Conversions from Islam to Christianity

2 Responses

1. Dear Sir,
   I appreciated your article very much, especially in that you referred to my article in Note 8 Jacob Thomas, The Christianization of Algeria, published 2013 at http://www.answeringislam.org/authors/thomas/Christianization_algeria.html

   quite often I use the name of my maternal grandmother as my nom de plume, Jacob Thomas. I would appreciate corresponding with you re Bassam Tibi’s Islamism and Islam.

   Sincerely, Jacob Thomas.

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2. I can offer a few small pieces of evidence of my own. A good many years ago – somewhere in the early 1990s, I think – in the church that I then attended (a congregation within the Anglican Communion, middle-of-the-road evangelical, with a very sober and intelligent priest in charge) our congregation witnessed, one Sunday morning, the baptism of a young Iranian postgrad student who was converting from Islam to Christianity. I don’t know all the circumstances of his conversion; I do know he had been drawn to Christianity by various means since he arrived in Australia to do postgrad study at a university in the same city as our church. I also know that our rector, who was not born yesterday, would have been well aware of the possibility of a conversion-to-gain-visa, and that the young man passed through quite a long period of catechesis to determine his sincerity. So far as I know, he has persevered in his faith. I can also say what Mark Durie once told me, within the past few years: that his diocesan Bishop was in the process of overseeing the catechesis of some forty converts to Christianity, of Iranian Muslim background, migrants in Australia, who were preparing to be baptised and confirmed in the traditional manner, at Easter time. The Anglican church in that particular city is not one for stump-top evangelism; their methods are fairly low-key. If *they* were finding themselves with forty ex-Muslim Iranian seekers knocking on their doors, who is to say what some of the more ‘out-there and up front’ protestant evangelical churches were gathering in? And it might have been interesting to talk to the Catholics, and even to the emigre Orthodox congregations (especially in light of the fact that Mona Walters, in Sweden, formerly a Somali Muslim, undertook the final steps of her journey into Christianity under the guidance of a refugee Syrian Christian priest). Final thought: My own hope for the UK, where many ex-Muslim Christians live in fear and in hiding, is that they may screw up their courage and *publicly* demand protection and succour from their Queen, one of whose titles is Defender of the Faith. It might put the government to shame if a thousand apostates – both the Christians and the atheists – were to write to the Queen for help and protection, and let it be publicly known that they had done this. They should put her on the spot. Her role is to advise and warn – she has no actual power as such; well then, let her be publicly begged and petitioned to *advise and warn* the Parliament and herself beg them to take concrete steps to give proper protection to apostates from Islam, on British soil! (And put in a good word for others throughout the Commonwealth, as well). Personally, I would like to see some of the better-known apostates from Islam, in Britain – Mr Nasir Hussain and his family, and Ibn Warraq, and Hannah Shah (author of The Imam’s Daughter), and there would surely be others, the British Pakistani Christian Association would know of some I’m sure and so would Barnabas Fund – invited to dinner at the Palace.. or to a Royal Garden Party. Let them be publicly seen to be placed under the direct protection and shelter of the highest in the land… with all hell to pay if a hair of their heads were touched henceforward. And let their testimony be *heard*.

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