DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — A criminal court in the United Arab Emirates has declared a Filipino pastor, Fernando Alconga, guilty of abusing Islam and conducting Christian missionary activity.
Arrested five months ago for giving a Bible and Christian literature to an Arab Muslim at a Dubai shopping center, Alconga was held in jail for five weeks and charged with a felony for preaching other than the Islamic religion, as forbidden in the Federal Criminal Code. A total of eight court hearings were conducted in his trial, which opened Jan. 19.
In the April 27 verdict, Chief Judge Mahmood Fahmi Sultan of the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance suspended Alconga’s punishment because the court was of the opinion that the 54-year-old pastor would not repeat his crime.
“In the long run, we are seeing God’s hand in this,” said Alconga, an ordained conservative Baptist minister who has served as pastor of congregations in the UAE for the past nine years.
He had been scheduled to return to the Philippines in January with his family, where he was due to take up pastoral ministry in a Manila church.
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