Fears are growing over the whereabouts of a 22-year-old Egyptian student who was last seen being dragged away from a Cairo metro station by a group of men on the 27th of October, shortly before security forces raided his family home.
According to witnesses, unknown men apprehended Omar Khaled at a metro station in Egypt’s capital, Cairo, on Thursday while he was on his way to meet friends at university. Officials told Khaled’s mother, Ghada Rifaat, that they did not know where her son was. Security forces, she said, raided the family’s home shortly after he disappeared.
“Had it not been for another student on his course tweeting that she had seen him being dragged away from the station by men in plain clothes, they would’ve had no idea about what happened to him.” Rifaat told Al Jazeera on Monday.
His disappearance has sparked outcry amongst his friends and family, who are trying to raise awareness of his abduction via social media, with the hashtag #FreeOmarKhaled.
This is not the first time the Khaled family have been targeted by the Egyptian regime. Omar’s father, Khaled Abdelrahman was tried in the same case as Al Jazeera English journalists in August 2015. He has now been in prison for 3 years. Ghada Rifaat’s brother, Waleed Rif’aat, a father of three was also abducted last year and later found in prison.
Comment:
Such cases have not become uncommon in Egypt, where human rights groups accuse the government of abducting and torturing hundreds of activists. In a report published in July 2016, Amnesty International said children as young as 14 were being forcibly disappeared by the state security apparatus.
The Egyptian interior ministry continues to deny that it has subjected hundreds of people to enforced disappearance, including children. Almost all those who disappear resurface months later in prisons and face charges based on confessions obtained under torture.
Sisi’s government has pursued a brutal policy against its people since the Western backed coup against the Muslim Brotherhood government in 2013. Those who are perceived as disloyal to the regime are treated with no mercy, and silenced for standing for the truth. The regime has also engaged in scare tactics, abducting individuals to force family members to be silent about their grievances against the Egyptian government.
This bloodied history is ignored by Western states, particularly the US, that still profess their admiration for Egypt’s secular stance. If more evidence was needed, this proves that such countries do not have the interests of Muslims at heart, even when they have expressed Islam as their chosen form of governance via a democratic route. Rather they will only support those that seek to remove Islam from public life and support the West in its imperialistic aims for the rest of the region.
As Muslims, we should take hope from the promise of Allah سبحانه وتعالى, when He describes this very situation in Surah Nur verse 55:
وَعَدَ اللَّهُ الَّذِينَ آمَنُوا مِنكُمْ وَعَمِلُوا الصَّالِحَاتِ لَيَسْتَخْلِفَنَّهُم فِي الْأَرْضِ كَمَا اسْتَخْلَفَ الَّذِينَ مِن قَبْلِهِمْ وَلَيُمَكِّنَنَّ لَهُمْ دِينَهُمُ الَّذِي ارْتَضَى لَهُمْ وَلَيُبَدِّلَنَّهُم مِّن بَعْدِ خَوْفِهِمْ أَمْنًا يَعْبُدُونَنِي لَا يُشْرِكُونَ بِي شَيْئًا وَمَن كَفَرَ بَعْدَ ذَلِكَ فَأُوْلَئِكَ هُمُ الْفَاسِقُونَ
“Allah has promised, to those among you who believe and do righteous deeds, that He will, of a surety, grant them succession in authority upon the Earth, just as He granted it to those before them; and that He will surely establish for them their religion which He has preferred for them and that He will surely substitute for them after the fear in which they lived, to one of security and peace. They will worship Me alone and not associate any partner with Me. But whoever disbelieves after that – then those are the defiantly disobedient.”
Allah سبحانه وتعالى has promised that He will not abandon the believers in times of difficulty and will instead raise their rank among the people and establish Islam in the land. Such a time is near for the people of the Egypt, and their reward is with their Lord.
Aisha Hasan