On June 1, an 18-year-old, middle-class Coptic Christian woman in Upper Egypt went to school as usual – but was then caught in a web of Islamist students, administrators, police and sheikhs seeking to forcibly convert her and marry her to a Muslim.
A network of Muslim girls at her school in Assiut Governate had targeted her for two years on WhatsApp and Instagram chat groups, trying to plant doubts in her about Christianity and distance her emotionally from her family, according to a report that advocacy group Coptic Solidarity released this month.
Identifying the missing student only as “Amany,” Coptic Solidarity stated that the Muslim girls were coached by men from the strict Salafi branch of Islam who sought to lure Christian students into Islamic captivity.
“When a Christian girl follows the advice of her friends and goes to inquire at Islamic institutions, the girls are immediately converted, and a restraining order is issued against her family members through the help of high-ranking security officials, in order to further isolate her and prevent her from seeking help,” Coptic Solidarity noted in the report, entitled, “Hidden Crimes, Public Deception: The Epidemic of Abductions and Forced Disappearance of Coptic Women and Girls.”
A good student who was on good terms with her family, Amany on June 1 had told them she was going for her last exam and would return in the afternoon. She never arrived at school. By midnight, the family started to inquire of hospitals.
When they went to her school the next morning, an administrator assured them she had arrived the day before but declined to show them attendance records, claiming they had been sent to district offices. He also would not show them camera footage. Only when they went to police and an officer accompanied them to the school were they allowed to see records showing Amany never arrived.
Amany’s sister told Coptic Solidarity that, as they left the school, an officer tried to intimidate her into saying that her sister was in a romantic relationship – that is, failing to be chaste – so that he could fabricate a story explaining her disappearance.
Police pressuring relatives to falsely claim disappeared girls are involved in sexual affairs is a common pattern, according to the report.
“Increasing the stigma of loose sexual morality is especially sensitive in a culture in which feelings of shame associated with gender-based religious persecution are already present and abused by perpetrators,” the report stated.
The police officer then went home with the family to look for clues – of an affair.
“He was not treating us nice,” Amany’s sister said, according to the report. “At home, he kept searching in my sister’s papers, looking for a letter or a note. On the way, he had taken my two phone numbers, so when we came in, one of them rang, and we heard her voice. He then pushed us all out of the room and took the phone inside and finished the call with her without letting us hear what she was saying or what he was saying. After that, he deleted the number that my sister called from.”
Amany’s uncle told Coptic Solidarity that in Amany’s conversation with the officer of less than 30 seconds, the family heard her say, “I left.”
“We don’t know what he did or said to her,” he said. “We don’t know. We were not allowed to speak with her.”
Her uncle added that her forced disappearance was meant to humiliate Coptic Christians.
“This is a plan to humiliate our faith, not to humiliate a girl personally, and it has nothing to do with the girl’s manners [moral values],” he said, adding that female Syrian and Lebanese refugees in Egypt are not targeted as the Coptic Christians are.
The family later found voice recordings and group chats on Amany’s Instagram account with a girl named Amira and a man named Islam.
“Amira was a Muslim friend at school and part of the Islamization ring,” Coptic Solidarity reported. “Islam was a young Muslim man introduced to Amany by Amira as a trusted friend who wanted to educate her about the religion of Islam so he could get heavenly credits, ‘thawab.’ During their conversations on Instagram, Islam tried to convince Amany to end all contact with her family and marry a Muslim man for her ‘own benefit and protection.’”
Islam convinced Amany that he wanted to take her and Amira to Dar Al-Ifta, an Islamic advisory and governmental body, so she could make theological inquiries and, if not convinced to become Muslim, she would be safely returned home.
He also explained that the Islamic teacher they were going to meet for inquiry, Sheikh Nasser, “had expertise in changing the paperwork for converts and feeding, hosting and getting them work, even wives/husbands,” the report stated. “He also added that the sheikh will get a restraining order against Amany’s family from the national security police. This seems to imply that upon her conversion, all contact with her family and friends would end and she would start a completely new life somewhere else.”
Amany’s family never heard from her again.
Growing Pattern
The abduction, forced marriage and forced conversion to Islam of women and girls in Egypt, where the population is about 10 percent Coptic Christian, often has been met with skepticism and outright denial, the Coptic Solidarity report noted.
“It is sometimes argued that these cases are mostly situations in which women or girls elope with a Muslim man of their own free will,” it stated. “There certainly are a number of cases in which Coptic women and girls voluntarily married a Muslim and converted to Islam, but the number of disappearances and the subsequent decision to sever all ties with their families is too substantial to ignore or to assume that the majority of disappearances are voluntary. In fact, the evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion.”
If a disappeared girl or woman’s choice were voluntary, it would not be difficult for local authorities to reach out to her and request that she restore contact with her family – but such is usually not the case, the report noted. Amany was told that isolation from her family and marriage to a Muslim man was her only option after conversion in order to remain safe, it reiterated.
“While Amany went to inquire, what decision she made is unknown,” Coptic Solidarity stated. “With the use of ‘grooming’ and forcible separation from her family and community, Amany would have been forced to accept life as a Muslim without the option to make her wishes known.”
In many cases the means of converting Coptic Christian women/girls has shifted from abduction to deception, luring or “grooming,” the report noted. “Grooming” is defined as methodically building a trusting relationship with a child or young adult, their family and community to manipulate, coerce, or force them to engage in sexual activities.
As punishment for trafficking children is more severe than cases of adult victims, perpetrators often wait until the targeted girls reach the age of 18 to abduct them; Amany disappeared two months after she turned 18, though the grooming started when she was 16, according to her family.
Victims of sexual abuse or their relatives face not only opposition from authorities but abuse. Coptic Solidarity pointed to a report by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) stating that sexual violence and harassment by Egyptian police officers and security personnel in detention centers is widespread.
“Women are targeted in the majority of cases because of the ease with which their religious, tribal or political affiliation can be judged from their external appearance, clothing or behavior,” the FIDH report stated. “Violence against women is thus often collective violence against the community to which the women belong.”
To help fight such abuses, Coptic Solidarity recommended amending Egypt’s law on underage marriage to close a loophole allowing “customary marriages,” in which a groom promises to register the marriage when his bride turns 18 and enforcing of laws with real consequences for the adult partner and legislator/government official who allow such crimes.
“Impunity for all involved with the various crimes is the primary obstacle to ending the targeting of Coptic women and minor girls for abduction, forced marriage and forced conversion,” the report stated. “The Egyptian government must ensure local police accept reports of missing Coptic women and search for the missing person; bring legal charges against any officials who refuse to perform their duties of filing an abduction or a missing person’s report, and against all officials who are found complicit in the disappearance of Coptic women and girls, and those who threaten or attack family members for reporting a missing person.”
Along with amending Egypt’s archaic and limited protections for women against sexual violence and harassment to meet modern international standards, the group also called for authorities to bring legal charges against any officials who fail to enforce the law against perpetrators after their involvement in the abduction, rape, forced conversion or forced marriage has been proven; bring charges against government employees and clergy who issue new conversion and marriage documents when achieved through coercion; revoke the license from any Muslim cleric involved in performing coerced marriages and overseeing forced conversions; and ensure returned girls and their families are safe from harassment and repeated abductions.
