Forced conversions?

Submitted by Dawud (United Kingdom), Jul 2, 2009 at 13:14

Seeing as you like wikipedia as the fountain of all knowledge, lets see what it has to say about the shahada (the thing you MUST do in order to convert to Islam)

There are seven critical conditions of the shahadah, without which it is considered to be meaningless:

• Al-'Ilm: Knowledge of the meaning of the Shahadah, its negation and affirmation.
• Al-Yaqeen: Certainty – perfect knowledge of it that counteracts suspicion and doubt.
• Al-Ikhlaas: Sincerity which negates shirk.
• Al-Sidq: Truthfulness that permits neither falsehood nor hypocrisy.
• Al-Mahabbah: Love of the Shahadah and its meaning, and being happy with it.
• Al-Inqiad: Submission to its rightful requirements, which are the duties that must be performed with sincerity to God (alone) seeking His pleasure.
• Al-Qubool: Acceptance that contradicts rejection.

Now could someone at gun point really full fill these requirements? including sincerity???

With reagrds to your reference of children being "forced"" well in that case any child brought up with religion is "forced" to convert and we need to start making arrests within the majority of Religious communities around the world seeing as the majority of the worlds citzens raise their children with their beliefs.

Rather than producing a few "examplez" (rather poor onese, many times using the words "rumour" or "suspicion" implying this is not even based on fact, why dont you give me some statistics on how many people are forcibly converted to Islam. Specific examples do not suffice as evidence. Otherwise we should also complain about hinduism which dictates that you must burn a women when her husband dies because the women doesn't even have the right to live after her husband dies. Do I hear any of you complain about hindu extremists?

You could also provide quotes from the qur'an to prove that people must be coerced into taking shahada and explaining how to force them to do it with sincerity

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".