TIME: Around 200 men flooded out of the al-Qa'id Ibrahim mosque into the midday sunlight following the Friday afternoon prayers in Alexandria. They held up banners before the hundreds of black-clad riot police who were there to greet them, and immediately began to chant. "Shenouda is the enemy of God," they yelled, referring to Pope Shenouda III, the head of the Coptic Church, Egypt's largest religious minority. "Shenouda is an infidel ... State security, where is your Islam? Why did you leave the criminals alone?"
Much of the rage expressed by the members of the hard-line Salafi sect of Islam stems from one woman. Not much is known about Camilia Shehata, a priest's wife from Upper Egypt, whose story (or lack thereof) has gripped the Middle East's most populous nation since the summer, sparking waves of angry protests and emotional editorials. Shehata disappeared from her home for several days in July after having reportedly converted to Islam — some say in an effort to get a divorce, which is not permitted by the Coptic Church. At first, the Christians protested — accusing Muslims of kidnapping a Christian and forcing her to convert. When she re-emerged, it was the Muslims' turn. Many now believe Shehata was forcibly returned to her home and the Coptic Church by state authorities, only to become sequestered against her will within the confines of a monastery.
"We do not know anything except that she was married to a priest and she ran away from that marriage. Everything else is just rumors, and that is the problem," says Amr Khafagy, the editor in chief of the independent al-Shorouq newspaper, which has run four stories and an editorial about Shehata. "The government never said the absolute truth and the church never said the absolute truth. And the media blew these rumors out of proportion."
It's not the first time a Christian has converted to Islam, but conversion has long been a sensitive issue in a state where Copts worry about rising Muslim religiosity and Muslims increasingly see Copts as existing outside the law. It is also one of the first times the state has interfered in an individual's conversion, claims Rafiq Habib, a Coptic intellectual. If they hadn't, he says, this never would have gotten so out of hand. "From the public perspective, it was a sign that the role of the church and the position of the Copts has changed in the last years — that they have become allies of the state and allies of the President."
Wafaa Constantine, who was also the wife of a priest, reportedly converted to Islam in 2004 and wound up in a monastery as well. Neither woman has appeared in public since their returns to the church, and the Salafi protests of late have invoked both names. "Today we hold a standoff to free our sister hostages from the church," explained one of the protesters, Atef Wael. "Whenever a sister converts to Islam, they keep her in the church and they torture her to make her appear before the media saying that she is a Christian, not a Muslim." Other protesters outside the mosque on Friday and in recent weeks have displayed pictures of women they allege are Shehata, Constantine and others held captive by the church. Some sobbed as they chanted slogans comparing their struggle to the Crusades. >>> Abigail Hauslohner, Alexandria | Monday, November 08, 2010
