I’ve waited for a while before revealing the bitter truth concerning the lady of Jabal al-Tair. Many people have ignited the fire including those who claim to be Coptic activists or even few Muslims.
There are three parties involved in the story: The woman and her family, Ministry of Interior and Al-Azhar, and the promoters and beneficiaries of the story. The question is: Why did this case was magnified? It’s clear that a forty years old woman and a mother of five children and not so beautiful is not likely to be kidnapped. This always happen to Coptic minor girls who are kidnapped and forced to convert to Islam before they get married to Muslim men in order to make sure they can’t go back!
However, in this case, the lady took the same way of Camellia Shehata Zakher Saad, and Wafaa Constantine, famous wives of Coptic priests who decided to abandon their husbands and religion by converting to Islam. Yet, Iman Morkos Saroufim Magali, the lady of Jabal al-Tir is not a wife of a priest, but a sister-in-law of a priest called Father Youannis Irian. This is the main reason behind such stories as the family relationship of these women to priests makes their stories very flammable!
In this case, the story was told in several ways. She claimed she was kidnapped and drugged by a Muslim partner of her husband called Samy Ahmed Galfy. However, Father Istafanous Shehata, agent of Assiut Diocese, said that the woman had relationship with this Muslim man that she escaped three times with him before. Yet, this time was meant to ignite sectarian strife right before the visit of the president to America. However, the Copts were naïve to be caught in this trap.
A Coptic man cried out in the village that a Coptic woman was kidnapped and, therefore, many Copts gathered before the police station to demonstrate demanding the police to return her.
The church was wise enough to demand media to stop talking in the matter in order to save the Egyptian national unity as well as the lives of the woman and her family. Real Copts sacrifice their lives for the sake of their nation. They pray for the president and the army and always think about their nation. However, it’s crucial that advice and guidance sessions return before any Coptic Christian convert into Islam in order to prevent much of these sad incidents.
