By Abigail R. Esman
September
29, 2020
It started
with his father.
As fighting
and instability ravaged Iraqi villages and cities, a local Shiite militia
offered a means for him to save his family and himself: convert from
Christianity to Islam, and gain not only protection but the promise of eternity
in heaven. Or, they said, he could remain a Christian, and put his life and his
children’s at risk.
A
priest plays with a child after a mass on Christmas at St George Chaldean
Catholic Church in Baghdad, Iraq December 25, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier
Al-Sudani.
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The father
converted.
Then he
demanded all his children do the same. “One daughter fled the home,” Muna Tagi,
a friend of the family based in the United States, related in an email. “The
teenage son was expelled from the home, but eventually came back as he had
nowhere to stay, and had to be forced, along with his other sister, to convert
their IDs to show them as Muslims.”
Despite
their conversion, however, the two teens secretly continued to wear their
crosses beneath their clothes — until their Shiite friend discovered them. “The
friend … cut it from the teen’s neck and threw it in the mud,” Tagi said. Soon
after, the boy received a letter, signed in blood, accompanied by a single
bullet.
Such forced
conversions are becoming increasingly common in post-Saddam Iraq, extending
beyond the 2014 capture and enslavement of Yazidis, and not only because of the
violence of ISIS militants. Under Saddam, Christians were largely left alone.
Now, says Tagi, churches and Christian communities have come under violent
attack because of Shiite rule, Islamist militancy, and Al-Qaeda’s
revitalization. Many Christians have faced torture, especially by ISIS
militants, who beat them when they could not repeat passages from the Quran.
Unsurprisingly,
then, Christians have fled the country in droves: over 1 million have sought
sanctuary either in the West or in the country’s more tolerant Kurdish areas,
leaving a mere 500,000 Christians in Iraq struggling for survival. Thousands
who escaped ISIS in 2014 now live in semi-permanent camps, knowing they may never
return home. And while most continue to resist conversion, more and more are
starting to give in.
It isn’t
just Iraq. In Algeria, the Algemeiner reported earlier this year, the
government “prohibited Christians and other non-Muslims from speaking publicly
about their faith, for fear of influencing Muslims.” Moreover, “any Muslim
accused of approaching Christians for the purpose of learning more about their
faith or beliefs could face years in prison and a hefty fine.”
And in
Nigeria, home to 80 million Christians (versus 90 million Muslims), Boko Haram
and Hausa Fulani militants have made the country one of the most dangerous in
the world for Christians, with an estimated 7,000 Nigerian Christians executed
since 2015 for their religion. In its 2019 religious freedom report, the US
State Department reported that “Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 17 Christians who
had gathered after a baby dedication at a Baptist church … including the mother
of the child.” They were but a few of the 1,350 Christians estimated to have
been killed in Nigeria last year.
And 2020 is
turning out to be similarly horrific, warns the Alabama Baptist. A video posted
to YouTube on July 22, for instance, shows the execution of five Christian men,
and a report issued by former MP Lord David Alton, co-founder of the Movement
for Christian Democracy, counts at least 27 murders of Christians during the 24
hours between July 19-20.
But it
isn’t only the fear of violence that is driving conversions to Islam. While the
New York Times reports that the “forced conversions of Hindu girls and women to
Islam through kidnapping and coerced marriages occur throughout Pakistan,”
other Muslim groups use bribery to seduce impoverished Hindus, Sikhs, and
Christians to abandon their faith. Indeed, in June, several dozen Hindus
converted in a mass ceremony in South Pakistan seeking to escape the constant
discrimination — in jobs, housing, and society — that Hindus typically
experience in the Muslim majority country.
“The
dehumanization of minorities coupled with these very scary times we are living
in — a weak economy and now the pandemic — we may see a raft of people
converting to Islam to stave off violence or hunger or just to live to see
another day,” former Pakistani lawmaker Farahnaz Ispahani told the Times in
August.
One wealthy
Muslim in Pakistan has taken particular advantage of the current economic
crisis. In a video posted on the social media site TikTok, Mian Kashif Zameer
Chohadary announced his plan to pay 200,000 rupees (about $2,000) to any
Christian who converts to Islam — with 1 million rupees (nearly $6,000) for a
family. “Please accept Islam,” he says in the video, “which is the best
religion.” The video, according to AsiaNews, quickly went viral.
Yet even
these non-violent methods are problematic, the Times reports, noting that:
“Hindu rights groups are also troubled by the seemingly voluntary conversions,
saying they take place under such economic duress that they are tantamount to a
forced conversion anyway.” Moreover, once non-Muslims convert to Islam, they
are unable to return to their former religion: apostasy is punishable by death
in Islam, and many countries — including Iraq and Pakistan — consider it a
capital offense.
For her
part, Muna Tagi is equally troubled about the situation in Iraq. “My concern
for Iraqi Christians, at present, is that there are many unreported incidents
like this one, never known … [for fear of] retaliation. And I strongly believe
it will get worse in the future, as … each conversion success will empower
these militia[s] to pursue the next.”
It is
largely, then, up to the West to aid these endangered families: “Open, firm
talk between leaders of the west and Iraqi government is [needed] first,” Tagi
believes. And second, “to help these families to migrate, if they choose to do
so.”
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Abigail R. Esman is a freelance writer based in New York and the
Netherlands. She is the author of Radical State: How Jihad Is Winning Over
Democracy in the West (Praeger, 2010). Her next book, Rage: Narcissism,
Patriarchy, and the Culture of Terrorism, will be published by Potomac Books in
October, 2020.
Original Headline: Protecting Religious Freedom
in the Middle East
Source: The Algemeiner
URL: https://newageislam.com/interfaith-dialogue/forced-conversions-becoming-increasingly-common/d/122993
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Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism