Advocates For The Persecuted:
New organization seeks to help Egyptians
A new nonprofit aims to make a difference for persecuted Christians in the Middle East.
Advocates For The Persecuted's purpose is to raise awareness and support for Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East who face persecution due to their religious affiliation. "Christians are the largest religious minority in Egypt, and are frequently deprived of basic human rights in Islamic countries. They suffer from false accusations, exploitation, hostile actions, government actions limiting religious freedom, and deficient legal systems that fail to provide justice and equity," said Jan Fletcher, executive director of the organization. "We want to raise awareness of the difficulties facing religious minorities in this region of the world."
David Joseph is president of Advocates and has long seen the need for more efforts to help bring advocacy and aid to those who are persecuted because they are adhere to a minority religion in an Islamic nation.
"There are tens of thousands of Christians in Egypt who are suffering discrimination, threats of violence, false accusations and oppression," he said. "We are excited about the opportunity to do more to help these Christians."
Fletcher said Egypt is in the process of enforcing a switchover to the country's new electronic national identification cards -- a move she views with concern.
"This will bring even more hardship to those whose religious affiliation falls outside the three officially sanctioned religions that are mentioned in the Koran: Islam, Christianity and Judaism," she said. "Additionally, the freedom to move from one religion to another is allowed for those converting to Islam, but not those converting from Islam to another religion. To change an identity card from Muslim to Christian, under the current climate in Egypt, is pretty much impossible.
"One Egyptian Christian - a young woman who converted from Islam to Christianity - lost her Muslim ID card in the panic of the exit from her Islamic family," said Fletcher. "If she goes to the authorities to request a new card, her family will find her, and may use extreme measures - even to the point of beating her, or killing her - in order to force her back into official adherence to Islam. Without an ID card, she must live the life of an illegal alien, yet she is a native daughter of Egypt. If she could acquire a Christian ID card, she said she would be willing to have a new identity even though it may mean relinquishing her academic credentials - in essence giving up her Bachelor's Degree, and her years of formal education. "This is what Christ means to me," she said.
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