By Jeremy Reynalds, Senior Correspondent, ASSIST News Service (jeremyreynalds@gmail.com)
LONDON (ANS. OCT. 17)
Writing in a blog for the British Pakistani Christians Association
(BPCA), Wilson Chowdhry said that as the British government prepares to
record religious hate crimes against Muslims separately due to a massive
rise in recorded incidents, some human rights activists are arguing
that the government is missing a major phenomenon, possibly due to
political correctness.
What phenomenon is that, he asked rhetorically?
It’s religious hate crimes
committed by Muslims, especially against those who have converted from
Islam, or non-Muslims who are from predominantly Islamic ethnicities.
On occasion, Chowdhry said,
this phenomenon has appeared in passing in the national media
consciousness and then faded out again.
However, these activists say
that for many, particularly Christians who are a minority in their own
ethnicities, their experience of religious hate in the UK is ongoing, in
some cases approaching the level of persecution in their ‘mother’
countries.
It doesn’t only affect immigrants to the UK. In some instances, it touches people born and brought up there.
One example is the Hussain
family. Living life in Bradford, Chowdhry said they have faced around
15 years of persecution because they are a Christian convert family.
Persecution in the UK in the
21st century is what their children have known their entire lives. That
includes assaults, stones thrown through car and living room windows,
intimidation; false accusations to get the father arrested (the most
recent being in March 2015), multiple vehicles destroyed, being forced
to move house after an arson attack, and ongoing persecution stemming
from one particularly influential Muslim family on their street.
The family is of Pakistani heritage, and the BPCA was recently asked to intervene in their situation.
A BPCA researcher speaking on
condition of anonymity said while he had been aware of this family’s
plight from media accounts, it wasn’t until he started talking to them
in person and reading a blog from one of their daughters that he really
understood the gravity of their situation.
He said, “I was appalled. The media did not tell the half of it.”
The researcher added, “Her
life might as well have been lived out in Pakistan, because what that
family has endured matches reports from Pakistan; the continuous
harassment, violence, the siding of the police – UK police, I stress –
with the extremists persecuting them, telling the family that they
‘brought this on themselves’ ... If I had been given this report with
all locations removed, I would have said these events had to have been
in Pakistan or a Muslim country.”
Sadly, Chowdhry said the researcher commented, while he was appalled, he was not that surprised.
He said he has similar cases
before in other cities in the UK, and not even involving converts from
Islam, but Pakistanis from Christian families who have been Christian
for many generations.
The researcher added, “We
don’t know how common these more extreme examples are, but we know these
incidents are far from isolated.”
Many Pakistani Christians run
a double gauntlet, the researcher noted. They have to endure their
children on the school bus being verbally abused as Christian “infidels”
by Muslim schoolmates, and being told by whites to “go home you
Muslims,” with added racial slurs.
In one case in Birmingham, a
Pakistani Christian family who gained asylum after fleeing Pakistan
faced the same kind of physical violence and tactics here as they had in
Pakistan. This happened within a couple of weeks of moving out of the
asylum system and into council accommodation.
The council had to re-house
them, Chowdhry reported the researcher said. They were not converts, yet
as soon as the nearby mosque found out they weren’t Muslims, the
attacks started, including false accusations of desecration of the
mosque, knife attacks and violence at their front door.
“I have been to stay with the
family several times in their new home, and whilst I can’t go into
details, I can tell you I have seen for myself a little of the appalling
abuse they are being subjected to online.”
He went on to detail how on
one of his visits to Birmingham, both white and Asian Christians
detailed no go areas where it was not safe for non-Muslims to go or even
park. “There was a particular climate of fear amongst Asian
Christians,” he said.
The researcher said that one
comment he can’t forget was one he heard made by a local Asian Christian
leader, “We know what they will do next. They will go for our
children.”
Chowdhry said they were making preparations against attempts to convert their children to Islam by whatever means.
According to Chowdhry, there are many converts to Christianity who live in fear, underground.
He added, “There is a reason that other Christian organisations have set up a series of safe-houses in the UK.”
Chowdhry said in some cases,
there is such a great threat, converts have reportedly been forced to
not only change address and name, but even their National Insurance
numbers.
He added, “A very significant
number of the so-called ‘honor killings’ in this country involve
victims who have converted from Islam to Christianity. There are reports
of converts facing death threats from every area of the UK – London,
Bradford, Birmingham, Glasgow. This is a nationwide problem that needs
to be addressed.”
For more information visit www.britishpakistanichristians.org
Photo captions: 1) Nissar and
his Family. Image copyright with Ross Parry Agency who we thank for
permission of use. 2) Jeremy and Elma Reynalds.
About the writer:
Jeremy Reynalds is Senior Correspondent for the ASSIST News Service, a
freelance writer and also the founder and CEO of Joy Junction, New
Mexico's largest emergency homeless shelter, www.joyjunction.org.
He has a master's degree in communication from the University of New
Mexico, and a Ph.D. in intercultural education from Biola University in
Los Angeles. His newest book is "From Destitute to Ph.D." Additional
details on "From Destitute to Ph.D." are available at www.myhomelessjourney.com. Reynalds lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico with his wife, Elma. For more information contact: Jeremy Reynalds at jeremyreynalds@gmail.com.
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