Islamic Tolerance - Egypt

Just in case you thought that Egypt was in some way a civilized country, you need to read this; EGYPT: CHRISTIAN CONVERT FROM ISLAM JAILED

October 18 (Compass Direct News) - A Muslim sheikh jailed in Egypt for 18 months has declared from his prison cell that he is under arrest for "insulting Islam" by becoming a Christian.

Egypt's secret police transferred Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad, 57, to the Wadi el-Natroun Prison last month. He was told he would remain there indefinitely unless he agreed to work as a government informer against other converts to Christianity.

According to the prisoner's Cairo attorney, Athanasius William, his client remains incarcerated in this desert prison "only because he has chosen a different belief, to be a Christian."

El-Akkad was imprisoned without charges for more than a year after officials of the State Security Investigation (SSI) arrested him in Cairo on April 6, 2005.

He was a sheikh who took the opportunity to educate himself in Islam, really studying it. And what happened?

For more than 20 years, the former sheikh was a member of the fundamentalist Islamic group Tabligh and Da'wa, which actively proselytized non-Muslims but strictly opposed violence. He also led a mosque community in Al-Haram, in the Giza area adjacent to Cairo. In 1994 he had published, Islam: the Religion, a 500-page book reviewing the traditional beliefs of the Islamic faith.

But he became disillusioned, and five years ago the sheikh said he began to pray that he could somehow know God personally. It was not until January 2005 that he talked for the first time with someone who explained the tenets of the Christian faith to him. He began intensive study of Christian Scripture, and within weeks he became a follower of Jesus.

"This is a proof to all Muslims," El-Akkad wrote, "that the person who studies the two religions from an objective and serious perspective will choose the Christian approach."

But within two months, word of El-Akkad's conversion to Christianity had reached the SSI, and secret police picked him up without warning from his private trade office.

That is not all.

El-Akkad was accused of "insulting a heavenly religion," a misdemeanor under Article 98-F of the Egyptian penal code. So a Cairo court ordered him released on July 30.

After learning of the court-ordered release, El-Akkad's wife and three children waited in vain for him to return home. Ten days later, William finally confirmed that although the convert had been released from prison, he remained in SSI custody in Giza.

Islamic countries are countries without law, only the dictat of a tyrant or an Islamic power.

Islam is the antithesis of all that is civilized, and is in fact a civilizational cancer, destroying any culture that it infects.

Oh, and we in the United States send Egypt $2 billion every year.

To this day, after having been ordered released, El-Akkad remains imprisoned. Pray for him.