The Mohammed Hegazy case, shows the huge problems in that country for those wishing to leave Islam and be recognised as a member of another religion — where Hegazy has suffered death threats from family and prominent Islamic figures alike.
A Judge ruled "He (Hegazy) can believe whatever he wants in his heart, but on paper he can't convert." He is the first Egyptian Muslim convert to Christianity to seek official recognition of his conversion from the Egyptian Government.[86]
In February 2009, a second case came to court, of convert to Christianity Maher Ahmad El-Mo’otahssem Bellah El-Gohary,
whose effort to officially convert to Christianity, faced opposing lawyers who advocated he be convicted of "apostasy," or leaving Islam, and sentenced to death.
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Our rights in Egypt, as Christians or converts, are less than the rights of animals," El-Gohary said. "We are deprived of social and civil rights, deprived of our inheritance and left to the fundamentalists to be killed. Nobody bothers to investigate or care about us."
El-Gohary, 56, has been attacked in the street, spat at and knocked down in his effort to win the right to officially convert. He said he and his 14-year-old daughter continue to receive death threats by text message and phone call.[87]
In 1992 Islamist militants gunned down Egyptian secularist Farag Foda. Before his death he had been declared an apostate and foe of Islam. During the trial of the murderers, Azhari scholar Muhammad al-Ghazali testified that when the state fails to punish apostates, somebody else has to do it.[88]
In April 2006, after a court case in Egypt recognized the Bahá'í Faith, members of the clergy convinced the government to appeal the court decision. One member of parliament, Gamal Akl of the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, said the Bahá'ís were infidels who should be killed on the grounds that they had changed their religion, thus ignoring the historical nature of the conversion and the fact that most living Bahá'í have not, in fact, ever been Muslim.