Mohammed Ahmed Hegazy 
 
CAIRO --  Aug 14, 2007- An Egyptian Muslim who converted to Christianity has gone into hiding saying that he feared for his life after receiving death threats for apostasy, a punishment supported by many Muslim clerics.

Mohammed Ahmed Higazi says that he converted at the age of 16 but was now trying to get this officially recognized so that the unborn baby being carried by his wife, who has also converted, would be born a Christian.

Higazi, a political activist now aged 25, said from his hideout: "I am in hiding now, far from the security services and other people. I've had death threats on my mobile phone. Each time I change the number some fanatics get it and call to threaten me with being eliminated."

He added: "Danger doesn't come only from the extremists; an ordinary citizen could decide to kill me, convinced he is serving Islam."

Higazi's wife has changed her first name from Zeinab to the Christian name of Katerina, while her father says that he will go to court to force a divorce.

"I want them [the judges] to make her divorce and that she returns to me - even dead," Ali Kamel Suleimane was quoted as saying in the independent daily Ad Dustour.

Higazi's father denies that his son has converted, saying that he continued "to go to the mosque" with him, something that the son totally denies.

Higazi said that he had finally found a lawyer to act for him, but refused to name him to prevent him becoming "the target of fanatics and the media."

Coptic rights group, the Kalima Center, initially brought a case for recognition on Higazi's behalf but then withdrew, with director Mamduh Nakhla saying that it did not want to break Higazi's ties with his family and also because of "lack of a church certificate certifying his conversion."

However, another center official Rumani Gad Al Rabb said that the center pulled out after receiving threats.

The government daily Al Messa has published an opinion poll in which clerics declared themselves unanimous on "the need to kill the apostate."

On Sunday, the independent daily Al Masri Al Yom quoted Sheikh Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, imam of Al Azhar, Egypt's most prestigious center of Muslim learning, as saying that "Islam can manage without those who opt for apostasy and renounce Islam."

But he would not be drawn on whether death was the punishment for apostasy, or comment on the statement of the Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Ali Gomaa.

Egypt's top Muslim religious advisor, Grand Mufti Ali Gomaa, in July reaffirmed that Muslims could choose their own religion, although apostasy would still amount to a "grave sin."

Meanwhile, the Orthodox Coptic Church has distanced itself from the controversy. "There is no link between the church and the Higazi affair," said Father Marcos, bishop close to Pope Shenouda III.