COMMENTARY: Time for the UN to Take Action against Egypt for Its Religious Discrimination

The 15-year prison sentence given to a widow and her seven children by a court in Egypt this month for converting from Islam to Christianity conveys a disgrace of Egypt's new Muslim Brotherhood government and its judicial system.

The fact is that this woman and her seven children should not have received any prison sentence, as they should have the right to choose whether they want to be Christians or Muslims. The sentence also illustrates how Egypt's government has become an Islam theocracy under sharia law in which non-Muslims are denied their innate human and religious rights.

Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood government is led by a radical Muslim by the name of Mohamed Morsi -- the same man who referred to Jews in 2010 as being the "descendants of apes and pigs." Now, that's a hateful, venom-filled epithet of a religious group that is difficult to top.

The United Nations Human Rights Commission needs to take swift and punitive action against Egypt and its president (Morsi) to end this prejudice and discrimination against non-Muslims who live in Egypt.

Otherwise, we can expect many innocent Christians and Jews to be unjustly persecuted -- even executed -- in Egypt in the ensuing years.