and inheritance rights are concerned," Bayoumi stressed. Other Muslim scholars beg to differ. "Personally, and I do not speak in an official capacity, I am against the insertion of one's religion in their ID cards. No civilised country states one's religion on their ID cards. One's religion is a personal, private matter," Ali El-Simman head of the Committee for Inter-Faith Dialogue, told the Weekly. "We are in the age of globalisation. Religion should be relegated to the private, not public realm," he added. This is not a universal sentiment, however. "It is better for those Muslims who have converted to Christianity to come out in the open and not practise their new religion in secret. Let them change their religious affiliation on their ID cards, after all what percentage of the population do they constitute? An insignificant minority," a Coptic priest Father Mikhail told the Weekly. From time immemorial, Egypt's history has combined swashbuckling bravado and piety, which makes for a combustible effervescence: the moulids, or religious fiestas, where Muslims and Christians mingle and panegyrise their common venerated saints of the two religions, are living testament to the vitality and spontaneity of national religious unity. For centuries, Christians and Muslims have lived in peaceful co-existence, albeit periodically precariously so. Admittedly there was a time in the swinging 1960s when Muslims and Christians were indistinguishable by dress and by name. Today, virtually 90 per cent of Muslim women don the higab, and Christians proudly display their crosses in defiance to what is widely perceived to be the hardening of Muslim attitudes to Christians. Increasingly Muslims prefer distinctly Islamic names for their progeny such as Islam and Abdel-Rahman. And likewise, Christians christen their children with traditional Coptic names -- Kyeirollos (Cyril) or Yuhanna (John). It is against this backdrop that the dispute concerning the conversion of Muslims to Christianity has reached renewed heights. The pivotal question, though, is whether conversion from Islam to Christianity is a civil rights issue or a question to be relegated to the religious domain, to be divined by the religious authorities. Simultaneously, religious conversion is a personal and legal matter, open to public debate and subject to public scrutiny. Pundits have picked up the pieces. The result of having these different interpretations has been to produce a somewhat splintered list of contenders to the real upholders of truth. The perennial question has been: is the rise of militant political Islam to blame? Or, is it rather interference from Western powers and their local Christian lackeys? Secularist human rights activists and religious fundamentalists are not perhaps the most natural of bedfellows. However, human rights activists have gone the extra mile to come to the rescue of the handful of converts who have gone public. Across Egypt, human rights activists and lawyers are paying court to fresh ideas -- including tackling the prickly question of religious freedom. But today, in this era of unprecedented religiosity, there is a new premium on human rights legal expertise. There are pressures, both social and institutional, exacerbating the problem. Families are split, in bitter disputes over the subject, as in the case of Hegazi. His father claims that he was bribed and brainwashed. Are these questions for rights activists, solicitors, barristers and judges to answer? Or, should these issues remain in the domain of the religious authorities? These pertinent questions continue to dog the converts and fuel the debate over religious freedom. Old assumptions are being challenged. Contentment with traditional ways is fast disappearing among certain segments of the population, especially the young. Questioning perceived wisdom has become commonplace. The charges levelled against Christians who proselytise are numerous and serious. DVDs and cassette tapes featuring the experiences of Muslims who have embraced Christianity abound. Typical is the case of a notorious Muslim convert to Christianity, one Nahed Metwalli. Hers was a Saul-to-Paul conversion. As a "fanatical", to use her own expression, headmistress who persistently persecuted her Christian staff, she "suddenly saw the light". Tearfully, she recounts her story. Her "vision" of Jesus Christ, his chiding her for persecuting Christians, her repentance and subjugation, in turn, to untold suffering and recriminations by her Muslim family and friends. She was abandoned by her husband and children, and treated as a pariah at work before being forced to resign her job. She narrates how she was smuggled out of the country. She claims to have been assisted by a Western embassy in Cairo, a foreign power that adopted her cause. But hers is not the only such story. There are thousands of such cassette and video tapes and DVDs in circulation around the country. And many deeply-offended Muslims believe that there is a conspiracy at work. Indeed, the suspicion that Western powers are fomenting trouble by deepening an already dangerous rift between Muslims and Christians in Egypt is rife. MECA, the Canadian-based Middle East Christian Association, incarnates the double standards being used in the media. The press has been replete with questions about who is behind MECA . The head of MECA in Egypt, Adel Fawzi, and his colleague Peter Ezzat Mounir Hanna were recently detained by the security forces. The latter was charged with proselytiszing, bribing and promising the infamous Hegazi that he will be smuggled out of the country. "Egyptians are deeply religious by nature," is a saying frequently heard. Both Muslims and Coptic Christians claim so. "Egyptians have been an intensely religious people since the days of the Pharaohs," another Copt chipped in. "I think the numbers of Muslim converts to Christianity are fast growing," a Coptic layman interjected. "But how many are these converts? A hundred? Say, a thousand? Probably, no more than 50. Why make a mountain out of a molehill? We are a nation of 80 million people," a Coptic priest who spoke on condition of anonymity told the Weekly. But why on earth would Muslims be interested in Christianity? "I believe that there is something very attractive in the nature of our [Coptic] rites. Take marriage, for example, it is a solid institution in Christianity -- or at least, that is what our conjugal vows promise: 'What therefore God hath joined together let no man put asunder'. That is a much firmer basis for marital stability," the Coptic priest noted. "Perhaps, that is one of the reasons why some Muslims are attracted to Christianity," he added. Be that as it may, Muslims point out that there are recently over 1,000 pending legal cases of Christians converting to Islam in order to obtain a divorce. Many Muslims suspect that Christian missionaries operate on the basis of "start small, think big". That is to say they start with a few converts and end up with a big following. How plausible are these accusations? "These conversions may not always bring bouts of contrition, but they highlight pertinent legal and religious questions. They also emphasise the entire notion of national identity," Sheikh Gamal Qutb, former member of Al-Azhar's Fatwa Committee, told the Weekly. The vital question is: do contemporary Egyptians want the religious conversions issue to be treated as a matter of democratisation and civic rights or is it to be consigned to something of a superbly mediaeval workout.
