LONDON — United Kingdom authorities are not granting asylum to several refugees who recently became Christians. The reason? The new believers cannot “prove the authenticity of their Christian faith” because they cannot answer basic Bible questions, according to The Christian Post.
According to BBC News, an international religious freedom group is defending the new Christians, arguing that Bible trivia (like reciting the Ten Commandments) does not prove one’s faith.
One Iranian convert to Christianity told The Post, “One question they asked me was very strange — what color was the cover of the Bible,” he said. “I knew there were different colors. The one I had was red. They asked me questions I was not able to answer — for example what are the Ten Commandments. I could not name them all from memory.”
Many churches across Europe have recently reported a growing number of Muslim refugee converts, with mass baptisms taking place.
The British Pakistani Christian Association (BPCA) said many Christian converts are being ejected on “very spurious grounds,” The Post reported.
In some instances, genuine converts are being turned down while other “bogus” Christians are able to learn and recite passages of “Bible trivia” in order to secure asylum, according to a recent report from an international freedom group.
Wilson Chowdhry, chairman of BPCA, said, “Our expertise is in the area of Pakistani Christians who make up less than 120 applicants for asylum in the U.K. each year. Less than 50 percent attain leave to remain in the U.K. on initial application and appeals yield little success.”
Other rejected asylum cases include individuals who were unable to detail the books of the New Testament; unaware of the Catholic rule of abstinence on Fridays; or unable to name the last book of the Bible (in this case, the individual answered correctly in Farsi, but was misunderstood).
(TAB)
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