Showing posts with label forced conversions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forced conversions. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 03, 2017
Monday, October 21, 2013
Britain’s Jails Facing ‘Growing Problem’ of Forced Conversion to Islam, Officers Warn
British prisoners are increasingly being forced to convert to Islam by their fellow inmates, the prison officers’ union has warned.
Muslim gangs are growing in power and influence among prisoners, and there are concerns that they are targeting vulnerable new arrivals – making prisons a breeding ground for extremism.
“It is a concern, and there’s been clear evidence from a variety of different incidents. Young men are being targeted and then coerced into converting to Islam,” the association’s general secretary, Steve Gillan, told Sky News.
One woman, whose brother is being bullied by a gang trying to force him to convert, told the broadcaster: “He just looks like a broken man ... he's tearful on visits. I'm just really scared for him. He's been physically assaulted. He's had black eyes. In the showers, he got threatened with a knife. He's not going to back down. He's not going to convert for anyone.” » | Adam Withnall | Sunday, October 20, 2013
Saturday, October 05, 2013
Bangladeshi Christians Told to Close Church, Convert to Islam
The Tangail Evangelical Holiness Church in Bilbathuagani village, Tangail district, about 100 kilometers north of Dhaka, was created Sept. 8 by a group of about 25 Christians who had been meeting secretly for three years.
However, local council chairman Rafiqul Islam Faruk joined around 200 demonstrators Sept. 13 to protest against the start of the building of the church.
The following day, the Christians were summoned to his office. More than 1,000 Muslims waited outside, following an announcement at all local mosques to gather at the chairman’s office.
Ordered to Embrace Islam
Mokrom Ali, 32, told World Watch Monitor he was forced to accept Islam.
“The chairman and the imams of the mosques interrogated me for accepting Christianity. They asked me why I had become a Christian. It is a great sin to become a Christian from Islam,” Asli said. “If I did not accept Islam, they would beat me, burn my house, and evict me from the society.
“Their threats chilled me to the bone. That is why I pretended to accept Islam, but faith in Christ is the wellspring of my life. Now I am no longer a Muslim; I am a Christian.”
Mojnu Mia, 31, told World Watch Monitor he was also forced to accept Islam against his will.
“The chairman and the imams asked me what my religion is. I said I was a Christian. Then they threatened to beat me and evict me from the village unless I recanted my faith in Christianity,” Mia said.
“They had browbeaten me into accepting Islam. I accepted it only to get out from that predicament. But later, I embraced Christianity by swearing a confession in the court.
“The chairman came to know that I became a Christian again, by affidavit. He threatened that it would not be possible to practice Christianity in that area. If I stick to this religion, I must leave this place.
“The chairman is clipping the wings of our faith. I do not know how long we can grin and bear it. We want religious freedom. We want to practice our religion freely.”
Eight Christians agreed to return to Islam since Sept. 14, under the chairman’s orders. The chairman and his associates had already beaten some of those Christians three years ago for accepting Christianity. » | World Watch Monitor | Friday, October 04, 2013
Friday, May 17, 2013
THE BLAZE: The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”
The BBC adds in a sidebar: “The ‘Martyrs of Otranto’ were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity. The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople.”
Historical texts throughout the centuries are filled with similar anecdotes, including the “60 Martyrs of Gaza,” Christian soldiers who were executed for refusing Islam during the 7th century Islamic invasion of Jerusalem. Seven centuries later, during the Islamic invasion of Georgia, Christians refusing to convert were forced into their church and set on fire. Witnesses for Christ lists 200 anecdotes of Christians killed—including some burned at the stake, thrown on iron spikes, dismembered, stoned, stabbed, shot at, drowned, pummeled to death, impaled and crucified—for refusing to embrace Islam.
If history is shocking, the fact is, today, Christians—men, women, and children—are still being forced to convert to Islam. Pope Francis alluded to their sufferings during the same ceremony: “As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence, and give them the courage and fidelity to respond to evil with good.”
Consider some recent anecdotes: » | Raymond Ibrahim | Thursday, May 16, 2013
Sunday, March 25, 2012
The fate of a Pakistani Hindu woman who claims she was kidnapped, forcibly converted to Islam and married against her will is to be decided this week, after weeks of campaigning by the country's Hindu minority.
The case of 19-year-old Rinkle Kumari has outraged Hindus from her small town in the south of the country, where community leaders accuse Muslims of preying on Hindu girls of marriageable age.
Some claim similar cases are helping to fuel a steady outflow of Pakistan's tiny Hindu community as families choose to move to Hindu-majority India instead.
In a hearing beginning on Monday, the supreme court in Islamabad will try to get to the bottom of the hotly contested versions of events. » | Jon Boone in Islamabad | Sunday, March 25, 2012
Saturday, July 19, 2008
ASIANEWS.IT: The district of Muzaffargarh rules in favour of the Muslims, rejecting the request from the family that wants to bring home the two sisters - 13 and 10 years old - kidnapped last June 26. Christian associations charge that they could end up as prostitutes.
Islamabad - District judge Mian Muhammad Naeem, of the section of Muzaffargarh, has ruled that the two Christian sisters "have converted in a legitimate manner to Islam", and for this reason they cannot be "restored to their family of origin". Setting aside the request from their father to regain custody of his daughters, the judge also admitted the "validity" of the marriage of the girls to two Muslims.
Saba Younas, aged 13, and her sister Anila were kidnapped last June 26 in the village of Chowk Munda, in the province of Punjab, where they had gone to visit their uncle, Khalid Raheel. This is the same uncle who in recent days reported their kidnapping, asking for help from news organisations and human rights groups. According to Raheel's account, a Muslim fruit vendor named Muhammad Arif Bajwa kidnapped the girls, and then handed them over to a friend, Falak Sher Gill, who then organised the marriage between his own son and the older of the Christian sisters, Saba. In court, moreover, father and son both stressed the "complete willingness of the girl to contract marriage".
The girls' uncle does not conceal his preoccupation, and denounces to AsiaNews that the Muslims involved in the kidnapping are acting as a "gang", recruiting the girls in order to "make them work in a bordello". This alarm has also been heard by the Catholic commission for justice and peace (NCJP) in the country, which confirms the words of Khalid Raheel: the kidnappers are believed to be human traffickers linked to prostitution, known to the police and under the protection of some local politicians. "For these unscrupulous people", charges Naeem Asghar, local coordinator of the NCJP, marriage is a pretence in order to control the girls, run their lives and exploit them for their own business purposes". Kidnapped Christian Girls, Judge Ratifies Marriage and Conversion >>> By Qaiser Felix | July 16, 2008
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