Muslims convert to christianity

Muslims converts face ostracism in France
Muslims are converting to Christianity in their thousands in France but face exclusion from their families and even death threats.

Most Muslims hide their conversion and Protestant ministers do their utmost to protect new converts. It is estimated that every year in the world some six million Muslims convert to Christianity.

The Muezzin call to prayer. But here in France it is no longer reaching all Muslim ears.

Around 15,000 Muslims each year are converting to Christianity - around 10,000 to Catholicism and 5,000 to Protestantism.

It is often a difficult and painful choice - one that can leave them excluded from their Muslim families and friends.

Pastor Schluster knows what a real taboo conversion is in the Arab world. His job is to support converts by meeting them to reassure them and help them face the isolation from their families.

Pastor Antoine Schluster, official representative of Protestant Federation for New Convert Immigrants, said "True, a conversion is not easy for the Muslims whether they are practising or not. Simply because Islam influences their daily life. And therefore they immediately have a sense of betrayal."

Comedian Siad Oujibou used to pray five times a day but found his questions about death and his desire for a God closer to him than Allah moved him to convert. He is now a Christian pastor.

But he has faced many reprisals and humiliations from his family and was even under a sentence of death.

Said Oujibou, Protestant Pastor, comedian and convert, said "We are under this law if we change our faith. In certain countries would be condemned to death because we have converted. But I haven't changed my religion. I don't believe in religion, I believe in God. And God and religion are two very different things."

Many Muslims in France hide their conversion but the trend is continuing. World wide around six million Muslims a year convert to Christianity.

Bureau Report
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FAITH UNDER FIRE
Descendant of Muhammad converts to Christianity
But faces threat to life if forced to return to Turkey
Posted: February 7, 2007
1:00 a.m. Eastern

By Wolfgang Polzer
© 2007 ASSIST News Service

A Turk who claims to be a descendant of Islam's prophet Muhammad has converted to Christianity while living in Germany.

But Sedar Dedeoglu, of Luedenscheid, now faces a threat to his life if he's forced to return to Turkey, and is seeking help from German authorities.

Dedeoglu, who is involved in Christian outreach programs among Muslims, has been receiving death threats from Muslims unwilling to accept his conversion. His relatives also regard the apostasy as shameful.

If Dedeoglu is returned to his native country, he very likely would be killed, his lawyer says.

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Despite this threat, the German Federal Migration Office and several courts of justice have rejected asylum applications by the Dedeoglu family. They claim Christians are free to practice their religion in Turkey.

To avoid deportation, Dedeoglu, his wife Husniye and their daughter Isil now hope at least to be tolerated in Germany as a "case of hardship." According to their attorney, Oswald Seitter, it is impossible to overlook the extraordinary danger the Dedeoglu family is facing.

For Muslims, he said, it is undeniable Dedeoglu descends from Muhammad's daughter Fatima and her husband Ali. In Dedeoglu's hometown, Elazig, in eastern Turkey they used to be revered as a holy family. According to Seitter, the apostasy of a family member is regarded as an insult of the prophet himself.

Dedeoglu's case has become so widely known in Turkey that his life is in real and imminent danger, the lawyer said.

"We should rejoice that a such a person has become a Christian, and we should avoid any actions which could put his life in additional danger," Seitter told an evangelical news agency.

Seitter is an evangelical Christian and used to be the speaker of the synod of the Protestant Church in Wuerttemberg.

Dedeoglu came to Germany in 1997 and asked for asylum because of political persecution of the Kurdish minority in Turkey. Four years later, he and his family converted to the Christian faith. They are members of an Evangelical Brethren church.
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