Life on Hold for Egyptian Christian Arrested for his Faith
CAIRO, Egypt (CDN) - An Egyptian who left Islam to become a Christian and consequently lost his wife, children and business is waiting to see if the government will now take away his freedom for "defaming" Islam.
Ashraf Thabet, 45, is charged with defaming a revealed religion, Article 98f of the Egyptian Penal Code. The charges stem from Thabet's six-year search for spiritual meaning that eventually led him to become a Christian. During his search, he shared his doubts about Islam and told others what he was learning about Jesus Christ.
Local religious authorities, incensed at Thabet's ideas, notified Egypt's State Security Intelligence service (SSI), which arrested and charged him with defamation. If found guilty, Thabet would face up to five years in jail. But because prosecutors have made no move to try the case, Thabet lives in limbo and is subject to a regular barrage of death threats from people in his community in Port Said in northeast Egypt.
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"I don't know what is going to happen in the future," Thabet said. "They're making life hard for me. I can't get back my computer. I can't get back anything."
Searching
Thabet said that before his search began he was a committed Muslim who did his best to observe its rules, including those for prayer and fasting.
"I wasn't an extremist, but I was committed to praying and to reading the Quran," Thabet said. "I went to the Hajj. I did the usual things. I followed the Quran for the most part."
Despite his efforts, Thabet admitted that his understanding of God was based on fear and routine, nearly rote obedience.
"There was no spiritual relationship between myself and God," he said. "In general I was always cautious about my relationship with God. I didn't want to do anything wrong."
Thabet started looking at Christian Web sites, but his real interest in Christianity began when he watched the film, "The Passion of the Christ" in 2004.
"When I watched 'The Passion of the Christ,' I was very touched by Jesus' story, and I wanted to read more about Him," Thabet said. "So I asked a friend how I could know more about Jesus, and he told me, 'The Bible.'"
His friend, a Christian Copt, did not get him a Bible until a month later because, Thabet thinks, he was afraid of being accused of proselytizing. Thabet began reading the Bible, which had a powerful impact on him, especially the Sermon on the Mount.
"I felt inside myself that these were the words of God," he said. "The Bible tells people to give and to give out freely, so these words couldn't be the words of a human being or a [mere] person, because human beings are inherently selfish."
Thabet was also struck by the lives that the early followers of Jesus led, especially their willingness to lose everything, including their lives, for Christ.
The final factor that led Thabet to become a Christian came from Islam's "Ninety-Nine Names of Allah," attributes of God according to the Quran and tradition. In the names, God is called a "healer" a "resurrecter" and "just."
"I started to compare all these characteristics with the characteristics of Jesus, and I saw that Jesus had a lot of the characteristics that God had, not only the human characteristics, being just and being kind, but there were similarities in the supernatural characteristics, like that He raised people from the dead," he said. "In the Quran only God could raise people from the dead. I noticed that Jesus could raise people from the dead, and that He could heal people. Once I started to notice the similarities between God and Jesus, I started believing that Jesus is the Son of God."
Thabet said he cared about others "going the right way," so he started having conversations with Muslim friends.
At first, people respected Thabet or tolerated what was seen as an awkward curiosity. But after he told his friends they were "only Muslim by inheritance," they started to turn against him. They asked him what he was going to be if he wasn't going to be a Muslim.
"I told them I started to read about Christianity, and I was starting to believe in it, and that's when they brought the elders to talk to me," he said.
The meeting didn't go well. The Islamic leaders were unable to answer his questions and ended up yelling at him. Then they reported him to the SSI.
Arrest
The SSI summoned Thabet and questioned him on his doubts about Islam.
Thabet said by the time he was done with the interrogation, the SSI officer looked almost sick and told him not to talk to anyone else in Port Said about religion.
"I don't encourage you to talk about these things with people or to open up these types of discussions, because it will just provoke people and make them angry," the officer told him, according to Thabet.
Two days later, Thabet said, the SSI ordered him to report for more questioning, this time with an officer who specialized in religious issues and countering missionaries. The officer wanted to know what made him start to doubt Islam. He asked specific questions about what Web sites he had been on and what books he had read, and whether he had been baptized.
Thabet said that at the time of his questioning, he was still struggling with his new beliefs. Part of him wanted something that would restore his faith in Islam, so he went to Internet chat rooms for religious discussion.
"A part of me wanted to feel that I was wrong, that there was an answer to my questions," he said. "I was looking for someone who would say 'No, no, this is how it is,' and that I would regain my trust back or not have any more doubts. But none of the people I talked to could answer me. They didn't say anything to any effect."
Thabet said he was always respectful, but Muslims found his questions provocative and became increasingly angry.
Eventually police came for Thabet. On March 22 at 3 a.m., he said, 11 officers from the SSI cut the power to his home, kicked down his front door and assaulted him in front of his crying wife and children.
Thabet quickly pulled away from the fight, once he realized they were officers from the SSI. The men swarmed over Thabet's home, seizing his computer and every book and CD he owned. They took him to jail.
Authorities interrogated Thabet non-stop for 12 hours, took a break and then interrogated him for seven more, he said.
Initially he was held for 15 days. Then authorities ordered he be held for another 15 days. Then they extended it again. Thabet said he spent the entire time in solitary confinement, and he wasn't informed of the "defamation of religion" charge against him until the end of 132 days in jail. He said he was not tortured, however, and that his interrogators and jailers were largely civil.
There was more hardship waiting for him at home. Muslim leaders in his neighborhood convinced his wife to divorce him and take his 10-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son.
"They gave her the money to file for a divorce, a car and another person to marry," Thabet said, adding that the Muslim leaders had offered him money too if he would stay in Islam. "In the beginning they tried to bribe me to come back to Islam, but I refused."
Thabet has only had a few brief moments with his children since he was arrested, mainly when his soon-to-be ex-wife came to their home to gather a few belongings. If she goes through with the divorce, according to Egyptian law it is likely Thabet will lose all parental rights to his children, including any right to see them.
In Egypt and most other Muslim-majority countries, leaving Islam is considered ample grounds for termination of parental rights. Thabet said the religious leaders consider him "lost to Islam" and are trying to "save" his wife and children.
He filed a report with police about the Muslim leaders bribing his wife – and about another man who swindled money from him – but police ignored both reports, he said.
Kamal Fahmi of Set My People Free to Worship Me, a group headquartered in Cairo dedicated to raising awareness about the problems faced by Muslims who become Christians, said that under Islam, "Muslim converts don't have the right to exist."
Arrests like Thabet's are common in Egypt.
"It is a tactic used to intimidate people and scare them from leaving Islam and taking alternative beliefs or moral codes," Fahmi said.
In Islam as it is most often practiced in Egypt, merely expressing doubt about Islam is considered wrong, Fahmi said. Questioning any of its claims is considered blasphemy and is punishable by imprisonment under a variety of charges in Egypt; it is punishable by death in some other countries.
"Saying, 'I don't believe in Muhammad,' is considered defaming Islam," Fahmi said. "Saying, 'I don't believe in Islam as it is not true,' can lead to death [murder], as you are considered an apostate," Fahmi said. "Even rejecting the Islamic moral codes can lead to the same thing. Criticizing any of the sharia [Islamic law] is considered blasphemy."
The Future
Thabet said he is uncertain what the future holds. He was released on Aug. 1 but, because he has the defamation of religion charge over his head – with no indication of when the case could go to court – he is unable to work and cannot even obtain a driver's license.
His savings are almost depleted, forcing him to borrow money from a Muslim friend. He is concerned about re-arrest and receives death threats on a regular basis. He is too afraid to leave his apartment on most days.
"There are a lot of phone threats," Thabet said. Noting he had been baptized three years ago, he said he has received phone threats in which someone tells him, "We are going to baptize you again with blood."
On numerous occasions while talking in Internet chat rooms, he has been told, "Look outside the window, we know where you are," Thabet said.
In recent days Muslims are angry at converts and at Christians in general, he said. "They're very worked up about religious issues."
He said he wants to leave Egypt but admits that, at his age, it would be very hard to start over. And if he stays in Egypt, he said, at least he will have a chance to see his children, however brief those encounters may be.
Since Thabet was released from jail on Aug. 1, authorities have seized his passport and summoned him four times for questioning. He said he thinks the SSI is trying to wear him down.
"Everyone is telling me that they [the government] want to make my life hard," he said. "The problem here in Egypt is the religious intolerance that is found in government ministries. The intolerance has reached a point where they can't think straight. Their intolerance makes them unaware of their own intolerance."
