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ENGLAND: Christians offer safe houses to Muslim Converts
By Nicholas Hellen, Social Affairs Editor
The Sunday Times
May 25, 2014
A CHRISTIAN campaign group is launching a national network of safe houses for Muslim converts who face ostracism or violent reprisals for leaving their religion.
It says it knows of up to 1,100 former Muslims at risk in Britain but the true number could be 3,000.
Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern, which is organising the network, said: “We are motivated by a deep sense of love and compassion for those that feel trapped in a situation from which they cannot escape.
“The penalty for them at best is to be cut off from their family; at worst they face death. This is happening not just in Sudan and Nigeria but in east London. The government has failed to deal with the rise in anti-Christian sentiment.”
News of the support network for converts comes in the wake of international outrage at Sudan for imposing a death sentence on Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, a pregnant Christian woman, for refusing to renounce her faith. Her estranged father was Muslim.
Michael Nazir-Ali, a former bishop of Rochester, said a “mistaken respect for culture” meant that British converts were not being protected.
END
