EGYPT: Movie challenges Coptic restrictions on divorce
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A soon-to-be-released movie featuring a divorced Coptic woman struggling with the church to receive a religious permit to remarry has triggered the outrage of many Copts, who criticized the film as an attack on one of the fundamentals of the Christian faith.
Christian lawyer Nabil Gobriel has filed a legal complaint and called on the Egyptian prime minister to ban the movie. “Freedom is not absolute, it must have limits, it should not infringe on religious fundamentals,” Gobriel told The Times in a phone interview.
Gobriel, who claimed that nine other lawyers, including two Muslims, had supported his complaint, accused the filmmakers of downgrading the teachings of the Bible. “Marriage is one of the secrets of the church, and no divorce can be concluded unless in cases of adultery. The movie wants to change the Bible. Actually, it is an act of rebellion against the Bible.”
The movie ‘Wahed Sifr,’ or “One-Zero,” has not yet been released. However, all this fuss erupted after movie star Elham Shahin, who plays the lead, spoke to the media about the project. Although most of the cast is Muslim, the screenwriter is a Christian woman.
The spokesman for the Coptic Church had reportedly said the church should screen the movie before it comes out. “The church is with creativity,” Coptic Bishop Marcos said. “However, when an artist tackles clerical religious thought, he should refer back to the church.”
Neither the crew nor the production company seems threatened by Gobriel’s move. “The movie is coming out next month. … Who would listen to a lawyer?” wondered Shahin in a defiant tone in an in interview with a local magazine this week. “These [lawyers] are seeking fame, and they are making up a fuss about something they have not seen yet.
“I am presenting a movie that touches the lives of thousands of Christian women whom I see around me. I know about their suffering and their inability to enjoy their right to get a permit from the church to remarry,” Shahin added. “It is as if we are calling on these women to turn into nuns. Why this ban [on remarriage permits] then? It is as if we are punishing them or driving them to commit vice.”
Several Copts have been struggling to convince the Coptic Church to ease the restrictions imposed on divorce and remarriage. However, since his ordination as pope in the 1970s, Patriarch Shenouda III has tightened restrictions on divorce, which, according to some observers, drove many Christian women to change their denomination in order to get divorced and remarry. Others resort to civil courts to get divorced; however, the church refuses to grant them a permit for a second marriage.
According to Naguib Mekhail, a Coptic human rights activist, there are several thousand Coptic women who face the same dilemma discussed in the movie. Yet Mekhail believes that the church’s position emanates from its duty to safeguard the faith. “There are religious texts in the Bible that the church abides by; these texts say that no divorce can be concluded unless a spouse commits adultery or converts to another religion.’
-- Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo