Wafaa Kostantin, the wife of a Coptic priest, has renounced her conversion to Islam and agreed to return to the Christian fold, Al Hayat reports today. The reason for her decision is that she “wanted to end the siege that had been imposed on her.” The problem here would be that Islam is an easy religion to join, but not such an easy religion to leave. On paper, the consequence of converting out of Islam is death. The Egyptian public prosecutor, who it seems is responsible for this affair, avoided this problem by saying in his report that she never actually converted to Islam, and therefore she “only retreated from seductive thoughts about converting to Islam.”
A group of Egyptian intellectuals, “most of them with Islamic leanings,” have released a statement criticizing the government for “submitting to the blackmail of Coptic extremists by surrendering her to the church to be detained against her will.”
The hypocrisy is plain as day here. A few days ago when it was thought that Kostantin had been pressured to convert to Islam by her boss in the civil service, there were protests and outrage in the Coptic community. The government, so as to avoid sectarian tensions, found the lady and handed her over to church officials who kept her under house arrest for 10 days while a team of four priests convinced her to return to the cross. Now who’s pressuring who?
I’m sorry mate – indulge me. Who IS pressuring who? I can’t seem to make a judgement either way.
Another really dumb move by the Egyptian government. Appease a few million Copts and anger tens of million Muslims instead, possibly hundreds of millions worldwide if word of this gets out (which I doubt will ever happen, I don’t think any international media outlets will pick this up). Real diplomatic stuff, indeed. They may have avoided sectarian conflict, but surely this will have consequences sooner or later.
And Copts have lost all right to complain about forced conversions from now on, if that were ever more than just another political fairytale.
As for the Shariah penalty for apostasy, technically it would be thrown out of any Shariah court because the lady was forced to apostatise. Of course they can’t admit to that so they have to make up a lie to acquit her. It’s insulting how they still go out of their way to pretend they respect or adhere to the constitution and the laws of the land, just drop the charade already.
the hypocracy for the favour of coptics is sth that is really very obvious and harming to the society as a whole, and i say to the coptics, from when did Islam force ppl to become muslims, who is forcing who, and where u angry about she being forced, or for she being a muslim in general, this is really an important question
and saying that Islam is a hard religion to get out of it, is it a game to go to a religion and realizing that it is not suitable, how rediculous!!
many christians convert to Islam everyday, and they claim that the coptics perform violent actions towards them to return them to the hands of christianity, is this not considered forcing?
In response to Hellme– what I meant was that the Copts complained when they thought Muslims had pressured Wafaa Konstantin to convert to Islam. However, the Copts it now appears were more guilty of pressuring her to renounce her conversion than were the Muslims of pressuring her to convert in the first place. Hope this clarifies my intent.
Well, to be honest, they do have ‘first rights’ to her. Law dictates that they have the right of access as soon as she plans to convert, in attempts to convince her otherwise. Whether they were previously granted such rights, is unclear. But yes, the hypocricy is still glaringly obvious. They are, finally, Egyptian. Egyptian hypocricy knows no God (I am Egyptian, so it’s fair game ;))
Most moderate Muslims will tell you that there is no compulsion in religion – a forced Muslim does the ‘nation of Islam’ no good. I am certain this applies to all religions.
Thanks for that.
i am not sure if this is really that badly done by the egyptian government. there was no way of figuring out what really happened and even if they did, noone would believe it. therefor it was a pure political matter. and the egyptian government did not act on internal considerations but on international considerations. i have been asked at least 3 times in the last weeks if there is any anti-coptic policies in place in egypt (i live in switzerland). people here did hear of the whole matter and follow it on the sidelines. but probably the decision of the egyptian government won’t do any good, as media has already dropped the matter again and the people will have read only about the “forced conversion” and the following riots and not about the whole follow up.
moritz
Very true Moritz – I’m being probed for my own anti-Coptic sentiments simply because I am Egyptian – the people asking aren’t even sure what faith I prescribe to, based purely on the conjecture that forced conversion is something of a ‘Egyptian’ past-time (“hey guys, let’s go convert some ‘blue bones.'”)
It’s interesting how anti-X sentiment flairs up, even in terribly non-politicised, celebrity worshipping circles like the ones I tend to find myself exposed to.
when are we going to grow up as a nation belives in freedom for all its citizins to beleive in what they want.
But in any islamic country this is difficult because of fear of death if they commit apostasy as per koran.
the country will be much better if no religen controllig the people’s behavior.
Wafa Konstantin was killed by her own mother. She killed her daughter with a knife while her daughter was sleeping. The reason for this killing was that Wafa wanted to leave her man and become a Muslim.
Camelia Shehata will face the same fate if not rescued from the hands of fundamentalistic Christians.