Christian Convert Nagla al-Imam: Disappearance after 'Questioning'

Nagla al-Imam

(Image from Mark Durie)

Readers may recall a post on Nagla al-Imam nearly two years ago. In that post, I was concerned about some strange views on rape that she had expressed while still a Muslim and wondered if she continued to hold to those peculiar views after her very public conversion to Christianity. Well, I still don't have any word on that, but I recently noticed that she has undergone some rigorous 'questioning' by an official in the Egyptian security forces despite her very public conversion and her status as a human rights lawyer.

The Australian Anglican minister Mark Durie, a linguist with expertise in Arabic, offers details of the questioning, which is reported upon in the original Arabic in a video showing Nagla al-Imam with clear facial bruises:

[The official] went to take hold of the cross [on my necklace] . . . . He held the chain and tightened it around my neck. He was showing that he was threatening to cut the chain, or to hurt my neck, or do anything . . . . Holding my hair, he bashed my face against the desk. He slapped my face more than once, and punched me in the ribs, and on my arm. By this time I was bleeding from the side of my mouth . . . . When I went back [home] I couldn't sleep. My ribs and my body were hurting, my neck and my shoulders . . . . But my real hurt was not the [physical] pain. My real hurt was that there was no real reason for them to do this. I was simply a piece of flesh, an object of defamation and slander. I was always damaged goods.

The facial bruises visible in the video lend a degree of credibility to this testimony, so despite speculations by commenters and me that Ms. al-Imam might have undergone a very public conversion to Christianity out of a sense of self-preservation, possibly aimed at "generating notoriety to protect herself," that seems not have been the result, regardless whether it was her motive.

Ms. al-Imam has since disappeared . . .