(Compass Direct News & US Copts Association) — From the mosque across the street, words blasting from minaret megaphones reverberate throughout the tiny apartment where Maher El Gohary is forced to hide. Immediately following afternoon prayers, the Friday sermon is, in part, on how to deal with Christians.

“Do not shake their hands. Do not go into their homes. Do not eat their food,” an imam shouts as Maher, a convert to Christianity from Islam, looks through his window toward the mosque, shakes his head and grimaces. “I hope one day to live in a place where there are no mosques,” he says.

For nearly two years, Maher and his teenage daughter have been living in hiding because he abandoned Islam and embraced Christianity. During this time, he has been beaten and forcibly detained, and his daughter has been attacked. He has had to endure death threats, poverty and crushing boredom.

Asked what gets him through the constant pressure of living on the run, Maher said he wants to show the world how Christians are treated in Egypt. When asked the same question, his 16-year-old daughter, Dina, pushed back tears and said one word. “God.”                             

The latest in a string of failed attempts by Muslim fanatics on the life of Maher El-Gohary who publicly converted to Christianity in 2008, took place in July 2010. As 57-year-old Maher left his secret lodging, somewhere in metropolitan Cairo with his lawyer, two unknown men on a motorbike, attacked him with daggers. “They were aiming at my neck to behead me,” said Maher. “Something inspired me to turn and give them my shoulder, instead of facing them, which was lucky. Had it not been for the interference of passers-by who were unaware of my identity and my efforts to quickly stand up and defend myself, I would have been dead by now,” he said.

During the attack, one of the men shouted the Islamic Jihadi cry of “Allah is Great,” while stabbing him.  Maher said that he was left with heavy wounds, however, he feared seeking medical treatment. He condemned the negative attitude of the Egyptian religious leaders and held them responsible for the attempts made on his life by calling for the killing of others, “just for being non-Muslims.”

Shortly after his conversion to Christianity became public, Maher and his daughter Dina, who also converted to Christianity, were forced into hiding. They have been living on the run, changing lodging as frequent as once or twice a month for fear of their identity being discovered. The fatwa (a religious opinion) issued by Sheikh Youssef El-Badri calling for the ’shedding of his blood,” caused them to live in constant danger in the face of the reactionaries and advocates for the enforcement of Islamic apostasy laws, which call for the death of a convert.

Change of Faith

Maher El Gohary or Peter Athanasius as he is now called became acquainted with Christianity through the only Coptic Christian at the police academy, who was his roommate when he was a young cadet. After watching the Muslim cadets harass his roommate for praying, Maher asked him why the others had ridiculed him.

“For me, it was the first time I had heard something like that,” Maher said. “I didn’t have any Christian friends before, and I didn’t know about the level of persecution that takes place against them.” Eventually, Maher asked his friend for a Bible and took it home. His family tried to dissuade him from reading it. “No, you can’t read the Bible,” his father told him. “It’s a really bad book.”

Undeterred, Maher began reading the Bible in the privacy of his room. Reading the account of Jesus meeting the woman caught committing adultery, and the level of mercy that Jesus showed her transformed Maher. He noted., “Jesus said, ‘If anyone among you is without sin, then let him throw the first stone.’ The amount of forgiveness and love in this story really opened my eyes to the nature of Christianity,” Maher said. The basis of Christianity is love and forgiveness, unlike Islam, where it is based on revenge, fighting and war.”

Maher went on to say his decision to follow Christ was final after he had a brilliant vision of light in his bedroom at his parents’ home, accompanied by the presence of “the peace of God.” Maher said that at first he thought he was seeing things, but then his father knocked on the door and demanded to know why the light was on. He told his father he was looking for something.  He converted secretly to Christianity 36 years ago.

Persecution Begins

Maher El Gohary went back to the police academy and learned as much as he could about Christ and the Bible from his roommate. Persecution was not long in coming.

One day an upperclassman spotted Maher absent mindedly drawing a cross on a notebook. The cadet sent Maher to a superior for questioning. Maher avoided telling academy officials that his roommate had taught him about Christianity, but a captain at the school was able to piece together the evidence. The captain called Maher’s father, a high-ranking officer at the academy, who in turn told the captain to make the young convert’s life “hell.”

Officials were imaginative in their attempts to break Maher. He had to wake up before all the other students. He was ordered to carry his mattress around buildings and up and down flights of stairs. They exercised Maher until he was about to pass out. Then they forced him to clean bathroom facilities with a toothbrush.

Maher El Gohary was not swayed from Christ, but he decided he could not stay in what he said is the agency of “the center of persecution against Christians” in Egypt. He tried numerous times to resign, but officials would not let him. Then he tried to get kicked out. Eventually, officials suspended the police cadet and sent him home for two weeks. At home, his family had a surprise waiting; they had hired an Islamic scholar to bring him back to Islam.

The scholar started by yelling Islamic teachings into Maher’s ears, and then moved on to writing Quranic verses on his arms. El Gohary remained seated and bore the humiliation in silence. Suddenly Maher stood up, pinned the man against a wall and started yelling at him; the convert had caught the distinct smell of burning flesh – when he looked down at his arms, Maher saw the scholar burning his hands with thin, smoldering iron rods.“I said, ‘Enough! I have tolerated all of your talk. I have listened to all you have said, but this has gone too far,’” Maher recalled. “The man said I had a ‘Christian demon’ inside me.”

Maher married a Muslim woman, the mother of his daughter Dina, who divorced him when she gave up hope that he would give up Christianity. Dina chose to live ‘on the run’ with her Christian father, rather than her Muslim mother. 

In August 2008, he filed the second ever lawsuit against the Egyptian Government to officially alter his identification documents to reflect his new Christian identity. He lost the case on June 13, 2009. According to the Court ruling, the religious conversion of a Muslim is against Islamic law and poses a threat to the “Public Order” in Egypt. Although the verdict is on appeal, Maher said this usually takes years before being brought to the courts.   

After losing his court case, Maher and Dina tried to leave Egypt, however, they were barred from leaving and their passports were seized at Cairo Airport on September 17, 2009 without any legal justification. They were told that the order came from a higher authority. Although officially their first destination would have been “a holiday in China,” they planned to travel further afterwards and seek asylum in the United States. Maher later filed a lawsuit to gain the right to leave Egypt and have their passports returned.                                     

Dina became known after she wrote to President Obama asking for help. Maher met with the US Committee on International Religious Freedom on their last visit to Egypt in January 2010, and they have asked for asylum in the United States. During a second hearing on June 29, his lawyers fought with each other leading to the judge adjourning the hearing until November 9. “I am so sad,” he said. “Five months postponement is a lifetime for us, the way we live.”                

Conditions

Maher El Gohary and his daughter while living in that small filthy, two-bedroom apartment across the street from the mosque took great precautions for their safety. They taped over the locks, and taped shut the inside of windows and doors, to guard against eavesdroppers and intruders. They had taped over all the drain holes of the sinks to keep anyone from pumping in natural gas at night. Even the shower drain was taped over.

The yellow walls were faded, scuffed and barren, save for a single picture, a holographic portrait of Jesus, taped up in what qualified as a living room. Maher motioned through a door to a porch outside. Rocks and pebbles thrown by area residents who recently learned that he lived there covered the porch.

Maher has an old television set and a laptop with limited access to the Internet. Dina said she spends her time reading the Bible, talking to her father or drawing the occasional dress in preparation for obtaining her dream job, designing clothes.

Even the simple task of leaving Maher’s apartment was fraught with risk. Every time he would leave, he placed a padlock on the door, wrapped it with a small plastic bag and melted the bag to the lock with a match.

Maher cannot work and has to rely on the kindness of other Christians. People bring him food, water, and the occasional donation. When the food runs out, he has to brave going outside.

“Our life is extremely, extremely hard. It’s hard for us to attend a church more than once because people will know it is us,” he said. “We can’t go to a supermarket more than once because we are going to be killed.”

Girl Interrupted

Possibly the worst part for Maher is watching his daughter suffer. A reflective youth with a gentle demeanor, Dina is quick to smile. But at a time when her life should be filled with friends, freedom and self-discovery, she is instead confined within four walls.

Even going to school, normally a simple thing is fraught with dangerous possibilities. Dina hasn’t gone to school in about a year. She said that the last time she did, other students ridiculed her mercilessly, and a teacher hit her when she tried to attend religious classes for Christians instead of Muslims.  Continued on page 4.

Now she and her father fear she could be beaten, kidnapped and forcibly converted, or simply killed. She can’t even go to church, she said.“I don’t understand why I am being treated this way,” she said. “I believe in something, Christianity. I chose the religion because I love it. So why should I be treated this way?”

Dina was a little girl when she starting hearing about Jesus. Her father used to sit with her and tell her stories from the Bible, and he told her about his conversion experience. Like her father, she cites a supernatural experience as a defining event in her faith.

One night, Dina said, she had a dream in which an enormous image of Jesus smiling appeared in a garden. She said the image became bigger and bigger until it touched the ground and became a golden church. She told her father about the dream, and since then she has believed in Christ.

Under Islamic law, Dina is considered a Muslim because her father was born as one. Because, like her father, Dina has decided to follow Christ, she is considered an “apostate” under most interpretations of Islamic law.

One afternoon, Dina was walking to a market with her father. As the two walked, Maher noticed smoke and vapors coming off Dina’s jacket. The canvas was sizzling and dissolving. Someone had poured acid over the jacket. Maher ripped it off her and threw it away. “I asked people if they saw what happened and everyone said, ‘No, we didn’t see anything,” Maher said.

Luckily, Dina was not physically injured in the attack, but since then she has been terrified to go outside.“I am very, very scared,” she said. “I haven’t gone outside since the attack happened.”

Hope

As bad as things have been for Maher and his daughter, their dedication seems rock-solid. They said they have never regretted their decisions to become Christians. Maher said that eventually, he will triumph. “By law, my circumstance will have to change,” he said. “I have done nothing illegal.”

Dina is not so sure; she said she does not feel like she has a future in Egypt, and she hopes to move to a place where she can get an education.

Whatever happens, both Maher and his daughter said they are prepared to live in hiding indefinitely.“There are days that I break down and cry, but I am not giving up,” Dina said. “I am still not going back to Islam.”

Please pray that Maher and Dina do find a place of refuge. Pray that they will be instrumental in the awakening of Egypt’s increasing persecution of Christians. And pray the government will hold to their own law of freedom of religion to be up held.

A Ministry to Persecuted Christians