Cairo for refusing to give up his faith in Christ, news reports from Egypt said Friday, May 13. 30-year old Gaser Mohammed Mahmoud was committed to the El-Khanka Hospital for Mental and Neurological Health early January by his adoptive parents, after they learned he had become a Christian in 2003, reported Compass Direct, a Christian news agency investigating persecution.
El-Khanka Hospital reportedly earned international notoriety in 1997, when an escaped patient claimed he had bribed his way out of the institution to launch a terrorist attack in Cairo that killed nine German tourists.
Since his forced confinement, Mahmoud has reportedly been beaten, whipped and given potentially fatal injections by hospital personnel. There was no immediate comments from hospital officials.
FAILED ESCAPE ATTEMPT
Compass Direct said after a failed escape attempt, Mahmoud was locked into a solitary room for a month by his nurses, who had learned he was being institutionalized "for apostasy." The hospital medical committee has now placed Mahmoud under the care of a female physician identified only as Dr. Nevine, who sources described as a “fanatic Muslim,” the news agency said.
Although Mahmoud was allowed visitors initially, the hospital has since apparently refused to allow any known Christian acquaintances to see him. It was not immediately clear how Compass Direct had been able to contact him. Mahmoud was quoted as saying he first admitted to his mother he was a Christian half a year ago. Angered, his father notified local Muslim sheikhs, who in turn reportedly threatened to kill him.
To prevent this, his mother called local state security police officials, who took him into protective custody on a day-time basis, allowing him to return home at night. But at her husband’s insistence, she finally agreed to commit him to the El-Khanka Hospital with the assistance of security forces on January 10, Compass Direct said.
TROUBLED YOUTH
Mahmoud allegedly became a Christian after a troubled youth. He was adopted as an abandoned infant by the childless Muslim couple, and grew up in the Red Sea port city of Suez, 290 miles (464 kilometers) east of Cairo. Although Mahmoud does not know the identity of his birth parents, he was reportedly told he had been found abandoned in front of a church in Suez.
He finished school and started working, apparently earning good money in an automobile tire workshop. However "eventually Mahmoud’s adoptive father became jealous of the young man’s income and had him jailed for a year on accusations of robbery," Compass Direct said.
Once he returned home from prison, Mahmoud "was so traumatized psychologically" that his mother asked some Muslim sheikhs to come and recite the Quran for him, Compass Direct said. “But I felt like I was getting worse, until I had a dream of Jesus Christ drawing crosses of light,” he was quoted as saying.
The distraught young man said he began to read about Jesus. Soon afterward, a Muslim neighbor reportedly advised him to listen to Christian radio programs broadcast from Monte Carlo. As his understanding of the Christian faith grew, Mahmoud began attending a small home fellowship of Christians.
"NEW LOVE"
At one point, he went to a nearby village and met with a Coptic monk, who advised him to keep quiet about his belief in Christ, Compass Direct said. But he claimed that eventually his "new love for Jesus" pushed him to talk with his mother about his faith.
Scoffing at his enthusiasm for Christianity, his mother allegedly retorted that even a Coptic priest’s wife had recently embraced Islam, referring to a highly publicized incident last December when the Coptic Christian community accused a Muslim of abducting and trying to convert the middle-aged woman.
"At that point, I told her, ‘I’m a Christian,’" Mahmoud reportedly said, adding he had gone so far "as to draw a cross on the walls" of their apartment. Doctors have now placed in Section Three, a closed ward for mental patients, till he gives up his faith, Compass Direct reported.
FORCED ASSIGNMENT
"You won’t get out of here until you change your mind," Dr. Nevine apparently told Mahmoud. He has not been allowed to leave his assigned ward for the past three months, nor has he been able to learn the names of the medications he is given every morning and evening, the news agency said.
Egypt’s Muslim citizens do not have the legal right to change their religion, although non-Muslims are allowed freely to convert to Islam and change their official religious identity, human rights watchers say. Egypt’s security forces have reportedly harass, interrogate and detain Muslims suspected to have converted to Christianity. Human rights groups have also expressed concern about reports of kidnappings of Coptic girls by Muslim militants.
Christians comprise less than 6 percent of Egypt’s mainly Muslim population of over 76 million people, according to official estimates. (With BosNewsLife Research, Compass Direct and reports from Egypt)
