The parents of an Egyptian Christian teenager, kidnapped a month ago by Muslims who claim she has converted to Islam, are being refused access to their daughter. Ingy Nagy Edwar disappeared on September 27, the day after she celebrated her nineteenth birthday at her home in El-Maryouteya El-Haram. The last time her father saw her was when he sent her on a bus to visit an aunt in Cairo's Heliopolis district. She never arrived.
According to an October 27 report from Compass Direct, her brother Nagy went to the police station on September 28 to report the disappearance where he was treated very rudely. Ingy's father then went to the police station where he was held overnight, accused of trying to interfere with his daughter's conversion to Islam. He was shown a declaration of conversion and a written complaint from his daughter, rejecting any interference in her conversion. She is staying in the home of former neighbours, Abdel Gaber Abdel Moteleb Mohammed Kandyl and his wife. According to the U.S. Copts Association, police are guarding the apartment to prevent unauthorized contact with the family.
On September 29, the Giza State Security Directorate held a hearing into the girl's case, producing Ingy dressed in an Islamic veil. According to the family, her moods were extremely unusual. "She was not in a normal mood," Nagy stated. "When we started crying, she was laughing hysterically." Based on that, and other phone conversations with her since, the family believes that she has been put on mood-altering drugs. During a second hearing, two Coptic priests were present, as required by law, to ask her about her alleged conversion to Islam. However, she did not come, saying that she was very sick. The family is concerned about her psychological stability since her mother's death two years ago. She has told her brother by phone that she wants to commit suicide.
Under Egyptian law, a daughter under the age of twenty-one cannot convert from one religion to another without her father's consent and there is no legal reason for keeping her from contact with her family, based on the alleged conversion. A third hearing has been set for November 1, where her father will be pressing for Ingy to be returned to his custody.
Pray for emotional and psychological strength for Ingy, as well for her family. Pray that the courts will uphold the law and return Ingy to her family. Pray for other families facing similar threats and for young girls, frequently led astray by Muslim men for the purpose of converting them to Islam.
 El Minia University |
Abductions of young Christian women, followed by forced conversions to Islam, are not uncommon in Egypt. The U.S. Copts Association reported this week on the case of Heba Samir Wahba, 19, who was last seen on the campus of El Minia University on October 20. When the family reported her disappearance to the police, they were told of her conversion to Islam and were warned to not attempt to intervene. After beginning a hunger strike, the State Security officials had agreed to arrange a meeting between the family and their daughter, in the presence of officials and her new guardians.
However, Christine Tadros of the U.S. Copts Association told The Voice of the Martyrs this morning that the meeting did not happen. There have been several similar reports from El Minia University and other college campuses where young Coptic women are befriended by Muslim male students, drawn into a life of drug addiction, and finally abduction and conversion to Islam.
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