CAIRO: Sharqiya Attorney General Ahmed De’bes referred Wednesday a Coptic girl rumored to have converted to Islam, to a care center where a committee from the Egyptian Center for Motherhood and Childhood will be formed to monitor her case, judicial sources told Daily News Egypt.
The brief disappearance of Rania Khalil Ibrahim, 15, led to sectarian tension in Meet Bashar Village in the northern province of Sharqiya after rumors that she had converted to Islam and was forcibly detained in the village’s church.
A group of Muslim residents surrounded the church and set it ablaze. Calm returned to the Delta village on Wednesday after police located the girl and confirmed to the attackers that she wasn’t held inside the church.
Priest Boukhen of the Virgin Mary Church in Meet Bashar told Daily News Egypt that police proved the girl was not forcibly detained there.
"We knew nothing about the girl, her conversion or her family issues. A group of wise Muslims formed a human shield to protect the church from destruction," he said.
Sources close to the girl’s family said her Coptic father had converted to Islam five years ago. He divorced his Christian wife and married a Muslim.
The girl had spent the last three months with her father and decided to leave days ago, the sources said.
The father told the prosecution that his daughter came to him three months ago asking to convert to Islam. He then took her to Al-Azhar to declare her conversion, denying that he forced her to do so.
He later issued a new birth certificate for her stating that she is a Muslim after which she got engaged to a Muslim man before her disappearance.
The girl in return denied her father’s allegations, confirming that he pressured her to convert to Islam.
She said she was not abducted and had willingly left her father’s house. She told the prosecution that she did not wish to live with either her Muslim father or Coptic mother.
