I co-wrote a book, Inside Islam: A Guide for Catholics, with a Kurdish convert from Islam to Christianity, Daniel Ali. His own experiences coincide with what is detailed here in several important ways. From AINA, with thanks to Nicolei:
North Iraq -- The small but growing number of Kurds who convert to Christianity say they face discrimination and intolerance from the Muslim majority.Kurdish Christians -- still a tiny minority - say they find it difficult to practice their religion because of public intolerance. Muslims in the region counter that it is wrong for Christians to proselytise among other faith groups.
The converts are joining new, western-style Christian groups which started growing after the fall of Saddam Hussein, rather than the long-established Christian communities such as the Assyrians and Chaldeans, who do not seek new members from Muslim backgrounds.
Majid Rashid Muhammed, a member of the Kurdish Christian Church Committee, said his church has gained at least 200 members in the last few months, bringing its congregation to more than 700.
"The rate at which people are joining our church is continually increasing, and most of them are young people," he said....
Many Muslims object to the new churches seeking to win over converts from the Islamic faith. Those who make the decision to become Christian may be shunned -- even by relatives.A 20-year-old man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said no one in his family knew that he had turned to Christianity. "I'll try to keep it a secret because our community is a Muslim one," he added.
Sirwan Abdul-Rahman, a member of the Kurdish Christian Church Committee from Erbil, said his relatives looked down on him after he converted to Christianity several years ago.
Abdul-Rahman has also got into trouble for preaching his religion to other Kurds. He said he's been arrested so often for carrying a Bible "that I've got used to it".
On a proselytising mission in the mountainous area of Qandeel, he was recognised as a Christian convert by a driver. "He started to insult me," said Abdul-Rahman. "He spat on me, beat me with his pistol and punched me in the mouth."
The Kurdistan Islamic League has issued a statement addressed to Christian groups and churches saying it is a "strange and terrible act" and an "unhealthy phenomenon" for a Muslim to convert.
"This phenomenon will eventually lead to a feud in Kurdistan," said Osman Ali, a member of the Islamic league's Sulaimaniyah branch.
The region's religious affairs minister, Muhammed Ahmed Gaznayi, said people who turn to Christianity are "renegades" in the eyes of Islam.
"I consider that those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society," he added.
The Christian community also has to worry about its collective security, as churches have been targeted by insurgents.
The main Kurdish Christian Church in Erbil and its two branches in Sulaimaniyah and Dohuk have no external signs or other indicators that they are places of worship. Services are held in private homes.
Is this a goose and gander thing: "Muslims in the region counter that it is wrong for Christians to proselytise among other faith groups."? Is it wrong to proselytise among other faith groups or does that only apply to Christians proselytising among Moslims?
While I am an atheist (and have been since I was 12, a week before my bar mitzvah), I know that the spread of Christianity among Moslems is one trend that will go a long way to saving us from having to rid the world of them.
"I consider that those who turn to Christianity pose a threat to society." This quote is from the religious affairs minister of the region. Obviously the word "religious" here means "Islamic."
The statement reveals the true nature of the objections to Christianity: social control. Islam, with its demands for blind obedience to authority figures who meld religion and politics, makes it easy for despots to control an acquiescent populace.
Inquiring into Christianity, or any other religion, would indicate that some thought processes are going on - a threat to totalitarianism.
Yes, Seymour... I agree. More christians and less Muslims would be of help. But what is more likely, get someone to change religion (especially from Islam to anything else) or getting them to just drop it all together (as you and I did)?
Any christian (or any other non-Muslim) who lives in a Muslim nation is lucky to be alive, much less one that CONVERTS to Islam.
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Hah... recently there was an article about Mobots killing a Mobette that was in love with a non-Mobot. What a joke. I can distinctly remember seeing the USF newspaper publish one of their never-ending Muslim apology opinion-page articles wherein a Muslim claimed something like,
"We know that Allah is merciful to other people and encourages us to love other people. That's why we are free to take Christians and Jews as wives. Of course we love our wives, so obviously Allah encourages us to love Jews and Christians, and did I mention that Islam is the perfect way for all people to live? And about those Israelis, one time Sharon said that... blah blah blah..."
Meanwhile, BACK HERE ON EARTH, Muslim women are ABSOLUTELY POSITIVELY FORBIDDEN to marry non-Muslim men (and it seems to me that they are in fact required to leave their husbands if they convert.)
Just another fine example of taqqiya/kitman. Only one religion has raised lying for propaganda to an artform.
This is more proof that a Muslim woman is nothing but a sex toy for a Muslim man and a brood sow for the production of more Muslims. She is little more than a life-support system for her vagina and womb, and for the supposedly-non-existent Muslim sodomite, a couple more orifices. This is especially the case for Mobette who's genitalia is mutilated (i.e. cut away anything that protrudes and/or has hair.)
I can't believe that some of these ridiculous c-words say that Islam encourages women's rights. What a joke.
Speaking of women's rights, I just heard Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring. So pretty soon America can join the ranks of those illustrious nations like Iran, Pakistan, and Sodomy Arabia in outlawing abortion. Yay! I feel safer already.
... yeah. Remember early on in the Bush War, some GIs married Iraqi women? Well, before they could, the GIs HAD to convert to Islam. I wonder why? Oh, that's right: Allah hates everybody else.
What I'd like to see would be a bunch of sweet Brooklyn JW ladies doing their Watchtower and Awake bits in the street just outside the Grand Mosque in Mecca during the haj. Of course, they'd have to be surrounded a few million US Marines, but that would be a sweet sight to see too.
Of course this couldn't happen in Britain....Uh, uh, well maybe it could..
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1470584,00.html
While Christians who turn to Islam are feted, the 200,000 Muslims who turn away are faced with abuse, violence and even murder
THE first brick was thrown through the sitting room window at one in the morning, waking Nissar Hussein, his wife and five children with a terrifying start. The second brick went through his car window. It was a shock, but hardly a surprise. The week before, another brick had been thrown through the window as the family were preparing for bed in their Bradford home. The victim of a three-year campaign of religious hatred, Mr Hussein’s car has also been rammed and torched, and the steps to his home have been strewn with rubbish.
He and his family have been regularly jostled, abused, attacked, shouted at to move out of the area, and given death threats in the street. His wife has been held hostage inside their home for two hours by a mob. His car, walls and windows have been daubed in graffiti: “Christian bastard”.
The problem isn’t so much what Mr Hussein, whose parents came from Pakistan, believes, but what he doesn’t believe. Born into Islam, he converted eight years ago to Christianity, and his wife, also from Pakistan, followed suit.
I have commented on this before. I don't believe any population surveys that have to do with Muslims. The Muslims always inflate their numbers to gain more power. Also, due to the threats and violence towards Muslims who leave the religion or would like to leave, for whatever reason, they can also keep their numbers up high. What if tomorrow, every Muslim man and woman who would like to drop Islam was free to do so, without dire consequences? I think that worldwide number of "a billion" would shrink dramatically. Of course, Islam is a religion without exit visas.
All right. I'll confess. I would drop any relative or friend who converted to islam like a hot potato, especially if--after I had shown him all the verses of the koran that tell him to kill me and other non-muslims--he still insisted on being a muslim. "If he wants to live like a pagan, let him go." Who needs him?
I don't blame people for dropping family members or friends who make stupid life decisions. What is tragic is the danger that a chosen way of life now brings these new Christians. But then, Jesus did say that Christians would be persecuted for following him.
The thing with Islam is that it is unlike any other religion in being quite extraordinarily easy to enter but impossible (according to its doctrine) to leave. Those who wish to become Christian or Jewish (Jews may not proselytize, but they definitely welcome converts) have to go through a course of instruction in the religion at the end of which they are still free to join or not; certainly Baptism is not granted to anyone merely for the asking. However, to become a Muslim, all you have to do is to say aloud that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammed is his prophet. From that moment on you are a full member of the Ummah and subject to Sharia. However, while people have been known to leave Christian or Jewish communities with no grimmer consequences than a certain amount of ostracism and perhaps a ceremonial curse or two - indeed, people may be thrown out of the communities, excommunicated - no Muslim is allowed to leave Islam under penalty of death. Clearly, this "religion" is designed to be a one-way trap. Clearly, too, a lot of "conversions" to Islam had no more validity than the Mormon belief that you can baptize non-Mormon dead into Mormonism.