Even in the minor details, identical patterns of persecution emerge. Because many if not most Christians who converted to Islam throughout the centuries did so not out of religious conviction but simply to improve their social status or to avoid persecution, it appears that some were struck with remorse, causing a change of heart followed by a reconversion to Christianity. They were then accused of apostasy, attacked, and often savagely killed.
This particular theme appears regularly not just in Witnesses for Christ, but in older accounts as well. For example, in 770, Cyrus of Harran converted to Islam, regretted it, and returned to Christianity. He was tortured in an effort to make him renounce Christ; he refused, and was executed. And “like a number of the other neomartyrs, John [of Phanijoit, a Copt] had converted to Islam and then, having repented, reconverted to Christianity, thereby making him liable in Muslim eyes to the death penalty for the crime of apostasy from Islam.”33 Authorities tried to get him simply to accept nominal Islam, but he staunchly refused and was executed. Sometimes such killings happened en masse:In 1389, a great procession of Copts who had accepted Muhammad under fear of death, marched through Cairo. Repenting of their apostasy, they now wished to atone for it by the inevitable consequence of returning to Christianity. So as they marched, they announced that they believed in Christ and renounced Muhammad. They were seized and all the men were beheaded one after another in an open square before the women. But this did not terrify the women; so they, too, were all martyred.34
Turning to the present, one finds the same pattern still being played out. Consider Pakistan alone. In February 2012, a Muslim mob attacked a sixty-year-old Christian woman named Seema Bibi because, six months after converting to Islam, she reconverted back to Christianity. Angry Muslims “tortured Seema, shaved her head, garlanded her with shoes and paraded her through the village streets.” Afterwards, she received more threats of “dire consequences” from Islamic clerics, prompting her and her family to flee the region.35 Similarly, in July 2012, it was reported that a Christian couple, Imran James and Nazia Masih, have been on the run since they reconverted to Christianity, after embracing Islam back in 2006. Upon learning that the couple had returned to Christianity, neighboring Muslims attacked and persecuted them. One of the husband’s best friends abducted and tortured him and beat his wife. “[One] should have the freedom to choose the religion one wishes to follow,” lamented the husband.36
RECENT EXAMPLES OF ANTI-FREEDOM LAWS
The following recent stories represent a sampling of what Christians are suffering under Islam’s laws against apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism. Oftentimes Christians are persecuted under two or all three of Islam’s anti-freedom laws. For example, in May 2011 in Algeria, a judge “stunned the Christian community” by sentencing Siaghi Krimo, a Muslim convert to Christianity (an apostate), to a five-year prison term and a fine of $200,000 Algerian dinars—even though prosecutors had only asked for a two-year imprisonment and a $50,000 dinar fine. Krimo’s crime was to give a CD about Christianity to a Muslim (proselytism), who later claimed the CD insulted Muslim prophet Muhammad (blasphemy).37 Even so, the examples below are organized according to the particular anti-freedom feature of Sharia law most central to the case in question.
APOSTATES: RECANT OR DIE
Like attacks on churches, some of the most heinous apostasy-related attacks are intentionally planned for Christian holy days.
On December 24, 2011—Christmas Eve—Muslims in Christian-majority Uganda threw acid on a church pastor outside his church, severely disfiguring him, blinding one eye and damaging the other. Pastor of the ten-thousand-strong Gospel Life International Pentecostal church, Umar Mulinde, formerly a Muslim, explained his ordeal: “I was attacked by a man who claimed to be a Christian. He called out to me shouting ‘pastor, pastor,’ and as I turned to see who he was, he poured acid which burnt part of my face. As I turned away from the attacker, another man poured the liquid on my back and ran away shouting ‘Allah Akbar.’” Mulinde originally “came from a strict Muslim family and his father was an imam.” Umar was the fifty-second child to be born to the polygamist Muslim leader. The son went on to become a sheikh himself before converting to Christianity in 1993, a decision that caused a strong reaction in the Muslim community. The thirty-nine-year-old father of six was also a leading figure in a campaign to block the introduction of Sharia courts into Uganda. After being taken to a hospital, where specialists struggled to restore his vision, Umar was relocated to an Israeli medical center for advanced treatment. According to his wife, “The main point of contention between Muslims and Christians in Uganda is that Muslims are yet to embrace the reality of freedom of worship or coexistence, but Muslims always think that any person who doesn’t believe like them is an enemy who deserves to be killed” [emphasis added].38
Spotlight on Iran
Despite the fact that Christians reportedly make up less than 1 percent of its population, Iran is one of the Middle Eastern countries most associated with persecution for apostasy. This is because the Islamist regime itself, as opposed to vigilante mobs, actively persecutes apostates there—though usually under different pretexts, for instance, “disloyalty to the state” or “calling into question the Islamic foundations of the Republic.” Nevertheless, the apostasy case of Pastor Youssef Nadarkhani received widespread media attention, placing the spotlight on Iran’s abuse of apostates.
The father of two and onetime evangelical house church pastor was arrested in late 2009, found guilty of apostasy, and sentenced to death. The pastor was kept in solitary confinement, routinely tortured, and pressured to renounce Christ and convert to Islam. He staunchly refused. At one point, his wife was also arrested and charged with apostasy and sentenced to life in prison, but she was later released.39
While Nadarkhani’s experiences were not new or unusual in Iran, news of his plight made it to the mainstream media in the West, prompting heavy criticism of Iran’s Islamist regime. In response, Iranian authorities changed the whole story in an attempt to make it more palatable to Western sensibilities—they said Nadarkhani was not being executed for apostasy, but because he had been found guilty of being a “Zionist traitor,” a “rapist,” an “extortionist,” and a “brothel owner. ”40
Such distortions did not square with the fact that Iran’s Supreme Court ruling had earlier decreed that Nadarkhaniis convicted of turning his back on Islam, the greatest religion the prophesy of Mohammad at the age of 19. He has often participated in Christian worship and organized home church services, evangelizing and has been baptized and baptized others, converting Muslims to Christianity. He has been accused of breaking Islamic Law that from puberty (15 years according to Islamic law) until the age of 19 the year 1996, he was raised a Muslim in a Muslim home. During court trials, he denied the prophecy of Mohammad and the authority of Islam. He has stated that he is a Christian and no longer Muslim.41
Because Nadarkhani had become an international liability for the Iranian regime—among other things, exposing the hypocrisy behind Iran’s humanitarian arguments against Israel—in September 2012 (soon after Canada severed diplomatic ties with Iran, citing among other things basic human rights concerns), the imprisoned pastor was acquitted of the apostasy charge but found guilty of proselytizing to Muslims but released because the court determined he had already served the requisite prison time for that crime. Then, on Christmas Day—to add insult to injury—authorities arrested him yet again, citing “improperly completed paperwork.”42
Although Nadarkhani’s case is well known, the fact is that it represents only the tip of the iceberg of Christian persecution under the mullahs. Both before and after Nadarkhani, apostates to Christianity have been regularly targeted. Beginning in the 1990s, authorities even used “death squads” against apostates. They formally executed at least one convert to Christianity, Pastor Hossein Soodmand. In 2006 the Iranian regime was described as “currently engaged in a systematic campaign to track down and reconvert or kill those who
have changed their religion from Islam.”43 Recently, however, having learned a lesson from the Nadarkhani debacle, Islamic authorities couch their charges against apostates in political language, often accusing them of being in cahoots with foreign powers—though human rights organizations monitoring the situation insist that this is just a cover for the apostasy law.
While examples of harassment, imprisonment, and even killings of apostates in Iran are many, just a few examples from recent months follow here:
In July 2012, a six-year prison sentence for Pastor Farshid Fathi Malayeri was upheld—though, as Barnabas Aid reported, “the political charges [against him] are a pretext for locking up the pastor, a convert from Islam to Christianity, on account of his faith.”44
Another prominent house church pastor, Benham Irani, remains behind bars even as his family expresses concerns that he may die from continued abuse and beatings, which have led to internal bleeding and other ailments. The verdict against him contains text that describes the pastor as an “apostate” who “can be killed.” According to one human rights activist, “His ‘crimes’ were being a pastor and possessing Christian materials.” He is being beat in jail and getting sick, to the point that his hair has “turned fully grey.”45
In January 2012, Leila Mohammadi, a convert to Christianity, was arrested when security agents raided her house. Locked away for five months in Iran’s “notorious” Evin prison, she was eventually given an official sentence of two years’ imprisonment there.46
Mohabat News reported in June 2012 that five months after five apostates to Christianity were arrested their condition and fate remained unknown. They were accused of “attending house church services, promoting Christianity, propagating against the regime and disturbing national security.” The report explained the strategies being used against apostates: being imprisoned for 130 days without word “is an obvious example of physical and mental abuse of the detainees. . . . One of the prison guards openly told one of these Christian detainees that all these pressures and uncertainties are intended to make them flee the country after they are released. . . .”47
In January 2012 Gelareh Bagherzadeh, a young woman who had recently converted to Christianity and who was an outspoken activist against the Islamic regime, was found dead “slumped over the steering wheel of her Nissan Altima steps from her home with a single gunshot wound to her head.”48
In February 2012 Iranian authorities “arrested Christian converts from Islam,” up to ten of them, “while they were meeting for worship at a home in the southern city of Shiraz.” The report from World Watch Monitor adds, “Authorities often detain, question and apply pressure on converts from Islam, viewing them as elements of Western propaganda set against the Iranian regime; as a result, the converts are forced to worship in secret.”49
In March 2012, authorities arrested 12 more converts to Christianity living in Isfahan, the country’s third largest city, in what is seen as a tactic to discourage Muslims from attending official churches—including one man who was reportedly taken into custody on March 2 when he returned home from work. “Security authorities raided his home and seized him without explanation.”50
In October 2011, a “group of four officers engaged in a commando-style raid on the house” of Fariborz Arazm, a Muslim convert to Christianity, arresting him, confiscating his Bible, and “transferring him to an unknown location.... His family was also threatened to remain silent and not to talk about this incident to anyone.” The Worthy News report of this incident also mentions another Christian named “Mohammad”—that is, an apostate—who was arrested and interrogated “for the charge of Christianity. ”51
In August 2012, a report sourcing Mohabat News said that Iranian authorities “raise[d] unsubstantiated charges” against five arrested converts to Christianity to “pressure” and “intimidate” them, including by falsely accusing them of desecrating the Koran and holding them for indefinite periods. “Although their situation is still unclear six months after their arrest, there is no doubt that the Christians’ only crime is related to their faith in Jesus Christ.”52
More recently, in October 2012, several reports appeared of Christian men and women, especially Evangelical Protestants and Muslim apostates, being “dragged to prisons.” According to a council member of the Church of Iran house church movement, “‘We have learned that at least 100, but perhaps as many as 400 people, have been detained over the last 10 days.... it has become clear that Protestant Christians are now viewed as enemy number one of the state.’” Some of those arrested, after serving time and being tormented, are “‘forced to say they will no longer attend church services in exchange for freedom.’” At least five apostates were confined in cells housing dangerous criminals on charges of “creating illegal groups,” “participating in a house church service,” “propagation against the Islamic regime,” and “defaming Islamic holy figures through Christian evangelizing.”53
Spotlight on Somalia
If Christians are being harassed, imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes killed in Iran, they are being butchered in Somalia. “All Somali Christians must be killed according to Sharia. A Muslim can never become a Christian, but he can become an apostate. Such people do not have a place in Somalia; we will never recognize their existence, and we will slaughter them.” These words, spoken in 2006 by influential Somali Sheikh Nur Barud, sum up the situation for the very few Christians remaining in Somalia, who must live in hiding. The al-Qaeda-linked Islamic organization al-Shabaab—“the Youth”—which has vowed to rid Somalia of any trace of Christianity, has been at the forefront of slaughtering converts to Christianity in the name of Islam.
In January 2011, Muslims from al-Shabaab slaughtered a mother of four after discovering she had converted to Christianity. Asha Mberwa, thirty-six, was murdered on the outskirts of Mogadishu, in a “ritual slaying” : after she was “arrested” by al-Shabaab in front of her home, members slit her throat in front of villagers who came to witness. “She is survived by her children—ages 12, 8, 6, and 4—and her husband, who was not home when she was apprehended.”54
In August 2009 four Christians who worked for a human aid organization helping orphans were abducted and beheaded “after they refused to renounce their faith in Jesus Christ.” Their bodies were not returned to their families for burial, because “Somalia does not have cemeteries for infidels”—according to a local Muslim calling himself “the Sword of Islam.” One eyewitness said, “All the four apostates were given an opportunity to return to Islam to be released but they all declined the generous offer. ”55
In February 2012, al-Shabaab Muslims beheaded another Muslim convert to Christianity, Zakaria Hussein Omar, twenty-six. He was abducted and murdered less than ten miles from Mogadishu, the capital. According to a close friend, who identified the body, “We have been communicating with Omar, and he was sharing with me his life as a Christian.... Last year he mentioned to me that his life was in danger when the NGO [Non-Governmental Organization] he worked for was banned by the al-Shabaab.”56
In September 2011, Juma Nuradin Kamil, another Muslim convert to Christianity, was abducted and decapitated, his body later found dumped in the road. According to a leader of the underground church, “It is usual for the al-Shabaab to decapitate those they suspect to have embraced the Christian faith, or sympathizers of western ideals.”57
In October 2011, after invading the home of twenty-one-year-old Hassan Adawe Adan, in the words of a witness, “Two al-Shabaab members dragged him out of his house, and after 10 minutes they fired several shots on him. . . . He then died immediately.” The two militants then shouted “Allahu Akbar” before fleeing. “Adan, single and living with his Muslim family, was said to have secretly converted to Christianity” some months earlier. Area Christians said they believed someone had told the Islamic militants of Adan’s new faith: “This incident is making other converts live in extreme fear, as the militants always keep an open eye to anyone professing the Christian f
aith,” said one source.58
In January 2012, Sofia Osman, a twenty-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity, was “paraded before a cheering crowd” and “publicly flogged.” She had been imprisoned since November in an al-Shabaab camp, and “the public whipping was meant to mark her release.” She received forty lashes as hundreds of Muslim spectators jeered. Bloodied and battered, she passed out. According to an eyewitness, “‘I saw her faint. I thought she had died, but soon she regained consciousness and her family took her away.’” In the days following her ordeal, she appeared traumatized and unable to talk. She has since fled the region.59
In September 2012, al-Shabaab Muslims shot three converts to Christianity. The men had converted while in Ethiopia in 2005, but pretended to be Muslim. When more zealous Muslims became suspicious, “militants” attacked the apostates, bursting into their homes and opening fire .60
Sometimes the families of apostates are attacked; sometimes they are killed as well. In 2009, when a secret convert to Christianity and leader of the underground church fled his home because al-Shabaab Muslims were coming for him, they took his children and beheaded them instead.61 And in January 2012 al-Shabaab members arrested a Muslim father after two of his children converted to Christianity and fled, accusing him of “‘failing to raise his sons as good Muslims,’ because ‘good Muslims cannot convert to Christianity.’” According to a Somali Christian leader, “This tactic [of arresting parents for conversion of children] is apparently intended to discourage Muslims from converting to Christianity since their Muslim parents could be held accountable for their conversion. The Somali Islamists have previously tried other failed harsh tactics such as summary executions of converts to minimize the number of Muslims converting to Christianity. Please pray for the Somali Christians, especially those living in Islamist controlled areas in southern Somalia.”62
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