Muslims kill believer over photos of girlfriend

Egypt

Tensions and the threat of confrontation remain high in the central Egyptian village of Dairut after Muslims killed a Christian man whose son had taken photos of a Muslim girl he was dating, fomenting Muslim rioting against Christian targets.

Police say they have arrested four men in connection with the shooting death of Henry Atallah, who was attacked allegedly because his son took "illicit" photos of a Muslim girl he was dating and distributed them with his cell phone.

The incident follows a long list of other violent attacks on Christians in the Arab nation, which essentially consults Islamic law in dealing with Christians.

"The Egyptian Christians aren't living under complete Shariah law, but they are living under a regime that consults the Quran and the Hadiths on how to deal with their Christian minority," said International Christian Concern's Egypt specialist Justin Mayer.

The number of incidents of Christian persecution has increased over the past year, but the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Rubin says frequency isn't the real issue.

"The frequency does not matter so much as the fact that, when these events occur, they too often occur with impunity. Increasingly, Egypt is not a safe country to be a Christian or, for that matter, any religious minority," Rubin said.

Mayer said the alleged killers claim religious authority for their action.

"The shooters said they were reacting to the fact that a Muslim girl was not being respected," he said.

Muslim mobs responded to the attack on the Christian man by taking to the streets rioting and looting Christian businesses and throwing rocks at the village's Coptic churches. Police had announced that the men would remain in custody pending further investigation of the shooting.

Christians make up only a fraction of Egypt's 78 million people and, because of the huge Muslim majority, Mayer says the government is usually complicit in the persecution.

"The Egyptian government is only paying lip service to religious freedom even though their system officially says there is religious freedom," he said. "If Muslims did the same thing to a Christian girl, it would be acceptable. So it's a serious double standard but completely in line with Muslim doctrine."

Middle East Journal editor Michael Dunn says the repression is not necessarily government-sanctioned, but it does happen.

"It is most frequently seen in upper Egypt and especially in the smaller towns and cities," he said.

But Rubin said repression of Christians in Egypt is rising because after the 1990s, when Egypt turned back an Islamic insurgency, it then "moved to co-opt Islam by becoming, in some cases, more Islamist than the Islamists."

"There is a major debate going on in the Egyptian government over how to deal with this issue. They're not upholding freedom of religion or freedom of speech," Mayer said.

Other recent incidents of persecution include:

A Coptic couple was forced to surrender their 20-year-old daughter who was being held against her will by her Muslim husband. The girl was 19 when she was forced to marry the Muslim man, even though the law says 20 is the age of legal consent.
Sixty-one-year-old Christian Abdel Kamel was arrested, handcuffed for hours and held without charge for giving out Christian leaflets in downtown Cairo.
Twenty-two-year-old Coptic Christian army draftee Mubarak Zakaria was beaten and died because he would not convert to Islam.

The Egyptian government has not responded to any inquiries about any of the recent incidents.

But WND previously reported that an Egyptian judge ruled no one ever leaves Islam, and that the Egyptian constitution makes Islamic religious law the "source" of Egyptian secular law.

WND also has documented the case of an Egyptian Christian who fled his home nation and was adjudicated by a U.S. court to have the right "not to be tortured." The ruling allowed the Egyptian Christian to remain in the United States.