Shadia Nagui Ibrahim, 47, was charged with "fraud" because her father’s brief conversion to Islam 45 years ago made her legally a Muslim. However her official papers claim she is Christian, said her lawyer Michael Maurice
In a statement released by French news agency AFP he said she wrote Christianity as her religion on her marriage certificate in 1982, because she was "unaware" that her father’s conversion to Islam two decades earlier had made her "a Muslim".
Her father, Nagui Ibrahim, left home in 1962 when daughter Shadia was two years old, converted to Islam and took on the Muslim name Mustafa. Three years later he reconciled with his wife and re-converted to Christianity. In the process, he reportedly got someone to forge his documents back to say he was Christian.
STATE RELUCTANT
State reluctance to allow citizens to put their religion of choice on national identity cards means many seek forged documents that can result in criminal prosecution, New York-based Human Rights Watch said in a report earlier this month.
In 1996, the man who forged Ibrahim’s documents was reportedly detained for falsifying dozens of documents and confessed to changing Ibrahim’s papers. Authorities detained Ibrahim and also informed his daughter that on paper, Ibrahim was still a Muslim and therefore so was she, AFP said.
Children in Egypt automatically take their father’s religion. Under Egyptian law it is also illegal for a Muslim woman to marry a Christian man, analysts say. Shadia Nagui Ibrahim was charged with "providing false information on official documents" for stating she was Christian on her marriage certificate. After a lengthy trial, she was sentenced to three years in absentia in 2000 but the case was subsequently dropped.
AGAIN DETAINED
She was detained again in August this year and sentenced to three years on Wednesday, November 21, after just one brief court session, her lawyer told AFP. It comes amid growing pressure on Egypt’s minority Christians, who comprise about 10 percent of the population, rights groups say.
Egyptian security forces and authorities have been accused by rights groups of not doing enough to halt Islamic extremism. However this week, Egyptian police arrested three Egyptian Muslims accused of killing two Christians, security sources said.
Reuters news agency quoted officials as saying police arrested the three in Kosheh in southern Egypt and charged them with killing Wasfy Sadeq Ishak, 45, and his nephew Karam Philippe Androus, 18, in October.
The motives of the killings were not immediately clear, but disputes have often been related to land, conversions and marriage. (With BosNewsLife Senior Special Correspondent Eric Leijenaar).
