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Baptist Press (BPNews)
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ISTANBUL, Turkey (BP)--Following a decision by the Appeal Court of Alexandria in Egypt to grant custody of 13-year-old Coptic Christian twins to their Muslim father, their mother lives with the fear that police will take away her children at any moment.
Kamilia Gaballah has fought with her ex-husband Medhat Ramses Labib over custody and alimony support of sons Andrew and Mario in 40 different cases since he left her and converted to Islam so that he could remarry in 1999.
The court ruled in favor of Labib Sept. 24 in spite of an Egyptian law (Article 20), which grants custody of children to their mothers until the age of 15, and a fatwa (religious ruling) from Egypt's most respected Islamic scholar, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, giving her custody.
"This decision was dangerous because it was not taken in accordance with Egyptian law but according to sharia law," said Naguib Gobraiel, Gaballah's lawyer and president of the Egyptian Union of Human Rights Organizations.
The lawyer told Compass Direct News that Egypt's civic code calls for children under the age of 15 to stay with their mother regardless of their religion, whereas sharia tends to favor the Muslim parent in such cases.
"They want to stay with their mother," Gobraiel said. "They don't know anything about Islam and sharia. They are Christians and go to church on Sundays."
The twins have publicly stated their faith, and during a test in a mandatory religious class two years ago they scribbled only, "I am a Christian" on their answer sheets and otherwise turned them in blank. The twins intend to go on a hunger strike if they are forced to live with their Muslim father, whom they hardly know, sources told Compass Direct.
"We only want one thing," Gobraiel said. "We want the law to be applied in our cases like this one, not the sharia, because the government owes us citizenship. This is a civilized, secular country, not a religious country."
The decision of the presiding judge, El Sayed El Sherbini, to give the father full custody is not even based on sharia but is purely arbitrary, Gaballah and her eldest son George Medhat Ramses contended, since the country's State Mufti had granted custody to the mother in April 2006.
"We don't want to give them to anyone or comply with the sentence" ...
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Christian Science Monitor | World
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