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Forced Conversion

Some of the South Korean Christian missionaries who were recently kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan were subjected to beatings during their captivity. According to the pastor of the Saemmul Church, the beatings were administered when the missionaries refused to convert to Islam. Five of the 19 captives who returned home at the weekend were male. According to hospital chief Cha Seung-Gyun: "We found through medical checks that some male hostages were beaten. They said they were beaten at first for refusing to take part in Islamic prayers or for rejecting a demand to convert."

The statement from the Koran (Sura 2: 256) that there should be "no compulsion in religion" has been cited as proof that Islam does not employ force to maintain its numbers. Perhaps this is true if one only judges the Koran, and ignores verses such as Sura 8: 12:

"Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): "I am with you: give firmness to the Believers: I will instill terror into the hearts of the Unbelievers: smite ye above their necks and smite all their finger-tips off them,"

or Sura 2: 191 which states:

"And slay them wherever ye catch them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out".

Compulsion is certainly implied in Sura 9: 29:

"Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya (a tax paid by Christians and Jews) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued."

Quoting small segments of a book, out of their original context, can be construed as misrepresentation. However, despite all arguments that Islam does not sanction the imposition of force upon others, the Koran does sanction the worst kind of compulsion - slavery. Sura 33: 50 sanctions sexual intercourse with women who become slaves as prisoners of war. Slavery was practiced by Mohammed and his companions, and has continued to this day in regions such as Mauritania and Sudan. Slaves were often "encouraged" to become Muslim. Egypt was ruled between the 13th century and 1517 by a dynasty of captured slaves who had been converted to Islam, called Mamluks. When the Ottoman Empire absorbed Egypt, Mamluks continued to administer Egypt until 1811. The tradition of enslaving Mamluks (slave-soldiers) had started in the 9th century under the Abbasid empire.

In North Africa, the Barbary Corsairs terrorized Christian coastal communities and seafarers from the 16th century until their defeat in 1815. The Barbary pirates took captives who would become slaves. Many of these would be forced to convert to Islam, though this did not alter their status as slaves. Thomas Pellow was one of the countless Europeans captured at sea by Barbary Corsairs in 1715. Aged only 11 at the time of his capture, his youth and speed in learning his Moroccan captors' language offered a chance to avoid the back-breaking labor imposed on older captives. As Giles Milton described in White Gold, Pellow was beaten on his body and upon the soles of his feet until he finally agreed to become a Muslim.

The slave centers of the Barbary Coast were in Morocco, Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli. The German historian Egon Flaig wrote: "In 1159 all the Christians in Tunis had to choose between conversion or death. At this time, the vital Christianity of North Africa was completely wiped out." (full translation available here).

Andrew Bostom, author of ???The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims,??? has written:

Orders for conversion were decreed under all the early Islamic dynasties ??? Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids, and Mamluks. Additional extensive examples of forced conversion were recorded under both Seljuk and Ottoman Turkish rule (the latter until its collapse in the 20th century), the Shi'ite Safavid and Qajar dynasties of Persia/Iran, and during the jihad ravages on the Indian subcontinent, beginning with the early 11th century campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni, and recurring under the Delhi Sultanate, and Moghul dynasty until the collapse of Muslim suzerainty in the 18th century following the British conquest of India.

When Thomas Pellow was a slave under the Moroccan despot Moulay Ismail (ruled 1672-1727), he noted that the sultan had an elite guard. These black slaves and converts to Islam were called "Bukhari". These captives gained their title as they were forced to swear their allegiance to Moulay Ismail upon a copy of Bukhari's Hadiths. This book legitimizes forced conversions, as in Vol 1, Bk 8, 378:

???Narrated Anas bin Malik: Allah's Apostle said, "I have been ordered to fight the people till they say: 'None has the right to be worshipped but Allah.' And if they say so, pray like our prayers, face our Qibla and slaughter as we slaughter, then their blood and property will be sacred to us and we will not interfere with them except legally and their reckoning will be with Allah."

Another Bukhari Hadith on this subject is Vol 1, Bk 2, 24. Another author of Hadiths who is regarded by Sunnis as "sahih" or "authentic" is Imam Muslim (Abul Husain Muslim bin al-Hajjaj al-Nisapuri) who lived from 817 - 874 AD. In his Hadith collection, (Book 1, 33) it is written:

"It has been narrated on the authority of Abdullah b. 'Umar that the Messenger of Allah said: I have been commanded to fight against people till they testify that there is no god but Allah, that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, and they establish prayer, and pay Zakat and if they do it, their blood and property are guaranteed protection on my behalf except when justified by law, and their affairs rest with Allah."

Book 19, 4294 specifies exactly how Muslims should fight disbelievers until they submit or convert: "If they refuse to accept Islam, demand from them the Jizya. If they agree to pay, accept it from them and hold off your hands. If they refuse to pay the tax, seek Allah's help and fight them." Thus, through the Hadiths, policies of forcing Christians and Jews into submission and paying a tax, or becoming converts to Islam, clearly lay out a means by which Muslims have historically conquered others. Forced conversion, which Muslim apologists state is in denial of Sura 2: 256, is sanctioned within these Hadiths. Some Muslims claim to be "Koran-only", but if the "sahih" Hadiths are to be believed, "compulsion in religion" is legitimized.

In Pakistan, forced conversions are common, and most of the victims are members of the minority Christian communities. Sometimes, Christian boys are abducted to be used as slaves. The Islamist group called Jamaat ud-Dawa (Jama'at-ud Da'awah) was founded in 2001 by Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, who also founded the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. Though Jamaat-ud-Dawa was listed by the U.S. as a terrorist organization on April 28, 2006, Pakistan has refused to outlaw it. Its HQ is at Mudrike in Punjab province. In May 2006, the Sunday Times reported that the Mudrike HQ of this group was used by Gul Khan, a militant based at the center, to trade in kidnapped Christian boys aged six to 12. They were to be sold on to criminal gangs as beggars, or for the sex trade. According to the Sunday Times, undercover Christian missionaries negotiated the release of 20 boys, after paying Khan. The boys had been kept in captivity for five months. The boys were returned to their homes.

Punjab province has one of the largest concentrations of Christians in Pakistan, though there are no more than 3% in the nation as a whole. On May 2, 2004, an 18-year-old Catholic university student called Javed Anjum died of his injuries at a hospital in Faisalabad. His body bore 26 wounds ??? his fingernails had been pulled out, an arm was broken, he had broken fingers and burns to his skin. He had been electrocuted. His bladder and kidneys were also damaged, and he had lost his sight. Anjum, who had been studying commerce, had the misfortune to feel thirsty as he passed the Jamia Hassan bin Almurtaza Madrassa at Toba Tek Singh on April 17^th. The student drank from a faucet and was abducted by staff and students from the madrassa. These took him into the seminary and tortured him for five days. Then he was dumped at a police station, where they claimed he was a thief. He remained in police custody for two days before being taken to hospital, where he eventually died. Anjum was tortured as part of a process to force him to convert to Islam.

In March 2006 a leader of the madrassa, Maulvi Ghulam Rasool, and Mohammed Tayyab were sentenced to 25 years in jail. While he had been tortured, Javed Anjum had finally succumbed and said his "shahada" of declaration of faith as a Muslim. His father became so distraught during the trial that he was ordered to leave the courtroom. After Anjum's death, the Pakistan Catholic Bishop's Commission of Justice and Peace sponsored legal proceedings to deal with his tormentors. The Commission noted in 2004: "Religious intolerance and discrimination is the reason behind the recent incidents where young non-Muslims were forcibly converted and circumcised." In November 2003, another Catholic youth aged 15 was abducted by a Muslim classmate. He was forced to convert to Islam after being beaten by Islamic clerics who forced him to attend the Madrassa Jamia al Qasim al Aloom. Though the boy escaped, his mother and brother had to go into hiding.

The experience of these two youths is a model followed in numerous instances. When Christian girls are forced to convert, they are usually raped or forced to marry against their will. The All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA) has documented some of these cases. The group reported that in September 2005 a 12-year-old Christian girl, Sara Tabasum, was abducted by neighbors near Rawalpindi. She was raped by three men in the neighbors' home, and told she could be "saved" if she agreed to convert to Islam and married one of the sons of the neighbors. Sara was reportedly raped by a total of 16 men, and as she had not recanted her faith her captors arranged to sell her to a gang. While being taken away in a truck, she jumped out and fled back to her family.

Shahbaz Bhatti, chairman of the APMA, later said that the 16 men should be prosecuted. He claimed, "This horrific, brutal and shameful act is continuously ignored by government authorities despite of the protests and demands from different organizations and victim family. Even no government authority condemned the incident nor visited the victim's family, which shows insincere and irresponsible behavior of the government to tackle issues of women. As a result of this negligence, incidents of rape, kidnapping, torture, and gang rape are on the rise and the victimized women are begging for justice and protection to save their dignity and honor." He added that Sara's family had been threatened by some of the suspects, to make them withdraw their charges.

In September 2, 2005 a 22-year-old Christian woman, Riqba Masih, was abducted at a bus stop in Faisalabad by two men. She was taken to Lahore and raped and threatened with death, as her assailants ordered her to convert. The two men were charged, but only one appeared in court. Because of the incident, Riqba's six sisters had to leave their school because their classmates labeled them as "prostitutes." Riqba still has not received justice.

In September 2006, APMA reported that a 40-year-old Christian woman and her 13-year -old daughter had been abducted near Sialkot in northeastern Punjab province. After the death of her husband, Nasreen Pervez had gone with her daughter to work as servants at the home of their Muslim neighbor. After a month, the man refused to pay them and kept them prisoners. The two were subjected to torture with shards of glass and burns when they refused to convert to Islam. The man had even brought a bottle of acid and a syringe and threatened to inject them if they did not convert. Their captor also threatened to kill their relatives if they did not become Muslim. The pair was released by a bailiff, on the orders of a court, after another daughter discovered what had happened to them.

On August 5^th this year Zunaira, an 11-year-old Christian girl, was abducted by a Muslim and his sister from the girl's home in Warispura, near Faisalabad in Punjab province. The girl was forced to convert to Islam and marry her kidnapper, Muhammad Adnan. Zunaira's mother spent all her money trying to trace her daughter's whereabouts. She said she had contacted the police when she discovered her daughter had been married. Police told her that the illegality of an underage marriage was "not a matter for the police".

On August 16^th this year, a 16-year-old girl was abducted after being told her father was in hospital, and was said to have been forced to convert and marry. Her father said that "cases such as these are on the increase: Christian girls abducted, forcibly converted and subjected to becoming the wives of complete strangers." It was later confirmed that the 16-year-old had been married to a Muslim man 12 days after her abduction.

Christians are not the only targets for forced conversion in Pakistan. In December 2005, the Supreme Court of Pakistan ordered that three sisters from a Hindu family who were staying at a madrassa in Karachi, Sindh province, be moved to a hostel. A charge had been made that the three girls, who had been found studying Islam at the seminary, had been forced to convert and also raped. The girls' father claimed that the administration at the madrassa would not allow him to see his daughters.

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) claimed in a 2006 report (pdf document) that in Sindh province in southeastern Pakistan in 2006, 25 Hindu girls were forced to convert to Islam, according to APMA statistics. Police in the province appear reluctant to deal with these cases. Some of those involved in forcing conversions in Pakistan are said to belong to militant groups. Madrassas are also said to be involved in assisting some of the forced conversions. On New Years' Eve, 2006, a 17-year-old Hindu girl from a village in Sindh was abducted by her Muslim tutor. AHRC stated that the girl was taken to a madrassa where the man taught. The seminary owner, who was providing shelter to the "couple", claimed that the girl had willingly converted to Islam, though her parents believed she had been forced. Though there were 25 cases of forced conversion of Hindu girls in 2006, the average figure is about 15 per year in Sindh province.

There is even a report of a Christian male being gang-raped and seriously injured in an attempt to force him to convert to Islam.

I wrote in Part Two about Pakistan's blasphemy laws, and how they have been used to discriminate against Christians and other religious minorities. On May 9, 2007, an 84-year-old Christian man, Walter Fazal Khan, was accused by his driver of setting fire to a Koran. The driver, a convert from Christianity to Islam, was a nephew of Mr. Khan's 86-year old wife Gladdis. When Mr. Khan was arrested and automatically detained in custody, a Muslim cleric took over his house and forced Gladdis to convert to Islam. The cleric claimed he wanted to turn the house into a madrassa.

A convention was held in Lahore, Punjab on May 26^th this year on the subject of forced conversion. Attended by representatives of human rights groups, the conference noted that around 500 to 600 people a year are forcibly converted to Islam in Pakistan. Only a fifth of these cases are taken up by the press and media.

In May this year, reports came that Christian communities in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), which lies next to the Afghan border, were being threatened by Islamists to convert to Islam or die. The Christians came from the town of Charsadda near Peshawar, the capital of NWFP. About 500 had received letters demanding that they convert by May 17^th or they would suffer from a campaign of "bomb explosions". NWFP is the home of the Pakistan Taliban, and numerous al Qaeda members live in the borderlands of the province. Many Christians took fright and fled from their homes.

The letters continued, and though the first deadline had passed, by late August three communities of Christians, at the neighborhoods of Tailgodom, Sandagodom and Goalgodom, still lived in a climate of fear. The later letters had contained the threat:

We will wipe out your slum on next Friday, August, 10^th, 2007. And you, yourself would be responsible for the destruction of your men and material. Get ready! This is not a mere threat, our suicide bombers are ready to wipe out your name and signs from the face of earth. Consider it be the Knock of Death... Our suicide bombers, lovers of Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) are ready to strike churches, to protect the sanctity of Mecca and Medina, and pride of Islam. These suicide bombers would strike at any time or day. It is our first and foremost Jihad to assassinate and eradicate the infidels from the face of earth.

In Southeast Asia, during the Moluccan conflict between Indonesian Islamists and Christians living in the Spice Islands and Sulawesi, one Islamist group led the atrocities against Christians. This group, Laskar Jihad, was led by a veteran of the Afghan Mujahideen and associate of Osama bin Laden, called Jafar Umar Thalib. This individual had been "educated" in Saudi Arabia. He had organized a horrific attack upon Christian villagers of Soya on the island of Ambon on April 28, 2002, where even babies had been hit with machetes. People were clubbed to death, some were burned alive in their homes, and several people were decapitated. Twenty-one died, and many more were injured. Despite organizing this, and many other atrocities, Thalib was acquitted of incitement on January 30, 2003.

During the Moluccan conflict, which lasted from 1999 to 2003 and claimed 9,000 lives, six islands with large Christian populations were attacked by Laskar Jihad. On January 27, 2001, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that 3,928 villagers on these islands were forced to convert to Islam. Men were forcibly circumcised and women were made to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM), even though Muslim women from the islands do not follow this custom. The circumcisions and FGM were done without anesthetic, mostly by Muslim clerics. Elderly women in their seventies and young girls as young as babies were subjected to this excruciatingly painful indignity. As a result of the Islamists' campaign, the eastern half of Ceram island became entirely "Islamic."

In Muslim countries, conversions into Islam are encouraged, but to convert out of Islam can be deadly. In Iran, three people have been sentenced to death for converting to Christianity since 1987. One Iranian man who converted to Christianity in 1980 and became a pastor, Hamid Pourmand, was accused of apostasy and trying to convert Muslims in 2005. He was acquitted of these charges on May 28, 2005, but during his trial hearings he had been forced to convert back to Islam. Members of the Bahai faith in Iran have been reported to be subject to forced conversions to conventional Islam. Jews in Iran have historically been subjected to forced conversions to Islam.

Forcible conversions in the Middle East are becoming more common. In Iraq, members of the Chaldean (Assyrian) church have been subjected to some appalling atrocities and over the past two years, attacks and threats have caused many to flee. In Mosul, Christians have been threatened with violence in extortion attempts, forced to pay a "jizya tax". In April 14^th this year, Christian families in the Dora district of Baghdad fled from their homes after Islamists gave them a 24-hour deadline to convert to Islam or be killed.

In Egypt, there has long been tension between the majority Muslim population and the Coptic Christians, who number 10% of the nation's population. Officially, all conversions to Islam in Egypt must be registered with the state-sponsored Al-Azhar University in Cairo, and validated by security police, but such procedures are rarely followed in cases of forcible conversion. It is illegal for Egyptian Muslims to convert out of Islam, but Christians are legally allowed to convert into Islam. About 10,000 Christians are said to annually convert to Islam each year. There have been several cases of forced conversions of Coptic women.

Some of these reports are disturbing. In April 2004, Heidi Hakim Mankerious Salib was a 17-year- old schoolgirl. She was abducted, drugged, raped, and forced to wear a veil. A Christian cross was tattooed on her wrist. Her abductor tried to remove this with scissors. She was taken to a police station and made to sign a document claiming she had converted to Islam, even though she was not yet 18. The family had their car rammed when they tried to protest, and on June 2^nd, 2004, Heidi went missing again.

In 2004, the abduction of Wafaa Constantine Messiha, the wife of a Coptic priest, caused consternation among the Christian community. Shenouda III, the Coptic Pope, spoke of the widespread anxiety about forced conversions. He said:

I have received so many letters about what's happening to the Christian girls who go to supermarket stores to shop. At the store they tell them that they have won and have to go upstairs to receive their award or prize. After that we don't know what's happening to these girls upstairs. There is a lot of talking going on about this matter, and I see that what's happening will create a religious clash in the country. I'm urging the police to take a serious action against what's happening.

The wife of the priest later claimed that she had converted voluntarily. She said: "I want to say to Christians that I willingly took this decision and I am not an immature girl who can fall under pressure from anyone." Despite this, there were four days of protests and the woman was taken by police and handed her back to her community. She later resumed her Christian practices. Bishop Abanob of Assuit claimed that Coptic Christians were being offered money, homes and jobs if they converted to Islam.

The issue of conversion is sensitive for Muslims as well as Christians. A play about a Christian man who converts to Islam but then returned to his faith, called "I once was blind but now I see" sparked riots at St. George's church in Alexandria in October 2005. DVDs of a 2003 performance of this play (which had taken place in the church) were circulating, and Muslims went on the rampage. A nun at the church was subjected to a knife attack in the church, and lost fingers.

In January 2006, Theresa Ghattass Kamal was abducted from Wadi El-Natroun, south of Cairo. She was able to phone her aunt to say that her captors had tried to force her to convert to Islam, but she claimed that she had resisted. Three months later, Theresa was found by her brother, living in a Muslim home and wearing a face-veil. "I have converted to Islam. I have found the right path," she said, even though her conversion had not been registered and she had not visited a Coptic priest, one of the conditions of official conversion to Islam.

In June this year, a 38-year-old Egyptian under threat of deportation from the U.S. said that he was under threat of being forced to convert to Islam if returned to Egypt. Sameh Khouzam's supporters claimed that he had left Egypt eight years previously because of similar attempts.

Patrick Poole reported that in June this year, an Egyptian Christian named "Omar" was in a similar position. He had "illegally" converted from Islam to Christianity, and had twice been arrested and tortured by police. He was threatened by members of the Muslim Brotherhood who claimed they would kill him, causing him to flee Egypt in October 2005. He was granted asylum by a judge in Texas.

In 2006 in Gaza, two journalists with Fox News who had been held hostage for two weeks were freed on August 27. 60-year-old correspondent Steve Centani and 36-year-old photographer Olaf Wiig were captured by Islamists who called themselves the "Holy Jihad Brigades." During their captivity, the two men were forced at gunpoint to convert to Islam. Mr. Centani said that "it was something we felt we had to do because they had guns and we didn't know what the hell was going on."

Last month, officials from Fatah claimed that a Christian woman, Professor Sana al-Sayegh, of Palestine Inernational University in Gaza, had been forced to convert to Christianity by members of the terrorist group Hamas. They claimed: "She was kidnapped and held for two weeks during which time she was not allowed to contact her family." The professor reappeared after her absence at the home of a Hamas member and, in the presence of Hamas gunmen, claimed that she had become a Muslim. Her mother said that she only announced her "conversion" because of the armed Hamas officials. Hamas accused the Fatah officials of lying. After Hamas forcibly took control of Gaza, Islamist group Jihadia Salafiya told WorldNet Daily that Gaza's 2,000 Christians could continue to live safely, as long as women wore Islamic head coverings.

In Britain, where Muslim immigration has taken place at high rates, there have been problems with attempts to convert Sikh girls in Birmingham since the late 1990s. Muslims have counter-claimed that Sikh boys in the city's suburbs have tried to get Muslim girls drunk. In February this year, the head of London's Metropolitan Police announced that Muslims who tried to forcibly convert Sikh and Hindu girls were being targeted. At universities, Sikh and Hindu girls have been threatened and attacked, sometimes forced to abandon their studies, in such conversion attempts.

So far, the most violent attempts at forced conversion have involved members of the south London gang called "The Muslim Boys". At an inquest at Southwark Coroner's Court on January 4, 2006 Ruth Marriott described how her 21-year-old son Adrian had died on June 8, 2004, shot five times through the head. She had heard the shots. She said:

The thought did strike me that Adrian could be involved, but it was a fleeting thought. Then we heard from police the following evening what had happened. Adrian was told on the Sunday prior to his death that he would be killed if he did not become a Muslim by the Wednesday, which was the day he died.