forced conversion a reality

Submitted by harjit (United Kingdom), Oct 16, 2007 at 17:38

I don't know about muslims prefering people to convert of their own free will. The basic doctorine is that if you convert people then you will be equal to the martyrs in how many virgins you get to keep as company in heaven - or something along those lines. The point is that it is seen as a good thing in many quarters regardless of how it is achieved.

In UK the khilafah group distributes funds to young muslim boys to help them date and marry sikh, christian and hindu girls. The idea is that they convert as a precondition to marriage and this is done in open air demonstrations. This group often target societies most vulnerable with leaflets and advice sessions on "how to date a fat girl" etc etc

In Afghanistan, non muslims pay higher taxes and enjoy less priveledges than muslims and there is a constant pressure to convert. There are many stories like this all round the world.

The whole concept of khaffir (non-believers) being lower than muslims and acceptable cannon fodder and the whole doctorine of conversion make the Islamic faith a potentialy abrasive one. Millions of Hindus were converted at sword point, the Sikh prophets were martyred and even now, the process has not gone away, it has just become more sophisticated.

The whole idea of religion, in my opinion, is to collect money for the priests and exercise control over the people. Democracy and capitalism have taken that away from the Christian church so people now seem to by-pass the church and worship the money directly whilst putting all of their faith in democratic government. All faiths are showing an element of this, but the shift of christianlity in Europe from middle class and working class white to African immigrant black congregations is a startling illustration of people becoming lovers of money and not so visibly lovers of god.

Which brings us back to Islam. Money will be the test of faith for Islam. My theory is that as Islamic followers become more affluent and partake in democratic capitalist economies - the religion will go from extreme fanatic, to tolerant moderate to basic non-entity in quick succession.

Soon we will see the effects of spreading the wealth and it will have the same effect that spreading the knowledge had on Brahmin hindus, it will blunt the extremist sword and eventually erode the elitist power held by the priests and other heads of the faith. People just want to be happy and a physical and spiritual balance is often best found when there is no conflict and this is what I suspect the Islamic people will seek before long.

Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments".