WATANI International
8 March 2009
Following demonstrations for more than six hours by some 700 Christians from the town of Mallawi, 280km south of Cairo, a 16-year-old Christian girl who had eloped was returned to her parents last weekend. Abeer Nageh Ibrahim, a pupil in the third secondary year in a commercial secondary school in Mallawi, had eloped with a Muslim boyfriend and headed to the security authority to convert to Islam and marry him. The young woman’s relation with her family was severely troubled and she thought that by running away and converting she would be getting back at them. Her father is abroad, working in Saudi Arabia.
Ibrahim’s family protested and began a fight with the family of the young man she had eloped with. Since the girl is a minor and, as such, not legally permitted to change her religion or to marry without the presence of a guardian, many other Christians joined in the fight and demonstrated in front of the police station and at the premises of Mallawi bishopric. The police tried to calm matters down and finally handed the girl over to her family.
Father Makary Yassa of the church of the Holy Virgin at Mallawi said Ibrahim had not been abducted as reported on some websites, but had eloped as a means of pressuring her family into ending their disputes with her. After she was handed over to her family, Father Pola Anwar of Mallawi Bishopric said, Ibrahim was taken to relatives in the Delta region.