Newspapers and news sites reported on clashes Sept. 15 between security forces and Coptic demonstrators in the town of Jabal al-Tair in Minya governorate. Afterward, demonstrators tried to attack a police station in protest of what they called “the failure of security forces to bring back a kidnapped Coptic lady.” This woman was Iman Morcous Saroufim.

Saroufim, a housewife from the village of Jabal al-Tair, is the immediate relative of a priest, according to some news sites. She had allegedly converted to Islam, reports said, citing a security source close to the Minister of Interior. Christians of Jabal al-Tair protested, while a Coptic lawyer filed a complaint with the attorney general accusing the interior minister of spreading false information about the kidnapped woman.

The crisis has calmed with the return of Saroufim on Sept. 28. In an interview with El Fagr, she said that on Sept. 3, she was kidnapped from a town close to Jabal al-Tair and moved to Suez governorate, where she was forced to wear the veil. Then, read the report, the abductor took her picture and gave it to a woman wearing the niqab, who went to al-Azhar and pretended to be Iman, wanting to convert to Islam.

Paul Halim, a priest of the Orthodox Church in Egypt, told Al-Monitor that the reasons behind the large numbers of Christians converting to Islam are primarily social, and have nothing to do with being convinced of the essence of the Islamic religion. “For instance, divorce is not allowed by the church. This has pushed a lot of husbands and wives to convert to Islam to get divorced,” he said.