Netherlands: Ex-Muslims Get Threatened 'Every Single Day'

Three converts from Islam to Christianity who live in the Netherlands recently spoke about their experiences, and it’s clear that they’re not exactly finding diversity, in the form of mass Muslim migration into Europe, to be their strength.

An ex-Muslim from Kurdistan named Faraidoun Fouad recounted: “I converted in 1999. In 2002 God called me to reach out to my own people. Directly after my conversion to Christianity I received the first threats. People who I thought were my friends, became my enemies.”

Nor were his former friends all jihadis: “Even Muslims who are not very conservative told my wife that they would kill me.”

Fouad converted twenty years ago, but his Muslim ex-friends have never gotten used to the fact: “I receive threats every day. When I post something on Facebook, I often receive hateful reactions.”

Fouad’s experience was similar to that of another convert, a woman named Esther Mulder who fled Somalia in 1992. Though they had left the homeland, they brought its mores to the Netherlands; when Esther was 14, they told her she was about to be married off. What she wanted had nothing to do with it, so she ran away from home and lived in shelters. Finally she married a Dutchman and converted to Christianity.

After she converted, matters got even worse: “After my conversion, the threats started. Especially on Facebook. Most of the time they’re coming from other Somalis. They write to me in Somali, so no one else is able to understand what they’re saying. We once posted a picture of a Somali conference where everyone was standing in front of a cross. People didn’t like it and we received several threats. I was really sorry about that.”

She reestablished contact with her family, but the tension level is high: “When I’m there, my father leaves the house. The last thing he ever said to me, is that I’m no longer his daughter.”

A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-‘ashriyyah, Al-Ja’fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.”

Qaradawi also once famously said: “If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment, Islam wouldn’t exist today.”

(Spencer, “Netherlands: Ex-Muslims Get Threatened 'Every Single Day',” FrontPageMag Online, 3/15/19).