مدونة الجزيرة العربية : Forced conversion to Christianity

Forced conversion to Christianity

Medieval era

During the Saxon Wars, Charlemagne, King of the Franks, forcibly Roman Catholicized the Saxons from their native Germanic paganism by way of warfare and law upon conquest. Examples include the Massacre of Verden in 782, during which Charlemagne reportedly had 4,500 captive Saxons massacred upon rebelling against conversion, and the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, a law imposed on conquered Saxons in 785 which prescribes death to those that refuse to convert to Christianity.[4][5]

Pope Innocent III pronounced in 1201 that even if torture and intimidation had been employed in receiving the sacrament, one nevertheless:

...does receive the impress of Christianity and may be forced to observe the Christian Faith as one who expressed a conditional willingness though, absolutely speaking, he was unwilling. ... [For] the grace of Baptism had been received, and they had been anointed with the sacred oil, and had participated in the body of the Lord, they might properly be forced to hold to the faith which they had accepted perforce, lest the name of the Lord be blasphemed, and lest they hold in contempt and consider vile the faith they had joined.[6]

Spanish Inquisition

Main article: Spanish inquisition

After the end of the Islamic control of Spain, Muslims and Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497.[7] After the Reconquista, so called "New Christians" were those inhabitants (Sephardic Jews or Mudéjar Muslims) during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Era who were baptized under coercion and in the face of murder, becoming forced converts from Islam (Moriscos, Conversos and secret Moors) and forced converts from Judaism (Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Marranos). Then the Spanish Inquisition targeted primarily forced converts from Judaism who came under suspicion of either continuing to adhere to their old religion or of having fallen back into it. Jewish conversos still resided in Spain and often hiddenly (cryptically) practiced Judaism and were suspected by the "Old Christians" of being Crypto-Jews. The Spanish Inquisition generated much wealth and income for the church and individual inquisitors by confiscating the property of the persecutees or selling them into slavery. The end of the Al-Andalus and the expulsion of the Sephardic Jews from the Iberian Peninsula went hand in hand with the increase of Spanish-Portugal influence in the world, as exemplified in the Christian conquest of the Americas and their aboriginal Indian population. The Ottoman Empire, the Netherlands, and the New World absorbed much of the Jewish refugees.[8]

Goa inquisition[edit]

Main article:

Goa Inquisition

Religious persecution took place by the Portuguese in Goa, India from 16th to the 17th century. The natives of Goa, most of them Hindus were subjected to severe torture and oppression by the zealous Portuguese rulers and missionaries and forcibly converted to Christianity.[9][10][11][12][13][14]

In 1567, the campaign of destroying temples in Bardez met with success. At the end of it 300 Hindu temples were destroyed. Enacting laws, prohibition was laid from December 4, 1567 on rituals of Hindu marriages, sacred thread wearing and cremation. All the persons above 15 years of age were compelled to listen to Christian preaching, failing which they were punished. In 1583, Hindu temples at Assolna and Cuncolim were destroyed through army action. "The fathers of the Church forbade the Hindus under terrible penalties the use of their own sacred books, and prevented them from all exercise of their religion. They destroyed their temples, and so harassed and interfered with the people that they abandoned the city in large numbers, refusing to remain any longer in a place where they had no liberty, and were liable to imprisonment, torture and death if they worshipped after their own fashion the gods of their fathers." wrote Filippo Sassetti, who was in India from 1578 to 1588. An order was issued in June 1684 for suppressing the Konkani language and making it compulsory to speak the Portuguese language. The law provided for dealing toughly with anyone using the local language. Following that law all the non-Christian cultural symbols and the books written in local languages were sought to be destroyed.[15]

Methods such as repressive laws, demolition of temples and mosques, destruction of holy books, fines and the forcible conversion of orphans were used.[16]

Indigenous children

Indigenous peoples colonized by Christians have been subject to forced conversions. Programs to convert children have been common.

North America

The government paid religious societies to provide education to Native American children on reservations. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) founded additional American Indian boarding schools based on the assimilation model of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

Children were usually immersed in European-American culture through appearance changes with haircuts, were forbidden to speak their native languages, and traditional names were replaced by new European-American names. The experience of the schools was often harsh, especially for the younger children who were separated from their families. In numerous ways, they were encouraged or forced to abandon their Native American identities and cultures.[17] The number of Native American children in the boarding schools reached a peak in the 1970s, with an estimated enrollment of 60,000 in 1973. Especially through investigations of the later twentieth century, there have been many documented cases of sexual, physical and mental abuse occurring at such schools.[18][19] Since those years, tribal nations have increasingly insisted on community-based schools and have also founded numerous tribally controlled colleges. Community schools have also been supported by the federal government through the BIA and legislation. The largest boarding schools have closed. In some cases, reservations or tribes were too small or poor to support independent schools and still wanted an alternative for their children, especially for high school. By 2007, the number of Native American children in boarding schools had declined to 9,500.

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Australia

Generations (also known as Stolen children) were the children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent who were removed from their families by the Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, under acts of their respective parliaments. The removals occurred in the period between approximately 1909[20] and 1969,[21][22] although in some places children were still being taken until the 1970s.[23][24][25]

Documentary evidence, such as newspaper articles and reports to parliamentary committees, suggest a range of rationales. Motivations evident include child protection, beliefs that given their catastrophic population decline after white contact that Aboriginal people would die out,[26] and a fear of miscegenation by full-blooded Aboriginal people.[27]

Abducting children in Bible Christians abducting Australian aboriginal children from their Mothers

http://aljazeeraalarabiamodwana.blogspot.com/2015/01/christians-abducting-australian.html

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Hindus in India

The Baptist Church of Tripura is alleged to have supplied the NLFT with arms and financial support and to have encouraged the murder of Hindus, particularly infants, as a means to depopulate the region of all Hindus.[28] In 2009, the Assam Times reported that about fifteen armed Hmar militants, members of Manmasi National Christian Army, tried to force Hindu residents of Bhuvan Pahar, Assam to convert to Christianity.[29] A few Christian evangelists in India have been accused of forced conversion of Hindus, and some of them have been for allegedly converting others by force.[30][31]

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Roman Catholicism

Archbishop Moras, refuting allegations of forced conversions and the charges of conversions against the Christian missionaries, said "We do not believe in forced conversions" and "It is easy to charge people with wrong allegations but difficult to stop evil powers that are working against Christians".[32]

Serbian civilians who are being forced to convert to Catholicism by the Ustaše regime stand in front of a baptismal font in a church in Glina, July 1941

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4^For the Massacre of Verden, see Barbero, Alessandro (2004). Charlemagne: Father of a Continent, page 46. University of California Press. For the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, see Riché, Pierre (1993). The Carolingians. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1342-3.

5^ The Crusades, by Bernard Hamilton, 1998, Sutton Publishing, United Kingdom, Chapter 9: Later Crusades, p. 87: “In 1309 the Teutonic Order moved its headquarters to Marienburg in Prussia. It had a papal license to wage perpetual war against the pagans and used this to launch annual crusades against Lithuania. These expeditions were very popular with the nobility of northern Europe: campaigns were held twice a year, in the summer and in the winter when the order laid on special Christmas festivities for visiting crusaders.” “The excuse for men who enjoyed fighting and to lay waste large parts of Lithuania in the name of Christ was removed in 1386 when the King of Lithuania, Jagiello, married Queen Jadwiga of Poland and received Catholic baptism. The two kingdoms were united under Christian rulers and the Teutonic Knights no longer had any justification for crusading against pagans there.”

6 ^ Grayzel, Solomon, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century, rev. ed., New York: Hermon, 1966, p. 103

7 ^ Lowenstein, Steven (2001). The Jewish Cultural Tapestry: International Jewish Folk Traditions. Oxford University Press. p. 36.

8 ^ 3000 Years of Sephardic History Jerusalem Connection Writers Archives

9 ^ Of umbrellas, goddesses, and dreams: essays on Goan culture and society Robert Samuel Newman, 2001

10 ^ The Goa Inquisition, Being a Quatercentenary Commemoration Study of the Inquisition in India by Anant Priolkar, Bombay University Press

11 ^ Everyday Nationalism: Women of the Hindu Right in India Kalyani Devaki Menon, 2009

12 ^ Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bombay 1967

13 ^ M. D. David (ed.), Western Colonialism in Asia and Christianity, Bombay, 1988, p.17

14 ^ Between ethnography and fiction: Verrier Elwin and the tribal question in India Tanka Bahadur Subba, Sujit Som, K. C. Baral, North Eastern Hill University. Dept. of Anthropology – Social Science

15 ^ "Goa Inquisition for Colonial Disciplining". Scribd.com. 2010-03-15. Retrieved 2012-11-13.

16 ^ Mascarenhas-Keyes, Stella (1979), Goans in London: portrait of a Catholic Asian community, Goan Association (UK)

17 ^ "Long-suffering urban Indians find roots in ancient rituals". California's Lost Tribes at the Wayback Machine (archived August 29, 2005) Archived from the original on August 29, 2005. Retrieved February 8, 2006.

18 ^ "Developmental and learning disabilities". PRSP Disabilities. Retrieved February 8, 2006.

19 ^ http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/newsletter"Soul Wound: The Legacy of Native American Schools". Amnesty International USA. Retrieved February 8, 2006.

20 ^ Marten, J.A., (2002), Children and War, NYU Press, New York, p. 229 ISBN 0-8147-5667-0

21 ^ Australian Museum (2004). "Indigenous Australia: Family Life". Retrieved 28 March 2008.[dead link]

22 ^ Read, Peter (1981). The Stolen Generations:(bringing them home) The Removal of Aboriginal Children in New South Wales 1883 to 1969 (PDF). Department of Aboriginal Affairs (New South Wales government). ISBN 0-646-46221-0.

23 ^ In its submission to the Bringing Them Home report, the Victorian government stated that "despite the apparent recognition in government reports that the interests of Indigenous children were best served by keeping them in their own communities, the number of Aboriginal children forcibly removed continued to increase, rising from 220 in 1973 to 350 in 1976" (Bringing Them Home: "Victoria"[dead link]).

24 ^ Wendy Lewis, Simon Balderstone and John Bowan (2006). Events That Shaped Australia. New Holland. p. 130. ISBN 978-1-74110-492-9.

25 ^ Social and Emotional Wellbeing: Removal from Natural Family in 4704.0 – The Health and Welfare of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, Oct 2010, Released at 11:30 AM 17 February 2011

26 ^ Bates, Daisy (1938). "The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime spent among the Natives of Australia". Project Gutenberg of Australia. p. 243. I did what I set out to do – to make their passing easier and to keep the dreaded half-caste menace from our great continent

27 ^ Bates, Daisy (1938). "The Passing of the Aborigines: A Lifetime spent among the Natives of Australia". Project Gutenberg of Australia. Half-castes came among them, a being neither black nor white, whom they detested.

28 ^ Bhaumik, Subhir (April 18, 2000). "'Church backing Tripura rebels'". BBC News. Retrieved 2006-08-26.

29 ^ Christianity threat looms over Bhuvan Pahar Assam Times – June 23, 2009

30 ^ India Pastor Jailed For Converting Hindus, Corpse Exhumed

31 ^ Indian couple detained on forced conversion charges

32 ^ Satisfied with govt action- Archbishop Moras

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CONVERT TO CHRISTIANITY OR DIE John Stone & Hugh Fogelman

http://christianity-revealed.com/cr/files/converttochristianityordie.html

Catholic to legalize the occupation and enslavement and rape the land of non-Christians
http://aljazeeraalarabiamodwana.blogspot.com/2015/09/blog-post_5.html

Christians permitted to force others into accepting Christinity

http://aljazeeraalarabiamodwana.blogspot.com/2015/01/christians-permitted-to-force-others.html

Islam against aggression and war