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Egypt: Father's Brief Conversion Traps Daughters in Islam
ISTANBUL, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – An Egyptian Coptic Christian woman has been sentenced to three years in prison for failing to uphold her Islamic identity – an identity she didn’t know she had for over four decades. Sisters Shadia and Bahia Nagy El-Sisi, both in their late 40s and residents of the small east Delta town Mit-Ghamr, were arrested and tried for claiming their official religious identity as Christian. Unknown to them, their religious identity changed 46 years ago due to their father’s brief conversion to Islam. Both are illiterate. Shadia El-Sisi was tried for stating her religion as Christian on her marriage certificate and sentenced to three years in prison on Nov. 21, 2007. She was released two months later. Last Sept. 23 a judge also sentenced Bahia El-Sisi to three years in prison for “forging” her marriage certificate by stating her religion as Christian. Their father, Nagy El-Sisi, converted to Islam in 1962 during a brief marital dispute in order to divorce his wife and potentially gain custody of his daughters, the sisters’ lawyer Peter Ramses told Compass. Egyptian law is influenced by Islamic jurisprudence (sharia), which automatically awards child custody to whichever parent has the “superior” religion and dictates “no jurisdiction of a non-Muslim over a Muslim.” If Bahia El-Sisi’s identity as a Muslim stands, then her religious status could potentially create a domino effect that would require her husband to convert to Islam or have their marriage nullified. Her children, too, would be registered as Muslims. Both women are married to Christians. “All of their children and grandchildren would be registered as Muslims,” Ramses said. “[The ruling] would affect many people.”
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India: Evidence Concocted against Christians in Murder of Hindu Leader
NEW DELHI, October 10 (Compass Direct News) – After police in the eastern state of Orissa confirmed this week that Maoists killed Hindu nationalist leader Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati, a Hindu extremist group circulated allegedly forged documents in an attempt to implicate a local church in the Aug. 23 murder. The Hindu Jagaran Samukhya (Society for Revival of Hinduism) circulated documents saying the plan to kill Saraswati in Kandhamal district was made at a meeting at Bethikala Church on May 25 attended by 17 people following a briefing and command from religious leaders, the Press Trust of India news agency reported yesterday. Local Christian leaders responded by saying they will file civil and criminal defamation charges. Father Joseph Kalathil from the Catholic Archbishop House in Bhubaneswar and the Rev. Fr. Prafulla Ku Sabhapati, president of the Bethikala Parish Council of Kandhamal, said in a statement. “Not only our signatures were forged, the contents of the documents were also fabricated.” On Oct. 6 Orissa state police confirmed that Maoists killed Saraswati, a day after the chief of the Orissa unit of the banned Communist Party of India-Maoist, Sabyasachi Panda, told NDTV 24X7 news that his organization was behind the murder. “We left two letters claiming responsibility for the murders. But the [Chief Minister Naveen] Patnaik government suppressed those letters,” Panda said. The Indian Express had reported that three Christians had confessed their involvement in the murder – after police tortured them into confessing a crime they did not commit, according to a representative of the Christian Legal Association.
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Pakistan: Pastor Suffers Police Attacks, Death Threats
ISTANBUL, October 9 (Compass Direct News) – A Pakistani pastor and his family in Punjab province have been living in fear for months after death threats from a murder suspect and repeated attacks on their house by police squads. Pastor Christopher Manzer, 55, of Jhugian Baja Singh, told Compass by telephone that a Muslim man, Mohammad Nawaz, blames him for the loss of his wife as the pastor counseled her after she returned to her father having regretted converting to Islam. Manzer said Nawaz has enlisted extremist Muslim groups to mount a wave of attacks on him. “I’m a Christian pastor, and in Pakistan you know it is a trend to hurt the Christians,” Manzer told Compass. “Most Christians are suffering very much.” Nawaz considers the pastor responsible for his divorce and the subsequent deaths of his ex-wife and unborn baby after a botched abortion. Nawaz’s uncle, a man identified only as Makha whom Nishter Colony police are seeking in connection with the murders of two Christian men in the past three months, has called the pastor twice telling him to leave town or die. At the same time, officers from different police stations have beaten Manzer on five occasions.
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Philippines: Christians Fear Failed Pact Increases Risk of Reprisals
DUBLIN, October 6 (Compass Direct News) – Militant Islamists in the Philippine island of Mindanao have stepped up their attacks on majority-Christian villages following the failure of a peace agreement that would have enlarged an existing Muslim autonomous region there. With Muslim commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the southern Philippines yesterday saying ongoing support from the international community was necessary to prevent full-scale war breaking out in Mindanao, both Muslim and Christian residents in the disputed territories were fearful of what the future might hold. “The problem is that many people living in these areas don’t want to be part of a Muslim autonomous region,” a source in Mindanao who preferred to remain anonymous told Compass. “The closer you get to these zones, the more nervous people are.” A Christian family from the area said many people were afraid to sleep at night because they kept hearing reports that they would be attacked at midnight.
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India: Three More Christians Murdered in Orissa
NEW DELHI, October 3 (Compass Direct News) – At least two more Christians were killed today in Orissa state’s Kandhamal district after Hindu extremists this week set fire to nearly 400 homes there and in Boudh district. A third man succumbed to axe injuries on Wednesday (Oct. 1). Weeks after Hindu extremist violence erupted against Christians, this morning tribal peoples in Sindhipankha village killed Dushashan Majhi, a local influential Christian, first shooting him and them cutting him to pieces. The mob then turned on Sanyasi Majhi, also said to be Christian, who was with Dushashan Majhi. There were unconfirmed reports that a third victim was killed along with the other two. A local Christian who wished to remain unnamed told Compass that after killing the two men, the assailants massacred cattle belonging to village Christians and burned Christian-owned houses. On Wednesday (Oct. 1), Lalji Nayak, believed to be about 80 years old, died from axe wounds after a Hindu extremist mob attacked his village of Hrudangia the previous day. Nayak and 14 others were wounded, with Nayak struck between his neck and chest. At press time Nayak’s widow Mandaki, who received an axe blow just below the ear, remained in the medical center with a serious head injury. Nayak’s brother, Junas Nayak, was taken to Cuttack Medical College for gunshot wounds. He remained in critical condition at press time with multiple gunshot wounds.
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