Tag: Religious conversion

Categories
Christianity Today Middle East Published Articles

ISIS Victims Welcome Christian Help, Not Christian Conversion

John Moore / Getty

The previous article in this series highlighted the impact of USAID cuts on the vulnerable Yazidi community in Iraq. ISIS displaced Yazidis from their historic home of Sinjar in northern Iraq in 2014, killing and enslaving thousands. The jihadist group claimed that the Yazidis, whose religion has roots in ancient Mesopotamia, worshiped Satan. (The nature of the Yazidi religion will be discussed in the final article of this series.)

After US coalition forces drove back ISIS, most Yazidis remained in United Nations camps for the internally displaced. USAID was a key aid provider, facilitating access to essential services for more than 30,000 people in Sinjar. The cuts have prevented vulnerable groups like the Yazidis from accessing food and health care they need to survive, wrote Amy Hawthorne, a former Obama-era State Department official.

Top of Form

Yet the legacy of USAID in the Middle East is mixed.

American foreign policy is “deeply unpopular” in the region, Hawthorne continued, while tens of billions of dollars in assistance have failed to create stability, prosperity, or democracy.

If USAID has its critics in the region, so too does faith-based aid.

“Some [Iraqis and secular expats] are very critical of Christians,” said one aid worker serving Yazidis. CT granted him anonymity due to the sensitivity of the issue. “They accuse us of mixing help with the gospel.”

Humanitarian organizations of many varieties rushed to help the Yazidis in 2014 during their displacement. Yet large agencies like World Vision, Medair, and Doctors Without Borders began leaving in 2019 as the situation stabilized and crises multiplied around the world. Among the international groups remaining, the aid worker said, many are small and motivated by a long-term commitment to serve the Yazidi people.

For instance, the Kurdistan-based Zalal Life (highlighted in part 1) provides food distribution, vocational training, and medical services to three Yazidi camps and dozens of villages in the northern Iraqi governorate of Duhok. Other Yazidis are displaced to Iraq’s Nineveh valley, bordering Syria.

Ashty Bahro, who founded the Christian group in 2007, has never received USAID or UN funding. But this would not be a problem in Kurdistan, he explained, because unlike many Arabs in the Middle East, most Kurds love America.  

Christian foundations and church support fund Zalal Life operations, he said, which recently included the repair of 100 tents left leaking in the wake of Trump’s budget cuts. And his two medical clinics are now serving twice as many patients as before, with three times the demand.

Bahro said the aid work is separate from his church ministry. He is also…

This article was originally published at Christianity Today on July 2, 2025. Please click here to read the full text.

Categories
Christianity Today Published Articles Religious Freedom

How 1 in 4 Countries Restrict Religious Conversion

Image: Pradeep Gaur / AP Images

To share your faith—or change it to another—first check your citizenship.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has released a new report on anti-conversion laws around the world. Providing the legal text for 73 separate laws, the compendium notes that 1 in 4 nations (46 total) restrict the right of its people to either adopt or propagate a religion.

“The right to convert from one religion or belief to another, or to no religion or belief at all, is central to [the] protection for religious freedom,” said Susie Gelman, a USCIRF commissioner. “And in countries with anti-conversion laws, religious minorities tend to be broadly targeted for harassment, assault, arrest, and imprisonment.”

Gelman, a three-term president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington, cited the example of pastor Keshav Acharya, sentenced by Nepal to one year in prison for allegedly attempting to convert Hindus to Christianity. But he is not the only example.

Last week in India, 9 Christians were arrested for allegedly evangelizing the poor.

Last summer in Iran, 106 Christians were arrested for their religious beliefs.

Last spring in Libya, an American Christian was arrested for alleged missionary activity. The USCIRF report grouped the laws into four categories. First, anti-proselytizing laws restrict witnessing of one’s faith in 29 nations, including in Indonesia, Israel, and Russia.

In Morocco, for example, it is illegal…

This article was originally published at Christianity Today, on December 8, 2023. Please click here to read the full text.

Categories
Christianity Today Published Articles

Iran’s House Churches Are Not Illegal, Says Supreme Court Justice (Updated)

The nine converts are officially acquitted. Branch 34 of the Tehran Court of Appeals agreed with the reasoning of the Supreme Court judge who ruled last November that the preaching of Christianity does not amount to acting against Iran’s national security.

On Monday, judges Seyed Ali Asghar Kamali and Akbar Johari accepted the converts’ lawyer’s testimony that their house church was “in accordance with the teachings of Christianity,” where they are taught to live in “obedience, submission, and support of the authorities.”

The precedent is strong, said Mansour Borji, advocacy director for Article 18, because the judges extensively outlined nine reasons in the acquittal, in line with the Iranian constitution and Islamic tradition.

But it may take time until the ruling becomes normative. One of the nine, Abdolreza Ali-Haghnejad, is already back in jail on a six-years-old separate charge of propagating Christianity, for which he was previously acquitted. And two others, Behnam Akhlaghi and Babak Hosseinzadeh, who made video appeals for freedom of worship, were charged with a separate crime of propaganda against the state.

Iranian Christians welcome the verdict, said Borji, but remain wary.

“This ruling is unlike any other of its type that I have seen,” he said. “[But] at least a dozen others … are still in prison—or enforced internal exile—following their own convictions on similar charges.”

This article updates a previously published piece at Christianity Today, from December 3, 2021. Please click here to read the full text.

Categories
Christianity Today Published Articles Religious Freedom

Like ‘Water on a Stone’: UN Expert on the Hard Work of Religious Freedom

Image: United Nations
Ahmed Shaheed, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief

Religious freedom requires global consensus.

Despite the best efforts of the Trump administration to prioritize the issue in its foreign policy, the Pew Research Center highlights that government restrictions on religion have hit an all-time high worldwide.

In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights included clear language on religious freedom, including the right to change one’s religious affiliation. But it was not until 1981 that the UN issued its Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.

Declarations are of little value without accountability.

In 1986, the UN created the position of Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief (FoRB). And in 2006, it created a process called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), in which nations report on their human rights development every 4.5 years and are required to address the recommendations of the global community.

Ahmed Shaheed, the current special rapporteur, was appointed in 2016 after serving six years as the UN human rights watchdog on Iran.

Formerly a foreign minister of the Maldives, Shaheed was declared an apostate from Islam in his home nation following his efforts to restore democracy and advance human rights.

Prior to this month’s third Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom, CT interviewed Shaheed in April as COVID-19 upended the world about recent American efforts to advance international religious freedom (IRF), the balance involved with gender equality, and the best methods to secure the right to religious conversion in the Muslim world:

How has COVID-19 impacted global freedom of religion and belief?

The pandemic is unprecedented in how it is impacting everyone.

As special rapporteur, I have issued three statements so far. The first concerned the cremation of bodies of those who died from the virus—can it be made compulsory, and can relatives attend? Religious practices can be limited to some extent during a time of public health emergency, but I wanted to remind the authorities of their obligations under international law and to be respectful of religious and cultural beliefs within the law.

The second statement was on hate speech targeting minority Christians, Jews, and Muslims. They have been scapegoated and attacked with conspiracy theories claiming they are the ones who spread or even originated this virus. And besides scapegoating, in some cases they were denied access to health care facilities.

The third statement raised alarm specifically on anti-Semitism, which was spiking across the globe.

My statements also highlighted the role that faith-based communities can play at this critical time, in terms of virtual pastoral care and the preservation of community cohesion. And I have applauded how most religious leaders have responded to the humanitarian and socio-economic challenges we have witnessed.

Many American evangelicals have been supportive of the Trump administration’s advocacy for international religious freedom. From your perspective, has it created an atmosphere where there is greater worldwide respect and attention, or has it politicized the issue and been detrimental to the global cause?

I look at US policy in a comprehensive fashion, and not just the president’s remarks. The State Department’s IRF report—covering every nation in the world—and the work of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) have played an invaluable role over the years. I’m happy that the Trump administration…

This article was originally published at Christianity Today, on November 16, 2020. Please click here to read the full text.

Categories
Christianity Today Middle East Published Articles

Conversion Confusion

Conversion Confusion Image

From my latest article in Christianity Today, from the April edition and published online on the 18th:

Nadia Mohamed Ali was raised in a Christian home, but when she married Mustafa Mohamed Abdel-Wahab in 1990, she converted to Islam. After his death, she obtained new identity cards—required under Egyptian law—that declared her and her seven children Christians.

Then came the ruling by a criminal court this January: “Egyptian Court Sentences Family to 15 Years for Converting to Christianity” read the Western headlines. Several U.S. religious freedom watchers declared Ali’s sentence a “real disaster” that “underscores the growing problem of religious intolerance” under Egypt’s new, Muslim Brotherhood-backed government. A shocking headline, indeed.

A cut-and-dry case of religious persecution? Not quite.

“They were imprisoned for fraud, not for conversion,” says Mamdouh Nakhla, founder of the Word Center for Human Rights in Cairo. The Coptic lawyer claims the family paid government workers to forge new identity cards. They registered their religion as Christian under Ali’s maiden name so that she could obtain her inheritance.

There is an underground market for such fraud:

“I was introduced to a certain priest—now deceased—who knew a certain Christian who works in the Civil Registry,” says Sheikh Saber (using his Muslim name, not his forged Christian identity). “He takes the bribe and distributes the money around for assistance in covering it up.” In 2003 Saber obtained new IDS, birth certificates, and a marriage license for his family. The cost of this illegal “service” now runs up to $2,500 per person.

The article proceeds to discuss in some depth the role of inter-religious love affairs and marriage in conversion, to which difficult social conditions also contribute. But there are accusations the conversions are not just a product of sociology:

Meanwhile, some Muslims target Coptic Christians for marriage to convert them. “The Coptic people are downtrodden,” says Isaiah Lamei, a priest who provides pastoral care for troubled Copts. “Muslims take advantage and get them to sign papers of conversion [so Copts can] fix their problems.”

Every year, Lamei ministers to 30-40 families in his diocese that have been approached by Muslims offering such “help.” “These problems can be emotional or financial,” he says. He estimates that in his diocese every year, “two or three convert to Islam.”

It’s hard to verify whether Muslims really marry Copts just to draw them into Islam. But it’s also hard to verify the sincerity of Muslim conversions to Christianity.

“We must be cautious,” says Cornelis Hulsman, editor in chief of the Arab West Report. “I have met converts who are sincere, and I’ve met converts who have other interests.”

Nakhla agrees. “Some converts come to me and say they want to marry a Christian. Or they request money, or work, or an apartment,” he says.

From time immemorial mankind has known of the power of religion in both fraud and piety, manipulation and sincerity. It is frustrating to navigate the divide.

Examples of grace and ‘ungrace’ abound, but in service of both mankind and God, toward whom religion is said to direct, the navigation is necessary.

Please click here to read the full article on Christianity Today.