{"id":18757,"date":"2024-01-22T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2024-01-22T16:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/?p=18757"},"modified":"2026-10-09T03:33:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-09T01:33:18","slug":"kirolos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zawia3.com\/en\/kirolos\/","title":{"rendered":"On Charges of Contempt of Religion… Menoufia’s Metropolitan Uses Prison as Punishment Against His Critics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kirollos Refaat Nashed, an assistant professor at Menoufia University’s Faculty of Engineering, is waiting in detention for the decision of the prosecution, which ordered his arrest and appearance over accusations of defaming Anba Benyamin, Bishop of Menoufia, and contempt of the Christian religion, an order he complied with by turning himself in to the police station.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Magdy Sobhy, the Metropolitan’s personal lawyer, had filed a complaint accusing Kirollos of defamation, spreading false news and harming his client’s reputation, using the social media site “Facebook” to do so, along with another complaint from a citizen named Kirollos Emad Girgis accusing Nashed of contempt of Christianity and insulting the saints, while the prosecution added to that list charges such as insult, slander, violating the sanctity of the Metropolitan’s private life and infringing on the principles of the Egyptian family, according to a statement<\/a> by the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. Following those complaints, the university academic was referred to trial in case No. 115 of 2023, Menouf police district.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Anba Benyamin, according to Kirollos’s family, disclaimed responsibility for the lawsuit filed against the university academic, stressing that the police report does not bear his name personally and claiming that “his lawyer acted without his knowledge and on his own”. The family was later surprised to find that the Metropolitan’s words were not true, and that the report bears his name, as well as a number of the accusations against their son, as they put it.<\/p>\n

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What Is the Story of Kirollos Nashed and the Menoufia Church?<\/h3>\n

Bassem El-Ganoubi, an activist interested in minority and Coptic rights, says in his interview with Zawia3 that the relationship between the church and Kirollos Nashed began when he came to Menoufia to join the Faculty of Engineering. At the time, Nashed was considered an important member, serving as a youth servant until 2016, when his professional life began and he joined the university’s teaching staff. That was a turning point in his thinking, when he decided to settle in Menoufia governorate and set up a marital home near his work. He adds that Nashed clashed at the time with complications imposed by the Metropolitan, Anba Benyamin, on those wishing to marry within the church, such as banning weddings in their known form and limiting them to “church weddings”.<\/p>\n

In 2019, a statement attributed to Anba Benyamin sparked widespread controversy on social media: it said the Metropolitan banned holding weddings outside the church walls, with a deposit to be paid by the groom before the crowning prayer to ensure compliance with the diocese’s instructions banning songs or dancing, whether on the wedding night or the henna night before it. It was said at the time that the statement came in response to a number of the governorate’s residents setting up a Facebook page titled “Menoufia Will Celebrate<\/a>“, in protest at the bishop’s policies in place since 2003, known as the wedding regulations, under which couples are forced to pay a financial deposit set by the priest to ensure no wedding or henna party is held outside the church wall, a precedent that has occurred only in the Menoufia diocese and not in Egypt’s other dioceses and churches.<\/p>\n

After the anger of Menoufia’s Christians flared up, Anba Benyamin came out denying the issuance of any statements on wedding regulations, and saying the money imposed by the church applies only in the event of violations inside the wedding hall such as drinking alcohol or singing and dancing. But some citizens who had suffered severe restrictions in marriage procedures rejected the bishop’s denial of the regulations, stressing that they had been applied to them and their families and that they had indeed paid money as a deposit to stop them from thinking of any popular civil celebrations, adding: “If there were no wedding regulations, the priests would not have come to weddings insisting on forcing us to sing hymns instead of songs, and the church would not have drained us with deposit money or threatened to throw its children into police stations in case of violation”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The diocese established what became known as the “Wedding Council<\/a>“, specialised in organising wedding affairs, whose tasks include deciding the appropriate penalty for each groom in the event of violations, whether a financial penalty, by depriving him of recovering the deposit, or a spiritual penalty such as being deprived of communion or of prayers and the blessing of homes.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Returning to Nashed, the intransigence in organising weddings was not the only matter that prompted him to criticise; he was shocked when one of the priests of the “Mar Girgis Menouf” church tried to assault him with his shoe inside his office at the church, over differences of opinion about Nashed’s view of repentance and confession, and the dispute turned into the church’s priests accusing him of holding “Protestant” thinking alien to the Coptic Orthodox Church.<\/p>\n

Commenting, El-Ganoubi points out that the accusation of “Protestantism” led to Nashed being socially ostracised within the church, and he faced several forms of harassment as a result, which prompted him to turn to “Anba Benyamin”, the diocese’s Metropolitan. The meeting ended with calm, but he was surprised the next day to be banned from entering the church by a decision of Anba Benyamin personally, with an attempt to assault him and seize his personal belongings. This prompted Nashed to comment in a post on his Facebook page, expressing his anger and protest. The harassment continued until the church’s administrative security called the police while he was inside, and he was accused of terrorism and of attempting to blow it up, an accusation the police found illogical. El-Ganoubi considers the decision to ban Nashed from the church illegal, as no one has the right to prevent another from entering places of worship on the basis of a dispute between them, because that constitutes a flagrant violation of Article 2 of the Declaration of Human Rights, calling on all those interested in the freedoms file to support him in his ordeal, especially as his professional and academic future is about to be lost, and expressing surprise at the bishop’s repeated denial of responsibility for the case, saying: “How can a bishop who does not control his lawyer manage the church’s affairs and money?”.<\/p>\n

Nashed went to the police station to file a report against two people who had tried to threaten him, but he was surprised to find an arrest warrant against him on charges of defaming the Metropolitan and contempt of Christianity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ishak Ibrahim, head of the religious freedoms file at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, points out that what is happening with Nashed is the first precedent in more than a decade, as police intervention in disputes between the church and the Christian people is rare, recalling the incident of Anba Ermia<\/a> calling the police on personal status protesters at the cathedral in 2011, and the arrest of some of them before they were released again.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

A large number of Coptic Christians had staged a sit-in in July 2011, after the revolution, in front of the headquarters of the Clerical Council, demanding the removal of Anba Bola, then in charge of Christians’ personal status file, permission for civil marriage and the reinstatement of the 1938 regulations, which include many grounds for divorce; but the cathedral’s security resorted to calling in the police and using dogs to terrorise and frighten the protesters.<\/p>\n

We tried to contact Father Moussa, spokesperson for the Coptic Church, but he declined to comment on the case, merely asking us to contact the diocese in Menoufia; however, Anba Benyamin, Metropolitan of Menoufia, did not answer his phone.<\/p>\n

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The Suffering of Copts Within the Walls of Their Church<\/h3>\n

Amgad Ezzat, a researcher in Coptic history, speaks to Zawia3 about the history of priests’ control over the Christian people within the church, stressing that there have been thousands of Kirollos Nasheds throughout history who suffered internal oppression and injustice; but the matter became clearer with the deposition of Pope Joseph II after the July 1952 movement and the establishment of the republic. According to the researcher, the Coptic Nation group crystallised as a result of the reform movement blazing outside the church in the 1940s; it began socially and then moved towards political work, becoming a focus for attracting some inside and outside the church to carry out its own aims. In return, the July government sensed danger, thinking a new group was on the way carrying ideas close to those of the Muslim Brotherhood, but Christian, so it directed the Patriarch to issue a decision dissolving it, which the government approved. The group then resorted to kidnapping Anba Joseph II, Patriarch of the Coptic Orthodox, to settle the dispute within the church and get rid of the corruption that had spread within it, which left conflicts in Coptic society, before the authorities returned him again. The matter remained contested until the Holy Synod and the Coptic Community Council eventually deposed the Pope, and from that moment the priests began their actual steps in hijacking the church from its lay people.<\/p>\n

Ezzat pointed out that the era of Pope Shenouda III is considered the era of the priests’ dominance over the church, not only against what is secular: the bans and restrictions even reached clerical figures such as the late Father Matta El-Meskeen and Anba Gregorios, Bishop of Scientific Research, who faced fierce and violent attacks from Pope Shenouda and the church merely because of differences of opinion between them, which ultimately led to the disappearance of every opposing voice within the church, and “the priest turned into the voice of God on earth, which is considered a gain for the state, which relieved itself of the Copts’ problems through the priests’ control over the Christian people within their church, as part of an implicit agreement”.<\/p>\n

He adds that the clergy’s control over the church has exceeded all limits, especially with a number of bishops lacking scientific and administrative competence, and “you find that some metropolitans basically hold intermediate qualifications, which has created a big gap between the people and the bishops and greatly affected the class of intellectuals within the church, who often want to discuss important matters of religion but are met with intimidation and criticism”.<\/p>\n

The Tanta Economic Misdemeanours Court had postponed the trial of Kirollos Refaat Nashed to the session of 23 January for review, and a video of an interview with Anba Benyamin<\/a> on the “Me Sat” channel was shown, in which he stressed that he had asked his lawyer only to close the defendant’s personal Facebook page, and had not asked him to file a complaint and sue him. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights warned in a recent statement commenting on the case that “the trial comes in the context of lying in wait for freedom of opinion and expression by institutions and individuals seeking to impose their religious tutelage on citizens, amid a climate restricting public freedoms, supported by state institutions, which should have risen to defend the citizen’s right to freedom of belief and the practice of religious rites”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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