Like primitive tribes with their savage rites, the Salafists in Mersa Matruh are yelling, kicking the ground hysterically and dancing. The reason behind this religious hysteria is the capture of a 14-year-old Coptic girl. Sarah Isaac is said to have voluntarily converted to Islam (it must be said that the Salafists campaign for a kind of Islam that is radically different from the mainstream and the Muslim majority's faith in Egypt). Salafists across the nation wish they had the chance to take part in the hysterical orgy in Mersa Matruh to mark Sarah Isaac's elopement with a young Salafist. These people claim that they are busy fighting non-believers (liberals and secularists) in Cairo over Egypt's post-revolution constitution. The Salafists are accusing liberals and secualarists of attempting to sidestep the Muslim Sharia (law) in the new constitution. In the meantime, the alleged non-believers, supported by the population, are worried that the Salafists are hell-bent on drafting a constitution that would reduce Egypt to a religious state. The Salafists are also accused of being determined to set the clock in Egypt back to the dark ages. Broadcasting their joyous news from Mersa Matruh, the Salafists proudly declare that the Coptic teenage girl's sensible decision to disown her family came when she ‘realised' the noble values of ‘their' Islam. In their deafening screams, they triumphantly claim that the girl's conversion is proof of Christianity's perversion. They also shamelessly allege that the young girl demonstrated her burning enthusiasm for her new religion by accepting a marriage proposal from a young Salafist in this western border province. All appeals by the girl's parents and wise Muslims in the town to release the captive and send her back to her devastated parents were ridiculed harshly and abusively by her captors. Mersa Matruh's Salafists also scorned the parents' statement that their daughter was too young to be accountable for her decisions. The girl's parents said that their daughter was kidnapped and seduced by a young Salafist several years older. According to marriage laws in Muslim-dominated Egypt, a female's age of consent is 18. The Salafists, in collaboration with other Islamists, are campaigning to lower the age of consent to nine. The Salafists are threatening to use all means at their disposal to resist any attempt by security authorities and Church officials to release the young captive. Thousands of Salafists demonstrated on April 11 last year-only weeks after the January 25 Revolution-in front of St. Mark's Cathedral in Abbassiya, Cairo. They called for the release of Camilia Shehata, a Coptic woman, who had allegedly converted to Islam. The Salafists, who took advantage of their new freedom to demonstrate, claimed that Camilia Shehata was held against her will in a monastery or church. It remains unclear why the Salafists are so obsessed with Coptic women and girls, while they ignore the men. Thanks to the fact that the few members of the Jewish community in Egypt are way over 80 years old, they are safe from the Salafists' perverted interest in Coptic women and girls irrespective of the victim's age or marital status. But all this does not alter the fact that some Coptic men have actually converted to Islam. However, the Salafists have never organised any hysterical orgies when a male Copt converted, nor do they help a converted Copt complete his change of mind by marrying a Muslim woman. According to Prophet Mohamed's teachings, a Muslim man, whether by birth or conversion, will only be a fully-fledged Muslim when he gets married. In other words, marriage constitutes half of Islam.
