The country's Mufti issued a religious edict stating that the five-year-old boy belongs with the family who discovered him as an abandoned infant. However, Tuesday, the North Cairo Prosecution ordered giving the mother who raised Shenouda temporary custody of the child.

The NCHR demands that Shenouda be returned to his parents, who raised him, while legal judgments are made. According to a statement from the prosecution, the child was to be returned to Amal Ibrahim after she promised to care for him and give him a secure environment. 

Amal Ibrahim is the mother who discovered the boy as an infant and raised him as her own. The prosecution also stated that it chose this following a fatwa (religious decree) given by the nation's Mufti based on well-established Islamic legal precedent.

Additionally, it gave the mother instructions on how to finish all legal foster care processes and secure custody of the child. After DNA tests revealed that the couple was not Shenouda's biological parents, the authorities took the child from them in late 2022 and put him in an orphanage.

The boy was then given the new name Yusuf and assigned to the Islamic religion following custom. The prosecution claimed that a request for the pair to gain custody of the child under the alternative families program and following the Child Law and its governing bylaws was sent to the Ministry of Social Solidarity, overseeing foster care for children without known parents.

Additionally, the prosecution gave the National Council for Childhood and Motherhood instructions on what legal actions to take to name the kid after his Christian foster parents legally.

Read Also: Egypt's Press Syndicate Elects Khaled El-Balshy As Its Leader

The top religious authority in Egypt, Al-Azhar, published a fatwa on Thursday that declared an abandoned child discovered in a church by a non-Muslim person belonged to that person's faith. Authorities were informed by the couple who raised the child that they found him in a Cairo church when he was just a few days old.

They added that they reared the child as their own and gave him the name Shenouda Farouk Fawzy in honor of the father.

On March 18, an administrative court refused to decide a lawsuit the couple had filed to reclaim custody of their five-year-old child, claiming a lack of subject matter authority.

The court stated that it lacked the authority to make decisions regarding the boy's return to the parents who raised him or the choice by the authorities to convert him to Islam.

Read Also: Egypt Sends Additional Aid To Turkey

Children with unknown parents are not given a particular religion under Egyptian law. However, the Civil Status Department at the Ministry of Interior, which oversees all issues relating to personal documentation, customarily converts children whose parents are unknown to the Islamic religion.

According to Islamic Sharia, adoption is illegal under Egyptian legislation.