Christian author and apologist Dr Augustine Samaan was detained in early October. His only crime? Criticising Islam.
Samaan’s social media presence is unashamedly Christian. Much of his content contains a defence of Christianity and discussions about Christians who’ve left Islam. According to Samaan’s social media accounts, he is a well-schooled theologian.
While personal information about him is scarce, Samaan’s YouTube page states he is dedicated to preaching the reliability of the Gospel. He describes himself as an ecumenical clerical deacon (reader and teacher), who is enthusiastic about engaging in “defensive and offensive theology in both Arabic and English.”
On a more personal note, Samaan’s “theology channel” is also dedicated to his mother, who, Samaan said, “planted in him the love of Jesus Christ.” This was, he added, “despite all the internal and external wars and persecutions.” The self-titled channel has over 1 million views, hosts 7,400 videos, and enjoys over 106,000 subscribers.
Reasons for his dubious “defaming Islam” arrest could be directly related to content shared two weeks ago. In one video he describes as funny, he shared audio of “a Muslim teaching an attempt to raise doubts about the Bible.” The second video appears to be excerpts from a much longer StreamYard debate about Islam from last year. Samaan’s last post featured a short from that debate in which he calls Islam’s tolerance for child marriage criminal. Particularly, Muhammad’s marriage to Aisha. To recount, Aisha was six years old at the time, and Muhammad consummated that marriage when she was nine. In the debate excerpt (posted twice, once in English and Arabic), Samaan argued that Muhammad’s child bride contradicted Egyptian and International law. Under those laws, Samaan declared, Muhammad had committed a crime.
Christian oppression in Egypt continues to worsen. Kidnappings, false imprisonments, and forced disappearances are at least a weekly occurrence. The latest is 18-year-old Bola Adel Naguib. Naguib was forcibly disappeared (secretly arrested) the week before last on suspicion of preaching Christianity and insulting Islam. Egyptian intellectual, Magdy Tadros, told Bassam Sam, owner of the YouTube channel Free Thought, that Naguib’s disappearance was probably due to his contact with Said Mansour Rezk. Rezk was arrested as a terrorist in August for converting to Christianity and criticising Islam.



