Jesus Christ, I was only kidding, honest!

This is the tale of Bahaa El Din Al Akkad, a 57 year old Egyptian, ex-Muslim Sheikh who converted to Christianity more than a year ago and was arrested by Egyptian State Security and thrown in Jail.

No real charges except "Blasphemy against Islam!"

While not every Christian convert is arrested and thrown in jail in Egypt, it would make sense for the State Security Agency to arrest this guy. He used to be in Tabligh and Daawa (which is the movement to spread the word of Islam and convert people) and he used to preach in a Mosque.

If word of his conversion ever came out it could cause a huge ruckus in Egypt and inflame lots of people. Hell, he could get killed and that would spark the debate on why Muslims can't convert to Christianity to begin with. (Apostates)

The Christians would get up in arms, the Islamists would one-up them in violence and voila, you get yourself a nice case of secterian strife and conflict.

So, instead of addressing the situation or trying to fix the problem, SSI decided to employ their usual quick and dirty solution and jail the guy.

Silencing him would be far easier and less work for them than to actually confront this very real issue.

Said one blogger from Egypt:

After contacting a couple of people who are involved in such cases in terms of human rights, the word came back that this story is actually true. They have known about it for a while now and have been in contact with the guy's lawyer. They plan on coming out soon with their own statements.

So I figured I would tell you guys first. This is for real. The guy got arrested for converting to Christinaity and has been rotting in prison for the past 18 months for it.

I don't think I need to tell you how much of a violation to his rights this is, but then again this is Egypt and we really have no rights to speak of. But yeah, spread the word and maybe we can create enough pressure on the authorities to get this guy out!

Allan W Janssen is the author of The Plain Truth About God-101 (what the church doesn't want you to know!) at; www.God-101.com
And the petition to have people mind their own business instead of yours at; http://www.petitiononline.com/moses/petition.html