His relatives went to the mosque seeking consolation, and this is what they got. "Bangladesh - Christian Convert's Life Threatened," from Compass Direct News, October 16:
DHAKA, Bangladesh, October 16 (Compass Direct News) – Muslim clerics and neighbors have ordered the father of a man who converted to Catholicism to remain confined to his house until retaliatory punishment can be exacted from the convert.
“Are you not ashamed that your son became Christian?” the founder of a mosque here asked Ruhul Amin Khandaker, father of a 32-year-old businessman who went to Australia earlier this year to court a Philippine Catholic woman, converting to her faith in April. “Why did you not sacrifice your son like cattle before telling the news to us?”
Khandaker has become a social outcast whose family lives under threat from fellow Muslims, in violation of Bangladesh’s constitution and international human rights safeguards. His son, Rashidul Amin Khandaker, has applied for protection from Australian immigration officials as he believes police in 88 percent-Muslim Bangladesh would do nothing to protect him from Islamists threatening to kill him.
Per Muhammad's own instructions: "If anyone changes his religion, kill him."
“They will try to kill me anywhere, any time in Bangladesh, and the police and the authority will not protect me,” Rashidul Khandaker wrote in his plea to Australian authorities. “There are records that show a converted person is not protected by the police, authority and society.”
Khandaker’s life would be in danger if he returned to Bangladesh, said his brother-in-law, identified only as Siddik, adding that “we are also surviving in the society at our own peril.”
Rashidul Khandaker’s brother wrote him in May to cease all contact with the family. Rakibul Amin Khandaker stated in the letter that Muslim authorities had threatened to ostracize the family because of his brother’s conversion, and that his life would be in danger if he returned to Bangladesh as Muslim extremists believe they would get to heaven by punishing him.
Logically, then, Muhammad was an Islamic extremist. How very Islamophobic.
Muslim leaders in Dhaka have ordered Khandaker’s 65-year-old father to disown his son and exclude him from his wealth and property.
“If he comes to Bangladesh, you must hand him over to us and we will punish him,” the founder of the mosque told the elder Khandaker.
Khandaker, who operates an oil lubricant refining business in the Kutubkhali area under Jatrabari police jurisdiction in central Dhaka, told Compass of the grief he experienced when his son informed the family from Sydney that he had become a Christian.
“My other sons and relatives informed it to the nearby cleric of the mosque so that the cleric could console me,” he said. “Unfortunately the cleric was so furious . . . [He] told me that, ‘You cannot keep any relationship with your son. A man of a noble Muslim family cannot be a Christian, and the society cannot accept it.”
Home Ransacked
When Rashidul Khandaker, who worked as director of marketing in his father’s business before going to Australia to pursue a relationship with a woman he met over the Internet, telephoned friends in Dhaka about his conversion, seven or eight of them broke into his house to loot his computer, scanner, printer, documents, sofa and other valuables, his father said.
“They told me, ‘We will return everything when your son comes back. Whenever he will come back, you must hand him over to us – we will take revenge for his activities. Until he comes, don’t mix with the people in the society and stay in your house.’”
The elder Khandaker said his son’s former friends also threatened to harm the family if they informed police about the looting...
The father - who is mourning the conversion of his son as though it's a death in the family - got what he deserved. Maybe the other Khandakers can ponder what it is about Islam that they are so attached to, after this treatment?
Although why should Australia be expected to take in Rashidul? Since he married a Filipina, can't he get citizenship in the Philippines? Or do Filipinas lose their citizenship on marrying foreigners?
From article: “Why did you not sacrifice your son like cattle before telling the news to us?”
Yes sacrifice your son like cattle...Hmm I didn't know Mohammadans sacrificed cattle. An animal sacrificed to Allah? I wonder how they went about that? I wonder when they stopped doing it? Never mind I don't want to know...
If he had just killed his son he could have prevented all this trouble. They would not even punish him...not for doing what is expected of a good Mohammadan father. But he has shown himself to be a bad father and Mohammadan, and he and his whole family are subject to punishment.
It's always best to obey the law...
Of course the son in Australia, want's none of that BS...Can't blame him. Since he is a convert
to Christianity, and I approve of converts,(from Islam) I hope he makes out...
Infidel Pride -
the young man met the lady in Australia. I assume therefore that she is a Filipino Catholic immigrant to Australia, and a citizen. We have many such, and they are all hardworking people who take their Australian citizenship very seriously. Most are also very devout and active in the church scene here.
(So many Filipinas have married Aussie men - and joined up at Aussie Catholic parish churches - that somebody could make a movie called 'The Filipino Wives' Club', about a suburban Aussie Catholic church making the transition from Irish-and-Italian Catholicism to Filipino Catholicism).
Filipino Christians, both Catholic and Evangelical Protestant, are very enthusiastic about communicating the Faith.
The conversion took place in Sydney.
To get a handle on Sydney, wrap your minds around the fact that it's Australia's 'gay capital', sort of the 'San Francisco' of Australia, but that at the same time its Anglicans are fervently evangelical and its Catholics are headed up by Cardinal George Pell who 'offended' the Muslims most dreadfully, some years ago, by speaking plainly about the violence in the Qur'an.
It is perfectly probable that a lovely Filipina has in fact succeeded in detaching Khandaker Jnr from Islam. Good on her!
However, Australian immigration authorities and the Catholic church should not be naive - the whole story needs to be very carefully examined, bearing in mind of course that practically everything the man's Muslim relations say may be a lie of some kind or another.
If he's genuinely converted, the shame and fury felt by his folks and by the Ummah in his hometown, must be eating them up inside; they will do or say anything at all to blacken his name and mess up his prospects of escape; anything to get him back home so they can slit his throat.
Or it *could* be an elaborate scam of some kind - though Bangladeshis, Muslim and otherwise, can migrate to Australia pretty easily anyway, so why bother? I have a friend (of Anglo-Indian ancestry herself; married to an Anglican priest) who has a Bangladeshi Hindu migrant family living next to her place on one side, and a Bangladeshi Muslim migrant family living on the other.
The young man, if allowed to stay in Australia, should be required to front up for regular security checks.
Since the young man has joined the Catholics, he is placing himself under the pastoral oversight of Islamosavvy Archbishop and Cardinal George Pell.
If he's truly converted, God bless him, he's welcome to stay in Australia and I hope he and his lady will swell the ranks of Aussie Catholics with many gorgeous dark-eyed children.
My wife is also a wonderful Filipina :)
I'm sure once the man experienced the love and joy of the Filipino Catholic community there, he had no choice but to convert ;);) a far cry from the fear and hate back home.
Let us always pray for those who want to convert to Christianity to have the courage to do so.
Proof, if any more were needed, that Islam is a house of cards. Very little real pressure will be required to destroy it.
It would seem islam cannot conceive of the idea that adult children are separate from their parents, autonomous beings who, after a certain age, must bear alone the consequences of their actions.
If true, the reaction by the cleric and his minions is blown out of all proportion. One might even call it overkill.
The abolition movement of the 21st century stares us in the face, and few recognize it.
The plight of ex-Muslims, and those who wish to leave Islam but fear the death threats of the mullahs and imams, is a violation of the most basic human rights--beginning with freedom of religion, but extending to freedom from fear and tyranny, freedom of expression, freedom of association, and freedom from extra-legal authority and intimidation.
An even greater cause than the rights of non-Muslims like Christians and Hindus in Muslim countries is the rights of ex-Muslims, because they are under immediate death threats, and there are far more of them. What if half of forced Muslims left Islam if free to do so? The imams can't have it, they must maintain religion based on death threats. We must fight them.
If true, the reaction by the cleric and his minions is blown out of all proportion. One might even call it overkill.
Posted by: ImNoDhimmi at October 17, 2008 8:29 AM
I think, if the cleric has his way, that there will be killing. Overkilling? Good possibility of that too.
Taking your '...islam cannot conceive of the idea that adult children are separate from their parents, autonomous beings...' further, ImNoDhimmi, it's time that Westerners contemplate, seriously - very seriously - the concept of the "individual". And what that idea means within the general society, and how long and hard a road it was to even get to it in Western thought. (But at least we got there.)
We need to thoroughly understand what must be defended in these Islam-threatened times.
From post above: Proof, if any more were needed, that Islam is a house of cards.
That's right, and the two main cards holding it up
are, 'There s only one Ilah, and that's Allah, and the second that, 'Mohammad is his messenger'.
Kick those two cards out and the whole structure falls. It is paramount to Islam, that a Mohammadan believe and accept those two concepts. They are sometimes used as a test.
I would still like to put Obama to the test. 'Do you believe Allah is God'? Do you believe the Mohammad was his messenger'?
He can't answer that without tipping his hand to kufrs, or Mohammadans. Yes or no either one hangs him with someone.
"Muslim leaders in Dhaka have ordered Khandaker’s 65-year-old father to disown his son and exclude him from his wealth and property."
Catholic leaders in Daytona, Florida have ordered Smith's 65-year-old father to disown his son, and exclude him from his wealth and property...
Methodist leaders in Ames, Iowa have ordered Jackson's 65-year-old father to disown his son, and exclude him from his wealth and property...
Lutheran leaders in Jackson Hole, Wyoming have ordered Brown's 65-year-old father to disown his son, and exclude him from his wealth and property...
Somehow, it sounds surreal, if it's not "Muslim leaders", doesn't it?
Something that stands out a mile from this story: the instant, reflexive resort to Mafia-style tactics by Muslim 'leaders' in order to keep fellow members of the Ummah in line. This man's father - seemingly a perfectly pious Muslim - has been 'confined to his house', and the whole family, in Bangladesh, are under threat.
Muslim goes to kafir lands, decides to leave Islam; Muslim's family back home (e.g. parents, siblings) are promptly seized upon as hostages to exact emotional blackmail upon the Muslim defector. "Return to Islam or we will HURT your family".
If this young man persists in his confession of Christianity, then the Muslims in Bangladesh, not being able to punish him directly (if he is given refuge in Australia) wlll 'take it out' on his relatives in Bangladesh.
I am 100 % sure that this tactic is used upon members of dhimmi communities as well, who manage to escape abroad: if they dare to publicly blow the whistle on what is happening 'back home' under Muslim rule, the Muslim Mobsters will threaten to attack their family members (or, more broadly, their co-religionists) who are still in the Muslim lands.
It takes a great deal of courage to defy that kind of threat, to refuse to play the hostage game: to say, 'I will tell the truth even if you kill my family'.
So: to any person in that position, who may be reading this, at this moment; any Coptic Christian, Assyrian Christian, Maronite Christian, 'Palestinian' Arab Christian, now fortunately escaped, and living in the kafir lands, but afraid to speak out because the Muslim Gang Bosses threaten that, if you do, they will torture or kill your family members who are still trapped inside Dar al-Islam...we know, here. We understand. We are starting to see through this dirty game of the Muslim Mob.
And here, in the anonymity of the jihadwatch/ dhimmiwatch comments floor, behind a nom de plume, you can tell us at least something of what you suffer.