Algeria’s recent oppression and persecution of the country’s Christians has been attributed to anxiety over the increasing number of Muslims converting to Christianity.
The government has ordered over half of the country’s Protestant churches to close, in accordance with a 2006 law, only now being enforced, that restricts worship by non-Muslims.
In addition to church closures, Protestants have been arrested in western Algeria as they travel between cities or exit religious meetings, and Catholics have been prevented from regular ministry activities outside their church walls.
Such restriction of religious freedoms has coincided with a barrage of antagonistic articles in Arabic newspapers, heightening tensions between Christians and Muslims in the Islamic Mediterranean nation.
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“This is the most pressure Christians have faced in Algeria,” said Farid Bouchama, an Algerian televangelist living in France. “Before it was discrimination from families or jobs, but this is the first organized pressure from the state.”
In Tiaret, western Algeria, Habiba Kouider, a 35-year-old Muslim convert to Christianity, has been charged with practicing her faith without a licence after she was found carrying several Bibles in her hand bag. The prosecutor told her he would drop the charge if she returned to Islam. She refused and now faces a possible three-year jail term. Her lawyer maintains the charge has no basis in Algerian law.
The state prosecutor in Tiaret is also demanding that six other Muslim converts be given two-year sentences and heavy fines. The six were arrested at a prayer meeting and originally charged with “distributing documents to shake the faith of Muslims”. A further charge of illegally practicing non-Muslim worship was added at a court hearing earlier this week.
One of the defendants asks a reasonable question:
“How can six people shake the faith of 40 million unless the court is convinced that the faith of the 40 million is not based on strong foundations?” said Djillali Saibi, one of the Christians on trial, referring to Algeria’s majority-Muslim population. Christians, mostly converts, make up less than 1 percent of the country’s people.
Reason, unfortunately, seems to be in short supply among Algerian authorities these days. The irrational reaction to Muslim conversions to Christianity indicates the condition previously identified as apostaphobia.
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