The systematic targeting of Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christian women has reached alarming levels, according to a recent investigation. Coptic Solidarity, an organization promoting equal citizenship rights for Egypt’s largest Christian minority, has released a comprehensive report detailing the abductions and forced disappearances of women and girls within the faith community.
“We find that Coptic women and their bodies are sometimes used to shame and/or avenge the entire Coptic community,” the report stated. “Yet most reports on Egypt exclude the special vulnerability of Coptic Christian women as a distinguishable ethno-religious group with regard to their safety and (the lack of) gender justice.”
Recent investigations reveal that hundreds of women of one of Christianity’s oldest groups, have forcibly disappeared in Egypt over recent decades. Western government officials and legislators have remained largely silent on the issue, as Egyptian authorities frequently characterize these disappearances as consensual “love stories” between Coptic women and Muslim men.
“There are certainly a number of cases in which Coptic women and girls might have voluntarily married a Muslim and converted to Islam (keeping in mind that the opposite — that is Muslim women converting and/or marrying Christian men — is prohibited by Egypt’s sharia-based laws), but the number of disappearances and subsequent decision to sever all ties with their families is too substantial to ignore or to assume the majority of disappearances are voluntary,” the report explained. “In fact, the evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion. Even more so when we take into account the fact that family members are often not allowed to report such disappearances to the police and in many instances are forced to deal with (implicit or explicit) threats by the police.”
A major shift in tactics by Islamic conversion groups, often operating with implicit or explicit support from certain authorities, now emphasizes grooming and luring rather than sudden abductions. These groups have also begun targeting Coptic women with physical or mental health vulnerabilities, making them particularly susceptible to exploitation. This strategy enables abductors to create confusion about a disappeared Coptic girl’s circumstances, fabricating a love story narrative using manufactured relationships and communications, despite orchestrating the entire situation.
“Coptic Solidarity was able to interview immediate family members of disappeared girls to better understand the current tactics being utilized to abduct and forcibly convert and marry Coptic women to Muslims in Egypt,” according to the report. “This new report explores these techniques and provides recommendations to the Egyptian government to end the exploitation of Coptic women by these criminal groups, many of whom have ties with government officials and known Islamic clergy in Egypt.”
According to recent documentation, these systematic attacks on women represent an ongoing crisis that requires immediate international attention and intervention.
–Metro Voice