A lifeline on hold: Christian women’s legal limbo
As a Christian woman from Upper Egypt, I understand all too well how marriage can turn into a prison with no exit, and how domestic violence becomes even more crushing in the absence of fair laws. When protection is denied, all that remains is an appeal for help—one that may or may not be heard.
This is not a private marital dispute. It is a crime that demands a firm response and collective responsibility. It is also a stark illustration of the harsh legal reality confronting Christian women in Egypt, compounded by the suspension of a long-awaited personal status law that was supposed to bring this suffering to an end. Instead, silence prevails whenever so-called sensitive issues arise—whether related to minorities or to domestic violence more broadly—hidden behind fragile excuses such as “respect for the sect’s religious particularity” or “preserving social cohesion.”
Systemic violence
What has this silence delivered? Only deeper pain, more abuse and more women trapped in cycles of violence with no escape—unless it ends in death, as it did for Manal Naguib, widely known as Mama Manal. After years of systematic abuse, her husband killed her by smashing her skull when she asked for a divorce. In May, he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
There are no official statistics on domestic violence within Christian communities. Still, national indicators strongly suggest that Christian women are not immune. Egypt’s 2021 Family Health Survey found that 31% of married or divorced women had experienced some form of spousal violence. A 2010 CARE study, conducted as part of the “Safety and Security” project, concluded that domestic violence is deeply embedded in societal culture across groups, often framed as a marker of masculinity and a husband’s perceived right to “discipline” his wife.
In Upper Egypt, tribal authority intersects with distorted religious interpretations to create a suffocating system that legitimizes violence against Christian women, according to a 2016 Assiut University study on the causes and effects of violence against rural women in Assiut governorate.
For us Christian women, this restrictive system is even more complex. Marginalization does not stop at physical abuse. It extends into structural and legal violence that strips women of their most basic rights. While women in Upper Egypt are often denied inheritance under tribal customs, Christian women face additional discrimination in court, including losing custody of their children if the husband changes his religion, under the pretext of “protecting the children’s faith.” Motherhood, by this logic, is deemed unfit once belief diverges.
This intersectional discrimination turns silence into an obligation rather than a choice. Christian women are pushed into a “blind zone,” where silence is enforced to protect the “reputation of the sect” and to ward off potential sectarian tensions. Speaking openly about abuse is, then, fraught with risk. There is a constant fear that expressing personal suffering will be weaponized to reinforce negative stereotypes about Christians as a whole. This fear is not imagined; it is rooted in years of myths and misinformation about Christians and their religious practices in Egypt.
The church’s authority over family disputes reinforces a form of “dual patriarchal power” that not only enables violence but also implicitly legitimizes it.
Myths circulate around religious rituals such as baptism or anointment, falsely alleging inappropriate physical contact with young girls despite the sacred nature of these rites. These fabrications create an atmosphere of stigma and distortion, opening the door to rumors about relationships between men and women inside churches.
All of this erodes my ability to speak about the violence I endure. I do not want my personal case to ultimately be turned into a tool for attacking Christianity, a fear that directly affects my willingness to seek help—whether from my family or from civil society organizations.
When domestic violence is filtered through prejudice and misinformation, every word spoken by a survivor becomes vulnerable to entrenching harmful stereotypes. A demand for justice is recast as material for collective defamation. Silence then appears to be safer, preserving a fragile social façade and deflecting external accusations, even if the cost is remaining trapped in a cycle of abuse without protection.
The deeper danger lies in relegating family disputes to church jurisdiction. This arrangement institutionalizes violence by prioritizing the preservation of marriage over women’s safety. Instead of access to a fair civil law, women are subjected to clerical rulings dominated by insistent calls for endurance and sacrifice, even when their physical and psychological safety is at stake.
This dynamic produces systemic violence. Abused women are urged to be patient, while perpetrators are granted indirect cover to continue their control. Divorce—and even survival—becomes nearly impossible without legal maneuvering or social stigma. Enforced silence cuts me off from any effective means of protection and keeps me confined within the cycle of violence.
A delayed lifeline
Against this backdrop, the proposed personal status law for Christians emerges as a long-awaited opening. It represents a serious attempt to address decades of unresolved suffering and to close the gaps left by the partial application of the 1938 bylaws.
The most significant shift in the draft law is the expansion of grounds for divorce and the simplification of procedures. Under current practice, divorce is limited to adultery or apostasy, pushing many to change religious affiliation as a legal workaround.
The draft law closes this loophole by applying the law of the denomination under which the marriage was contracted, regardless of any subsequent change. It also expands the definition of adultery to include constructive adultery, allowing infidelity to be proven through all available forms of evidence, including electronic correspondence and photographs.
The law restores desertion as a valid ground for divorce, reducing the required period to three years instead of five, as stipulated in the 1938 regulations before their provisions were effectively frozen. This reopens a path to safety that was completely sealed after the 2008 amendments restricted divorce to adultery alone.
The draft also introduces civil separation in cases where marital life has irretrievably broken down. While this procedure formally ends the marriage without automatically granting the right to remarry without church approval, it provides an exit where none previously existed. The law also reorganizes custody arrangements, giving the father priority after the mother. It balances parental rights by guaranteeing visitation, hosting, and overnight stays, conditional on the payment of child support. A compensation clause allows the harmed party to seek damages, a provision absent from previous laws.
Another key gain is the affirmation of equal inheritance rights for men and women, in line with Christian doctrine, as well as the right to remarry after annulment or divorce for legitimate reasons, excluding only the adulterous party.
A stalled journey
The draft law is the result of joint work between Egypt’s three main churches—the Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant—and the Ministry of Justice. The process began in 2016, when Pope Tawadros II led efforts to unify denominational positions, before the Ministry of Justice took on the task of drafting the final legal text.
Despite this, the law’s path to parliament has repeatedly stalled over the years. The reasons are many: sectarian disagreements over certain provisions, particularly those related to divorce and remarriage; legal concerns about compatibility with public order, including the now-removed adoption clause; and persistent procedural delays. After reaching a near-final version, the draft became trapped in government drawers, delaying its referral to parliament for approval.
Yet these efforts prove that change is possible. Justice for Christian women requires coordinated action between religious institutions, civil society and the state. Only the law can dismantle this prison and grant us what we have long been denied: safety, and dignity without conditions.