Kidnappers Forcing Teenage Girl to Convert to Islam. Plus an Update as more news comes out. Kidnapped Girl Escapes to Family

The Free Copts have the story (link).

I'll repost it here:


On October 2nd at 2:30 p.m., Lorans Wageah Emeel, a 15-year-old Christian girl, was kidnapped by Muslims in the Egyptian city of El Mahala Al Kobra. The incident was publicized by El Tareek, the only Arabic Christian newspaper in the Middle East. It is reported that the abductors are trying to force Lorans, a student of Saida Nafesa High School in El Mahalla Al Kobra, to deny Christ and accept Islam.

At approximately 10:30 a.m. Cairo time, on October 3rd, the Emeel family gathered around the El Mahala Al Kobra police station, pleading with the officers to return Lorans to them. Her parents accused a Muslim man of kidnapping their daughter at 2:30 in the afternoon and filed a police report at the station.

The kidnapping of Christian teenage girls in Muslim nations has reached into the thousands. Many are forced through physical violence to convert to Islam. Other girls are often lured into becoming Muslims with promises of material wealth. The Voice of the Martyrs sponsors safe houses in Islamic countries to protect Christian teenage girls who have been threatened with or have escaped from abduction. These Christian refuges are also places where young women learn job skills and receive spiritual training.

Please offer your prayers. But also...Contact our own government here in the United States. Make this an issue. Make the sufferings of our brothers and sisters an issue for our own government. Our tax dollars are going to support (in the form of military aid to Egypt) the government that turns a blind eye to this.

Some links on how to mail Congress about the United States and their role in this:

Link
House of Representatives faq

Link
THE COMPLETE LIST OF E-MAIL ADDRESSES & FAX NUMBERS FOR CONGRESS, SENATE & GOVERNORS

Link
Congress.org


Update (From Voice of the Martyrs)

An Egyptian Christian teenager escaped her Muslim kidnappers last week hours after they had drugged her on a public bus. They threatened to rape her and convert her to Islam if her family did not leave their Nile Delta city of El-Mahala el-Kobra. Laurence Wagih Emil, 15, escaped the ground-floor room where she was being held in Cairo's southern Helwan suburb at 10 p.m. last Tuesday (October 3) while her captors were away breaking their Ramadan fast.

Her father, Wagih Emil, had received several threatening text messages from his daughter's mobile phone. "Take the rest of your daughters and leave the city, or you will lose them one by one," said one. "The girl is not accepting easily, but she will embrace Islam for sure." Before family members recovered her, State Security Investigation officials interviewing Laurence Emil told her she would never see her parents again unless she reported a false story denying the kidnapping.

Lift your voice in Prayer: Love as Active

We are called to prayer. We are called to love.

So many times we are asked to raise or join our voices in prayer. How?

True, the great expressions of faith in our liturgies, songs and devotions are examples of this. But the core, the Eucharist is an act of love. The core of the liturgy and the core of Christian life is love.

The beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit, 4 for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land.

Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness,for they will be satisfied.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me.

Can they be given a core? Yes. Blessed are those who love. Who love God. Who love others. Blessed is love.

But love, far from passive is active. Far from calm, is a burning desire. It is love that led our Lord to come to us. Love that led Him to die for us. Love that leads our brothers and sisters to stand firm in the face of persecution.

And it is love that should cause us to lift our voice in opposition to persecution. To lift your voice in prayer is to lift it in love. It is to Pray. To write. To speak. To stand against harm to others.

Life itself is a prayer because it is alive with love. Guided by love. May the silent prayers in our hearts be joined to the active expression of the love of Christ toward others.

Love puts us in the heart and life of another through the One Body in Christ.

We are not only people sitting at a computer reading this.

We are a girl in Egypt preparing for her wedding who is kidnapped and taken away.

We are a husband waiting for the one you love, as the bridegroom waits in the Song of Songs.

We are a family who has a moment of joy turned to sorrow.

We are again at the computer, but can We go back to it unchanged? Love transforms us. It awakens our hearts. May the life in Christ move us to prayer and action.

For Mona Yacoub
For Marianna Rezk Shafik Attallah
For Tereza Ghattas Kamal
For Lydia Atef Atta
For Ingy Nagy Edwar

For all who suffer as they do.

We work in a good job, but We are also a Copt who can not get a good job because the ID badge names you a Christian.

We are in Church free from fear, but We are also a Copt who knows that you could get stabbed or shot leaving the service on Good Friday or any day.

We might attend a church at a building that has stood for 200 years, but We are also a Copt who must watch as a monastery that has stood for 1,400 years is demolished.

We donate for church repair, but We are also a Copt who sees their place of worship fall apart and get killed for trying to repair it.

We celebrate the Eucharist, the most holy event we share. But We are also a Copt who, as on September 19, 2003, watches as security throws the consecrated Host to the ground and steps on it.

We see children playing but you are also a handicapped Coptic child who sees the center devoted to helping them attacked, as in November of 2003 and again in 2004 and again in 2005.

We are all of these things and more (link)

We are and must see ourselves as one. Tell one person today what our brothers and sisters suffer. Tell another tomorrow. Do what you can.

Let our prayer be an active love that seeks to fill those who hunger and thirst for justice. And let us do it with the love of Christ, not with hate. Because love is the active force of a better world.

As St. Theresa of Avila wrote:

Christ has no body now but yours
No hands, no feet on earth but yours
Yours are the eyes through which He looks
compassion on this world
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

We are all one in the Body of Christ.
What love is too great for that heart to feel?
What good is too great for those hands to accomplish?

To write Congress and our politicians:

(link) House of Representatives
(link) Congress.org
(link) E mail and Fax numbers for Congress and state Governors

To write Catholic Bishops:

[(link) catholic-hierarchy.org] With your bishop will be a link to your diocese web page or other contact info. You can use the search bar to look anywhere in the world.

To help the suffering children in any way you can. Coptic Orphans (link).

If anyone has any other ways or events in support of our brother and sisters always feel free to email them to me and I will get them up here as fast as possible.

Mona Yacoub

From time to time I have done stories on this blog about the kidnapping and forced conversion of Coptic girls in Egypt. A good friend of this blog, Peter, sent me this story about a Catholic girl who has been taken.

Here is the link (link).

Let me echo a part of this post:

On to what YOU can do, it’s very simple (as I may have mentioned above).

Just pretend this is the Gospel and SPREAD the (not-so-Good) news. TELL people about this poor girl.

Tell your friends online, skip the gossip and share THIS around the water cooler, or even just forward this and other articles to people who might be interested.

Also, educate yourself about kidnapping. It happens all over Egypt, and most cases end up in tragedy, not with a “happy ending.”

And also:

Finally, for the Catholics out there, WRITE to your bishop or priest, and ask them to tell the Pope about his Egyptian daughter whose status as a Christian is hanging in the balance.

It should not matter what faith a person is when an innocent is kidnapped. So many people deny these things happen. If you are a person who does not believe such things happen, then support the investigation of these acts. There is nothing to lose, and if you are wrong innocents will be saved. The only reasonable act of love is to stand against these horrors, no matter who they befall.

If you are a Catholic please write your bishop and talk to your priest about this case. Info on how to contact your bishop or diocese:

[(link) catholic-hierarchy.org] With your bishop will be a link to your diocese web page or other contact info. You can use the search bar to look anywhere in the world.

But do not just mention poor Mona. Bring to light all of our Coptic brothers and sisters who suffer.

Write. Pray. Hope. Love.

Always, In Christ.

Nefertetti has covered such stories in the past. For info on these types of cases:

(link) Marianna Rezk Shafik Attallah
(link)Tereza Ghattas Kamal
(link)Lydia Atef Atta
(link) An overview of a few cases

And I could keep going with this list.

Thereza Ghattass Kamal, may the Lord protect her

Neferteeti has a post on the situation of Thereza Ghattass Kamal(link). The original article is from the Canadian Coptic Association. Here is a link for their site (link), and here is a link to their original story (link).

Thereza was kidnapped in a forced conversion attempt and has managed to call her family. Here is a quote from Neferteeti's blog:

"Why have you all left me? Theyve kidnapped me and are treating me very badly. They want to force me to convert and I don't know where I am"

The aunt had caller ID on her phone and the call was traced back to someone who works for the Egyptian State Security!!

State security. May the Lord protect her, and deliver her back to her family. It is hard for Americans to really wrap their minds around this, but we must.