Egypt's Salafi Party Objects to Banning Sex Slavery

Considering that the abduction, enslavement, rape, and trafficking of Coptic Christian girls, especially minors, in Egypt is at an all time high—according to U.S. lawyers, 550 such cases have been documented in the last five years—Egypt’s Constituent Assembly to the Constitution met yesterday to consider the inclusion of a new article, #33, in the section dealing with Rights and Freedoms, that would expressly criminalize “forced labor, slavery, the trafficking of women and children, human organs, and the sex trade.”

Yunis Makhiyun deems human trafficking laws pointless, since “such things do not exist” in Egypt.

Yet some members on the assembly are grumbling. According toMasrawy, Muhammad Saad Gawish, a member of the Constituent Assembly, wondered: “How can an article [#33] mention human trafficking when this is not happening in Egypt?” Likewise, Yunis Makhiyun, another Constituent Assembly member complained that “this article will give [Egypt’s] citizens the impression that things like slavery, trafficking in females and children, are happening in Egyptian society, when such things do not exist.”

Rather tellingly, both of these men are also members of Egypt’s Salafi Nour Party, which closely patterns itself after the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and his companions—who owned and sold infidel slaves, and advocated deceiving the enemy. Moreover, it is those called “Salafis” who are most associated with the abduction, enslavement, and selling of Christian women and children in Egypt.

This should be no surprise considering that Egyptian Salafi preacher Huwaini urges Muslims to abduct, enslave, and sell infidels as a Sharia-approved way of making a good living.

Yet here are the Salafis—out of Egypt’s prisons and sitting in Egypt’s parliament—complaining about the outlawing of human slavery and trafficking, and insisting (with a straight face) that “such things do not exist.”