{"id":60123,"date":"2022-10-05T16:12:13","date_gmt":"2022-10-05T16:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=60123"},"modified":"2022-10-05T16:12:13","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T16:12:13","slug":"muslim-converts-to-christianity-in-europe-face-persecution-from-family-and-community-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=60123","title":{"rendered":"Muslim converts to Christianity in Europe face \u2018persecution\u2019 from family and community: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Andreas Wailzer<\/strong><\/p>\n

The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) issued a report in July about the persecution of former Muslims in Europe that estimates between 4,000 and 30,000 people in France alone face persecution for converting from Islam to Christianity.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe overwhelming majority of people who leave Islam to join Christianity experience family and communitarian persecution that varies greatly in intensity, from contempt to violence,\u201d the\u00a0report\u00a0states in regard to converts in France.<\/p>\n

The extent of the persecution can go as far as murder, according to the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome Islamists carry out intimidation and intelligence campaigns to seek out and repress converts,\u201d the report stated. \u201cIt may therefore happen that a convert is discovered and threatened, assaulted, or even killed by an Islamist who they did not even know.\u201d<\/p>\n

To prepare the report, ECLJ spoke with several associations from France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, and Austria that are involved in supporting those leaving Islam and evangelizing Muslims. In addition, extensive interviews were conducted with more than 20 former Muslims.<\/p>\n

Even though sharia law is not officially in practice, it may still be executed \u201cif a local Muslim community is sufficiently large and radicalized.\u201d Leaving Islam for another religion represents apostasy, which is \u201cviolently condemned\u201d in the Koran and hadiths, the main source for moral doctrines in Islam. These texts justify the \u201cphysical and moral persecution of converts,\u201d according to the ECLJ report.<\/p>\n

The parents of a convert also face pressure to expel their child since they \u201cmay also be persecuted if they tolerate their children\u2019s conversions, since as educators they are deemed responsible for their \u2018betrayal.’\u201d<\/p>\n

All converts who spoke with ECLJ experienced at least contempt and verbal aggression as well as threats and intimidation and rejection by their families. But the persecution for some was more severe.<\/p>\n

Young women face worse persecution as they bring dishonor to their families in the eyes of devout Muslims. They may be raped, forced to marry a \u201cdevout Muslim\u201d or kept in confinement until they return to Islam, according to the report.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the report documents a former Salafist Muslim who converted to Christianity and confirmed the existence of \u201cactual ambushes.\u201d \u201cSeveral Muslims from the local community, with or without family members, wait for the convert in the street and beat them, sometimes to death, usually with their fists, iron bars, or knives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most converts that were interviewed by ECLJ say that they live alone, isolated from their family and Muslim friends. They still fear persecution, though, including murder, by Islamists such as the Salafists or the Muslim Brotherhood.<\/p>\n

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The testimony of Sabita James, a woman of Pakistani origin living in Austria, shows what Christian who choose to follow the gospel of Jesus Christ face. ECLJ quotes a statement from her book in the report:<\/p>\n

My head was clearly telling me, \u2018Sabatina, your parents are already angry that\u00a0you don\u2019t want to marry Salman. How will they react if you renounce Islam?\u00a0How will you live without your family? I shuddered at the thought of losing\u00a0them, and I knew that if I turned to Jesus, all ties to my family would be cut.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the ECLJ document addressed the problem of Muslim migrants attacking Christians and Christian churches. \u201cIt is an increasingly common public security challenge in Europe that Muslim immigrants loot\/damage Christian churches in the name of Islam,\u201d the report states, citing a report from Budapest about Christian persecution in Europe.<\/p>\n

ECLJ mentions an incident in Nanterre, a suburb of Paris, that occurred on December 8, 2021, during the celebration of the feast on the Immaculate Conception. During a Catholic procession, Muslims started insulting the participants: \u201cThis is not a cathedral\u2026 you are kuffars [unbelievers], miscreants\u2026 get out, you don\u2019t belong here.\u201d The tensions rose and a group of Muslims threatened the Catholics by saying: \u201cWallah [I swear] on the Koran, I\u2019ll cut your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furthermore, the report found that in all European countries, particularly in Germany, organizations that deal with the persecution of Christians on other continents usually are \u201clittle or not at all concerned with persecuted Christians in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is certain that the situation for an ex-Muslim who became a Christian is much more difficult in Pakistan or Nigeria,\u201d the document continued. \u201cYet, the situation is becoming really worrying in Europe and awareness has to be raised in the world of associations for the<\/p>\n

The ECLJ concluded its report by calling for \u201cpublic inquiries by the Ministries of the Interior\u201d in order to \u201cshed light on these converts and to obtain more accurate statistics in order to better understand this phenomenon in France and in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u25aa\ufe0e By LifeSiteNews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Andreas Wailzer The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ) issued a report in July about the persecution of former Muslims in Europe that estimates between 4,000 and 30,000 people in France alone face persecution for converting from Islam to Christianity. \u201cThe overwhelming majority of people who leave Islam to join Christianity experience family […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":56098,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5772],"tags":[1646,5171,4868],"class_list":["post-60123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-faith","tag-christianity","tag-muslim","tag-persecution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}