My name is Sherif Mansour and I am the Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists. I am more than determined than ever to write my story and that of my family.
Our story reveals what it means to be born a religious minority in Egypt. But also the façade of “fighting terrorism in Egypt,” long before--though arguably much worse after--President Abdelfattah el-Sisi took office in 2013. Most tragically, to have members of our family used as hostages by the Egyptian government to put pressure on those of us who have been able to leave the country.
Just this past August, members of Egypt’s notorious State Security agency came for my cousin, Reda Abdelrahman, a quiet, unassuming teacher, and 9 other family members. They raided his home after midnight, terrified his young children, and starved him in custody for 47 days. Then, the Egyptian state fabricated a terrorism case against him to keep him indefinitely in pretrial detention.
We will likely never know exactly why they arrested Reda, whether it is in retaliation for my work defending press freedom, or against my father’s work in defending human rights from the North Virginia based International Quranic Center.
Sadly, Reda’s case is not unique in Egypt, but also not unique for my family. Many of us have faced arbitrary detention, torture, threats by religious extremists, and intimidation by state authorities for our secular and pro human rights interpretations of Islam.
My father Dr. Ahmed Subhy Mansour, a former fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy, and at the Human Rights Program at Harvard Law School, has long criticized the state-sponsored religious establishment in Egypt, primarily those associated with Al-Azhar University. He has advocated for a secular, civic state in Egypt that firmly separates religion from the state and protects the rights of all religious minorities and atheists as well.
For this advocacy, he, his family members, and broader supporters across Egypt have learned to live in fear.
I grew up with this fear.
They came for my father when I was 7 years old. I remember being woken up by an Egyptian police officer along with my younger brothers in what is commonly called a “dawn raid.” The officer was one of a dozen agents who had barged into our small three bedroom Cairo apartment with a convoy of military-grade vehicles, pointing big guns at all of us as if we were hardened criminals. After ripping the apartment apart for “evidence,” they took my father away for 40 days detention at State Security.
As soon as they left, my brothers and I tried to make light of the situation by joking that the police officers missed the bulk of "evidence" against my father when they failed to look under our makeshift beds. My bed had shelves for clothes, but also space to store copies of my father's latest books, in which he had committed the crime of claiming all human beings are equal and have a fair chance on judgment day in front of God.
Even after my father’s return, our lives would never be the same. He had a case of "insulting religion," hanging over his head for decades to come. He is fired from teaching at Al-Azhar University, where he and I had been trained. He and many of our friends and family would later be frequently harassed, detained, questioned, and smeared.
Five years later, when I was 12 years old, my father came home to tell us that one of his friends, secular columnist Farag Fouda, had been shot dead in front of his office in broad daylight. And that he, could be next!
I knew thought I knew why. Not only did Fouda regularly write in defense of my father and his more open interpretation of Islam but more recently, the two men shared a stage at Cairo's regional book fair--an event I was fortunate enough to attend. They made the case publicly that Egypt should become a "civil" state—the closest anyone could get to saying secular at the time, and not a "religious'' state. It was a nationally televised debate against a number of Al-Azhar representatives and leaders of Egypt's Islamist parties.
Later we found out that the man who pulled the trigger to kill Fouda was illiterate. He did not read a word that Fouda or my father wrote. However, he referenced a fatwa issued by clerics at Al-Azhar declaring both Fouda and my father "apostates.”
Fouda would become the first of 12 journalists killed in Egypt because of their job since 1992, according to my current employer, CPJ, which started keeping track that year.
I was 17 when Egyptian security agents came for me. I had the misfortune of opening our apartment door to a police officer, who promptly handed me a crumpled 2-inch note with only my name on it. “They can’t possibly be here to take me this time?” I thought.
Though my father argued with the officer about why I was being taken in, the officer decided that I must go to the National Security complex in Lazoughli. The very place my father was detained a decade before. For those who know, Lazoughli is also the same complex that Italian prosecutors said was used to torture Italian student Giulio Regeni to death in 2016.
I was lucky. I will only be subjected to the routine of having a "chat over coffee," into the late night, with a bored national security officer gradually stuffing even larger pieces of papers into a file that had my name on it.
In 2006, I was lucky enough to leave Egypt, seeking asylum along with other members of my immediate family in the United States. I am fortunate that I will never again have to speak to a national security officer, step foot into that Lazoughli building, or be woken up in the middle of the night to see a family member dragged away by state security.
However, my family that was left behind in Egypt are not as lucky. They continue to be targeted merely for sharing my last name; for having a cousin like me who works for a well-respected American human rights organization; for having an uncle who publishes about religious freedom from his suburban Virginia home.
Whether you support press freedom or religious freedom, I seek your help in putting an end to the practice of holding family members as political hostages in Egypt.
We should and can demand better for religious minorities and human right advocates who seek a safe haven and become citizens of the United States. They are only a few among the thousands of Egyptian citizens who are facing even greater injustices, given that they remain invisible to the rest of the world.
Join in please in demanding that Egypt #FreeReda and all prisoners of conscience in Egypt once and for all.