During the last 1,400 years, many non-Muslims converted to Islam to avoid death or a wretched existence as dhimmis. Bribery and murder, as instruments of conversion, still take place today, in Muslim lands as diverse as Iraq, Nigeria, and Pakistan. The story of these converions is here.
It started with his father.
As fighting and instability ravaged Iraqi villages and cities, a local Shiite militia offered a means for him to save his family and himself: convert from Christianity to Islam, and gain not only protection but the promise of eternity in heaven. Or, they said, he could remain a Christian, and put his life and his children’s at risk.
The father converted.
Then he demanded all his children do the same. “One daughter fled the home,” Muna Tagi, a friend of the family based in the United States, related in an email. “The teenage son was expelled from the home, but eventually came back as he had nowhere to stay, and had to be forced, along with his other sister, to convert their IDs to show them as Muslims.”
Despite their conversion, however, the two teens secretly continued to wear their crosses beneath their clothes — until their Shiite friend discovered them. “The friend … cut it from the teen’s neck and threw it in the mud,” Tagi said. Soon after, the boy received a letter, signed in blood, accompanied by a single bullet.
The letter, signed in blood, and with a bullet enclosed, is no different from the warnings given by the Mafia to its potential victims. The message is not “Pay up, or die,” but, rather, “Convert, or die.” The only other possibility for most Christians in Iraq to save themselves – unless they choose conversion under maximum duress — is to flee the country. And that is how some Iraqi Christians have handled their calvary. Many have fled the country, many have converted, and an impossibly brave minority still hangs on, most having moved to the Kurdish part of Iraq, deemed safer because the Kurds are not as fanatical in their faith as are the Arabs.
Such forced conversions are becoming increasingly common in post-Saddam Iraq, extending beyond the 2014 capture and enslavement of Yazidis, and not only because of the violence of ISIS militants. Under Saddam, Christians were largely left alone. Now, says Tagi, churches and Christian communities have come under violent attack because of Shiite rule, Islamist militancy, and Al-Qaeda’s revitalization. Many Christians have faced torture, especially by ISIS militants, who beat them when they could not repeat passages from the Koran.
Unsurprisingly, then, Christians have fled the country in droves: over 1 million have sought sanctuary either in the West or in the country’s more tolerant Kurdish areas, leaving a mere 500,000 Christians in Iraq struggling for survival. Thousands who escaped ISIS in 2014 now live in semi-permanent camps, knowing they may never return home. And while most continue to resist conversion, more and more are starting to give in.
Before the war in 2003, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. The secular despot Saddam Hussein protected them; he knew that they were no threat to his rule, unlike the Shi’a, or rivals among the Sunni population. Saddam employed Christians as his household staff, as cleaners, waiters, drivers, launderers, tasters—many of these Christian workers were inherited by the Americans living in the Green Zone. Saddam also employed-as his face to the world, his Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz, a Christian who was liiving testimony to Saddam’s tolerance.
It isn’t just Iraq. In Algeria, the Algemeiner reported earlier this year, the government “prohibited Christians and other non-Muslims from speaking publicly about their faith, for fear of influencing Muslims.” Moreover, “any Muslim accused of approaching Christians for the purpose of learning more about their faith or beliefs could face years in prison and a hefty fine.”
In Algeria, the Arab rulers are most concerned about the Berbers, noticeable numbers of whom have, both in Algeria and in France, been converting to Christianity. Those Berbers, whose language and culture have been suppressed by the Arabs, have come to see Islam — as the late Anwar Shaikh argued — as a vehicle for Arab supremacism. After all, the message of Allah, the Qur’an, was delivered to an Arab, and in his language. Five times a day Muslims prostrate themselves in prayer, turned toward the qibla of Mecca, in western Arabia. At least once in their lifetime Muslims who are financially able must make the pilgrimage to that same city of Mecca. So great is the prestige in Islam of the Arabs that new converts to the faith frequently adopt Arab names. Some Muslims go even further, calling themselves “Sayyids” — especially in non-Arab Pakistan — which indicates a claimed descent from the tribe of Muhammad himself, the Al Quraysh.
Thus the Algerian Arabs, to cut down on apostasy from Islam, have tried to shut off discussion of Christianity at both ends. They don’t want Christians, or other non-Muslims, to speak about their own faith, and they don’t want Muslims speaking to Christians to find out more about their faith. Breaking these laws can result in long prison sentences. Statistic on conversions are understandably not released by the Algerian government, so there is no way of knowing how effective the draconian laws preventing even the discussion of Christianity have been in discouraging apostates from Islam.
And in Nigeria, home to 80 million Christians (versus 90 million Muslims), Boko Haram and Hausa Fulani militants have made the country one of the most dangerous in the world for Christians, with an estimated 7,000 Nigerian Christians executed since 2015 for their religion. In its 2019 religious freedom report, the US State Department reported that “Muslim Fulani herdsmen killed 17 Christians who had gathered after a baby dedication at a Baptist church … including the mother of the child.” They were but a few of the 1,350 Christians estimated to have been killed in Nigeria last year.
In Nigeria, unlike in Iraq and Algeria, the Christians are not a tiny minority. They have been attacked by Muslims, both those in the terror group Boko Haram, and Hausa-Fulani tribesmen, determined to push Christians out of northern Nigeria, in a territorial grab that has an underlying religious basis.
And 2020 is turning out to be similarly horrific, warns the Alabama Baptist. A video posted to YouTube on July 22, for instance, shows the execution of five Christian men, and a report issued by former MP Lord David Alton, co-founder of the Movement for Christian Democracy, counts at least 27 murders of Christians during the 24 hours between July 19-20.
Non-Muslims, not only Christians, continue in many Muslim countries to face the threat of violence, including being killed if they refuse to convert to Islam. That has always been the major reason for conversion to Islam, and not, as Muslims would have you believe, the self-evident sheer wonderfulness of Islam. As Muslims swept out of Arabia and conquered new lands, they offered the non-Muslims they vanquished only three choices: death, conversion to Islam, or wretched lives as dhimmis, “tolerated” minorities who had to submit to a host of political, social, and economic disabilities, including payment of the capitation tax known as the Jizyah. It’s no wonder that so many non-Muslims have over the centuries converted to Islam to save their own, and their families’ lives, and to avoid the crushing economic burden visited upon dhimmis.
But it isn’t only the fear of violence that is driving conversions to Islam. While the New York Times reports that the “forced conversions of Hindu girls and women to Islam through kidnapping and coerced marriages occur throughout Pakistan,” other Muslim groups use bribery to seduce impoverished Hindus, Sikhs, and Christians to abandon their faith. Indeed, in June, several dozen Hindus converted in a mass ceremony in South Pakistan seeking to escape the constant discrimination — in jobs, housing, and society — that Hindus typically experience in the Muslim majority country.
“The dehumanization of minorities coupled with these very scary times we are living in — a weak economy and now the pandemic — we may see a raft of people converting to Islam to stave off violence or hunger or just to live to see another day,” former Pakistani lawmaker Farahnaz Ispahani told the Times in August.
One wealthy Muslim in Pakistan has taken particular advantage of the current economic crisis. In a video posted on the social media site TikTok, Mian Kashif Zameer Chohadary announced his plan to pay 200,000 rupees (about $1,200) to any Christian who converts to Islam — with 1 million rupees (nearly $6,000) for a family. “Please accept Islam,” he says in the video, “which is the best religion.” The video, according to AsiaNews, quickly went viral.
Yet even these non-violent methods are problematic, the Times reports, noting that: “Hindu rights groups are also troubled by the seemingly voluntary conversions, saying they take place under such economic duress that they are tantamount to a forced conversion anyway.”
Moreover, once non-Muslims convert to Islam, they are unable to return to their former religion: apostasy is punishable by death in Islam, and many countries — including Iraq and Pakistan — consider it a capital offense.
Of course for the impoverished Christians in Pakistan, who are confined to such menial and ill-paid jobs as garbage collectors, tannery workers, and lavatory cleaners, the amounts they are offered to convert are huge sums, and it is no wonder that some cannot resist conversion – but can we really describe these conversions, as Pakistani Muslims insist, as “voluntary”? It’s under extreme economic duress that these desperately poor Christians convert to Islam, in what are clearly forced conversions.
For her part, Muna Tagi is equally troubled about the situation in Iraq. “My concern for Iraqi Christians, at present, is that there are many unreported incidents like this one, never known … [for fear of] retaliation. And I strongly believe it will get worse in the future, as … each conversion success will empower these militia[s] to pursue the next.”
“It is largely, then, up to the West to aid these endangered families: “Open, firm talk between leaders of the west and Iraqi government is [needed] first,” Tagi believes. And second, “to help these families to migrate, if they choose to do so.”
Does the West think it can pressure Muslim governments to prevent their people from attempting to. bribe, or to threaten with death, non-Muslims, unless they convert? What kind of law could those governments enact that would prevent fanatics from threatening, or killing, or bribing non-Muslims? Wouldn’t angry Muslims rise up against such attempts to limit their freedom to convert the Infidels, and threaten the stability of the government?
In Iraq, the best solution would be to aid Christians to migrate to the safety of the West, a migration that has already been underway since 2003. In that year there were 1.5 million Christians still in Iraq; today there are scarcely 500,000. In Nigeria, the West could help with funds, and possibly troops, to ease the move of Christian Nigerians from the Muslim-dominated north to the safety of central and south Nigeria, where they can resettle among fellow Christians. But the best solution for the plight of Nigeria’s Christians was that which was attempted in the Biafra War in 1967-1969. In that war the Christian tribes of the south, particularly the Igbo, who were by far the largest in numbers, after pogroms were unleashed by Muslims against Christians in the north, decided to declare the Christian-populated south as the independent state of Biafra. A bloody civil war ensued. Shamefully, the major Western powers did not intervene to help Biafra; some of them thought that it was “important” – but why? – that the most populous African state remain in one piece. The U.S. and U.K. did nothing to help the Biafrans; only Israel and Ghana extended both diplomatic recognition and military aid. Meanwhile, the Muslims were given aid by some Arab states. Egyptian Migs, with Egyptian pilots, freely bombed Ibo villages, killing hundreds of thousands of defenseless civiians. In the end, Biafra – outgunned and outmanned – lost the war and was again folded into the Nigerian state. .
But times have changed, and if there were another attempt today by Nigeria’s Christians to declare an independent state of Biafra, this time the Western powers, having now been subject themselves to Muslim aggression and terrorism, would likely intervene on the side of Biafra, by sending weapons, including planes, to the Christian fighters of Biafra Redux. And this time Biafra would win.
Kola says
Thanks for sharing. I am starting to think and believe , Muslims are at war against Christians and Christianity all over the world. Unfortunately, it appears Christians all over the world are not fighting back.
How can anybody join you to win a war, that you, yourself are not fighting?
Fight Back.!! Curse the Islamic host.!!
Thanks for sharing.
Love you God bless you.
Our Lord reigns.
Jesus is Lord.
Michael Copeland says
Correct. A “permanent war institution” is how Al Azhar explains Islam’s relationship with the filthy Kuffar.
Western politicians fail to notice.
gravenimage says
Christians in Iraq have no protection.
Reziac says
They were not protected as Christians, but rather as the remaining tax base, since Arabs do not work if they can avoid it. In fact one Islamic ruler forbade conversions to Islam because it was eroding his profits.
Jayell says
“Islam is the fastest growing religion in the World!”……or so the Disciples of the Great Prophet keep reiterating like a broken gramophone record. But we all knew this sort of thing has been going on from the days of Mohammed’s marauding troops in the Arabian Peninsula 1,400 years ago to the stories from around the world today that we see in this article – which hasn’t included choice pieces of information from ‘civilised’ Europe, like (for example) muslim converts to Christianity in ‘nice’ northern UK cities having bullets in their kneecaps whilst the local police stand round and do nothing. Everything we see here is straight out of a protection-racket handbook to guarantee the size of the ‘client-base’. No wonder Mohammed & Allah have such a following if the alternative is a friendly midnight visit from ‘their associates’.
gravenimage says
Good points, Jayell.
Sabri S. says
Bad points and nonsense. Islam spread throughout the world primarily by trade, marriage and voluntary conversion, particularly in North America. This islamophobic garbage is exactly why muslims in north america, particularly black americans and immigrant muslims are NOT integrating with your racist society. They are better off with Islam and independence, which is becoming more evident every year. And no, Black Lives Matter is not needed to show this. It is Christians and other non-muslims that are occupying other countries lands and political systems. And there has never been a muslim country that shoots drones into residential neighborhoods except for christians and zionists. Live and speak the truth for once infidels!
James Lincoln says
Sabri S,
Lest our readers forget, you support honor killings.
Everything that you post will be seen through those optics…
gravenimage says
The dishonest Sabri S. wrote:
Bad points and nonsense. Islam spread throughout the world primarily by trade, marriage and voluntary conversion, particularly in North America.
……………………………
Islam has been overwhelmingly spread by the sword throughout history, as the canonical texts of Islam themselves confirm. The “Prophet” Muhammed himself spread Islam through the sword. Arabia, the Middle East, the Mahgreb, Anatolia, much of India–all conquest.
As for the Muslim population in North America, counting the US, Canada, and Mexico, it is about .7%. To point to this as an example of Islam spreading without conquest actually shows just how little Islam spreads *without* resorting to bloody violence. Just sad. Given that much of this has been through migrant invasion proves that most of these Muslims are not converts to Islam.
And note that Sabri S. says *nothing* against spreading Islam by threats and violence, as here in Pakistan. But then, why would he? This is perfectly Islamic.
More:
This islamophobic garbage is exactly why muslims in north america, particularly black americans and immigrant muslims are NOT integrating with your racist society. They are better off with Islam and independence, which is becoming more evident every year. And no, Black Lives Matter is not needed to show this.
……………………………
Islam is *still enslaving* Africans–and Sabri S. has refused to say anything critical about this.
And most African Americans are indeed Americans–that Black Muslims and Muslim invaders are not should not surprise–Muslims refuse to integrate into any civilized Infidel land. Note that Sabri S. is simply confirming that Muslims flooding into the West have no intention of integrating–instead, their intent is to impose brutal Shari’ah on us.
Elsewhere Sabri S. has lauded Muslims threatening Jews and beating women in the streets for daring to wear skirts. He has also, as James Lincoln notes, applauded Muslims “Honor Killing” their own young children. *These* are the horrors he wants to see imposed here in the civilized world.
More:
It is Christians and other non-muslims that are occupying other countries lands and political systems. And there has never been a muslim country that shoots drones into residential neighborhoods except for christians and zionists. Live and speak the truth for once infidels!
……………………………
How are Christians “occupying” Pakistan? There have been Christians in greater India for longer than Muslims violently invading there. Moreover, they are a tiny minority regularly persecuted by Muslims, as made clear in the story above. The same sort of oppression is being used there against Hindus and Sikhs, as well.
Then, Sabri S. again castigates Infidels for daring to defend against Jihad terror. That Jihadists disgustingly use civilians as human shields is of no concern to him.
E T says
Battle of Bedr 624, Battle of Ohod 625, Expedition Against the Jews 627, Siige of Medina, Extermination of the Jews 627-628, MOs Pilgrimaged to Mecca 629, Subjection of Mecca 630…………jihad, jihad, jihad, convert or die.
Giacomo Latta says
So pray tell, what does someone of the Islamic race look like?
Cornelius says
HUGH: In Algeria, the Arab rulers are most concerned about the Berbers, noticeable numbers of whom have, both in Algeria and in France, been converting to Christianity.
This may indeed be happening, but it would be nice to read some actual statistical validation of the assertion.
HUGH: But times have changed, and if there were another attempt today by Nigeria’s Christians to declare an independent state of Biafra, this time the Western powers, having now been subject themselves to Muslim aggression and terrorism, would likely intervene on the side of Biafra, by sending weapons, including planes, to the Christian fighters of Biafra Redux.
I would be reticent to be so certain about this Hugh. You may be introjecting more backbone into the West than actually exists. In fact, while the original rational for Western support in ’69 for the Nigerian central government, the sacrosanct-ness of African national frontiers – has been subsumed with the birth of countries in East Africa like Eritrea, South Sudan, and Puntland, there exists today in the West a politically-correct deference to – (and fear of) – Islam….that didn’t exist in the late 60s.
Anyways, immensely enjoying your current contributions to JW Hugh. Would love to see a return of your previous critiques of Western academia.
gravenimage says
Grimly I have to agree, Cornelius.
Walter Sieruk says
This is still further proof ,as if more proof is really needed , Islam is totally lacking in in good strong valid arguments to uphold the claim made the imams and mullahs that “Islam is the one true religion.”
Therefore, since Islamic is completely insufficient to supply rational evidence to support its claims , from reason, logic o the Bible , many Muslim when they are in power then resort to the use of bribery and even death threats to gain “converts.”
Likewise , in Muslim countries there are “blasphemy law” with very harsh and brutal punishments of the violation of that law to protect Islam from being criticized , No matter who mild that criticism might be.
This shows what a weak and fragile religion Islam actually is.
Furthermore, in the classical work of ancient Greek literature, by Plato, entitled THE APOLOGY OF SOCRATES it in written that Socrates had said that “An unexamined life is not worth living.” Likewise, in may also be said that “An unexamined religion is not worth believing in.” This is said about all religions. Yet to be specific, in this case, the topic is about the religion of Islam.
In addition , one man who was as a former a Muslim and had lived in one of the Islamic nations of the Middle East but now he is Christian and an American citizen had explained in a book he wrote that “Driving into depths of the word of reasoned thinking and research in Islamic societies has always been costly. Some Muslims who have done this have even been excluded from their social rights and even sentenced to death.” [1]
[1] ISLAM AND THE SON OF GOD by Daniel Shayesteh page 70.
Vladimir says
Coming to a country near you; or it already is beginning right where you live.
John says
Baby Bush was a fool. Saddam kept the wild animals in their cages. Bush invaded and ‘freed’ all the animals so the lions could eat the lambs.
Michael Copeland says
Islam has its own terminology:
“Those whose hearts are to be reconciled, meaning new Muslims and friends of the Muslim community.”
https://www.zakat.org/the-eight-kinds-of-people-who-receive-zakat/
Aah! Isn’t that just adorable? For reconciling hearts. How touching. Wonderful.
somehistory says
That poor, poor baby. Wish I could just reach out and snatch her away to a better place, a place far away from the filthy evil of islam and its adherents, proponents, and those who practice its barbarity.
Vladimir says
All error is spread and perpetuated through a combination of force, fraud, and ignorance. Islam has all that in spades. Islam does however have enough of a superficial resemblance to the truth that natural mankind can and does easily fall for it or gives in to it. When it’s all said and done before the End. Islam will have conquered a huge portion of what the Geopolitical scientists called the ”World Island”. I think it’s Divine Providence that we have the New World more or less free of Islam compared to the Old World, and Russia and Africa have vast Wildernesses and strongholds too. And then there’s Israel…
gravenimage says
Bribery and Murder Threats Still Spread the Faith of Islam
……………..
This poor family.
God, I hate Islam.
Subramaniam Iyer says
I Got a Facebook Friend request from a Turkish man , then chatting , he asked me if I want to go to Europe , then he asked me to pay 10000 Euros , and request Me to go ahead if I want .twice he message me , I asked how can I go ,he said I can make all travel arrangements ,visa etc but he did not reveal more .Then I found something fishy ,m that he may make me dump in a ship from libya turkey border and dump me in Italy of Greece .This is how Terrorist travel to Europe.
gravenimage says
*Don’t* trust this guy.
OLD GUY says
Hitlers NAZI regime did the same thing, join or die. Only difference is Islam claims to be a religion with a bloody God at its head. I think the Aztec leaders and several other ancient rulers tried this same ideology of leadership. Islam’s attempt to rule the world will fail but at the cost of millions of lives I’am afraid. The longer we wait to put this ideology down the bloodier it will be.