We hear a great deal about Westerners converting to Islam. Here is the other side of the story. When will we hear of these converts to Christianity becoming Christian terrorists, as John Walker Lindh, José Padilla, Richard Reid and others did when they converted to Islam? What’s that? You mean, converts to Christianity don’t as a rule become terrorists? What are you, some kind of Islamophobe?
From the Jerusalem Post, with thanks to Looney Tunes:
In the past few years, increasing numbers of Westerners have been converting to Islam. Agence France Presse recently reported annual figures in France alone of 30,000 to 50,000. But a new phenomenon – largely unreported in the Western media – is occurring: Muslims, especially in the Maghreb (north-west Africa) are becoming Christians.
The controversy over the conversions has been most acute in Morocco. Since the beginning of the year there have been numerous articles in newspapers such as Le Matin, La Gazette du Maroc, Le Journal Hebdomadaire, and even business magazine La Vie Economique and political weekly Telquel have written about this “greatest danger.”
According to most reports, the culprits are American evangelical
missionaries operating in major cities such as Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech and Fez to remote areas in the mountains or the countryside.The statistics differ wildly: Missionaries are reported to number anywhere from 150, according to French weekly newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, to the 800-plus figure most often used. Converts are said to number anywhere from 7,000 to 58,000. These discrepancies are easily explained by the fact that both missionaries and converts have to stay constantly below the radar.
Even though Morocco is a much more tolerant country than say Saudi Arabia regarding freedom of religion, it nonetheless imprisons anyone trying to convert a Muslim for up to three years.
Karen Thomas Smith, one of the four officially registered American pastors in the country explains that because of this missionaries have to pass for businessmen or officials from NGOs.
THE RECENT visit of the American televangelist Josh McDowell, invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and received by King Mohammed VI, has sparked lots of conspiracy theories. In fact, Le Journal Hebdomadaire reported on January 8 that this evangelization campaign was part of US President George W. Bush’s campaign in the current war. Unsurprisingly, the article pointed out that this was also the goal of the neocons and the Zionists…
Those Zionists. Out to convert Muslims to Christianity now, eh? Can’t they stick to Coca Cola?