Cairo, Egypt - An Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity has gone into hiding, facing death threats after he launched an attempt to get official recognition of his change of religion, an unprecedented step in this conservative Islamic nation.
An Islamist cleric has vowed to seek Mohammed Hegazy's execution as an apostate, his family has shunned him, and Hegazy raised a storm of controversy when pictures of him posing for journalists with a poster of the Virgin Mary were published in the newspapers.
"They think I am crazy or something," the 25-year-old Hegazy said of his family, speaking to The Associated Press by phone from his hideout.
Hegazy made an unusual public splash because he sought to raise a court case to officially change his religion on his national ID card, likely the first time a Muslim-born convert has sought to do so in Egypt. His first lawyer filed the case, but then quit after the uproar, and his second is still considering whether it's worth pursuing the attempt.
Hegazy said he received death threats by phone before he went into hiding, in an apartment bare of furniture where he lives with his wife, who is also a convert from Islam and is four months pregnant. He would not say where the apartment was located.
"I know there are fatwas (religious edicts) to shed my blood, but I will not give up and I will not leave the country," Hegazy said.
There is no law on the books in Egypt against converting from Islam to Christianity, but in this case tradition trumps the law. Under a widespread interpretation of Islamic law, converting from Islam is apostasy and is punishable by death — though killings are rare and the state has never ordered or carried out an execution.
Most Muslims who convert usually practice their new religion quietly, seeking to avoid attention, or flee the country to the West. In Egypt, at the very least they face ostracism by their families, but if their conversion becomes known they can receive death threats from militants, or harassment by police, who use laws against "insulting religion" or "disturbing public order" as a pretext to target them.
The overwhelming taboo against conversion has made even trying to get official recognition unthinkable, leaving it unknown if a court would accept it. Christians who become Muslims are able to get their new religion entered on their ID and face little trouble from officials — though they too are usually thrown out by their families.
The issue of conversion is an inflammatory one in Egypt, which is majority Muslim but has a large Christian community estimated at about 10 percent of the 76 million population. Tensions have run high in recent years, with sectarian clashes in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria and small villages in southern Egypt.
Many Egyptian Christians complain of discrimination, Islamic hard-liners oppose any moves that could be seen as encouraging the spread of Christianity — and the Coptic Church together with the government are extremely wary of any steps that could anger conservative Muslims.
Hegazy — who has taken the Christian name Beshoy, after an Egyptian monk — said he converted to Christianity nine years ago and began attending church in his hometown of Port Said, a city on Egypt's Suez Canal.
"I started readings and comparative studies in religions," he said. "I found that I am not consistent with Islam teachings. The major issue for me was love. Islam wasn't promoting love as Christianity did."
After his conversion was discovered, police detained him for three days and tortured him, he said. He was harassed several more times, then in 2001 he published a book of poems critical of the security services. He was quickly arrested again and held for three months on suspicion of sedition, disturbing public order and insulting the president, though he was finally released without charge.
Last year, he was finally baptized at a Coptic Orthodox Church, he said. Soon after, he married his wife, a Muslim named Um Hashim Kamel who had converted several years earlier, taking the name Katarina. She too had been ostracized by her family.
He said he wants to officially change his religion on his ID card for two reasons — to set a precedent for other converts and to ensure his child can openly be raised Christian. He wants his child to get a Christian name, birth certificate and eventually marry in a church. That would be impossible if Hegazy's official religion in Muslim, since a child is registered in the religion of the father.
Hegazy's first lawyer, Mamdouh Nakhlah, told the AP he initially accepted the case because of an editorial last month by one of Egypt's highest Islamic clerics, the Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, who wrote against the killing of apostates, saying there is no worldly retribution for Muslims who abandon their religion.
"The essential question before us is can a person who is Muslim choose a religion other than Islam? The answer is yes," Gomaa, who is Egypt's highest authority for issuing fatwas, wrote in the editorial in The Washington Post.
Gomaa's comments were sharply criticized by Muslim conservatives, who said he was opening the door for Muslims to leave their faith.
Still, Nakhlah said he had hoped Gomaa's statement could signal the chance to set a legal precedent. He submitted Hegazy's suit to the courts, but when the uproar in the press , Nakhlah backed out.
"Its very sensitive case and the atmosphere is not suitable," Nakhlah told a press conference in Cairo on Tuesday.
Hegazy's new lawyer, Ramsis el-Nagger, says he had not decided whether to pursue the case and is pessimistic the suit could be won "because of all the conflict" around it.
If the case makes it to court, it is opening an unknown realm of Egyptian law. Earlier this year, a court rejected an attempt by a group of Christians who had converted to Islam but then returned to Christianity and sought to restore their original religion on their ID cards.
The judge ruled that the group was treating religion like a "game" and "exploiting religion." When a higher court agreed last month to hear the group's appeal, it raised a new storm of controversy, and the appeals court has yet to rule.