What about religious freedom, especially to evangelize and convert from Islam? Isn’t this restricted under Shari’ah?
This section of the agreement is both encouragingly clear and elusively vague. “Respect for beliefs and sanctities is obligatory” is followed by “prevention of any contempt of others’ belief or incitement of hatred is a compulsory social responsibility of loyal citizens.” How much limitation does the word “contempt” impose on religious freedom?
[Andrea] Zaki [vice president of the Protestant Churches of Egypt]: “Evangelism and changing one’s faith is a very problematic area. I want the Westerner to understand that Muslims think of changing faith in the same way one thinks of changing gender””that is, it is never contemplated.
[url=http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3083/egypt-christians-convert-pay-tribute-leave]Christians Should “Convert, Pay Tribute, or Leave,” Says Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood Candidate[/url]
It is risky and possibly pointless, it seems to me, for this small group of Egyptian Christians to try to deal with the Brotherhood. (The article starts by calling them “Coptic evangelicals.” Copts belong to the Coptic Orthodox Church.) As #1 points out, trust is the issue.
Pray for Egypt.
Copt (indigenous Egyptian) is an ethnic identity, too. Some Copts are Coptic rite Catholics. Some are Protestant. The overwhelming majority are Coptic Orthodox. I agree that this “divide and conquer” negotiation won’t come to much.
I don’t see how Zaki can claim Muslims feel that changing faith is changing gender since they welcome people to become Muslim!
#3, you may be right. When I asked an inept and in their view slightly inaccurate question of Coptic friends, they replied, “We are Orthodox!”
There are converts in Egypt and in other Arabic countries. Generally they keep it very quiet, and here Mursi is saying that they can be Christian as far as he is concerned as long as they don’t admit it in public. Nice, huh? If you admit to a Muslim-to-Christian conversion, your marriage can be cancelled and your children and property taken away.